Hm. Mebbe a Wedtech on understanding and applying cell phone
technology...
But seriously: a question for Owen and all those who might know-
This afternoon I inadvertantly ended up with Google voice mail
(thought I was getting something slightly different: I'm not familiar
enough with google jargon to realize my error until it was too late).
I looked for a 'delete' or 'deactivate' option for the voice mail
account.
Instead agreement in the forums is that there is no way to delete a
google voice mail account once you have established it on your phone,
other than changing your phone number.
That will not work for my business.
So is this really true?
There is no way to remove my phone number from a google voice mail
account once it's set up?
In awe of megalopolies-
Victoria
On Aug 2, 2011, at 9:37 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
Ouch! I realize that sounds harsh.
Let me be clearer. Gmail is very sophisticated. And with cleaver
plugins, you can make it less noisy and have a UI you'd prefer (See
Minimalist for Gmail http://goo.gl/gSAi4).
But it is not IMAP or POP. This means 100% of new users of gmail
haven't a clue as to how it works.
One trivial example: Sent messages. In POP/IMAP clients, these are
messages that you have sent from the account (SMTP). In Gmail it is
a system "label" (not folder).
Now lets suppose you send a message to a "conversation" (IMAP/POP:
thread) and you later delete the thread in Gmail. It will also
delete your copy of your outgoing email from the Sent label/folder!
This behavior moves users to the simpler Archive usage. Great. You
keep all email you've sent or read. Ever. You do this because
there is really no alternative for the behavior you'd like for our
earlier Sent message behavior. Thus Google have a gold mine of
preferences to use as they please.
The point I'm (badly) making is that very, very few users ..
including 80% of Friam .. understand these subtleties. And it is
dangerous.
A few simple rules help. Never use a service that entraps your
data .. i.e. you cannot pull it back out. Gmail is great that way:
simply hook up an IMAP client, and it will transfer GMail messages
to any new account you might create. If that stops being available,
I'd leave it. (Yes, I use Gmail .. via DNS)
Another rule is to have your own DNS name. Why? Because you have a
single identity on the web and if you move to a new ISP, you simply
change your DNS records and no user of your identity (mail, web...)
is confused.
For novice users, the two most difficult to understand events are:
1 - To get a new computer (Where'd my mail go? .. etc)
2 - To change ISPs (Holy cow, I'm now joe@gmail and was
joe@earthlink .. what do I do?!)
And a third is now hot on their heels:
3 - To have multiple devices (phone, pad, TV, server, laptop,
desktop) all of which need to share certain data like email.
Another is to be polite .. which I screwed up and hope not too
badly! :)
-- Owen
On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 8:48 PM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]>
wrote:
BTW Sarbajit, you are a gmail user. Could you enumerate the
difficulties, even immoralities, that entails? We have to be
careful what we consider "free".
-- Owen
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
