Supermoon

Some pictures of the March 19 “supermoon”, taken from my home in The Netherlands.

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I used a Nikon P5000 compact camera mounted on a Leica APO 77 Televid spotting scope. The scope is mean for birdwatching, but it’s not bad for an occasional look at the skies. The scope was set to 20x magnification, camera’s optical zoom varies per shot, as does shutter time and other settings (I tried to capture both the details of the moon’s surface as well as the stunning brightness of the supermoon, so I experimented).

Backing up your Gmail account using POPIf you use Gmail, you should want to have a local backup of all your e-mail even if you always use the web interface. This will make sure you have all your precious e-mails even when Google makes a mistake or  shuts down your Google Account. It can happen to you. I’ve been using Gmail since the beginning of the beta, and have over 6GB of data in 250K+ messages. After switching laptops I decided to rebuild my backup by starting from scratch. I did this by disabling POP access to Gmail, and then re-enabling it for all mail ever sent. You can find these settings in the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab of your Gmail settings. Next configure your client. Any e-mail client can receive POP traffic. You can set this up using instructions from Google, from your e-mail client, or both. I happen to use Mail.app on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Now for a very important step. Every POP3 client should have a setting that asks you whether or not the messages should be removed from the server after retrieving them using POP. Your first response will be “No way, I’m keeping my messages on Gmail”. Still, you should tell your client to remove the messages from the server because Google uses this setting for something else entirely. Your Gmail will not be deleted. Google treats the delete requests your POP client sends to configure the batches of messages that your client can retrieve. If you have a lot of e-mail, and do not allow your client to “delete from server”, you will not be able to back up all of your e-mail.  Some clients, including Mail.app, have other settings for “delete from server” besides yes and no. For example “delete after a week” is the default setting for Mail.app. Do not use this, allow your client to send the delete signal to Google’s servers immediately. If not, your mail retrieval will stall at some point (for me it was after about 216,000 messages). Now let your client do its work and slowly but surely you will have a nice, local copy of all your Gmail. Which you should back up to an external disk or a cloud server, but that’s another story. Thanks to all the contributors to my question on the Gmail Help Forum.
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Backing up your Gmail account using POP

If you use Gmail, you should want to have a local backup of all your e-mail even if you always use the web interface. This will make sure you have all your precious e-mails even when Google makes a mistake or  shuts down your Google Account. It can happen to you.

I’ve been using Gmail since the beginning of the beta, and have over 6GB of data in 250K+ messages. After switching laptops I decided to rebuild my backup by starting from scratch. I did this by disabling POP access to Gmail, and then re-enabling it for all mail ever sent. You can find these settings in the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab of your Gmail settings.
Next configure your client. Any e-mail client can receive POP traffic. You can set this up using instructions from Google, from your e-mail client, or both. I happen to use Mail.app on Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

Now for a very important step. Every POP3 client should have a setting that asks you whether or not the messages should be removed from the server after retrieving them using POP.

Your first response will be “No way, I’m keeping my messages on Gmail”. Still, you should tell your client to remove the messages from the server because Google uses this setting for something else entirely.

Your Gmail will not be deleted. Google treats the delete requests your POP client sends to configure the batches of messages that your client can retrieve. If you have a lot of e-mail, and do not allow your client to “delete from server”, you will not be able to back up all of your e-mail. 

Some clients, including Mail.app, have other settings for “delete from server” besides yes and no. For example “delete after a week” is the default setting for Mail.app. Do not use this, allow your client to send the delete signal to Google’s servers immediately. If not, your mail retrieval will stall at some point (for me it was after about 216,000 messages).

Now let your client do its work and slowly but surely you will have a nice, local copy of all your Gmail. Which you should back up to an external disk or a cloud server, but that’s another story.

Thanks to all the contributors to my question on the Gmail Help Forum.

A solution for ERR_SPDY_PROTOCOL_ERROR in Gmail / Chrome

An unlucky combination of Gmail and Chrome seems to cause users not
being able to log in. I was among these this morning. After a little
trial and error, this worked for me: - Clear Chrome’s browser cache
- Restart Chrome
- Go to www.google.com
- Sign in and go to Gmail

Good luck if you are suffering from the ERR_SPDY_PROTOCOL_ERROR also.
Remember that you can also pick another browser, the problem seems
confined to Chrome.

RunKeeper Pro to remain a free application

Over at the RunKeeper blog, CEO Jason Jacobs has an interesting announcement:

As the end of January approaches, we have been blown away by the response to RunKeeper Pro being free. Based on what we have learned in the last month, and based on our long-term goal of building the biggest most engaged community of users that we can (who get the best fitness results in the process), it became clear what we needed to do. We are pleased to announce that, as of today, RunKeeper Pro will continue to be a FREE download!

So one of the top grossing apps of 2010 (according to Jacobs) thinks free is the way to go. Interesting times!

RunKeeper is an excellent application. I can’t wait to use it again (which won’t be any time soon due to an ankle injury, alas). The Pro version being free for everybody makes it much more likely I’ll be running into RunKeeper users online or offline. I saw on Twitter one of my teammates is already a RunKeeper.

Desktop notifications for Gmail and Google Chat

No more switching tabs or applications to find out if you have new mail waiting. Google Chrome users can enable desktop notifications from the Gmail settings page. You can customize your settings from there too.


I especially like the integration with Gmail’s Priority Inbox. Now if only Chrome would delegate these messages to Growl.

via gmailblog.blogspot.com
Twitter for Mac Secret Preferences UpdateThe newest update for Twitter for Mac has a few changes to the secret preferences pane. You can now have Twitter display full names instead of user names, and you can customize your retweet syntax (a very welcome change). UPDATE: Although I can set the Quote Syntax, my customizations have no effect on what happens when I right click - Quote Tweet in the app. Activating the secret preferences is no longer possible. If you had activated them while you still could, the secret settings tab remains very much alive and kicking, even after the latest App Store update.
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Twitter for Mac Secret Preferences Update

The newest update for Twitter for Mac has a few changes to the secret preferences pane. You can now have Twitter display full names instead of user names, and you can customize your retweet syntax (a very welcome change). UPDATE: Although I can set the Quote Syntax, my customizations have no effect on what happens when I right click - Quote Tweet in the app.

Activating the secret preferences is no longer possible. If you had activated them while you still could, the secret settings tab remains very much alive and kicking, even after the latest App Store update.