Long Term Storage

Google finally put up the page to download Chrome and guess what?  It is Windows only.  WTF?!  I guess it goes on my work PC for now.

Let me start by saying I am a big fan of Firefox.  I have yet to find another browser that meets the bar Firefox sets in web browsing.  On with the story.

Google announced (a bit prematurly) yesterday that they have their own browser called Google Chrome and they are releasing it for public beta today.  I have yet to see the announcement, but I am looking forward to checking it out.

They did release a comic that describes the features and functionality.  In standard Google fashion it is very good and does not require a degree in Computer Science to understand.

During Defcon a new tool was mentioned that would automate the hacking of GMail accounts.   This only applies that those of you using GMail, not the Google Hosted Apps.

The problem is in how GMail encrypts traffic.  It only does SSL encryption during the login session.  As described here and here, this leaves your actual email unencrypted and a door for someone to get into your account later.

The simple fix is to go into your account Settings, scroll to the bottom, select “Always Use HTTPS” and click save changes.  This will cause your entire session with GMail to be encyrpted and mitigate the risk of your account being hijacked.  Combine this with Perspectives and you have a pretty solid security setup.

I have been using Google Hosted apps for my mail domain for over 2 years now and I couldn’t be happier with the service.  It is always available and quite frankly keeps getting better.  Now Google had an email outage yesterday and at latest count, there are over 125 news articles about it along with COUNTLESS complaints.

It befuddles me to think that someone has the rights to bitch about GMail being down for two hours.  A service that most and by most, I mean high 90s percentage do not pay for.  It may even be 99% don’t pay for.  How can you complain about a service that offers soo much for free when it goes down for 2 hours or less?  Is your life/business/etc so critical that you can’t not be with out email for two hours?  Best of all, it was only the web interface that was down for two hours.  You could STILL access it by POP or IMAP.

So I have to ask again, WTF are you complaining about?  If your business relies on a FREE BETA application that much that two hours will have a significant impact to you, then you seriously need to reconsider your IT strategy.  It is no one’s falt but your own if you go out of business for, again with emphasis this time, RELIYING ON A FREE BETA APPLICATION for business critical services.  Period.

I don’t care who you are, what you do, how you do, how much money you make, or who you fuck.  You are frankly an idiot if this makes you mad or damages your business.  And you can quote me on that.

For just over 2 years now, I have had my email domain hosted by google.  It has been a great expereince.  The service is ALWAYS up and is always getting better.  I started out and Google offered something like 2GB for the mailbox.  Which is quite a bit.  Now it is just shy of 7GB and I have access to a variety of additional features.  Best of all, since I am a beta user.. my service will always be free.

So.. the point of the story is.. if you have your own domain, you need to switch to Google Hosted apps for your email.    (http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/index.html)

Addendum: The first two objections I can think of are.

1. But I love my Outlook.  Well the good news is, google offers POP and IMAP support so you can continue to use OL if you have to.

2. My employer/school/library/ISP/whatever blocks access to the site.  Well.. that would be a problem with any of the major email poviders anyway.  You could always setup an SSL-VPN tunnel to proxy the traffic through.