What it means for GMail's web interface to use a different grammar for labeling and searching...

I have been having a hard time explaining this to the Google Apps support team. I originally contacted them because I had a lot of labels with leading special characters that I use to affect their sort order. For example, I have a "?Bulk" label grouped together with other "?Bulk/sublabels" (e.g., "?Bulk/Facebook"). The leading question mark prevents them from showing up in the middle of other labels I have that start with "B". Moreover, using leading special characters lets me put certain important labels at the top of my list where they are easy to see and access.

Now, the search bar at the top of the GMail web interface doesn't have much problem with this. It will match such labels regardless of whether I include the leading special character:

Note that it's not just finding partial matches in the middle of a label. If you drop the first alphanumeric character after the special characters, you get no matches:

Now, you would expect the "Move To" and "Copy To" quick searches to behave the same way. At first, it seems like they do. They'll do partial matches from the front of the label if you include the special character:

But if you drop the special character, you're doomed.

Pretty annoying, huh? See, "Move To" and "Copy To" are using some special grammar to extract information from the list of labels. Apparently this grammar is overly simple. Now, I might be able to live with that if it wasn't the case that GMail Search knows how to get labels right. In fact, Gmail Search can even handle nested labels with leading special characters. Check it out:

See? It was able to recognize that the "/" in big version of the label name separated parent from child label (which actually can be a problem if you're not intending to use nested labels). It then looks for matches at the start of the sublabel, which is in the middle of the big label shown. Pretty cool. Moreover, if you drop the leading alphanumeric character, the match fails:

Now, apparently "Move To" and "Copy To" have some of this matching behavior. That is, they'll properly chop the label into parent and child and look for matches in just the child part:

Unfortunately, you need the special character for the match to work:

So, again, for some reason GMail has developed the quick search for "Move To" and "Copy To" independently from GMail Search in general. Maybe this was an optimization, but it seems like it wouldn't be too slow to call out to GMail Search to find these labels. Then everything would be consistent.

Now, I tried explaining this to the Google Apps support team initially. You know what they told me? That "Gmail Search" doesn't do partial matches, and so it's the expected behavior. Can you believe they actually had the nerve to forward me to a GMail Search page when the real problem is that "Move To" and "Copy To" are in fact acting DIFFERENTLY than GMail Search? IF ONLY the issue was with GMail Search; I could live with that.

Well, Thunderbird gets it right. I guess that's a nice workaround.

Why GMail's show-if-unread is NOW useless with nested labels

Once upon a time, when they were both in "GMail Labs", the show-if-unread feature and nested labels features worked together seamlessly.

• nested labels: You could create a nested label (like a subfolder) by adding slashes in folder names. You would create two folders called "Parent/ChildA" and "Parent/ChildB", and they would be displayed as "ChildA" and "ChildB" underneath a single "Parent" that you could collapse and expand.
• show-if-unread: Only labels that had unread messages in them would show up in the left bar. To see all of your labels, you could use the "more" link which would show you a full list.

In the case where a nested label had unread messages in it, it would show up in its flat form (if I recall correctly) in the list. So you'd see "Parent/ChildA" but "ChildB" would still be nested under "Parent" in the "more". That was fantastic.

However, eventually both labs features became integrated into production GMail, and they messed it all up. Now, ostensibly to avoid revealing the slash form and to avoid having parent labels repeated in both the unread and read lists, they've made it impossible to apply show-if-unread to nested labels. Consequently, if any nested labels have unread messages in it, the parent and all of its nested labels show up in the unread list. So you get things like this (click for larger):

Obviously, that defeats the whole purpose of show-if-unread. I'm forced to look at all of those read nested labels just because some of their "sublings" are unread.

So Google has gone from taking two nice features and combining them into one terrible and useless and awful thing.

3mindme is shutting down! Old owner recommends NudgeMail

Today I received the quoted e-mail below from David Barrett (@quinthar). His work as CEO of Expensify and some complications with maintaining the longevity of 3mindme have made him decide to shut down the 3mindme service effective immediately. He recommends the very similar but commercially operated service NudgeMail as a substitute. You can find other substitution options at an old post of mine discussing these services.

Hi! I'm David, the guy who made 3mindme. I'm very sad to inform you that I'm shutting down the service permanently, starting immediately. I strongly encourage you to check out a similar service at http://nudgemail.com -- it's essentially the same thing as 3mindme, but better.

Q: What will happen to the emails I've scheduled for the future?
A: After I send this email to all users, I'm going to send all future-dated emails immediately. My goal has always been to return every email at precisely the right time. Unfortunately, I'll need to make due with simply returning them at all.

Q: Can I do anything to convince you to keep 3mindme alive?
A: Probably not. It's been a fun service to operate these many years, but as CEO of Expensify (https://expensify.com - Expense reports that don't suck!) I just don't have the time to devote to 3mindme.

Q: Why now, after years of continuous operation?
A: Spam. I recently learned that many users (myself included) were having their emails silently dropped, meaning they got no error response, but the message was never scheduled for future delivery. Solving this problem is very difficult and time consuming, and I'd rather shut down 3mindme than leave it in a non-functioning state.

I think that's all. If you have any questions, feel free to respond to this email and I'll do what I can to help. Otherwise, give NudgeMail a shot, and keep Expensify in mind for your next expense report!

-david
Follow me at http://twitter.com/quinthar

So that is very sad. 3mindme was a nice server-side mail-me-back reminder service that didn't have the ugly commercial taste of pretty much every other alternative.

So bye-bye 3mindme; we'll miss you.

Delayed reminder e-mails: iTickleMe, LetterMeLater, FutureMe, 3mindme, and Outlook

UPDATE: On August 27, 2011, 3mindme was shut down. See a recent post for more information. The old owner of 3mindme recommends NudgeMail as a substitute.

---

UPDATE: It looks like there has been an update to the original Gadgetwise post. Unfortunately, because it seems like all technology writers are born to disappoint, the author picked a bone-headed client-side solution like the Boomerang plugin for Firefox/Chrome despite so many people pointing out existing server-side solutions. In fact, a bunch of people posted lots of johnny-come-lately server-side applications like Good Todo, FollowUp, FollowUpThen, and NudgeMail. Why you would favor any of these over something like 3mindme baffles me, but I guess it's nice to have options. You certainly shouldn't ever need to use Boomerang though!

This recent NYTimes: Gadgetwise post got me thinking about an old functionality I built into my mail server (using procmail and cronjobs) back before I switched over to Gmail. Basically, I implemented exactly this "delayed reminder" feature in a sort of GTD "tickler file" (43folders) way. I think you could already do something similar in GMail, but you'd still come a little short. Let me explain how my old IMAP-based version worked.

I would send myself messages with a subject like:

tickle10: Ask Joe to return book he borrowed

That is, "on day 10 of this month, remind me to 'Ask Joe to return...'". When my mail server received messages matching that format, it would file them into "tickler files" that were just IMAP folders for each day; each folder had a name like "TICKLE.1" or "TICKLE.25". I then had a script that would run nightly and would move contents of "TICKLE.today_number" into my inbox and mark them unread.

Consequently, this acted exactly like a tickler file with folders. I "drop" a message into the folder for a day later in this month or next month, and each day I empty the folder in the front and move the empty folder to the back. I just had a script do it for me.

You could have GMail do ALMOST all of this for you. That is, you could have it automatically file messages based on subject into tickler folders. The problem would be to automate moving the daily folders back into your inbox. Perhaps you could just manually check today's folder each day. That would be a step in the right direction.

But then I realized that if the NYTimes guy thought of it now, and I thought of it many many many years ago, then maybe other people have thought of it too. So I did a Google search, and it turns out other solutions do now exist. Here's one I just found:

• iTickleMe: http://www.itickleme.com/
  
  iTickleMe lets you schedule e-mail reminders by sending the service e-mails at addresses like INTERVAL@itickleme.com.

Of course, there is more than one way to skin an cat. Alternatives to iTickleMe include:

• LetterMeLater: http://www.lettermelater.com/
• FutureMe: http://www.futureme.org/

But then I found a really simple and elegant non-commercial alternative:

• 3mindme: http://3mindme.com/
  
  which you can find a little more information about at Lifemuncher:
  
  http://lifemuncher.blogspot.com/2007/12/3mindme-reminder-service.html
  
  However, I really recommend you just check out 3mindme.com directly; it's self explanatory. I just hope that 3mindme doesn't go under because it's not commercially supported and the author might eventually lose interest.

Finally, apparently Outlook has the ability to schedule e-mails for later delivery. This won't be an option for, say, GMail users who access GMail through the web... or Thunderbird users in general. Does Apple Mail have this feature? Well, in the meanwhile, the on-line reflector services should work pretty well... and, so long as you can count on the server being up, you don't have to worry about your mail client at home crashing and not sending those delayed e-mails while you are away (plus, do you really need to keep your computer on just as a reminder server?).

So go check out 3mindme. I haven't tried it yet. I hope it still works. Sounds great!

pine, mutt, elm, and mousetraps

The web hosting provider for tedpavlic.com recently upgraded their UNIX boxes to a 64-bit platform, and the websites I host with them had to be moved over. There were a few small hiccups (primarily due to 32-bit apps I built that needed to be re-built), but most of the issues afterwards had to deal with apps that I asked them to install on the old machine that I then had to ask them to install again on the new machine. One of those apps was (al)pine, which is the console-based e-mail client that I use. They installed pine for me, but the guy in charge was curious. Here's a response to a question he had about my request. It's my justification for using pine (and throwing away the mouse).

But I must ask, for the few odd requests I get for pine, I am curious as to if you actually use it on a day to day basis or just for testing. I remember using it back in the day (good ol'e ISDN!), but it seems a bit redundant and quaint now that we have webmail and Thunderbird and such.

Gosh – pine is far more powerful than either of those. For example:

*) Does webmail support IMAP tags? Pine does. Thunderbird just started, and it's support is still limited.

*) When managing large folders of mail, it's often much easier to query and process the messages with pine. I can quickly select a batch of messages, invert the selection, view the selection as its own folder, etc. etc. I have much more efficacy in pine.

*) If I'm at a remote computer, it's much more convenient for me to ssh into gemini and run pine than to use webmail (which is slow and clunky) or setup Thunderbird for my one time use.

*) If I'm at a remote computer *with* pine, if I run THAT pine and point it at gemini's IMAP server, pine will use the pine configuration (and address book) that is stored in a special IMAP folder. Hence, pine is much more portable than Thunderbird.

*) With very few exceptions, I'm much happier with console-mode (or near-console-mode) apps. Similarly, I use vim on every machine I have. Not only does it give me a uniform editing environment wherever I am, but with the addons packaged with any standard vim installation, vim will download, edit, and upload networked files automatically for me without much extra work on my part.

*) Oh, and don't forget that once upon a time you could only get pico with pine. Now, IIRC, nano comes separately.

My officemate uses mutt, and I used to be a major elm fan because it integrated better with vim. I shifted to pine because it's just so very powerful.

Have you heard of Vimperator? It's an add-on for Firefox that makes it act like Vim. The same people also brought out Muttator – it's an addon for Thunderbird that makes it act like mutt.

So there are lots of us out there that are dissatisfied with the GUI. Console-mode developers don't put a lot of time into perfecting the shading of the chrome. Instead, they add features, and they make the apps fast.

(note: applications like Quicksilver, Spotlight, and Microsoft's latest knock-off are bringing people back to the keyboard. People would rather *type* the app they want to launch rather than clicking through folders. Eventually, people will realize where the mouse belongs – dead in a trap stuck in the garbage out in the garage)

Thanks. :) –
Ted

"Please unsubscribe me..."

A mailing list at the university was recently created and added a large number of faculty, staff, and others to it automatically. An announcement went out to all of these subscribers (who didn't know the list was going to be created) giving information on the list (and why they were added) and details about subscribing/unsubscribing/etc. Of course, many of them did not want to be subscribed. Rather than following the clear instructions on how to unsubscribe, they started sending e-mails to the list.

(Some actually sent e-mails to the list ASKING TO BE SUBSCRIBED!!)

Here's a snapshot (from Google Mail, rendered with an ASCII art theme) of the hilarity that ensued... (where names have been obscured to protect the guilty... I mean... innocent)

Notice how some of those messages are threads that are 10 messages deep. Also notice that this isn't a pruned inbox. This is a snapshot of an inbox that has been destroyed by this mailing list.

Pine, PASSFILE, all-patch, and Thunderbird 2.0 IMAP keywords

Thunderbird 2.0 has been released! It's fast and finally supports an arbitrary number of custom IMAP keywords (IMAP keywords are similar to the labels used in GMail). I'm thrilled about this.

However, regardless of how wonderful Thunderbird gets, I will always keep PINE around (which has supported IMAP keywords for a long time).

When I build PINE for my systems, I usually pick up a few of the most popular patches as well. I never noticed that there was an all of the above patch that packages ALL of the most popular patches, new features, and bug fixes. I think this is pretty exciting too.

To build PINE with PASSFILE support (i.e., support for saving passwords to file), I recommend using the infinite ink instructions:

#!/bin/sh
./build clean
./build 'EXTRACFLAGS=-DPASSFILE=\".pine.pwd\"' osx
#                                              ^^^
#                                              platform

You can find a list of platforms in the doc/pine-ports file. Some common ones include (see the document for any special build instructions):

    BSD (original BSD 4.3 from U.C. Berkeley)
        bsd     BSD 4.3

    BSDi
        bs3     BSDi BSD/386 Version 3 and Version 4
        bs2     BSDi BSD/386 Version 2
        bsi     BSDi BSD/386 Version 1

    Cygwin
        cyg     Cygwin environment under Windows 

    HP-UX
        hpx     HP-UX 10.x
        hxd     HP-UX 10.x w/ DCE
        ghp     HP-UX 10.x using gcc
        hpp     HP-UX 8.x and 9.x
        shp     HP-UX 8.x and 9.x w/ TCB
        gh9     HP-UX 8.x and 9.x using gcc

    Linux
        lnx     Linux using crypt from the C library
        lnp     Linux using PAM
        slx     Linux using -lcrypt for crypt()
        sl4     Linux using -lshadow for crypt()
        sl5     Linux using shadow passwords
        ldb     Debian Linux
        lmd     Mandrakelinux
        lrh     RedHat Enterprise and RedHat 7.2 or later
        lsu     SuSE Linux

    Macintosh
        osx     Macintosh OS X
        ox2     Macintosh OS X 10.2 and earlier

    NetBSD
        neb     NetBSD

    OpenBSD
        bso     OpenBSD w/ shared-lib
    
    QNX
        nto     Neutrino

    SCO
        sc5     SCO Open Server 5.x
        go5     SCO Open Server 5.x using gcc
        sco     SCO Unix
        gsc     SCO Unix using gcc

    Sun Solaris (Solaris 9 is the same as SunOS 5.9)
        gs5     Sun Solaris >= 2.5 using gcc
        soc     Sun Solaris >= 8 using Sun C
        gs4     Sun Solaris <= 2.4 using gcc
        so5     Sun Solaris >= 2.5    (try soc or gs5)
        so4     Sun Solaris <= 2.4

    Sun SunOS (This is pre-Solaris SunOS)
        sun     Sun SunOS 4.1
        ssn     Sun SunOS 4.1 w/ shadow passwords
        gsu     SunOS 4.1 using gcc
        s40     Sun SunOS 4.0

    System V Release 4
        sv4     System V Release 4

    Windows
        wnt     Windows NT 3.51

Happy mailing!