Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

kkinder.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 324 posts

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#211

Post by jasonlotito »

Kerrick wrote: post #189
barrkel wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I also object to the lack of a menu bar, for bookmarks in particular. It does have a menu bar, with bookmarks in particular. http://i.imgur.com/awPDYp4.jpg

While Chrome has a menu bar for bookmarks, your screenshot does not in any way show that.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#212

Post by pyre »

rogerchucker wrote: post #208
pyre wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people are OK with something until it bites them. Plenty of people are 'ok' with not backing up their information (e.g. family photos), until a storage failure takes it all away.

Yes it's called taking risk. I am aware of it - people like you seem to get offended that we actually take that risk in exchange of the convenience (free and more or less stable services).

I'm not offended.

- Not everyone that pays with their information is aware of the risk they are taking.

- Many people that know the the risks are misjudged their probability of coming to bear.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#213

Post by aniket_ray »

gwern wrote: post #210

> Google started by dropping XMPP invites under the questionable guise of spam protection. Shortly thereafter, we learned at 2013 Google IO that their real motive was to drop XMPP entirely and move to a closed platform. I’m sure that timeline is a coincidence. No really. If this is true, it makes fools out of everyone on HN who defended Google and poo-pooed the reaction to the XMPP spam move as being merely geek hyst…

Umm ... XMPP is not being dropped only support for XMPP federation.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#214

Post by thezach »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #188
acabal wrote: post #59

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…

> Replacing Dropbox doesn't seem practical right now. Owncloud is buggy, Sparkleshare seems like a "when you've got a hammer, everything's a nail" kind of solution, and I haven't tried Seafile yet because the configuration is intimidating and I haven't really heard anything about it. git-annex-assistant provides a friendly Dropbox replacement, with a web-based GUI and a magically synced/shared folder. Supports Linux,…

Rackspace is one of two providers I will never use... the second is Linode

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#215

Post by subway »

stanleydrew wrote: post #206
subway wrote: post #142

The biggest problem with moving back to XMPP now is that Google us cut us off from anyone now using Hangouts. Less than a year ago I drank the Google Kool-Aid and started using GApps instead of my personal server running Postfix/Dovecot/EJabberd. Since 87% of my XMPP contacts are on the GSuite, by going back I lose all IM connectivity with them. I almost feel like I'm being held hostage at this point. I've also inves…

I don't understand. I thought Google's Hangouts app didn't use XMPP but everyone with a Google account still has a gTalk account and you can still communicate with XMPP. Am I wrong? Would those chats not show up in gMail? And would they not possibly also show up in the Hangouts app?

The GTalk and Hangouts appear to be two entirely different things. Once I switched over to Hangouts, folks subscribed to my presence information no longer saw me online, and from within GMail I have no way of messaging them without switching back to GTalk Mode. On Android I don't even have a way to switch back.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#216

Post by j-kidd »

mutantmonkey wrote: post #172

The 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.

I am pretty sure ownCloud web client does have timezone support, but he didn't change the setting.

From http://owncloud.org/support/calendars/

> The calendar needs your current position for detecting your timezone. Without the correct timezone there will be a time offset between the events in owncloud and your desktop calendar you synchronise with owncloud. You can also set the timezone manually in the personal settings.

After reading the article, it seems like the author hasn't looked too hard into self-hosted solutions.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#217

Post by jspiros »

I posted this as a comment on the article, but I figured I should mention it here too: I’ve switched to Twilio + OpenVBX (http://openvbx.org/) as a replacement for Google Voice. The per-month cost is low (something like $2/month per number), though you do have to pay a per-minute charge when you’re actually handling calls. I think transcription might be an additional fee, too.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#218

Post by ceol »

thezach wrote: post #214
JoshTriplett wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Replacing Dropbox doesn't seem practical right now. Owncloud is buggy, Sparkleshare seems like a "when you've got a hammer, everything's a nail" kind of solution, and I haven't tried Seafile yet because the configuration is intimidating and I haven't really heard anything about it. git-annex-assistant provides a friendly Dropbox replacement, with a web-based GUI and a magically synced/shared folder. Supports Linux,…

Rackspace is one of two providers I will never use... the second is Linode

Is there an interesting story behind your reason for avoiding the two?

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#219

Post by bound008 »

kenkinder wrote: post #35
thezilch wrote: post #20

You have to be biting your tongue awfully hard to shoot off "Google is, in other words, the new AOL." He admits all of the services are not complete alternatives, save for maybe RSS readers. In other words, either 99% of users can't manage to use these non-alternatives for reasons like calendar and contacts not syncing, or they already don't use the product like RSS, or they definitely won't be able to run their own…

As the OP, let me respond. I'm not suggesting that Google is evil. What I am saying is, these products don't work for me and the reason they don't work is that they aren't interoperable with my own desktop software, or the rest of the Internet. I actually do use desktop calendaring software which will stop working this summer. I communicate with people via XMPP who are not on Talk. I used to use Listen and Reader. I'…

Well said.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#220

Post by reedlaw »

thezach wrote: post #214
JoshTriplett wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Replacing Dropbox doesn't seem practical right now. Owncloud is buggy, Sparkleshare seems like a "when you've got a hammer, everything's a nail" kind of solution, and I haven't tried Seafile yet because the configuration is intimidating and I haven't really heard anything about it. git-annex-assistant provides a friendly Dropbox replacement, with a web-based GUI and a magically synced/shared folder. Supports Linux,…

Rackspace is one of two providers I will never use... the second is Linode

Is it out of a concern with security?
Post reply on HN