Category: Software

Posted on

Outlook Mail server

We use Gmail servers to host several domains providing a mail service that is free, quick and easy to manage. But this service is no longer available free of charge unless you had it setup previously for a domain. A lot of people avoid the free services as they do not feel they offer them any protection or support, however my experiences are that if the service is popular enough then it works reliably and issues are generally resolved very quickly. We have had more issues with paid for providers, who seem to have a tendency to try to support too many accounts and too little equipment or bandwidth.

Google and Microsoft do not have these issues, and surprisingly Microsoft’s outlook.com is free, even for hosting domains, the advertising is less and they suggest they do not read emails to target ads, unlike other providers.

We now have a number of domains hosted via outlook accounts and although the setup is different the actual mail front end is excellent very quick and easy and with Gigabytes of free storage.

Posted on

Move GMAIL email to another account

Needed to change my GMAIL account from an gmail.com to a new domain, associated with Google Apps, moving most elements was easy. Â But the the actual emails proved to be tricky, mostly as there are about 5 years worth of emails and one reason to use GMAIL is the search speed.

There are many ways it seems to move the email you can

  • get new gmail to pick up the email from old gmail account, google recommended they call it MailFetcher. Â Bit slow, label issues and sometimes generates errors which although Google acknowledge the error is still there years later. Â Great for a small number of emails up to 10k
  • setup IMAP and use a client like Outlook or Thunderbird to download and transfer the emails, bit tedious relies on your own internet connections etc… label issues.
  • paid for solutions exist for transferring between email account about 12.00GBP per account. Â Not tried so no comment, but did consider.
  • command line driven utils like GMVAULT.
I used GMVAULT in the end, ran it on my machine at home took hours (rubbish internet speed), it works via IMAP to backup your email locally and then restore to the new account, bit like using a mail imap client but once setup much easier and quicker, less label issues.
In the end I used a free AWS instance great internet speed, installed GMVAULT (used Python PiP), copied the previously set up OAuth keys to home directory and set it off, took 40 minutes to backup, about 80 minutes to restore, really quick labels correctly moved then saved the GMVAULT directory to S3 (just incase) and saved the machine image and terminated the instance.
Effective and free love it!
Posted on

Essential GWT Book

Bought ‘Essential GWT‘ (GWT 2), as at the time it was the most up to date introduction to GWT version 2, or at least I thought it was an Introduction.

Sadly I needed something simpler, basically I found that it was readable and the first 4 chapters very good from there on it was a bit disjointed and difficult to follow, the down-loadable source although available is poorly package for a beginner. I think that I will read it again after using GWT for a project or 2 and it will make alot more sense.

Have decided to try out ‘Google App Engine Java and GWT Application Development‘ no idea if any good but again reading first couple of chapters were OK, hopefully this combined with the ‘Essential GWT’ and online tutorials will be fine.

Couple of thing I did decide after this episode:

  • technical books on Kindle not sure they work for me?
  • source code availability is not enough, it needs to be packaged in a way that follows the book
  • always read the amazon.COM reviews not just CO.UK, there are more of them and wider range of views. (I think .co.uk had 3 reviews, .com had 50!!) just read these for ‘Google App Engine Java and GWT Application Development‘, does not bode well.