email Archive

We are receiving reports that Google’s mail service, Gmail, is down. Our tests from the CenterNetworks International Headquarters shows that it is unreachable. The time of our tests was 3:54pm Eastern Time. We will continue to update this post with additional announcements as they become available. Google’s Apps Status Dashboard shows an outage for Gmail although they state it’s for a “small subset of users”.

I use Yahoo Mail for the majority of my email although today I decided to send emails about apartments using my Gmail account. I guess I will be homeless if Google doesn’t get it working soon! :-P

Update: 5:00 PM Eastern – Google has provided an update on their blog about the service outage. They say that the team is working on the issue but there are no details on the cause or expected recovery time.

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As always, please report in if Gmail is down where you are.

While you wait for Gmail to return to service, check out all the ways Google tracks you online.

I’ve been a happy Yahoo Mail user forever and to the best of my memory, I don’t ever remember the service being down. As of 7pm Eastern this evening, Yahoo Mail has not been functioning. The few times that I’ve received an error, a simple browser refresh fixes the issue – but not this time. The error message remains even when switching over to the very old “classic” version of Yahoo Mail.

There are lots of people on Twitter who have also had issues accessing the mail service.

As always, please report in if Yahoo Mail is down for you.

Update: 7:45pm – it appears Yahoo Mail is back to normal.

This afternoon at SXSW I was able to grab a couple of minutes with Mark Schmulen. Mark is one of the co-founders of NutshellMail. Here’s their company overview, "NutshellMail transforms your primary email account into a universal inbox so you can retrieve messages and manage all your accounts in one place. NutshellMail was also designed to enable employees, restricted from third-party messaging accounts, to securely access personal messages at work without violating their employer’s IT policies."

Check out my NutshellMail demo with Mark:

Last Post is a London-based startup that hopes to help people leave last messages for their loved ones upon death. The company notes that, "1 person dies every 30 seconds in a car crash." Their goal is to help you setup letters today to leave for others. I have to admit it’s a bit of a different startup than we typically cover on CN.

What I don’t see on the site is how they know when the account holder has died. Last Post offers a variety of account plans which I’ve commented on below. The paid plans allow you to include printed pieces which you mail to the Last Post offices in London. Naturally anyone who creates an account with Last Post assumes they will be around long enough to deliver the mail and messages to your loved ones. 

The free account allows you to send 10 emails immediately upon death. They also offer yearly paid plans from GBP 9.99/year to GBP 29.99/year. This is where it gets interesting. The paid plans allow you to pick a date past death to send the letters. Let’s say you pick a date 5 years after death on an anniversary. The account holder pays the yearly fee until death. After that, Last Post notifies the recipient about the letter and then that recipient must pay the yearly fee until the letter is sent (in this case 5 years). This might be the most interesting business model I’ve seen lately.

There are so many songs about passing and not being able to say goodbye. Last Post is trying to change that – while I am not sure about their business model, I think the concept is a good one.

Slovenia-based Zemanta has announced a variety of important product updates today. Zemanta provides a set of content tools which help bloggers "enhance" their posts. They have updated their widget to offer support for video, audio and Web apps including Google Maps. Zemanta has also created "content verticals" in categories including: music, tech, health and travel. The idea of the verticals is to have a set of content sources on hand for each content category.

The other update is a major update for Zemanta. The widget they offer to bloggers will now be available to Yahoo Mail and Google Gmail users. The widget is installed as a toolbar for Firefox. Once the toolbar is activated, Zemanta users can enhance their emails by adding images and links, similar to the blogging product. The company also notes that you can create "postcards" which can be personalized and sent via your email provider. It’s a very interesting extension to writing emails although I wonder how often a person will want to enhance their emails.

One interesting thing I’ve noted with Zemanta is just how many juicy SEO links they push out to sites like Wikipedia and Crunchbase. When a person picks an image for a company, Zemanta drops the image into the post, links to Crunchbase below the image and links the image (with a follow tag) to the page that the image references. In fact, I’ve wondered if Crunchbase would rank so high for company searches if it wasn’t for Zemanta.

Maybe there’s a business model in the links. For example, Crunchbase could pay Zemanta a fee each time their links are displayed on a user’s post. Maybe the user who initiated the link gets a cut of the fee. Of course that would just mean that Crunchbase (and the others) are paying for in-text linking which could easily be gamed and is against Google’s TOS, but perhaps it’s an idea that could spark other revenue ideas for the company.

Perhaps the better idea is to allow the content sources to bid on placement in the widget for each keyword. The more you bid, the higher you are listed on the source list.

Techcrunch writer Jason Kincaid posted yesterday about webmail providers removing account access and deleting a user’s mail and documents who becomes inactive for a long period of time. He notes that mail services like Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail all delete accounts after a period as short as 60 days or as long as nine months. Most of these services are ad-supported (i.e. free) and it makes sense to delete non-active accounts. Why let a user store gigs of documents they never return to access?

He goes on to explain why Yahoo is evil for asking users who have violated their terms of service if they want to pay for an option where their account won’t be deactivated for non-use. I like this move by Yahoo for two reasons: first it’s a smart business move; and second, it makes sense to tell users who are outside of the terms of use how they can avoid the situation in the future.

What’s so wrong with a business acting like a business? Guess what… this year we will see many more companies (and startups) acting like real businesses. "Free" doesn’t mean there are no rules or regulations.

When you signup for an email (or any other Web) service, you are accepting the terms as presented. If you don’t like the terms, don’t sign up.

Jason closes with, "For these cloud-based services to thrive users will have to believe they’re good for life, not just until the company involved holds their data ransom for a revenue boost". Nope, users need to believe that they are good for as long as they say they are.

I will cut Kincaid some slack since his LinkedIn profile shows he’s new to the business world. But understand, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with running a business like a business should be run.

Day #3 in the Holiday Gifts Giveaway goes to the Peek email device. Here’s an overview provided by the company along with their offer to the CN readers.

Peek is one of the hottest new products of 2008. It is a super simple and stylish mobile email and texting device that makes it easy to stay connected with your family and friends on-the-go. No contracts. 1 minute to set-up. Very affordable – Peek retails for $99.95 (+$19.95 per month for unlimited email and texting).

The company is offering 15% off the device when you purchase it via getpeek.com. Enter code FVDVMAUJCX during checkout.

Editor’s note: This post is part of our Holiday Gifts series. The company listed didn’t pay CN for the listing. The content above was provided by the company.