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

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

#271

Post by 6d0debc071 »

piyush_soni wrote: post #165
6d0debc071 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How exactly is Google evil? Well, there's an account out there with my real name tied to it that I never wanted to happen and to this day have no idea how it got there. I don't have a Google + account. Probably there was something that I clicked when I was tying my mobile phone to my Google account or something. I can't find any way to delete it either. My YouTube account keeps telling me I should use my real name…

And which one is going to be your next phone? An iPhone? or a Windows Phone? Just curious.

I don't know yet. Neither of those companies, (I believe? - might be wrong), has active social strategies. So, they're unlikely to use my data in ways that would increase my public risk by much. Either of them would be an improvement from that perspective. Neither are they likely to be particularly pushy when it comes to other services simply because I don't use much else that's made by them.

In terms of private risk - well, bam. They're OS manufacturers. If they want to screw you, you're screwed. Do either of them seem to be in the habit of screwing their customers? I don't think so. Again, I might be wrong.

I think, in terms of private vulnerability, if you're seriously concerned with that, then you have to start off with the assumption that your device is a traitor. I remember back when we were playing around with using phones microphones to eavesdrop on people even when the phone was turned off. You've got a snitch in your pocket - if you want to do something private from the people who made it, leave it at home.

#

All that being, from my point of view, more or less equal then - (and I'm open to feedback on any of this since I'm not religiously tied to either option.) I'm currently leaning towards Windows Phone. It looks like it has a really nicely thought out interface.

A lot of it will depend on which keyboard is better. That was the reason I opted for an android for my first phone - that it had the ability to change keyboard if I didn't like it.

Windows Phone's weakest points are probably the designs of its handsets and the app availability. But I don't use many apps anyway, and the hardware, IMO, isn't worse than iphone, it's just not as good as the best of android.

The things that might lean me more towards iphone is that I want to get a tablet at some point - and I've not seen any good Windows 8 Tablets. If I'm going to be curling up in bed for some reading, I don't really want something that's heavy and hot. It's gonna be easier if my tablet and my phone are both on the same system.

:/

It's far from a perfect solution, whatever I choose. Android has, it seems to me, the best overall experience across tablets and phones, but the pushiness of Google's a deal killer. Windows has the best phone of the two remaining (and according to some of my girlfriends the best phone experience overall anyway) and Apple seem to have the best tablet of the remaining two.

I'm not strongly tied to any option at the moment though. I might even end up getting a Linux device - though the fact that they run on Android hardware which ties back to google is troubling.

Anything that you'd recommend?

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

#272

Post by jpadkins »

bad_user wrote: post #252
rogerchucker wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By principle I prefer software that's free as in freedom of speech and services that are managed by non-profits. However, you're not talking about "free as in freedom of speech", but rather about being a cheap bastard. Nothing wrong with that, I am and will always be a cheap bastard myself. BUT sometimes being cheap is different from being frugal and can have a negative effect on your bottom line. My Dropbox subscrip…

what is inherently better about non-profit running a service?

Functionally, the only difference is they can't pay dividends to shareholders. Non-profit's can (and do!) turn profits into executives bonus's or perks, or bloated organizations, etc.

Why do you feel a non-profit would run a service better?

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

#273

Post by micloud »

aw3c2 wrote: post #254
micloud wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing dropbox is an easy task. Have u tried tonido ( http://www.tonido.com )

That is neither self-hosted nor free open-source from a quick look at it.

It is self-hosted but it is not open source. Does it have to be an open source solution?

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

#274

Post by aw3c2 »

PaulFreund wrote: post #262
aw3c2 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jappix looks really nice. Is there a lightweight Android client that polls every few minutes for new messages? I would need to be notified about new messages when the phone is inactive (screen off). A browser is too big for that.

There are many ways to accomplish that. As Jappix requires an XMPP account you can also use a native android client like Xabber ( http://www.xabber.com/ ). For my part I wrote a node.js server application that acts as a notification central: myhub ( https://github.com/PaulFreund/myhub ). It captures events from different sources (xmpp, irc, mail, rss) and makes them accessible via Email summarys, RSS feeds or a webin…

Sorry, I was not verbose enough: It is sync between multiple clients I would be interested in. So if I used XMPP on my mobile and accessed the mobile interface via a browser elsewhere, would both show the same messages (in and out)?

I wish more Jabber servers would support http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0136.html and http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html

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

#275

Post by freehunter »

kenkinder wrote: post #8
freehunter wrote: post #4

Fix your certificates! Your cert is signed for webfaction but you're hosted at kkinder. Host: kkinder.com Common name: .webfaction.com Alternative subject names: regex([^.] \.webfaction\.com), regex(webfaction\.com)

OP (as in the site) here. It's not my certificate, it's your browser, which I assume is Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP? You're using a browser that does not support TLS, a cutting edge new technology that's over 10 years old. Get Firefox or Chromium.

I'm actually using Chrome Version 26.0.1410.64 m on Windows 7.

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

#276

Post by PaulFreund »

aw3c2 wrote: post #274
PaulFreund wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many ways to accomplish that. As Jappix requires an XMPP account you can also use a native android client like Xabber ( http://www.xabber.com/ ). For my part I wrote a node.js server application that acts as a notification central: myhub ( https://github.com/PaulFreund/myhub ). It captures events from different sources (xmpp, irc, mail, rss) and makes them accessible via Email summarys, RSS feeds or a webin…

Sorry, I was not verbose enough: It is sync between multiple clients I would be interested in. So if I used XMPP on my mobile and accessed the mobile interface via a browser elsewhere, would both show the same messages (in and out)? I wish more Jabber servers would support http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0136.html and http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html

I exactly know your problem. I don't think Jappix makes this possible but I have a solution that works for me.

On my XMPP server (prosody) I modified the message module so it sends all messages to all connected clients and I never miss a message (this solves the "in" part). Additional I installed http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0280.html which unfortunately is not very widespread in clients but I use it with myhub (mentioned above) so I get all messages ( in and out ) for logging.

For the future I'm planning to build a server that will render all these problems obsolte but until then we have to find ways around it.

If you need further ideas how to solve your problem I'd be glad to help :)

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

#277

Post by leephillips »

tomkarlo wrote: post #143
ineedtosleep wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the blacklisting part? I've had my mailserver for a little over a year now and never had any issues with my mail going to spam, but my uses for that mailserver only revolve around 2-3 email accounts.

Sorry, I was a little unclear - the setup is easy, it's the maintenance that's annoying. (I've run mail servers in one way or another for ~15 years. I use Google Apps for my personal email now but still maintain some servers that do about 10,000 emails a day.) Even if you have DKM/SPF setup, someone can decide to start spoofing email from your domain to send spam, especially if your domain has been around a while and…

"someone can decide to start spoofing"

What kind of spoofing are you talking about? Attempting to spoof the headers is common, but no blackhole list looks at that - they blacklist based on the IP of the machine the spam is coming from.

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

#278

Post by leephillips »

eridius wrote: post #89
magicalist wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually do use desktop calendaring software which will stop working this summer. What's the software? Google CalDAV support isn't actually going away, it's just switching to a whitelist, so depending on your client, it should be fine. I don't know how that's going to work exactly (is it just an API key? how will that work with open source calendaring software like Lightning?), but if it's even moderately activel…

Speaking as someone who uses Google Apps for personal email, it sucks . I hate having a google apps managed account under my personal email address (my primary google account is a gmail address), I hate the limited filtering options that Gmail provides, I hate the faux-IMAP layer that Gmail has, I hate the fact that every time I switch networks with my laptop I get a "too many simultaneous connections" error from the…

Here's something else you can hate:

http://lee-phillips.org/gmailRewriting/

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

#279

Post by kenkinder »

magicalist wrote: post #63
kenkinder wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> I actually do use desktop calendaring software which will stop working this summer. What's the software? Google CalDAV support isn't actually going away, it's just switching to a whitelist, so depending on your client, it should be fine. I don't know how that's going to work exactly (is it just an API key? how will that work with open source calendaring software like Lightning?), but if it's even moderately activel…

The software is KDE (Akonadi), Thunderbird (Lightning), and a few small utilities. It seems probable, though not guaranteed that Lightning will keep working. But I don't want to bed the farm on that, I doubt KDE will be supported, and I'd really rather just use a calendar that faithfully implements the standard instead of whitelisting the standard for certain clients.

In terms of XMPP, I checked yesterday. After updating the Android Talk app to Hangouts, all of my XMPP contacts disappeared.

In terms of email, using Google Apps on a custom domain would avoid lockin and actually not be a bad choice, at least for now. I went with Fastmail anyway, and I think it's just a better service.

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

#280

Post by angersock »

rogerchucker wrote: post #160
Steko wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Ain't just paying with your information though, is it?

You're also volunteering your interactions with other people, their conversations with you and whatnot.

They may not be so spendthrift with their privacy.

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