To change the layout of my “You” page, I went thru the menus: You->Your Account. There is now a new option added to allow me to pick out which layout I wanted. The choices are small images only, small images plus sets (the original default), small images plus collections, medium images only, medium images plus sets, or medium images plus collections. Since I promptly sorted all my sets into collections, I chose the small images plus collections option which worked a treat.

To create collections, use the Organizr. The “Sets” tab is now “Sets and Collections.” It’s all pretty intuitive to use: when I choose to create a new collection, all my sets are displayed to one side, and I can drag and drop (and reorder, etc) sets into the collection.

Sets use a particular picture within the set to create its visual identification; collections use a mosaic of nine pictures to create its visual identification. I believe there are still some bugs with creating the mosaic representations. In several cases, the mosaic insisted on using pictures from one particular set within the collection, instead of a nicely distributed random set. In one case, the pictures chosen are from a set not even in the collection!

Collections are not available to free flickr accounts. This makes sense as free accounts are also limited in the number of sets they can create, as well. However, choosing different layouts is available, with the small/medium pictures + collections options omitted.

The announcement of the new features are up at Flickr’s Blog.

But, I have grudgingly entered the present day world, as Gmail (and Thunderbird, but that’s another topic) have made pretty good gains and I’m not yet prepared to set up my own personal mail server on my own linux box just in order to keep using a text based set of programs which admittedly don’t handle some things such as pictures all that cleanly (although that also meant that I basically never got email viruses).

Gmail Account

For the first three years, Gmail was invite only. Now it’s open to all. Of course, all the good names have been taken

Security

First of all, for any kind of web browsing of a relatively personal nature, I recommend making sure the session stays within https connections. In grossly simple terms, the “s” on https means the connection is secured from eavesdropping. One simple way to do this is to log in on Gmail from this address: https://mail.google.com which should thereafter retain the secure connection. I like to be absolutely sure of this, though, so on Firefox, I use a simple Greasemonkey script called GmailSecure to enforce the https connection. (It’s also extensible to force secure connections on an array of google related items.) Sorry Opera, IE, or Safari users, I couldn’t find comparable extensions for this (though an Opera widget called Gmail Checker has a feature request for this.

Second of all, as tempting as it might be to aggregate all new items into a feed reader for convenience, do NOT use a public web accessible reader such as Bloglines or GoogleReader to do so! These subscriptions become generally searchable on either service and while the full message can not be displayed, there’s chances that the excerpt will contain enough private information that can be viewed. I came across this security hole last year, and on re-checking Bloglines, I can still find gmail feeds hosted there. I’m at a loss as to why a feed is even offered in Gmail (or at least why not make it an option in the settings and default it off for security?) but since neither Gmail nor Bloglines have taken concrete steps in addressing this issue, I’ll put this warning down. Just don’t do RSS feeds of private email, and if you do, don’t use a public RSS reader to access them — use a personal one on a particular computer for the purpose. Oh, you wanted to be able to access the feed anywhere on the net? Then use Gmail’s web interface already, that’s what it’s for.

Notifications

There’s several ways to have Gmail notifications setup. Gmail itself provides small applets for Windows/Mac. The open source community has created an equivalent for Linux called CheckGmail (which is now available with some distributions, such as Ubuntu, so check the package managers first).

Opera and Firefox have various different widgets and extensions that provide notification. I use the Firefox Gmail Manager which has its own notification system besides much more: see below. Opera’s Gmail Checker is a small and simple widget solely for this purpose. I did not find any for Safari or IE on cursory check.

Favorite Firefox <-> Gmail Extensions

As a Firefox user, I like to search around at Firefox Add-ons for useful extensions. The ones I use are:

• Gmail Manager This is an essential script to handle multiple Gmail accounts. A small notification in the bottom tray of Firefox can be configured to display the current number of unread messages in the mailbox as well as a way to simply log into each account, with minimal switching around.

• Gmail Skins Fun to play with; note that some of the choices result in error messages, just uninstall, reinstall and choose a different theme.

• And of course I use the Firefox extension Greasemonkey. Saved Searches gives me dynamic folders, pretty useful. Hide Gmail Ads allows me to regain valuable real estate on my laptop where every centimeter counts.

Tips and Tricks

• Use a draft message (start a message and then save it rather than send it anywhere) to do quick file transfers between computers. I save the item into a draft on one computer, and pull it out from my login on another computer. It’s more convenient than emailing it to myself, and few home computers have a permanent IP address for ftp transfer and the like.

• I also use the drafts for “Notes to self” on particular emails. Sometimes I want to remind myself of things related to an email, and drafts attached to that email serve as a form of post-it notes.

• Sort everything! Any mailing lists should be slapped with a label and archived. This way I browse mailing lists at my leisure and I’m not distracted by constant incoming email. The only thing that should be popping up in my mail account are important things that I need to attend to relatively quickly. Gmail does provide pretty good filtering and labeling and other options for incoming email.

• Use the + feature in email addresses. The definition of mailing protocol means that addresses of the form somewhere+identifier@somedomain should be delivered t somewhere@somedomain . Not all mail providers adhere to this, but gmail does, and this can be a trick to sort incoming email from different sources. For example, when I’m forced to use my email address for something that I suspect will spam me later, I can use something like myemail+nyt@gmail.com to see. Since Gmail has reasonable filters, this is perhaps not as useful as it might have been at the start.

• Google itself lists several pretty cool Gmail related Greasemonkey scripts here; they’re all well worth looking at.

• There’s plenty of creative ways to divert items to Gmail: feeds can be sent via email through Feedster or Feedburner; that way I could if I chose have a daily weather forecast or my current to-do list emailed to me.

What would I like to see?

Gmail allows multiple email addresses to be forwarded to it, and to “reply” as those emails. However, those emails are still marked in the headers as originating from that particular gmail account. I would like to see it anonymized down to at least only knowing it’s routed through Gmail. Since the extra email addresses in question are verified before being added to Gmail’s list of alternate addresses, I don’t see why that can’t be offered.

Yes, a short list. Well, if it were longer, I wouldn’t be using Gmail in the first place Most of the time if I want a feature, I can find an extension of some type for it.

Miscellaneous Issues

One of the most annoying consequences of Google having assimilated Blogger is the effect it had on Blogger accounts versus Gmail accounts. I have a different “identity” on Blogger that’s well established, but not connected to my Gmail. Now, both accounts were retained in the merger, but they do not play well together. If I am logged into my Gmail when I encounter a Blogger post I wish to respond to, and I log in my old Blogger account, it logs me out of Gmail. I have not found a good way around this, although I have discovered that logging back to the original Gmail account often leaves the Blogger login available on other Blogger entries that I might respond to.

My favorite program is Gaim. I like it for a number of reasons, but two primary ones are that it’s cross platform, so I can run it on my windows (at work) and linux (everything else) installations, and not have to familiarize myself with two different programs. (There’s not a version for mac, unfortunately, but I understand Adium is a derivation.) The second reason is that it is multi protocol, meaning that I can stash my AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, and other Jabber ID’s all in one spot, again instead of running a separate IM application for each account I’ve got.

About my only complaint, and the impetus for this post, is that Gaim does not yet support video (eg with a webcam). The developers say that it’s planned for 3.0, but inasmuch as we are just reaching 2.0 and there’s no timeline in place, I have no idea when this will come out. There was a gaim-vv fork at one point, but that seems to have disappeared, folded back into the main project for the later release.

Now it appears that using a webcam on Linux is slightly tricky, but to start with, one must at least have an IM application of some sort that supports it. Which led me to Kopete. Now, I’m willfully ignoring the little voice in my head that persists in saying “kaopectate” as I download this little puppy and check him out. [Interestingly, this project also shares configuration stuff with Adium, might check that out a bit.]

If you’re running ubuntu, kopete is readily available in the repositories and is advertised to understand video. I’ve been playing with it, and it’s a nice little piece of eye candy so far. I like the interface and the colours and such. The cutest part may be the excited cheerleader swirl you get in the system tray if you’ve got it all shut down off the desktop and you get an incoming message. It seems to be pretty robust all around, and although I like Gaim’s interface better (it’s much more compact in the chat panel), it seems pretty extensively customizable, so there’s probably a configuration I can find that I like.

(The webcam is currently in the mail somewhere between Amazon.com and me, so that part of the post is later.)

Kopete webcam Howto.

In the same vein, akismet is up to 1.8.1 (although their website gives an earlier version number, I had 1.8.1 after updating). If you have already installed it and are just updating it, all you have to do is unpack the new version in the same plugin directory, you are already set up with your API key and everything (their faq doesn’t make it clear what is involved in updating versus newly-installing, probably because it’s so trivial).

Plus which I use the plugin Bad Behavior for further spam killing (now at version 2.0.9). It works a charm. It’s also been pretty recently updated, so I suggest installing it if you haven’t got it, or updating it if you’re behind.

I’m using the Nearly Sprung theme as well, and have a problem getting Ordered Lists to display properly in IE 6. I see that your site has the same problem. An ordered lists displays only using 1. for every item – the problem is compounded when your line wraps and the number gets pushed down to the next line.

Any ideas for a fix? I’ve posted this question to the theme owner but received no response.

I’m checking this now, with the following ordered list

1. first item
2. second item
3. third item

and indeed when it’s viewed on IE6, each item is prefixed with “1″. In reading up about this, I have found these links here and here, but neither of them have (yet) given me any ideas about fixing the problem.

In honesty, my initial one word reply would have been “IE7″ but dammit, I just checked and it’s a bug in IE7 as well. I’d say “Firefox,” or “Opera” but I do realize that some people have irrational or forced attachments to IE…

Still poking at it…