If you ask 100 users about their preferred email client you will receive many different answers. Many will tell you that they use web based email like Gmail, Yahoo Mail or Windows Live Mail. Others will proudly mention that they rely on desktop email clients like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird. Only a few will mention an email client that you never heard about though; And this is the tale of one..
eMailaya is a portable email client for the Windows operating system. It is one of those software programs that receives fantastic ratings all over the place but is known by only a few users. What makes this client unique in comparison to other desktop clients and web based email services?
The answer is its functionality. Have you ever asked yourself why there is no way to send audio or video emails easily? Why there is not a build in feature to check and manage emails on the mail server? Why there is no easy way to backup emails?
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Email
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I’ve been thinking a bit about the history of the internet, and one important point I deduced was how important Google was to this all. Many-many people love Google, which usually means a lot hate it or dislike it too, but everyone should be thankful for what they have done.
You’re probably thinking that I’m a Gmail maniac, or I use Google Maps too much, but this isn’t the case. The reason Google should be thought of highly is that it made (and makes) everyone question the quality of everything, and taught everyone that even the strongest product can be beaten with the right attitude/tools. It first challenged Altavista and other search engines and won. It then built the best Email app ever, made it completely free and gave people masses of storage.
During this period it “Googleized” all its rivals, meaning Yahoo, Microsoft and smaller companies started to act the same way, thinking more community-oriented thoughts and developing their own stuff to the same standard.
I think most of the Twitter phenomenon is because of Google too. Not that they have anything in common, but the same thing is happening here. First there was Twitter, a great idea. Then others came and created Pownce, Plurk, and loads of other, basically identical services. This is great since it guves us variety, and they push each other to do better and better.
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The Web
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Gmail is currently providing each Gmail user with Gigabytes of free storage space for their mails and attachments. One way to utilize that space is to use Gmail as the email backup for a local email client like Mozilla Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook. The great news is that no third party software is needed to backup the local email at Gmail.
We will utilize IMAP to transfer the local mails to Gmail which will make it possible in the end to simply move or copy mails to the Gmail account in the local email client.
The first thing that needs to be configured is IMAP support in Gmail. This is done in Settings > Forwarding and Pop / Imap. You only need to check the IMAP enabled checkbox to enable IMAP access for that GMail account.
The rest has to be configured in the local email client. Thunderbird will be used as an example but the basic settings are similar in all other email clients such as Microsoft Outlook.
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Email
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News about domain hijackings came to light in the last weeks. The commonality was that all victims were using Google Mail as the primary email address of their websites. Yesterday a proof of concept for a Gmail security flaw was posted at the Geek Condition blog which explains how the attacker was able to hijack the domain names.
The attacker basically set filters in Gmail to forward emails from the domain registrar to another email account. To ensure that the account owner would not notice the mails they were set to be deleted afterwards.
Most domain registrars offer web forms that can be used to retrieve account information. Godaddy for instance provides web forms to retrieve the username and reset the password of an account. They do send out emails to the primary email account. Those emails are however forwarded and deleted so that they can only be accessed by the attacker.
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Email
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Online mail users without a software client should still make sure that their precious emails are backed up regularly to avoid data loss. Lifehacker mentioned the tool Gmail Backup which can be used by Gmail users to perform regular backups of all stored Gmail messages.
Gmail Backup will backup all Gmail mail folders and mails contained within including labels, dates and from fields. Before the backup can be started users have to enable IMAP in the Gmail settings. Once that nuisances is out of the way it is possible to backup all Gmail messages with minimal interaction. If desired a time interval can be set to restore only emails of a certain period and not all of them.
Interestingly enough emails will be stored in Microsoft’s eml format which makes it easy to import the messages into other mail clients. Gmail Backup provides an restore option to restore previously backed up emails; Not necessarily though to the same user account since the name and password of the user account can be specified freely whenever Gmail Backup is being used.
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Email
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The question why I’m still using an email client came up recently in an article about adding Gmail properly to a software email client. That’s actually a pretty good question; Online email services have evolved in the last years. They provide so much storage space that most users would never be able to fill it in their entire life. They introduced features and filters to make the email client more secure but still lack a few that are essential for some users.
When we look at the requirements we see the following. An online email service requires an online connection which might not always be given, either because of the location of the user or a problem with it. It might also be that the email service itself is down and not offering services. All those cases would mean that it would be impossible to read or send emails.
A local client does not have these restrictions as it stores all emails locally which ensures access even without Internet connection. It requires on the other hand that one (or the few) computer(s) to work with.
I think it’s pretty much a matter of personal taste. I prefer to have my data close to me, as silly as it may sound. If something unforeseen happens I can still access my data providing I took care of creating backups and stuff like that.
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Email
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