Why I no longer use Gmail - and am contemplating disentangling myself from GOOG entirely

As I write this, my personal Gmail account has been down and unavailable for about 36 hours.

There hasn't been a status update from "tech support" (and I use the term very loosely, as I haven't seen anything from Google yet that deserves the name "support") since 3PM Eastern yesterday.

I've relied on a lot of Google-based free services for everyday computing - Google Apps and Google Voice in addition to Gmail, to be sure, but also Blogger (since 2004.)

I'm done with that, I think.  Monocultures are dangerous.

As a first step, I have a new personal e-mail address.  I'll be sending updates out shortly - for those of you who care, Fastmail is my new provider of choice, for the following reasons:

• Good reputation for quality and transparency in the geek community
• Multiple tech support options
  
• Affordable: USD 35 for one year of "premium" e-mail service (free and lower-cost options are available)

I'll let y'all know how it goes.

And in the meantime - well, I guess it's finally time to suck it up and move enrevanche to a new home.  Stay tuned.

Random access memory lane

I've really been enjoying the new Gmail Themes feature.

Here's a theme called Terminal that looks like a blast from the past.

I can remember some BBSes that didn't look too dissimilar to this in the 1980s, and were it not on a very wide screen, it would look a lot like an old-school VT-100 or IBM 3270 display:



(That's my spam folder, so as to protect the privacy of my correspondents.)