Archive for the ‘email’ Category

Thunderbird Email Losing Sync with Google Hosted Email (via IMAP)

Monday, August 19th, 2013

Update: I wrote this too soon. This worked for a day or two, but then Thunderbird got out of sync again. I will have to try something different later.

Update 2: For a week or so, I have disabled mail.server.default.use_condstore  in Thunderbird, as suggested here: http://www.ghacks.net/2013/09/07/fix-gmail-imap-slows-thunderbird-mails-arriving-timely-fashion/ – I’m again cautiously optimistic that it’s worked around the problem.

My email is currently hosted by Google and I use a mix of the web interface (often on multiple devices), Thunderbird on a workstation, and my phone to access email. For reasons unknown to me, a couple months ago  Thunderbird client stopped updating itself when items were read or deleted from other devices or interfaces. I often resorted to closing Thunderbird, and re-opening it to force a re-synchronization.

I vaguely recall updating Thunderbird at about the same time that  this issue started, but, I’m not 100% sure. I hadn’t updated in quite a while –  probably over a year. Or, perhaps Google changed some settings on their end. I really don’t know.

I finally spent a bit of time trying to figure out a workaround or fix.

I disabled IDLE support in the email account in Thunderbird. It’s under Account Settings –> Server Settings –> Advanced. For those who don’t know, IDLE is supposed to push new email notifications to your email client, in this case, Thunderbird, more or less instantly. That’s normally a good thing.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, disabling this seems to have fixed my Inbox’s “deleted” and “read” status issue, and I can live with a few minutes delay before my emails reach me.

Minimizing Data and Voice Costs when Travelling to Europe

Saturday, June 18th, 2011

I’ve recently returned to Vancouver after a trip to Europe – a couple days in Barcelona and a Western Mediterranean cruise on the Carnival Magic.

I try to avoid using Fido’s atrociously priced international roaming for voice and data.

Here’s a rough overview of the system that I’ve pieced together:

  • I carried my iPhone with me and left it on. Technically, I was roaming, but I had no intention of receiving or making phone calls except in emergencies.
  • Data roaming on the cellphone was also off.  I considered buying the roaming data package, but $50 for 10MB of data seemed a bit steep. In hindsight, it’s not a horrific rate if I could somehow make sure only email was being downloaded.
  • Before leaving, I unconditionally forwarded all voice calls to voice mail.  With some cell providers, if you are roaming and you choose not to answer a phone call, the call will route back to your cellphone provider and you are charged roaming rates while someone leaves you a voice mail. I don’t think this currently applies to Fido; however, I wasn’t about to take the chance. Besides, I didn’t want my phone ringing during the middle of the night (I was, after all, in European time zones).
  • I instructed people to text message me if there was anything critical.
  • I have rules in my mailbox to forward emails that are critical (like our web servers being offline) to Fido’s email to SMS address, e.g. 604nnnnnnn@fido.ca.  These are actually active rules at all times, not just when I’m travelling.
  • Of course, the normal voice mail SMS notifications would get sent to me too.
  • With my cellphone on and technically roaming, I would receive the most important messages.  Receiving text messages while roaming is supposed to be free on Fido. I haven’t checked my invoice yet, but I’ve done this successfully for previous trips.
  • Interestingly, modern cruise ships have satellite based cellphone service, so even in the middle of nowhere, I could receive these text messages.
  • Internet access on board the ship is a pricey $0.75 per minute.  This was OK for briefly viewing email, but I wasn’t too comfortable using this too often.
  • On dry land, if I had some time to spare, I would look for WiFi.  At some ports, I stumbled upon Internet cafes.  But, much more common in Europe, as opposed to China, is a WiFi enabled coffee shop. With WiFi, I could download  email for offline review.  Internet cafe pricing was less than a few dollars per hour, which compared to the on-ship pricing, is roughly equivalent to free.
  • For voice calls, on the iPhone I used the 3CXPhone VOIP App with a Voip.ms account to make ridiculously cheap phone calls. I set these up prior to travel. Even while in Vancouver, this combination is useful for making cheap long distance calls on an iPhone while on WiFi – in theory, I can make VOIP calls on 3G; however, it hasn’t worked too well in my limited testing.  There’s either too much lag or too little bandwidth.

All in all, for me, the iPhone was a great tool to have when travelling, even if you don’t plan on paying for pricey roaming voice or data.  This obviously only works if you have similar needs to me – I didn’t really want to be connected, but I did want to know of anything critical.

Also useful for the iPhone was the CityMaps2Go App which had offline maps for nearly every city that I was in – perhaps I’ll post about that separately some day.  Evernote and Dropbox were also useful, but make sure that you use the flagging features to make the files and notes that you need available offline!

Shaw email SPAM filters for shaw.ca addresses are mediocre

Monday, January 24th, 2011

 

Shaw SPAM filter catches a lot of false positives.

Shaw SPAM filter catches a lot of false positives.

I have mentioned my disdain for Shaw’s email at least once on this blog.

Today, I’ll write a bit on Shaw’s mediocre spam filter.

We manage a fully legitimate, opt-in email newsletter for a local retail chain. This client has a large (relative to the business size) email newsletter list.  The vast majority of the email subscribers reside in the trade radiuses of their stores in the GVRD, Kelowna, Victoria, and Calgary.

By a slim margin over hotmail.com, shaw.ca email is the most popular email domain in these areas, at about 25% of email addresses on the list. The list subscribers is heavily female; however, I doubt that this affects the ratio of  email providers by very much.

The point is that for a BC or Alberta merchant, your email newsletter effectiveness is highly dependent on Shaw’s hit and miss SPAM filter.  We have a test shaw.ca email account, and subscribed to dozens of opt-in newsletters.  For months we have built up an archive of all the items flagged as SPAM. And we’ve seen many, many,  false positives.  See the thumbnail at the right.  Everything that I’ve highlighted in yellow is a false positive, in other words, they should not have been flagged as SPAM.

The Bay, Beyond the Rack, indulgeliving.com: Your emails are being flagged very frequently as SPAM at Shaw.  I didn’t count, but well over 50% of your emails are being SPAM binned at Shaw.  Many other firms get caught, though, less frequently.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any real secrets to sell you on consistently getting deliverability into the Shaw Inbox.  We have tried a dozen different changes in how our client’s e-newsletter is delivered to Shaw, and the results have been somewhat positive, but definitely not 100% successful.  Even the much touted Sender Score Certification did not work.

In brief, since this post could go on for pages and pages:

  • Email users – I do not recommend ever using your ISP’s free email accounts.  They really don’t care as much as the firms that specialize in email.  I would not trust that commercial email that I need, such as an invoice or receipt, would get to my shaw.ca inbox.  I strongly recommend any of the big 3 webmail providers instead.
  • Email marketers – if BC and Alberta are important to you, watch your open rates by domain.  You might find that some email hosts do not like you very much.
  • Shaw – if you happen to stumble on this, could you please just outsource the whole email system to someone who cares?  Cut a deal with Google or Hotmail and split the advertising revenues and be done with it.  You know, and I know, that email isn’t a profit centre for you, so it will never be as good as the webmail specialists.

Note: I have written about Shaw here; however, I can tell from the email open rates, that Telus email SPAM filters are also quite finicky; however, I do not have a telus.net email address to  use for testing this theory.

 

Canada.com Email is Shutting Down… it’s a good time to move to a vanity domain.

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

I was mildly surprised when a relative mentioned to me that her free Canada.com email address was being shut down.  She’s had that email address for years – though, I know she hasn’t been using it for day-to-day email for most of that time.

For those individuals who are actively using their Canada.com email addresses still, here are a few suggestions from us at Perceptus:

  • Do NOT move to the email provided by your internet service provider.  Choose one of the major webmail providers such as Hotmail.com, Gmail.com or Yahoo.com – these services are all well run, and more importantly, they will probably be around for a long, long time.  Of these three, I recommend Google’s Gmail.com service.  I’ve written about this in a previous post: Picking an Email Address – Don’t use a Free Account from your ISP.
  • This is a great excuse to move to a vanity domain.  It’s cheap.  You can buy the rights to a .com domain for <$10 per year and have Google host the email for you.  If you have a few family members or friends, you can share a domain.  We use Google’s Apps for Domains  for all email to perceptus.ca – it’s excellent.
  • You do not have to lose your saved Canada.com email.  Read their own migration instructions here.  You can move your email to Google’s Gmail service easily.  These instructions can be adapted for all other major web email providers, and also, to download your email using POP3 to your own computer to software like Outlook or Thunderbird.
  • Remember to update all of your 3rd party logins.  eBay, PayPal.com, Amazon, everything.  You will not have an easy time getting access to your accounts once canada.com webmail goes offline.
  • Do this ASAP.  Canada.com really did a disservice to their users by providing such a small amount of notice.

I wonder if the email being shut down is related to the recent change in ownership of the site’s publisher, Postmedia Network Inc.  Seriously, couldn’t they find a way to make a buck on this by partnering with a 3rd party webmail provider and sharing ad revenue, rather than shutting it down?

Comments are encouraged.

Does Google Apps for Domains work in China?

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

Today I got a call from someone whom I helped setup with Google Apps for domains.  Primarily, he’s using Google to handle his email – it’s pretty much the exact same system that powers GMail, but under your own domain name.  We use it too for perceptus.ca email.  It’s awesome.  You can use the excellent webmail interface,  and IMAP for full desktop and mobile email applications.  Plus,  it’s free if you don’t need very many user logins.

If you have a vanity domain for yourself, get Google to host your email.  You won’t find anything better, especially for $0.

Anyway, my client is in China, behind the world’s biggest firewall.  And he can’t access his email.  His web requests get  forwarded to weird places. Ironically, he sounded rather pleased, since he’s actually on vacation, but it did raise some good questions.

Does Google Apps for Domains email actually work in China?  I don’t know, it might be a weird forwarding bug.  I’m not there now, so I can’t experiment with it.  If someone reads this and can confirm success or failure with Google Apps for Domains, that would be excellent.  Unfortunately, this is some info that I can’t seem to find on the Internet.

As an aside, in  trying to figure this out, I stumbled on  Google’s Transparency Report.  It’s a fun way to see if Google services are blocked in different countries at any given time.

I wonder if any of Perceptus’ websites are blocked in China?