MacBigot Cached Glances

Last night I found I could no longer access GMail, YouTube, etc. (any of the services that use Google’s login) while using Firefox. But, I could log in just fine from any other browser. And in Firefox, I could still log into any non-Google service with no issues.

It’s a good thing that I have more than one browser. I avoid using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer like the plague — it’s a puss-filled excuse for a portal to the world. My weapon of choice is Firefox, which I use about 95% of the time; but I also have Chrome and Safari to test any dramatic changes I’ve strong-armed on web sites I create. Each of them excel in their own way — too bad I can’t pick their advantages ‘a la carte’ and leave the dross behind.

I tried all the standard browser troubleshooting through the morning (rebooting, FLUSHDNS, clearing history and cookies, etc.) — but saw no improvement.

After a bunch of searching, I found lots of people chiming in about disabling the GMail Notifier. So I tried disabling it under Tools/Add-ons, and now GMail and Google Calendar are working again. I even turned the GMail notifier back on later, and nothing broke this time.

If you’re interested, GMail Notifier is a service that camps out in your Windows system tray (bottom-right-hand corner of your screen), or in the menu bar of your Mac to show a pop-up when you’ve received incoming messages. There are also a bunch of other tools that do the same thing; one of them might be more to your liking, so check out this list at “15 tools for the Gmail addict” (CNet.com).

Oh, and because I love you, here’s a quick tip for everyone on other platforms: “How to flush DNS cache in Linux / Windows / Mac” (TechieCorner.com).

Almost all of the web sites I manage are sitting on inexpensive accounts with BtoBDomains.com. It’s a reliable host, and includes free click-to-install applications like WordPress, and free email. Unfortunately for small organizations, there is a cap on how many emails you can send with Outlook (or any other desktop email client) in a 24-hour period. Fortunately for those same organizations, it’s forcing many of them to stop sending their promotional emails using Microsoft Outlook — which is a great tool for business correspondence, but a crappy one for managing your message.

The following instructions are to answer two questions:

1) How do we get around the host’s limit of 250 SMTP (outbound messages sent with email software on your laptop) messages per 24-hour period? [Note that there is no limit to outbound messages sent from the host's webmail interface.]

2) How do we format the body of a message so that it will look presentable on all/most email clients? [A high priority is to include inline images -- that should not appear to recipients as attachments.]

——————————————————————–

For part (1), realize that there are actually THREE methods to send email with your hosted email account:

A) Using the webmail client provided by the host

B) Using email software on your PC/Mac/handheld (Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Entourage, iPhone, Droid, Blackberry, etc.)

C) Giving your GMail account access to send and receive your hosted mail.

For this exercise, we will be concentrating on (C), which gets around usability issues (A) and SMTP limits (B) of the other two options.

You will need:

- Your hosted email username (NAME@YOURDOMAIN.COM) and password
- A free GMail account (go to http://GMail.com to create one if you don’t have one yet.)

After you get logged in on Gmail.com, navigate this way to add your hosted email account to your GMail account:

/ Settings / ‘Accounts and Import’ tab / ‘Send mail as:’ section / ‘Send mail from another address’ /

After you go through the steps as GMail will prompt you, there will be a new feature added to the top of every new message you compose — which is, a pull-down menu that lets you select WHICH email address this message will be sent from (your hosted account, or your GMail.com account).

There are no limits to how many emails a day you can send this way; though we recommend that you put no more than 100 recipients in the BCC field each time you send.

OPTIONAL: In the same area under ‘Settings’, you can have the GMail account receive inbound messages that land in your hosted account. This is not necessary for this exercise; but may be convenient for some users. To do so, navigate here:

/ Settings / ‘Accounts and Import’ tab / ‘Check mail using POP3:’ section / ‘Add POP3 email account’

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For part (2), you’ll need to make a minor change to your GMail account to add an ‘Insert Image’ button to the toolbar.

Instructions are here:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-in-labs-inserting-images.html”>

Some things to remember when designing the message body:

- Not all email clients present content the same way. Keep things as simple as possible.

- Graphics should never be larger than 600 pixels wide. Resize them BEFORE adding them to the message.

- Some email clients will block images no matter what you do. Remember to include enough appropriate text content so every recipient understands your message.

Follow-up:
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint (NYTimes.com)

CARU (Children’s Advertising Review Unit of the Council of Better Business Bureaus), complained that Google’s GMail service didn’t do enough to prevent younger children from creating an account that might expose them to the internet garbage that normally lands in most normal email accounts. (h/t to bnet.com)

They pointed out that most other services ask the applicant’s age first, and then proceed to allow or deny access to the account-name creation step of the process — while GMail asks the applicant to create a user name first, then notes that persons must be 13 years of age, and then finally asks them their age.

CARU’s ideal that there are no children that will bother to try filling in an account-creation form a second time when told that they are too young, is much more telling about the idiots running that organization than the ‘sloppy and careless’ methods used by GMail to keep out youngsters.

I commented on bnet:

“So your kids are really, really stupid?

CARU’s logic leads one to believe that kids are stupid enough to get stopped by the ‘other’ email services’ block on under-13 applicants.

If a child finds out that he/she cannot get an email account after submitting their under-13 birthday, only the really ignorant ones are going to be daft enough to not try lying about their age on the next try.

This is supposed to (somehow) be GMail’s fault?

If a child wants in, and you don’t ask for a credit card number (which is almost universally rejected by customers now as being too invasive), there is no way to keep the under-13 crowd out of your system.

This goes back to parenting, primarily.

An alternative (systemic) method would be for the services (ALL of them) to aggressively offer methods for parents to create sub-accounts with parental controls. AOL used to do this — does CARU honestly think there is no market for this now?

This is simply an attempt by CARU to appear authoritative and knowledgeable in a area where they have little clout.”

[NOTE to multi-platform users... YES, I know this is exactly what Microsoft has done ... over and over ... with Windows Media Player. But just because 90 percent of the planet uses Satan's software, doesn't make Hellish behavior acceptable.]

If you’ve been with us a while, you know I’m already pissy about all the things Apple has:

• evangelized
• based their platform marketing on
• established legions of foaming-at-the-mouth followers because of
• encouraged millions of customers and developers to create workflows around
• – and then taken away

If you were a QuickTime user, nay, aficionado, who had paid to upgrade to the ‘Pro’ version just so you could cut/copy/paste/export/etc. (features that used to exist in the free version of Apple’s player), then you are getting screwed again with Snow Leopard.

If you buy a new machine (or say, roll out a handful to staff at your day-job), there is nothing to warn you that any tools, serial numbers, plugins, or AppleScript code WILL NOT WORK with the version of ‘QuickTime X’ that comes preinstalled on Snow Leopard.

Apple’s knowledgebase notes that:

“Note: If you double-click any media that requires QuickTime Player 7 for playback and it is not already installed, you will be asked if you want to download it from Apple.”

BUT, they’re wrong. Tripping across a media file that requires 7 only triggers a popup dialog that says, “You need QuickTime Player to view this file.” Not QuickTime Player 7, just QuickTime Player. Which, by the way, is what you are already running at the moment (they just don’t bother to differentiate between versions when they’re informing you that you need software that you already have, and no, I’m not going to play that file for you.

And, there is no link or button to take you where you can get the version that you need.

There is an installer for a special version of QuickTime 7 on the boot DVD that comes with your Snow Leopard system — but if you are already out in the field, as I am today, and are in need of converting from one filetype to another for a customer, as I am, you will find that not only can you not do that in the new ‘QuickTime X’; but none of your third-party plugins will work with it either.

Nor can you insert the serial number (that you paid $29.95 for) to upgrade to the ‘Pro’ version that allows cut/copy/paste/export/etc.

So, you need to install QuickTime 7. From your boot disk, remember?

The installer they provide online (at Apple.com/QuickTime) will download but not install — that QuickTime 7 is only for pre-Snow Leopard installations.

So, if you are out an about with your portable computer, be sure to take your install disk with you wherever you go for the next few months — because who knows what other pieces have been castrated from your otherwise ‘advanced’ upgraded OS.

—–
Does anybody know when Adobe is planning to come out with a Linux-compatible version of Illustrator, so that I can change my domain name and … ‘switch’?

Related Reading:
Snow Leopard: QuickTime X (MacWorld.com)

Here’s why Yahoo logins are ‘breaking’ for users of third-party clients over the last couple of weeks (like Trillian, GAIM, Pidgin, Adium, etc.):

http://www.ymessengerblog.com/blog/2009/06/09/we%E2%80%99re-retiring-versions-60-to-75/

Here’s what notes a helpful guy has contributed to explain how to work around the problem:

http://www.celticwolf.com/useful-information/faqs/26-pidgin-yahoo

And for those too busy to read the instructions (what kind of a geek are you, anyway!?!?!?), the gist of it is that you’ll need to change the address of the Yahoo login server that your client points to. There is also some discussion about the authentication method being slightly altered, but this seems to mostly affect those using the branded YIM (Yahoo! Instant Messager) client, and not the third-party ones.

It appears that Yahoo may still be ‘in flux’, meaning that there might still be some changes in the near future; but the developers who crank out the third-party clients are watching the situation closely and most are anxious to adapt to whatever the new environment evolves into.

—–
Old Yahoo login servers:
scs.msg.yahoo.com:5050 (what my copy Adium was already set to before it broke)

New Yahoo login servers to try (pick one, move down the list until you find one that works):
cs101.msg.mud.yahoo.com (and anything from that to cs127.msg.mud.yahoo.com)
66.163.181.166
66.163.181.106
cn.scs.msg.yahoo.com
scsc.msg.yahoo.com

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And if you’re wondering, I don’t use Apple’s iChat — I use Adium (AdiumX.com) and love it.

And even if you’re not wondering because you aren’t interested in trying out new software at the moment anyway, I’ll still take the opportunity to plug Meebo.com, which is a completely web-based multi-network client that will give you a single-sign-on from any internet-connected machine to get access to ALL your buddy lists. Oh, and reports from all comers are noting that there have been no such Yahoo login problems, as noted above, on the Meebo site.

The only reason I love Adium so much is that it’s so tightly integrated with the Apple Address Book. Bonus.

Thank you for your attention.

I have already seen a heap of this crap in my son’s third-grade homework and texts.

Remember when our parents used to complain about the ‘new math’? Well, apparently it wasn’t enough to permanently stomp out the idea that textbook producers must out-do the methods of textbooks past… new curriculum must be significantly different (and will be assumed as ‘better’) from older teaching methods because … we wouldn’t want a child to feel like they aren’t doing as well as the rest of the class, now, would we?

Better keep your desk well-stocked with batteries; because the only way your kids are going to survive is by having a calculator by their side for the rest of their lives.

“Would you like fries with that?”

Is Your Child a Math Moron? (LewRockwell.com)