Gmail

[SunTaxMan]

I haven't had Gmail open for about 2 days. Just a blank screen. Anyone else having a problem?
Thanks

[dtlee]

Not sure what you are saying, but does it say "loading" and is there some indication that it finished with "errors" of some kind in the lower left of the screen?

If so, try refreshing the screen. I think something is going on between Internet Explorer and Gmail.

[FEDUKE404]

Gmail problems

Looks as if you are not alone........

gmail problems...Yes: reader comment from panmce
Posted on: January 12, 2008, 2:56 PM PST
Story: Gmail problems... again?

My gmail has been unavailable most of last night and today. I was able to log on a couple of times, vs the dozens of times I was not. I read the previous posting about registering with CNET and after I registered, I was able to log on. I hope that lasts.

More:

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-6053454-7.html

Good luck!

FE

[Koss]

[OFF-TOPIC] You get what you pay for

Google blew it when they decided to use search technology that actually targets ads to the user based on the content of the e-mail messages. I don't really believe that my e-mail is interesting enough for any human, at Google or anywhere else, to take the time to eavesdrop on it. But the simple fact is that Google is reading your mail, using fairly sophisticated artificial intelligence, and then using that information to deliver advertising content.

It's bad enough that we currently have a massive problem with the executive branch of the federal government basically ignoring the US Constitution, and declaring that no judicial or legislative control is needed for certain eavesdropping activities.

With Gmail, by simply using the service, you are agreeing to all their terms and conditions, which allow them to use AI to read your mail. You also give up most of your right to recover damages for any kind of system failure or loss of data.

Gmail may be fine for sending a copy of your airline itinerary to Aunt Gertrude so she knows what time to pick you up at the airport. But I sure hope no one in this community is using a free e-mail service to communicate with clients...

My nonprofessional advice to anyone today is to avoid using free e-mail accounts, and also avoid using an e-mail account that is hosted by a commercial ISP and tied to their domain name. In other words, I recommend avoiding even those e-mail accounts that you are indirectly paying for as part of your service package from Roadrunner, or Comcast, or whoever is providing your internet connection.

Why? Because if you become dissatisfied with their service, or want to cancel the account for any other reason, you will either lose the e-mail address altogether, or have to negotiate some way to keep the e-mail account without the original service package.

Many folks on this board are a bit older than me. Others are much younger.

I certainly understand that some folks have been using the same e-mail address at AOL or some other provider for the last six years, and they can't just abandon it. Everyone they know has that address, and migrating would take a lot of time and effort.

And that's my whole point. For those that are not already in that situation, I recommend establishing your own domain name now, and then pick an e-mail address to go with it that will be your permanent e-mail address for the rest of your life.

E-mail and the internet will only become more of a fixture in our lives as time goes by. This is one particular point where I think parents are not full-blown bat-s**t crazy when they purchase a domain name for a newborn baby.

My stepdaughter is 18, and she is applying to colleges, planning to become a commercial and professional artist. Up until recently she had only Hotmail and Yahoo addresses, and of course they were adolescent, personal addresses... I won't post them here, but they were things like ohiocatlover88, or Goldfish44.

I advised her not to use those addresses to communicate with colleges, and I advised her to pick a domain name and an e-mail address that are neutral and professional-looking.

A domain name from the most reputable hosting services usually costs only ten or fifteen dollars a year, and it typically comes with one e-mail account that will hold 25 or 50 MB. It requires no technical expertise at all. Most offer a web-based interface to read your mail, just like the free services, or you can set it up through Outlook or Outlook Express in five minutes by reading the help screen for the mail server settings.

Purchasing your own domain name and establishing an e-mail address on it does not mean setting up a website. That's a different matter.

But you get an e-mail address that's yours forever, and if you become dissatisified with the host, you simply move the domain to a different host. Kind of like porting your phone number to a different carrier.

My stepdaughter settled on nikki@brackenstudios.net.

Burton M. Koss
koss@usakoss.net

[Koss]

E-mail Security and Reliability

I wrote:

Gmail may be fine for sending a copy of your airline itinerary to Aunt Gertrude so she knows what time to pick you up at the airport.

But that wasn't a very good example. If you are forwarding your airline ticket from your Gmail account, that implies that you used the Gmail address to purchase the tickets.

When you want to go and make changes, or buy new tickets a month later from the same airline, and you can't remember your password for the airline's website...

And the password reset/recovery process involves the airline sending you an e-mail message with a temporary auth code or something...

Do you really want to be using a free e-mail service that may not be functional when you need it?

BMK

[SunTaxMan]

Response to Doug

Doug,

"Not sure what you are saying, but does it say "loading" and is there some indication that it finished with "errors" of some kind in the lower left of the screen?

If so, try refreshing the screen. I think something is going on between Internet Explorer and Gmail."

No "loading" appears, No "indication" of activity, except the progress bar that appears on the bottom, while a web site is loading.

Refreshing makes no difference. "Done" appears on the lower left of the window.

the advantage I have enjoyed is having several chat group activites appear in the same window. Perhaps it is time to throw GMail overboard?

[Koss]

Gmail

My partner uses a gmail account for noncommerical purposes, and we just logged in without any problems.

We're in central Ohio
using Windows XP
Internet Explorer 6

on a wireless broadband connection from Verizon Wireless
(an "aircard" that plugs into the USB port)

whatever you are experiencing might be originating with your ISP and Google

if Google moved some or all mail accounts to a different server or IP address, it is possible that your ISP may not have updated their Zone Files yet

if that sounds really technical and geeky, it's because it is

in English, Google moved some accounts to a different server, and some ISPs may not yet have the new address

or something like that

I know this sounds really sophomoric, but have you tried rebooting your computer?

And clearing your cookies and cache?

And making sure that you are not using some sort of autofill, or "remember me" feature that is automatically filling in your username or password?

BMK

[dtlee]

Very Interesting

For about a week, I have been having the symptoms I described where "Loading..." would appear but not the actual mail window unless I did a refresh.

This morning when I posted that, it was working fine. Just now, I tried and it displayed exactly the symptoms you described. This is all in IE7. After a few minutes of refreshing the screen it went back to the "Loading...." message and then eventually it loaded my mail screen.

If you experience problems and you need to urgently access this email inbox, you might try this:

http://mail.google.com/mail/x/

or the mobile version:

http://m.gmail.com

[Koss]

Gmail Issues...

My nonprofessional opinion is that IE 7 and Windows Vista are currently in the gamma stage of development...

that's where Microsoft has completed beta testing and released a final version, but won't admit that they never resolved all the bugs that were detected during beta testing.

Someone very close to me is a recovering alcoholic on the AA program. AA is the original twelve-step program. Of those who are sober but operating with wrongheaded thinking, it is sometimes said that they are "on the 13th step."

The 13th step is--

Came to believe your own bulls**t.

BMK

[dtlee]

Cute, Burton

I have never liked any Microsoft Product. Word still has pagination bugs that were there in Word 97, I'm sorry "features."

Unfortunately, many of us are stuck with their tools. I have found that Firefox is significantly buggier than I would have expected any Microsoft competitor to be and it is a memory hog. I tried to use it as my primary browser but cannot stand the crashes. I hear that Firefox 3 will correct the memory issues.

[skhyatt]

gmail

I have a gmail account that I use very infrequently. I just tried it and was able to log in without any apparent problems.

[skhyatt]

Bugs

I have never liked any Microsoft Product. Word still has pagination bugs that were there in Word 97, I'm sorry "features."

Unfortunately, many of us are stuck with their tools. I have found that Firefox is significantly buggier than I would have expected any Microsoft competitor to be and it is a memory hog. I tried to use it as my primary browser but cannot stand the crashes. I hear that Firefox 3 will correct the memory issues.

I have IE 7 and Firefox 2 on my computer. Firefox is significantly faster than IE7 and it is the main browser I use. I am surprised you are having bug issues Doug. I haven't had any (knock on wood). Are you using any extensions or add-ons with it?

[skhyatt]

Google blew it when they decided to use search technology that actually targets ads to the user based on the content of the e-mail messages. I don't really believe that my e-mail is interesting enough for any human, at Google or anywhere else, to take the time to eavesdrop on it. But the simple fact is that Google is reading your mail, using fairly sophisticated artificial intelligence, and then using that information to deliver advertising content.

It's bad enough that we currently have a massive problem with the executive branch of the federal government basically ignoring the US Constitution, and declaring that no judicial or legislative control is needed for certain eavesdropping activities.

With Gmail, by simply using the service, you are agreeing to all their terms and conditions, which allow them to use AI to read your mail. You also give up most of your right to recover damages for any kind of system failure or loss of data.

Gmail may be fine for sending a copy of your airline itinerary to Aunt Gertrude so she knows what time to pick you up at the airport. But I sure hope no one in this community is using a free e-mail service to communicate with clients...

My nonprofessional advice to anyone today is to avoid using free e-mail accounts, and also avoid using an e-mail account that is hosted by a commercial ISP and tied to their domain name. In other words, I recommend avoiding even those e-mail accounts that you are indirectly paying for as part of your service package from Roadrunner, or Comcast, or whoever is providing your internet connection.

Why? Because if you become dissatisfied with their service, or want to cancel the account for any other reason, you will either lose the e-mail address altogether, or have to negotiate some way to keep the e-mail account without the original service package.

Many folks on this board are a bit older than me. Others are much younger.

I certainly understand that some folks have been using the same e-mail address at AOL or some other provider for the last six years, and they can't just abandon it. Everyone they know has that address, and migrating would take a lot of time and effort.

And that's my whole point. For those that are not already in that situation, I recommend establishing your own domain name now, and then pick an e-mail address to go with it that will be your permanent e-mail address for the rest of your life.

E-mail and the internet will only become more of a fixture in our lives as time goes by. This is one particular point where I think parents are not full-blown bat-s**t crazy when they purchase a domain name for a newborn baby.

My stepdaughter is 18, and she is applying to colleges, planning to become a commercial and professional artist. Up until recently she had only Hotmail and Yahoo addresses, and of course they were adolescent, personal addresses... I won't post them here, but they were things like ohiocatlover88, or Goldfish44.

I advised her not to use those addresses to communicate with colleges, and I advised her to pick a domain name and an e-mail address that are neutral and professional-looking.

A domain name from the most reputable hosting services usually costs only ten or fifteen dollars a year, and it typically comes with one e-mail account that will hold 25 or 50 MB. It requires no technical expertise at all. Most offer a web-based interface to read your mail, just like the free services, or you can set it up through Outlook or Outlook Express in five minutes by reading the help screen for the mail server settings.

Purchasing your own domain name and establishing an e-mail address on it does not mean setting up a website. That's a different matter.

But you get an e-mail address that's yours forever, and if you become dissatisified with the host, you simply move the domain to a different host. Kind of like porting your phone number to a different carrier.

My stepdaughter settled on nikki@brackenstudios.net.

Burton M. Koss
koss@usakoss.net

You make good points regarding email. I have considered getting my own domain name also, but have just not pulled the trigger yet.

Another thing to consider though. Is any email account 100% secure? Even with your own domain name, whoever is hosting it could possibly read your email, couldn't they?

Like I said before though, you make some good points here about email in general. Excellent post.

[dtlee]

On my machine that rarely gets rebooted, there are obvious memory leaks with Firefox 2.X which can chew up hundreds of megs of memory. This is a known issue that they have not attempted to fix in 2.0. They apparently want us all to wait for 3.0.

Right now I have it running with just about 35M used and when it is running nicely, it is a great browser, However, I would not be surprised to come back tomorrow night and find it bloated beyond belief.

[skhyatt]

On my machine that rarely gets rebooted, there are obvious memory leaks with Firefox 2.X which can chew up hundreds of megs of memory. This is a known issue that they have not attempted to fix in 2.0. They apparently want us all to wait for 3.0.

Right now I have it running with just about 35M used and when it is running nicely, it is a great browser, However, I would not be surprised to come back tomorrow night and find it bloated beyond belief.

I should have mentioned earlier. You are correct about the memory leaks and it being a known issue. It does hog memory. It is quick though. The fact that it does take up so much memory could be the reason why it is so quick. Right now, FF is taking 56K of memory on my machine. IE7 running is taking 36K of memory.