contentious.com

Back on July 16, I wrote about why I wanted to try Google’s new Gmail service. A couple of CONTENTIOUS readers were kind enough to send me Gmail invitations, so I’ve since been experimenting with two different Gmail accounts for about two weeks now.

Here’s how I’ve decided to us – and not use – Gmail for now…

• E-mail newsletters: I’ve decided to switch all of my subscriptions for e-mail newsletters over to my personal Gmail account. I’ve created a “label” for each publication.

  I find that Gmail is a much easier way for me to manage bulk e-mail. I simply archive whatever I don’t have time to read. Basically, if I haven’t read a newsletter issue in 2-3 days, I archive it. But if I want to go back and catch up on a particular publication, the “label” function makes it easy to find the most recent issues.

  NOTE: Apparently Gmail cannot yet corrently interpret e-mail messages that are base-64 encoded. In my experience, base 64 encoding has become much less popular. However, I’ve had to retain my subscription to the base 64-encoded EPA press release list at my original address, since I only got garbage from this list through Gmail. (How fitting, for the EPA…)

• E-mail discussion groups: I’ve also switched all of my e-mail discussion group subscriptions over to my personal Gmail address. Gmail’s “thread” approach to displaying messages makes following discussion lists much simpler.

  NOTE: At first I thought there was a bug with my GMail discussion list subscriptions. I have all my discussion list subscriptions configured to send me a copy of my own postings. When I switched those subscriptions to Gmail, I noticed that when I would post to a discussion list I would not receive a copy of my posting in my in-box. This is not a bug. Apparently Gmail recognizes when an incoming message is identical to the one you sent and eliminates it from the inbox. But that’s OK, since all Gmail messages that I send are in the sent-mail folder. As long as I have a copy somewhere and it’s associated with the appropriate message thread, that’s good enough for me.

• No spam problems so far: I’ve posted on the Web this Gmail address: contentious@gmail.com. Two weeks later I’ve yet to receive a single spam message at that address. Not bad.

  My personal Gmail account mistakenly interpreted a few legitimate e-mails as spam at first. However, when I marked them as “not spam” that problem stopped.

• Bandwidth conservation: When I am at my mountain cabin or on the road, I often have to use dialup Internet access. By switching all my bulk mail subscriptions over to Gmail, I now face significantly less download time when I’m getting e-mail via dialup. That’s a relief. Plus, Gmail is a pretty low-bandwidth site – accessing it over dialup is not a hardship.

• Why I still use regular e-mail: My main e-mail account is now less cluttered with bulk e-mail subscriptions, and thus easier to manage. I find that with my day-to-day ordinary correspondence, so far my ordinary system of folders and subfolders suffices for storage and retrieval. I can search my existing e-mail well enough with built-in tools that I don’t yet feel a need to switch everything over to Gmail. I find that I want Gmail’s special presentation, search, and display functions only for bulk e-mail.

  Personally, I really don’t like the idea of Google having access to ALL of my e-mail. I’m just not that trusting. So I think my day-to-day correspondence with individuals will remain on my private e-mail account.