181–190 of 324 posts
The biggest problem with Gmail alternatives is missing hotkeys. Outlook.com is the only one I've found that even comes close, but things are still different enough to be irritating.
I've been working on removing myself from the Google silo for the past few months. It's tough, and the alternatives just aren't as good or convenient as what Google offers, but I think it's an important thing to do at least on principle. I found Owncloud to be difficult to install and very buggy. For self-hosted CalDAV/CardDAV, I chose Baikal ( http://http://baikal-server.com/ ) instead of Radicale. It seemed easier…
I wonder how hands on Larry Page is. I cant imagine that some Googler asked Larry face to face about XMPP. I cant even imagine that it was a bullet point in a video chat. Maybe it was an email to a large group of people that Larry may or may not have read. I can imagine that.
He - and the rest of the leadership - have been asked about XMPP/CalDav/CarDav/RSS/Reader/ in person repeatedly.
Every week there is a global meeting called TGIF. The format is almost always the same - some announcements, a presentation or two about things that various teams are working on - followed by Q&A. There is an internal Google Moderator instance set up each week where questions can be submitted and voted on, and there are live microphones in the meeting room.
Generally at least one of Larry or Sergey are there (usually both) as well as the other senior leadership. They take the questions and they - for the most part - give pretty straight answers.
I can promise you that nothing that gets brought up here on HN doesn't also get brought up internally and debated intensely. The fact that this is possible and normal (even encouraged) is one of the things I love about working at Google.
Whether or not we like the answers that are given we at least get to hear the reasoning behind the decisions and get more insight into the thought processes of the people that are making the decisions.
We get to see, first-hand, Larry and Sergey talking about the larger plans. We get to see what they are passionate about. We get to see and feel their sincerity.
I truly wish I could share more of what we are told. I wish I could get across why I believe in the company and in the larger vision that Larry and Sergey have shared about where the company is going.
There is a reason that so many Google employees are so passionate about the work we do and about the company. It's not because we've "drank the Gool-aid" or because we get great food and other perks. It's because we get to see and experience first-hand what the leadership talks about and cares about - and we believe in what they are trying to do.
It's about making the world a better place. It's about doing things that nobody else can do. It's about doing things that most other people don't even imagine is possible.
I recently switched from Gmail to Fastmail.fm for much the same reasons as the OP. Fastmail.fm managed to migrate 30k emails without so much as a sweat. I still haven't worked out what I'm going to do about Google Reader :(
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"I've been working on removing myself from the Google silo ... Replacing Dropbox doesn't seem practical right now." I must have missed something, did Google acquire Dropbox? Dropbox makes their money from the Dropbox product which is exactly why you should use a company like them instead of a borg offering. I prefer Sugarsync but there are no shortage of options.
I prefer these services free and have no problem being tracked for more personalized ads. I don't wanna pay with my wallet - I am OK with paying with my information.
It would be really great if somebody wrapped up all the open source material available and made an image available to AWS and other VPS users. Use the image, have email, an XMPP server, etc -- out of the box. On your own dime. I'd pay for it.
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Google used to support openness, and now it is being less open, and therefore less "good". A step in a direction that is less "good" is a step towards "evil". It's not unreasonable to say that Google is being more evil. It's not a stretch to say that Google can't be trusted not to be evil if they've moved in a more evil (or less good) direction.
I think you're applying a a value judgement to a technical issue. "Open" pertains to the nature of certain software and standard. It's not inherently good or evil; you're just choosing to assign that value based on how it correlates with the world you'd like to see. I'd prefer things be more open too, but I don't agree that being less open is somehow inherently "more evil." You can have an entirely non-open company t…
I do consider a shift toward less openness to be inherently less good. I don't consider Google to suddenly be this evil company.
Google is, however, to be a very powerful company (and therefore a very dangerous company by nature), and a moral regression in policy is certainly an unnerving thing to see. I love a lot of things Google has done. I love a lot of their products, projects, practices, etc. I just can't consider Google to be a safe place.
I've been working on removing myself from the Google silo for the past few months. It's tough, and the alternatives just aren't as good or convenient as what Google offers, but I think it's an important thing to do at least on principle. I found Owncloud to be difficult to install and very buggy. For self-hosted CalDAV/CardDAV, I chose Baikal ( http://http://baikal-server.com/ ) instead of Radicale. It seemed easier…
git-annex-assistant provides a friendly Dropbox replacement, with a web-based GUI and a magically synced/shared folder. Supports Linux, Android, and (very early stages) Windows and OS X.
> Rackspace has great hosted email for $1/inbox/month. Eventually I want to bite the bullet and host my own mail server (I still have nightmares from when I self-hosted email a few years ago) but in the meantime I've really liked Rackspace.
I currently use Gandi's mail servers, which you get free when you have a domain through them. I run my own IMAP server and move the mail to it with getmail, but I let Gandi handle SMTP receipt and delivery.
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Tabs in the title bar is a better UI decision. The URL box belongs to the tab, so it should be part of the tab. Your objection here seems to be 'Firefox mimicked Chrome and this is a bad thing', rather than these things being objectively bad.
Tabs in a treeview is better again, and is not possible with Chrome. I also object to the lack of a menu bar, for bookmarks in particular. I have an extension that emulates it, but nothing that can properly emulate treeview tabs - I can't imagine ever going to a browser without this.
It does have a menu bar, with bookmarks in particular. http://i.imgur.com/awPDYp4.jpg
I've been working on removing myself from the Google silo for the past few months. It's tough, and the alternatives just aren't as good or convenient as what Google offers, but I think it's an important thing to do at least on principle. I found Owncloud to be difficult to install and very buggy. For self-hosted CalDAV/CardDAV, I chose Baikal ( http://http://baikal-server.com/ ) instead of Radicale. It seemed easier…
