is it just me or has anyone noticed that gmail‘s space counter jumped to 5 gig? compared to yahoo’s “unlimited” space, 5 gig is “small”. but heck, 5 gig is still plenty.

but (there’s always a “but”, isn’t there?) i do have a small gripe. i have a couple of mail accounts in yahoo. here’s how it looks like on the beta interface:

the problem i have with the new interface is i suddenly do not have a way of accessing my other mail accounts. ugh. why can’t yahoo announce these things in advance, at least to their small business clients? i know there is a way to access the other mail accounts’ webmail interface but the rub here is that i have one domain that has a .com.ph extension and when i but the webmail address on the address bar all i get is a yahoo! business e-mail sign up page. so essentially the other users of the .com.ph domain is cut off from their webmail interface. domains ending in .com or .org doesn’t seem to be affected.

no word yet from yahoo.

so the filter/rule would more or less go like:

if the sender’s e-mail address is in my address book/contact list then put the e-mail in my inbox; otherwise put the e-mail in the trash bin.

simple enough.

the downside i can see here are

• more security and attention would be given to the address book
• legitimate e-mail from a new contact would possibly be trashed which brings up a question on how to add legitimate e-mail addresses to the address book

the upside would be

• less attention and resources would be given to the spam filter
• all the mails you receive are from people or websites that you already know. the thing with this last point is that everybody’s e-mail address can be spoofed so what looks like an e-mail from a legit address could contain spam

unfortunately, not all mail applications support filtering using the whole address book as a base or white list. i can confirm that microsoft outlook — but not outlook express — and thunderbird can be configured to use the address book as a white list.

with web-based mail systems, both google mail and yahoo! mail (yahoo! business mail also) does not support address book white list filtering. i find this a bit of a bummer because i use y! mail and gmail most of the time. i cannot confirm if hotmail has this feature since i have not used hotmail.

i sure hope that gmail and yahoo! mail would give my feature request a little bit of thought. it may not be an end-all solution but it would be nice to have this option.

edit: 23 sept 2007: gmail says that it delivers all mails from people in the contacts list.

huh?!?

ok. so things are good. after a few days, i get an e-mail for the user’s supervisor and she says the user still can’t send/receive his mails. what the…?!?

ok. i go there again, check the system, do a send/receive and, voila! it sends out mails and receives mails also. hmmmm… strange. i send out a test mail to the super just to prove that the computer can send and receive.

after about a week, i get an e-mail, this time from the boss. yup. the user still can’t send/receive e-mails.

here we go again. i check, send out test mails, receive test mails, click on the send/receive. and it does! the dang thing works properly. grrrr..

now this happens a couple more times and i send him step-by-step instructions. i even talked to him over the phone. and no joy.

then finally i found out what was wrong.

he couldn’t send or receive his e-mails because he doesn’t click on the send/receive button.

end of story.

• don’t open any e-mail from anyone you do not know.
• don’t click on that link from an e-mail unless you’re expecting that e-mail
• be wary of e-mails even if it appears to be from someone you know
• be wary of e-mails with small file attachments

be safe. think.