Being digitally homeless has really started to change the way I do things. Suddenly onlineness becomes key. In the past, I’ve been 100% committed to having my e-mail locally stored on my laptop (in mbox format), using Mutt (and then Mail.app when I switched to Mac) to manage it all. And it worked fine back then.
But we’re now in 2006 and times have changed. I switched to Gmail a while ago, but only used the web interface when I was at school. Whenever I had my laptop with me I would use Mail.app instead. Now, however, I’m forced to use the web interface all the time.
Assuming that I eventually get my laptop fixed — and hopefully that’s not an unreasonable assumption :) — I’ll have a choice to make: do I return to using Mail.app or do I stick with the Gmail web interface? Until today, I was positive I’d return to my old ways, but now I’m not so sure. Using both almost feels like having multiple personality disorder. I’d rather use a single way, and Gmail gives me the advantage of universality: I can access my e-mail from any computer in the world. That’s the way things are going, and it’s a very nice movement. (See my Beyond blog for thoughts on this as regards genealogy.)
By the way, it’d sure be nice to have a central place on the web to store everything I need… ~sigh~
[tags]e-mail, Mail.app, Gmail, Mac[/tags]
Comments
Hi Ben,
I assume by “a central place on the web to store everything I need” you refer to some way to store all your files online somehow. A web-accessible network drive, as it were.
The Techcrunch blog (http://techcrunch.com) has reviewed a number of online storage services, which you might find interesting.
A recent entry to this space that (if you haven’t heard about it already) is Amazon’s S3 (aws.amazon.com/s3). I can see it providing a lot of possibilities whch address the need for ’somewhere online to put my stuff.’
S3 might provide some nice possibilities for people using Beyond to store their stuff.
Having a web-accessible network drive is indeed part of it (and thanks for the links), but part of what I envision is a place where I can store things like account information (or at least which sites I have accounts for, since you probably wouldn’t want to store passwords online), links to comments I make on blogs, etc. A hub for my online presence, as it were. But as I’m writing this comment I’m having difficulty pinning it down — the idea is a vague cloud in my head and so I’m not really sure if this is something useful (or even what it would have to be). Backpack seems to be the closest thing so far, though. I’ll think about this more and when I get something clear I’ll post again.
Throw in your two cents