My Basecamp account has been lying dormant for a few months now. This AM though I fired it up as a way for Kel and I to coordinate the stuff we need to do for the move. The whole Milestone->todo list gestalt works really nicely for planning something like a move. The Messages tool is also helpful for nailing down contact/phone logs with the various accounts and utilities we need to cancel. I do, however, wish that Basecamp was more like Backpack in its ability to email content to a list or page.

Technorati Tags: basecamp, GTD

Google announced Google Apps for Your Domain a while ago. Using per-domain branded Google apps, you could pick up services like email, IM and calendar all for free, hosted by Google. Sounded like a good idea but I’ve always hosted my own webDAV calendars and email (qmail/courier-imap) and been happy with my self-sufficiency. Until recently.

Image spam, server instability and DNS issues started to really make my willisbros.net email less than reliable. Plus, since I’m moving on from the statehouse position, having a reliable method of contact is pretty important. I decided to give another look at Google Apps for Willisbros.net. I read the service agreement, FAQs, and forum feedback and everything looked kosher with one major exception: Google mail is POP3 only. No IMAP. This was almost a deal-breaker for me.

I wanted to benefit from the reliability and accessibility of having Google host my willisbros.net mail, but I didn’t want to give up IMAP flexibility. So here’s what I did:

• Setup Google Apps for Willisbros.net, changed the MX record and setup necessary accounts
• Went to my legacy IMAP server and setup fetchmail to retrieve my gmail via POP3
• New mail is downloaded by fetchmail (ssl’d) into my IMAP inbox where my mail client can access it and I can file it into my “archive” folder or delete it
• Mail stays on the gmail server after being pop’d but is automatically dumped into the online Archive folder after being pop’d
• Uploaded six years’ worth of archive messages from my IMAP archive folder to gmail using Mark Lyon’s GMail Loader

Now my local mail client’s IMAP folder structure and contents mirror that of my web-based gmail. Brilliant!

Granted, this only works if you have an IMAP server somewhere that you can use but i’d imagine you could setup courier-imap on pretty much anything and, as long as you’re cool with the minimal folder implementation (INBOX, Archive, Trash and Spam) you’re pretty much set. The only fly in the ointment here is that there’s no synchronization between my local mail client’s “Sent Mail” and mail I send through the gmail interface. Not that big of a deal, but it does prevent this solution from being perfect.

I’ve been very pleased so far with letting the good folks at Google worry about my mail reliability. They’re much better at it than I am. And their spam filters kickass over anything I’ve ever been able to eek out of spamassassin.

Found this document on the state library website. Interesting bathroom reading. Or something like that.

Oh, and then there’s this little gem, too. A review of the Walsh Act and other Acts and Charters as a way to explain Jersey’s municipal history and forms of government.

Technorati Tags: NJ