Planned Spontaneity

I do apologize, I know this blog must feel like it is entirely about my email habits (or lack thereof). In a previous post of mine, I talked a lot about rolling my own mail synchronization system. It involved either a complex series of small scripts, something hideous like LDAP / imap relaying, switching to mutt, or a combination thereof. Now I’m thinking about a new option. Gmail.

Gmail is great. I love Gmail, especially for the publicity and adoption it has given to jabber. That said I have several issues with Gmail. Here are my the big ones (in this order):

1. Google reads my email. I know, “there are worse things” or “you have nothing to hide so you are okay.” Still, the ads are a constant reminder of my (lack of) privacy.
2. No offline support.
3. Keyboard shortcuts let me fly on Mail.app
4. I would have to use an @gmail.com address.
5. I can’t integrate it with iCal and my addressbook.
6. I can’t use https to read email.
7. It won’t sync with my PDA (iPhone)
8. Personal certificates won’t work

Recently Google has been unveiling a lot of really awesome announcements. I’m in a list mood tonight so lets go with another list.

1. Google announces integration with iPhone (though Yahoo mail Apple’s preferred email system!)
2. Google announces Google Apps, giving you all the luxury of Google on your own domains.
3. Google announces multiple email account support for your existing email addresses through SMTP/POP3

Combine this with their keyboard shortcuts, mobile interface, and api interfaces and I’m sold. If I do this, I have to go all out, and what I’m worried about is that I will lose the data when I leave Gmail. I still would like to roll my own solutions, mostly because I think my idea is better than Google’s, but several billion dollars and collective of thousands of the best minds might just beat me to it. We’ll see. In the interim, I need to sleep on it before dropping $50 for a “premium” account at Google for karulf.com and converting all of fort-awesome from dreamhost.