Today I’d like to tell you about Google’s free e-mail service called GMail. I have been using GMail now for about a year and I have to say I love it. I’ve tried Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, but so far, GMail is the best for me. Friends who I set up with GMail also love it.

So you already have e-mail with Eastlink or Aliant so why do I need yet another e-mail service? I’ll tell you why…

• It is web-based meaning you can check your e-mail from anywhere as long as you have a web browser (FireFox, IE, etc) and an Internet connection.
• Because it is web-based all your contacts are available as well.
• You reduce the risk of getting a virus through e-mail. (GMail takes care of all that for you at their end and since the e-mail is not actually stored on your computer when you retreive it, you are much safer.)
• It has built in spam filtering… GMail will put all spam in a spam folder for you and after 30 days messages are automatically deleted, so you don’t even have to look at them unless you want to make sure no “real” mail slips through. Note: To date, no real mail of mine has ever been treated as spam.
• You get plenty of storage space, so you can keep old e-mails around for as long as your want.
• You don’t have to worry about emptying your Trash bin, like spam, anything over 30 days old will be deleted automatically.
• The best of all, it keeps similar e-mails grouped together in what they call “Threads”. So if you send an e-mail to someone, they reply, you reply back and they once again reply, you’ll be able to see them all at once… no hunting for previous replies etc.
• If you get a new computer you won’t have to worry about saving all your e-mails and address book because nothing is saved on your machine.

I could go on, but I’ll stop here.

To find out more on your own, check out this link: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about.html

So you also ask, ok now that I have GMail I’ll have to send everyone my new address and also keep checking my Outlook or Outlook Express programs… No, not so. You can update your Eastlink or Alaint e-mail to automatically forward all your current mail to your new GMail account (see below). After doing that, you won’t miss any mail that is still getting sent to your old account and after you reply to one of those messages, your friend will see that you now have a new address and update their address book.

GMail is free, but requires an invite from an existing GMail user. If you want to give GMail a try, send me an e-mail “paul.wesson@gmail.com” and I’ll send you an invite.

Eastlink Users go to https://webmail.eastlink.ca/ and log in with your e-mail address and password…

Then go into Options -> Settings
In the “Mailing Forwarding” section check both “Enable Forwarding” and “Don’t Leave Copy on Server“, and click “Save Changes“… then log out.

Sympatico/Aliant users go to http://webmail.aliant.net/ and log in with your e-mail address and password…

Then go into Options -> Rules
In the “Forwarding” section enter your GMail e-mail address and then for the “Forwarding Setting“, check “Forward, then discard” and click “Ok” at the bottom, then log out.

For users who don’t use Alaint or Eastlink I’m sure your provider has similar options available to you.

With the latest annoucement from Apple Computers at Mac World this week regarding their switch from IBM Power PC chips to Intel Pentium chips, your next computer purchase may be a MAC!

At Mac World Steve Jobs announced they are ahead of schedule with the PowerPC -> Intel conversion and starting now you can by your first Intel powered Apple computer which they claims is now 2 to 3 times faster than the previous Mac.

I’m pretty sure my next purchase will be an iMac but probably not until the Fall (have to pay off that trip to China first). Also I want to make sure they get all the bugs out of it, so I’m going to watch consumer reactions closely up until the time I’m ready to buy.

Why am I going Mac you ask? Well, I’m tired of all the spyware, viruses and security flaws in Windows. I just want to turn on my machine and be productive, I don’t want it slowed down by all this other crap I need running just so I can be on the net! Yes I know Microsoft is coming out with a new version of Windows later this year called Vista, but hey did you know if you want to run this new OS, you’ll have to have all new hardware! Yep, your little P4 2.4 Ghz computer won’t be able to cut it. You’ll most likely need a minimum of 1 Gig of RAM, a 256 MB Video card (if not more) and a P4 3 Ghz processor… and I bet this will be a minimum.

Oh and don’t be fooled by all the smoke and mirrors Vista is claiming to have, if you look closely it is the same functionality already available in the Mac OS! Check out this funny parody of a Microsoft person showing off Vista while the video being played over top is actually the Mac OS!

Here are 10 reasons why your next PC could be from Apple.

One of the articles I had planned on writing about was digital photos and how to store, organize and share them. Well I came across a good article this morning that I thought I’d share with you.

I won’t get into the organizing part of digital photos yet, but we’ll actually start with the sharing part of it. Most people today have friends and family spread out all over the province, country and world and as we all know, it can sometimes be is a pain e-mailing your favorite photos to everyone. What you need to do is have your photos on the web and just tell people to go and look at them.

The service I use for this is Flickr. What I liked about Flickr from the start was that they were a Canadian company from Vancouver who were recently bought out by Yahho. Flickr has a FREE service (upload 20MB a month) as well as a paid service ($24.95USD/year 2GB upload per month). I personally use the paid service.

Here is a good article on using services like Flickr for sharing your photos. Enjoy…

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

NOTE: One thing I disagree with is resizing of your photos to be smaller so you can get more onto the Flickr site. For me Flickr is not only a way to share my pics but it also is my backup. If for some reason my computer crashes or my house burns down then I can always get my “originals” from my Flickr site. The last thing I want is a smaller version of that one great shot I took of the Great Wall in China!

If you want to see my Flickr site the address is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ipaw/. These are the exact same photos you see from the “Photos” page of this blog… my blog just links to my Flickr account (how cool is that!).

Paul

Booting up my computer this morning I see that Microsoft has finally fixed this security flaw mentioned in my previous post.

If any of you have followed the instructions I quoted and installed Ilfak Guilfanov’s patch then it is now safe to remove, as long as you have applied the Microsoft Updated from today. You SHOULD REMOVE THIS PATCH to restore full functionality to Windows Metafile processing once Windows has been officially updated and repaired.

To Remove: Simply open the Windows Control Panel “Add/Remove Programs”, where you will find the “Windows WMF Metafile Vulnerability HotFix” listed. Remove it, then reboot.

The Security Now pod cast from “This Week In Tech” has an interview with Ilfak Guilfanov if you are interested in listening in.

SN-021.mp3

URGENT SECURITY WARNING

I want to help spread the word about a threat that is going around the net right now which Microsoft has known about since December, but has yet to fix.

I won’t bore you with all the techno babble that goes along with this threat, but I’ll give you the resources to learn more about it or simply just fix it.

To learn more go to: http://grc.com/sn/notes-020.htm

To listen to security expert Steve Gibson talk about it, listen to this MP3.

For Windows XP users, both Home and Professional, here is a temporary fix to the problem:
http://www.grc.com/miscfiles/wmffix_hexblog14.exe

Way to start 2006 with at bang Microsucksoft.