kate's infrastructure

Articles I found interesting today:

• How to NOT Over Provision Virtual Machines – Virtualization Webinar

Articles I found interesting today:

• Why Twitter Will Endure: David Carr

- I want to believe

As a compulsive domain buyer, I never felt that compelled to actually move off my old GMail account as my primary email.  It worked well enough, and I got to avoid making any big decisions about which domain would be my favourite.

Still, it seemed like I was missing out a tad.   Gmail is no longer invite only for the tech elite, and prior to that distraction I was using my own domain for email over 10 years ago. 

The irritating thing also was that even though I was using my domain via GMail, it looked bad:

In short, it was time.

I wanted to document the wonderfully simple process I used to make the move, in the hope that someone else might find it useful.

To get started, I assume that you’re already using Google apps for your domain and that you’re up and running at the new location.  If not, you’ll need to do that now.

If you’re like me, you’re primarily using GMail from the website, and even if your mail is downloaded to a few computers, it’s all in cloud.

Now let’s get get GMail ready for the exit:

• Log on to http://gmail.google.com/ with your existing gmail account;
• Go To Settings;
• Click on the tab called Forwarding and POP/IMAP;
• Under the section called POP Download, select the following:
  1. 1. Ensure that Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded) is checked;
  2. 2. When messages are accessed with POP archive Gmail’s copy;
  3. 3. [Nothing required here – we’ll use Google Apps as the mail client]
• Click Save Changes 

This means that we’ve made all of your GMail messages available for download from someplace else.  It also means that anything downloaded will be Archived by GMail – so you’ll know what’s been transferred.

And the next step is to tell your domain to transfer your mail over from GMail:

• Log on to your new google apps mail account at https://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com or similar;
• Go To Settings;
• Click on the tab called Accounts;
• Under the section called Get mail from other accounts, select the following:
1. Click Add a mail account you own;
2. A popup window will appear;
3. Enter your GMail address at the prompt, Click Next;
4. Enter your GMail credentials;
5. The POP server should default to smtp.gmail.com – this doesn’t need to change;
6. Check the box marked Always use a secure connection…;
7. Check the box marked Label incoming messages (this will make things MUCH easier later);
8. I didn’t check the box for archiving incoming messages, but you might prefer to;
9. Click Add Account; 
• Click Save Changes;
• Your mail in your Gmail account should begin downloading (oldest first) immediately – the rate doesn’t exceed 200 mails an hour, so expect the transfer to take a while.  Mine took over a week;
• Remember we chose to archive mail in Gmail as it’s transferred, meaning you should start to see the quantity of mail in that account reduce;

You can choose to remove this link later,  but I found it easiest just to leave it as is.

Other stuff I learned:

• Importing and Exporting mail filters was easy and totally worthwhile;
• Contacts were perfectly exported, imported and useful;
• GTalk chat logs aren’t transferred;
• I really should have cleaned up my gmail inbox a bit first – preferably by more frequently deleting or archiving the mail I no longer need;

My dreams of the vanity domain and google apps have successfully been realised.

If the Australian filter goes ahead, this isn’t a bad option:

http://www.kinfrastructure.com/doughboyisland/

Setup a proxy on a US server as described on lifehacker, also a useful workaround for unproductive corporate proxies.

Articles I found interesting today:

• GDrive Is Here-ish: Upload Any File Type In Google Docs

- Truly entering the age of google vs apple. With this why would I need dropbox or mobileme?

• How To Rise Fast At Work: A True Story

- Suprisingly awesome, despite the title

• NetApp and Microsoft buddy up