OstroHoopy

John Carmack, of id Software fame, is now blogging. He even put up an interesting posting on his experience and analysis of MIDP development.

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/johnc/Recent%20Updates

Paul Graham

GMail Utilities

Very nice!

[June 27 Update]
Mark Lyon, the maker of probably the most popular GMail import tool, has a fully updated version of GML (GMail Loader) with a GUI available now!

Also using GTray, a system-tray utility that checks your current GMail inbox status without requiring a browser open all the time. It’s reasonably good right now, but, as it is a work-in-progress, shoudl continue to get better.

Okay, it’s only been one day, but so far GMail is incredible compared to any other web mail I’ve used. Better than many desktop clients I’ve used as well!

Things I like:

• It’s really quick, as one would expect from Google.
• I’ve always thought Labels would be the best way to organize mail.
• The user interface is really slick.
  • The integration of key press shortcuts is very unusual for a web interface, and very welcome!
  • Everything is very intuitive and easy to use.
  • The conversation layout for messages works better than any mail client’s “threaded view” that I’ve seen.

Things I think would make it better: (and many might still be implemented since it’s in Beta!)

• Filters need to be more flexible. By this, I mean things like being able to provide multiple test cases that activate the filter, compared with boolean operators. This is common among most desktop clients.
• Contact management needs to be a bit more sophisticated.
  • Need multiple email addresses for individual contacts.
  • Labels or categories for contacts would be helpful for people with large lists.
  • Support for groups of contacts would be nice. (mailing lists)
• Configuration for the Sent Mail needed to allow such things as an automatic CC. (via Todd, and I concur)
• Labels need a little more sophistication as well.
  • eg. Label hierarchies so that one label can imply many more. A simple example of this: Set up a parent label called Personal, it has a child called Family, and it has a child called Wife. If you label a message with Wife, it automatically inherits Family and Personal. Later when you are searching through your messages, you have the option of finding the same message under Personal, Family, or Wife. Now, this can be done right now by having all three labels set up and just labelling your message with all three, but I believe the hierarchy would provide a lot of convenience for this.
• My first spam wasn’t caught. Though I won’t put too much fault here, it was spam sent to another account of mine that forwards to gmail. And there will probably be some learning for the spam filters to do. However, I would like to see some configuration options for handling spam.
• I would like to be able to save drafts of messages before sending them.
• Templates would be nice too.

Well that’s a good starting point. I know it sounds like I am unimpressed with it since I didn’t have a long list of good points, but really good things are hard to describe: you just stare in wonder. I really do think it is great and can’t wait to see what the final product is like.

I don’t know how many people actually read this blog, but I’d love to read some other people’s comments on either my entry or their thoughts on GMail.

[June 24 update]
Another feature I discovered to be missing today: Opening a message in Sent Mail should allow the user to Re-send the message. This option should open the message up in a compose window and allow editing of recipients and contents of the message before sending.

I also noticed that Reply to all does not remove your email address if it was sent to preset Reply-To setting. Both your GMail address and your Reply-To setting should be ignored. Alternately, setting up email identities in your preferences could allow a ton more customization such as: all the email addresses you use, different display names for different identities (corporate, personal etc), different signatures, and so on.

Woohoo, now I AM someone. A friend sent me a Gmail invite today so I can be hip and cool with the Google crowd!