Gmail Gets IMAP

I’ve been using Google’s Gmail for a while and really like it. It has plenty of storage, an excellent spam filter, a good web interface, and access via POP3. Oh yeah, its free, too. POP3 is a protocol that lets email programs like Outlook download your email, but POP3 is pretty simplistic. It doesn’t update the mail server with the read/unread status or if it has been responded to. It also doesn’t handle using folders and keeping the folders synchronized between your email client and the server. So for example, with POP3, if I read my Gmail at work over lunch and mark some messages as read online, when I go home they are still marked as unread in Outlook.

One of the reasons I like using Google’s services is that they are always making improvements. Recently, they added IMAP support to Gmail which was the one feature I had been wanting. The IMAP protocol is more advanced and does handle the above issues. If you access your Gmail online as well as using a client like Outlook, you might want to consider switching over, but if you only access it at home it won’t make much difference. I switched over and have been very happy with it. The only thing that is a little odd is that Gmail uses tags instead of folders so IMAP has to map the Gmail tags to folders. Since Gmail lets you add two different tags to an email, it might show up in two folders in your client. You may also want to turn off your clients junk mail filter since Gmail’s filter is probably better and will have already filtered out the junk. If you are interested in learning more, go to Gmail’s IMAP help page here. Don’t forget to enable IMAP in your Gmail settings too.

So what could be better than Gmail? How about your own personal Gmail server for your domain name like @drozmonkey.com? Stay tuned…

Black Friday

If you don’t know what Black Friday is you can get the low-down here. For me, it started two years ago when I was flipping through the Best Buy ad on Thanksgiving afternoon. They had a super cheap desktop PC - $250 including monitor – and a laptop - $380 (first time I had seen one under $400). My sister was in the market for a new computer at the time so around 6 PM, Jenny (eight months pregnant at the time) and I drove down to the local Best Buy to see if there were any crazies camping out yet. Nobody was there, but I usually have a hard time passing up something that is labeled crazy so I decided to start my camp out. I figured that if you are going to get up early in the morning that you might as well just go a few hours earlier get a decent spot in line, and then you might as well add another couple of hours to be the first one in line. Jenny hung out for a while and then dropped off some camping supplies before going to bed. They officially opened at 5 AM, but at about 4 AM they came out with donuts and coffee. Then they went down the line and passed out vouchers for all the big ticket items that had limited quantities. With the voucher you were guaranteed the item as long as you picked it up before noon. You were offered a voucher (limit of one) for each item in the ad, so I was able to get both the desktop and the laptop. By the time the doors opened and the mob was let in, it was mostly over. In the end, there are no guarantees that you’ll get what you want until you’ve made it through the checkout line, but Best Buy actually did a really good job and kept everyone happy and controlled. Of course, the people in the front of the line were definitely the happiest. It was fun and I even ended up hauling some stuff for the mother/daughter pair in line behind me since it wouldn’t fit in their compact car.

Last year Jenny’s mom & brother were visiting, so Zach went along. When we went to get in line at 5PM we were already tenth in line. We still got everything we wanted (a computer for Jenny’s parents, one for my grandma & one for my uncle), but it was a little too close as one of the items we were getting was a limit of 10 per store (thankfully, someone ahead of us did not want a desktop). This year I’m shopping for computers for Jenny’s grandma and my parents. Most of the ads have already been leaked on the Internet and Google can easily find them for you. I’m not sure what time I’ll head out but we might be eating turkey in the parking lot.

You might think camping out overnight for these deals is crazy, but I’m willing to do it to save 65% on a PC. Heck, this year I don’t even think I’ll be getting anything for myself, but it also a fun little social experiment. You get to watch all of the people drive by at 1 AM and say that you are crazy, but what are they doing driving around a Best Buy parking lot at 1 AM? You also get to talk to all of the people who are like #300 in line and come up to the front to ask everyone if they are waiting for the item they want in the hopes that 300 people came for something other than what they did! Line jumpers and people confronting line jumpers; yet another reason it is nice to be in the front. And everyone (including myself) going back through the ad trying to fight off the the urge to add more items to their list.

So, who’s up for a Black Friday camp-out? The high is supposed to be 75 and the low 49 . . . not too bad.