Planned Spontaneity

Sometime last night Google unveiled IMAP support for Gmail (and Google Apps). This is huge. This makes Google Apps a viable business solution and it makes Gmail a great email aggregator. Here is what this means for me :

• My desktop, laptop, and iPhone all share the same Sent box / Drafts / email
• Gmail still manages all of my filters, so I don’t have rule synchronization issues
• If I am out and about in the world (on campus or at the library), I have access to all the same resources

Here is my new setup:

Gmail Account :

• Checks my email addresses and tags them on entry.
  If you simply forward email to Gmail, there is no way of tagging based on non “To:\CC:\Subject:” headers
• Runs the appropriate filters
• Stores the “official” copy of any email (received, draft, or sent)

Desktop & Laptop:

• I’ve switched back to Mail.app for my primary email reader. I love Gmail, but the UI is a bit old, and it consumes resources in Firefox.
• Here are some decent instructions on setting up GMail + IMAP successfully (Official, Some Blog)
• I use Mail Act On with the following rules (mirroring Google’s keyboard shortcuts):
• y - Archive Message
• Condition: Every Message
• Action: Move Message to [Gmail]/All Mail
• # - Delete Message
• Condition: Every Message
• Action: Move Message to [Gmail]/Trash
• ! - Mark Message as spam
• Condition: Every Message
• Action: Move Message to [Gmail]/Junk
• I also have a few custom rules setup to tag certain things (family, ToDo, etc.)
• Condition: Every Message
• Action: Copy Message to {Label}
• I use Copy instead of Move as it simply tags the message, and leaves it in its current context (Inbox, Archive, Sent, etc.)
• I use MailType Select to speed up browsing email
• I use Custom From Address
• I go through the account setup n times, once per From Address
• The only difference is the email address I set in the first step, all of the other settings are the same

iPhone:

• I actually setup the iPhone using a combination of the official instructions and a helpful blog.

I’m sure I’ll blog more about this later, as well as a crazy idea I have to use OpenID and GMail together for some sweet two-factor web based authentication (I have issues).