Archive for June, 2004

24 Hrs……….and no change

Its almost 24 hrs, and my gmail account is still not operational……….no response from the tech support either. (except for the autoresponse!)

And on the other account., no invites as of now !

Add comment | June 21st, 2004 at 09:08pm

FireFox Reloaded - v0.9

Just installed fire fox 0.9., and I can easily say that Microsoft has some thought times ahead.

Its getting closer and closer to MS. I guess it would take may be one or 2 more releases to beat MSIE!

Right now, MSIE has got a clear advantage (and a major one) when it comes to intranet within huge companies. All the big sites on the internet load perfectly fine with this browser. But, some sites which are designed with IE in mind still don’t look too good on firefox., but yes, its much better then 0.8!

Within our company intranet, I am forced to use MSIE. Why ?

Lot of pages within our intranet need authentication., and MSIE automatically authenticates you ! (as u r logged on to the domain!). Using firefox forces you to enter your userid/password every time you visit the page or the portal.. and given the security policy of our company, my account might get locked up if my user id/password is entered wrong a couple of times..
Some sites within our intranet are “designed” for MSIE. So, such sites look really weird on firefox.

Features wise, firefox is fundu. So is Opera 7.5.x!

Add comment | June 21st, 2004 at 11:45am

Still the same error!

Its almost 12 hours since I got this error, and I am still getting it.

I haven’t yet got any invites in my other account.

I did write to google, and I got a autoresponse from them. Waiting for things to be set-right!

Also, I figured out that I am not alone. There are quite a lot of people who are facing the same problem!. Beta………… it is !

Also, seeing this, I have decided not to make gmail as my primary account, for all my mails. Bcoz..for obvious reasons. :)

Let it be released formally.., then let me think about it!

Add comment | June 21st, 2004 at 10:40am

First Error in gmail ! (and hopefully the last one)

This is something new and wired

I go this error while logging on to gmail! Not sure why!

Click on the above image to see a bigger picture

Given the fact that gmail is in Beta, this should not be a problem!………

Add comment | June 20th, 2004 at 09:20pm

How I managed to get the famous ‘Invite’ !

Well, I am posting this blog from my gmail account ! And I just discovered that there is a beautiful auto complete feature when you type in the “to” field of a new mail. Tooo good.

OK, let me tell you how i managed to get the famous gmail Invite!

For the past 1 week or so, i was on the lookout for a gmail invite!
searched the net., and posted a “kind of” request on my blog
! :)

Then I was routinely browsing some other blogs, which was shown up in the recently updated list of blogger, and found this post and put a request .. and.. i forgot about it!
:)

The same day, was chatting with a cousin of mine, and came to know that he had managed to get a gmail account. Requested him for a Invite…. but he had used the two invites he had.. But he promised me that he would arrange for a invite some how !

The next day, when i check my mail, i find 2 invites ! …. Boooom!

Created two accounts!……………………..

Now comes the interesting part. One invite was from my cousin (which was in my BULK mail at yahoo).. and the other invite was from ..some UnKnown Guy! .. at that point.

Then i figured out that this un known guy is one of the Good men’s of the above mentioned blog! :)

Right now, I don’t yet have an invite with me in my gmail account. If you need an request, plz reply to my comment on the afewgoodmen blog. Will send you the invite! I will wait for 1 week for the same. (ie, 26th June 2k4)…….So, hurry up. FCFS!

5 comments | June 20th, 2004 at 03:38pm

Good, Bad and the Ugly!

I am still wondering who might have taken my id at gmail!. ie, arjunprabhu@gmail.com :) I have written to that id., but no reply so far!

There are three possibilities :

1. There is someone out there with my name. Someone real !

2. Some one has hijacked my id ! ..Hehehe..

3. Some goofup with my Google account !

If its case 1., then no issues. But if its case 2., I would like to tell that person to use the id! :)

GMail is not even released to public, Its only 2 Months and 18 days since its in beta (released on April 1st , 2k4), and i don’t get my ID !.. that’s really wired and the sad part. There are thousands of people out there who just hijack the names!.. just like domain names, and then ask for something in return !…..Well, If this is the case here, please don’t expect anything for me!………Keep the ID and use it!. Would love to see how long you would use it ! :)

Also, in the last 1 month month, I read that around 500+ domain names with the word Google have been registered ! Now isn’t that interesting.

Add comment | June 20th, 2004 at 12:13pm

Now I know why GMail is GMail !

Wow……….. You will love GMail. Its just tooo good. Can’t believe that its for free !. After using gmail for a couple of hours, I can easily say that I would be very easily beat up MS outlook or eudora or any other pop3/exchange client!

Lot of JavaScript, and these are JavaScript that work, without throwing any error at you !. That’s one of the best part. Very fast since most of it happens at client side!.

Let me now talk about some of the features…..

As mentioned in almost all the reviews, the labels concept is very good. More or less like a folder. But the difference is, here, the system takes care of putting the mail into the folder (or labeling it!)
Fundu search .. ie, google search for your mail. You will definitely need a robust search when you have 1GB of mail in your box !.. and this search is as good as google search
You can star the message. Something like flagging a message. Useful feature.
By default, the mails are grouped by conversation. The last mail that came in is displayed……
The UI is real fundu. Lot of space on your screen is saved. And DHTML again comes in here!
The prev conversation in a mail, with all the > > is hidden, to save screen space. You can see the entire conversation by just clicking a button!.
The Keyboard shortcut is just too much. Never see such stuff in any of the web based mails!..
The spell check feature when you compose the mail works like a charm!.. Again seems like its DHTML + some activex code …………on win platform. …But its too fast., and cool.
You CAN change the “Reply-To” address!.. in settings.. and the Name also.
You can turn on/off the keyboard shortcuts (by default its off).
Very good help/documentation.
You can set up your signature in the settings
filters are there.
there is a spam filter.. but haven’t’ received any spam yet. So………. yet to see how it would work! I am sure, even that would work like a charm!
Ads………That’s also pretty good..All adds in the right slide. No pop ups .. no ads on the top……… no BIG Flash movies as Ads. Only text based add., and sometimes they are helpful too :)
There is much more…..This is just the tip of the iceberg!

Overall, a very good fundu system.
No wonder people all over are going crazy over it!. Already tons of utils are available for gmail (all third party).

I have come aross utils which manage to emulate pop box ! Something like yahoopops! (for gmail!).. and one more called gTray!

I am sure that this one is going to be a big time hit.., and would give sleepless nights to yahoo and hotmail! Its not 1 GB or N GBs that you give that matters. Its the features, and the quality that matters, and thats why gmail is gmail!

Kudos to the gmail team!. Great work folks!

Add comment | June 20th, 2004 at 11:33am

GMail, Finally!……….Good News & Bad News

Yaaahooo!…after waiting for some time, got gmail invites!..

Yes. InviteS. In the same hour, i got 2 invites.
One from my cousin., and other from an UnKnowned person. Yet to find more about this person!.. I wont disclose the mail ids or contacts of these two folks right now for obvious reasons ! (ie, thier accounts would get bombed with requests for invites!)

Thanks to both of them.

I was damm happy to see the invites (thats Good News!)…………..clicked the link provided…… only to find that my most used user id is already taken up (very Bad News). Thats one of the saddest part !……….so had to settle down for a r j z o n e at g m a i l d o t c o m and created one more account with the other invite..

Now starts the best part!, using/testing gmail, geting a feel of it.

At the first glance it looks pretty simple……and cool..
decently fast.

Will post more on it once i go through it in detail!

Wish me all the best :)

1 comment | June 19th, 2004 at 03:18pm

RSS Feed……How to read?

Yes ! RSS (real simple syndication) feeds are the in-thing. Goto any website, you will find the familiar XML logo!

But, how do I use these RSS Feeds ?

Well, we have RSS Readers. One of the RSS readers that I have come across, which nicely integrates into Microsoft outlook is newsgator!. Check it out at http://www.newsgator.com . Its worth a try.

There are tons of freeware RSS readers on the net. Just Google!

Infact, you can read this blog using the RSS readers!
Just use the following URL:
~~http://arjunprabhu.blogspot.com/atom.xml~~
http://www.arjunprabhu.com/blog/feed/

Update: Check this post for a better web based feed reader.

Add comment | June 18th, 2004 at 03:25pm