Nokia Email service graduates as part of Nokia Messaging

Nokia Mail graduates from the beta labs finally. I’ve been using this for a while now and it’s pretty good. I do not have the experience of a Blackberry to compare, but it surpasses all other mobile email I’ve ever used.

Nokia Email service graduates as part of Nokia Messaging: ”

Written by Davis Fields, Nokia Messaging team

Hello,

It’s Davis Fields and I’m happy to announce the official release of Nokia Messaging. Please go to http://email.nokia.com to download the latest version. I’m also proud to say that we are graduating the program from Beta Labs. The Nokia Messaging team has gained so much from you, our users, during our time here. We started our beta in August 2008 with the first release of Nokia Email service. We will be rolling out the service on a country by country basis starting with Australia, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom and Venezuela. You are free to continue using the service until it’s commercially available in your location.

Here are the highlights of this release:

  • Support for Yahoo! Mail
  • Support for more Nokia S60 phones
  • Support for up to ten email addresses
  • Support for subfolders for IMAP email accounts
  • Support for Google Apps hosted email and other vanity domain email addresses
  • Flagged messages will automatically become starred messages in Gmail
  • More intuitive inbox navigation via a discoverable control bar
  • Faster opening of inbox
  • Sent email will be synced to your webmail’s sent folder for all email addresses

I can say that most of these features came from your requests, and I hope you enjoy this new release. I can also say that we are by no means done with our work – this is the first official release but we will continue to regularly offer large updates to Nokia Messaging. I want to acknowledge specifically the omission of HTML in this release – we have spent plenty of time figuring out the best way to implement HTML and we are close to delivering it, but not in this release. It’s an important feature to us.

Finally, though we’re graduating from Beta Labs today, I will continue to be listening to your feedback and keeping up the dialogue. You will be able to find future postings from me regarding Nokia Messaging at the S60 Living blog. I will continue to read and reply to emails sent to nokiaemail [at] nokia [dot] com. As always, thanks for your feedback. Enjoy the holidays and the new release of Nokia Messaging!

– Davis Fields

Nokia Messaging

(Via Nokia Beta Labs blog.)

Hackers ‘aid’ Amazon logging scam

Hackers ‘aid’ Amazon logging scam: “Hi-tech criminals have helped Brazilian logging firms evade official limits on how much timber they can harvest, says a report.”

Quite amusingly when I first read this I thought that some crackers had hacked into the logs of some Amazon transactions, and grabbed credit card details….. Of course Amazon is not the only Amazon, and neither is it the largest or most important! 🙂

(Via BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition.)

Resizing a Time machine backup

As spotted on this blog here’s a way to increase the maximum size used by sparse bundle.

I use Time Machine to backup to My Ready Nas. I found this thread and howto on the Infrant forums. It’s not supported by Appole but it works nicely. Although you’ve got to admit that using an usupported method for a backup is a little dodgy!

I had a problem where resizing was not supported. This post, and this post again on the Infrant forums and this post helped. Well they helped me realise that something Apple did with the OS X 10.5.2 update stopped AFP shares being supported 100% for HDIUTILS manipulation of Sparse/ bundles.

So this command line does not work 🙁

sudo hdiutil create -size 320g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -nospotlight -volname "Backup of Morcheeba" -fs "Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+" -verbose ~/Desktop/test.sparsebundle

So I just started again. I have multiple backups anyway!

As far as I understand it Time machine backups use Rsync and link. Much in the same way that my

Will future generations regard the Plane Stupids as heroes?

I’m sure that the Daily Mail etc… of the Suffragette (city?) era swore and cursed them. I’m also sure that Rachel Silent Spring was cursed (..and still is by pesticide companies) by the tabloid press. So will history regard the Plane Stupid people in the same way that we rightly regard these people as heroes?

Although I do not agree with illegal protests, I’m off the mind that our children (or theirs) will regard the Plane Stupids as people who took a stand. They took a fairly lonely position as obstacles in the unrelenting carbon burning nature of our apathy. I may even pop in Lush next week (even though it does stink) and buy something!

online storage

I’m a bit of a paranoid sort, and I really do backup even the most trivial of my data. I’ve been thinking of offline storage and a recent loss of my entire HOME directory (due to stupid human error, but all backed up) has made me think more strongly about this.

I used Rsync.net For quite a while, but I’ve been getting increasingly interested in Dropbox. Rsync is a commendably Open standard company. They allow access to their storage via many widely supported protocols, rsync (using ssh), scp, sftp, webdav etc. However, as a home backup network they are fairly expensive. I used a 10Gb share for a while, that’s about 11 bucks a month ($1.2 per Gb per month) but that’s not large enough to backup all my data. I used Rsync in a script that backed up a directory containing various softlinks to various important data folders scatered about my home directory. However, I’ve always been of the opinion that backup needs to be indiscriminate and completely automated. That is I’d prefer for all my Home directory to be backed up offsite rather than specific folders.

Dropbox offers 50Gb for 99 bucks. Now this is only accesible using a web interface or their admittedly cool client. Useable on Mac and Linux (windows as well but I’ve not used that). The folder is kept synched between all clients.

As a home user how can I afford to have the same storage as Dropbox but the same flexiblity as Rsync.org…..?

Backup wisdom

For somebody who’s paranoid about backing up the most trivial files as me, this is very funny and very true!

Backup wisdom: “

I’ve been thinking about and experimenting with various backup options recently, seeking the One True Backup Solution. In my search for enlightenment I came across a rather nice site called The Tao of Backup.

(Via Status-Q.)

Nokia Messaging – Nokia World 2008 Announcement

Looks like Nokia Email is coming out of beta!

I hope all the new functionality is available on old phones!

Nokia Messaging – Nokia World 2008 Announcement: “

Written by Davis Fields, Nokia Email service Nokia Messaging team

email_rebranded.PNG

Hello beta testers!

It’s Davis Fields, coming to you live from Barcelona from the Nokia World conference where we officially announced Nokia Messaging – the complete messaging solution for Nokia devices. For all the official information regarding what Nokia Messaging is, please check out the press release.

I’d like to give our faithful beta users more information. What we called Nokia Email service is now the S60 email portion of the overall Nokia Messaging solution. Nokia Messaging will be the best way to use your existing email and instant messaging accounts on all Nokia devices. There is a significant update of Nokia Messaging coming out in the next two weeks – containing a lot of exciting new features, including significant performance increases in client performance and battery life.

Please check out David Dueblin’s post below on the exciting launch of Mail on Ovi as well. Nokia Messaging will seamlessly access Mail on Ovi accounts just like other email accounts, offering the same great features. Users can use their ovi.com email address to sign up for Nokia Messaging and access their email through Nokia Messaging on their Nokia phones.

I’ll post plenty more information regarding Nokia Messaging when we post our next update on http://email.nokia.com. We look forward to improving upon Nokia Email service with a complete email and instant messaging solution in Nokia Messaging.

– Davis Fields

(Via Nokia Beta Labs blog.)