For a Docs replacement, do give https://hackpad.com a try. It's web-native and optimized for collaboration and sharing (vs trying to bring a desktop experience to the web).
Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more
171–180 of 324 posts
Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more
#172The issue he is discussing with ownCloud and timezones is not a limitation that applies to their CalDAV implementation, it is just an issue with their web client. If you use a CalDAV client that supports time zones properly (most do), it will work fine.
Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For one FastMail offers email for your domain, which Gmail no longer does. You're still able to get a free one-user Google Apps for Domains account by going through Google App Engine. [1] I've used it to get catchall email addresses for any new domains I've recently registered. [1] http://lifehacker.com/5967336/use-google-app-engine-to-get-g...
When I migrated back from Windows 8/Phone 8 to iOS, I looked at this - but this loophole, from everything I've read, has been closed for a few months now.
I did this two months ago.
Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more
#174I 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 :(
I'm quite happy with own open-source Reader replacement: https://github.com/swanson/stringer
Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more
#175I'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…
Most of the work for the "hacker alternative" is already done, in the form of [iRedmail]. [iRedMail]: http://www.iredmail.org/
As others have mentioned, it's not really the technical aspects of SMTP that make hosting your own email difficult. It's the entire deliverability ecosystem that's developed (ostensibly to protect from spam), such as most residential providers blocking outgoing port 25, or most mailservers filtering incoming mail from dynamic IPs.
Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more
#176I was actually considering owncloud but there seems to be a lot of negative experiences. Anyone know if its getting better/actively developed?
It is a very active project. I'm using it at home with a 12Tb server for a central storage point in our household. It's been great for us. It is quite basic at the moment, but has a tonne of promise. Haven't found it to be buggy myself.
Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more
#177I'm surprised no Microsoft alternatives are mentioned here -- Skydrive, Outlook.com, and Office 365 are very solid. I have very specific use cases for Google that prevent me from switching (long story) but if I could I would use the MSFT products in a heart beat. Also, Yahoo Mail + Calendar + Flickr + Tumblr are pretty solid now-a-days, with lots of positive upside with the new company direction; however I'm iffy on…
> I'm surprised no Microsoft alternatives are mentioned ... Also, Yahoo ... The author explains why he didn't consider them in his second paragraph: " Moving, for example, from Google Calendar to Yahoo Calendar solves very little in the long run, because Yahoo’s business interests are exactly the same as Google’s: advertising and consumer lock-in. "
I don't think Microsoft cares about advertisement to the same degree that Yahoo and Google do. Of course they will still try to lock you in.
Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more
#178Why not just host your own email, calendar etc? You can even do it in your personal cloud and replicated it SECURELY to machines who won't give out your information at the drop of a hat or are hacked by a high profile attack.
It would seem that many server apps support open standards (SMTP, CalDav, XMPP etc.)
Your address book is the new friendlist instead of facebook's. Why not do the same with your email and calendar, etc. ? And dropbox is cool but you can easily have mercurial + watch files with node.js ... I think there's DVCS-autosync and OwnCloud is coming along
Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more
#179"Unfortunately, there are no good alternatives to some Google properties. Maps...." For maps, depending on your uses, bing mapquest's map and geocoding APIs can be replacements, and sometimes cheaper.
I think the obvious alternative would be Open Street Maps. Microsoft is no better than Google in these regards, they're just not the current market leader.
Furthermore, Mapquest has an Open Street Map layer, if that suits you - http://open.mapquest.com/
Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more
#180There is always yandex, if you aren't afraid of a Russian company.
You can also set up a personal domain there for free, if you can read/translate Russian instructions at http://pdd.yandex.ru
Their web client for mail is localized into English.
Pros:
* Not google; yandex have rather good reputation here, and like google, they are tech company, with good engineering team
* A nice web-interface for mail (for my use case it's comparable to google's)
* Supports RSS feeds via mail interface
* Like google, there are interesting services: calendar, maps, search, translations, etc.
Cons:
* Basically, yandex is Russian google in terms of business (89% of their revenue is ads); however, they don't do hardware and don't have a facebook/plus-like social network
* Russian-based, so potentially a kgbfsb threat (never heard of any kgbfsb incidents, though)
* Some/most services are not localized for English speakers