Google Inbox Review

Posted on 2014-12-27 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

Google Inbox came out with a great and nicely presented idea of a cleaner inbox that has been around since Inbox Zero. In short, your inbox should be like your mail, messages come in and you take them all out, leaving the mailbox empty and ready for more messages. Most people tend to leave all their messages in their inbox and determine if they need to act on messages based on the unread status. This is a poor idea because important messages can be buried and as you wait to find time to take care of them.

Google Inbox has some cool features to help solve this problem. They can make your messages disappear from your inbox and have the reappear in a week just when you need it (very similar to Boomerang for Gmail but this extension lets you delay sending messages!). They also automatically organize message the way GMail’s priority inbox did it but Google Inbox allows you to receive all of them in bulk daily or weekly. This helps to keep your inbox clean without constant clutter throughout the day. I used Google Inbox on my computer and on my Android phone for about a month. Above were my compliments but below are my complaints. I have complaints because I feel Google Inbox was rushed to market too quickly.

No signatures – Professional people need to add a signature with their emails, whether with a name/phone number/email or just a “from my cell” message.

Categories showing in Inbox – Users can select to have a category like “Promotions” appear in their inbox daily or weekly, but only at 7am. I would like the option of bringing these categories up at night rather than seeing them to start my day.

Message formatting – The options available for formatting an email are less than Gmail, but that is fine since Google is trying to do more with less. My issue is that when replying inline to an email message, the only shown option is to add an attachment. Bullets are not readily available in line. My work around is to select the attachment button when typing in line so the message draft pop outs. The pop out allows message formatting.

Long email threads – Long emails that approach 80-100 replies begin to lose the ability to show quoted text and items that are not supposed to be hidden become hidden. This is also a bug in Gmail.

Chatting button – It is hidden at the top because I know multiple people that could not find it. There were no default tutorials or help bubbles shown when one starts to use Inbox to find this button. It is also slow and unresponsive to me, causing me to restart the page to get it to work.

Reply/Reply All/Forward – Emails have a conversation feel. One can forward the current email but attempting to reply or forward and older email in the middle of a thread results in misplaced button pressing and an unresponsive site. Doing it correctly is harder than it should be.

Typing on Android – I have experienced the problem of needing to restart the Google Inbox Android App because entering text into a conversation breaks. I can see myself typing words but they are not appearing in the text of the email body.

Edit – Dec 29th

Available Browsers – Just noticed this so updating, Google Inbox is only available for Google Chrome, not even Firefox. That is interesting and inconvenient for me.

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NFL 2014 Playoff Scenarios

Posted on 2014-12-26 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

Sport websites love to show all the possible scenarios a football team can have going into the playoffs but nobody really cares about the TIE situations. Ties sometimes happen during the season but rarely at the end of a season. So let’s not root for a tie since that is just absurd. Here are the 2014 NFL Playoffs Scenarios with the TIE situations eliminated, thanks for CBS Sports for doing most of the work.

 

AFC

Denver Broncos

First-Round Bye

  1. DEN win
  2. CIN loss

Cincinnati Bengals

First-Round Bye

  1. CIN win + DEN loss

AFC North

  1. CIN Win

Pittsburgh Steelers

AFC North

  1. PIT win

San Diego Chargers

Wild-card spot:

  1. SD win

Baltimore Ravens

Wild-card spot:

  1. BAL win + SD loss

Kansas City Chiefs

Wild-card spot:

  1. KC win + BAL loss + HOU loss

Houston Texans

Wild-card spot:

  1. HOU win + BAL loss + SD loss

NFC

Dallas Cowboys

First Round Bye

  1. SEA loss + ARI loss

Detriot Lions

Home-Field Advantage

  1. DET win + SEA loss + ARI loss

First-Round Bye (and NFC North)

  1. DET win

Green Bay Packers

Home-Field Advantage

  1. GB win + SEA loss

First-Round Bye (and NFC North)

  1. GB Win

Seattle Seahawks

Home-Field Advantage

    SEA win

NFC West

  1. SEA win
  2. ARI loss

Arizona Cardinals

Home-Field Advantage

  1. ARI win + SEA loss + GB loss

First-Round Bye (and NFC West)

  1. ARI win + SEA loss

Carolina Panthers

NFC South

  1. ATL win

Atlanta Falcons

NFC South

  1. ATL win
Posted in Sports | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Excel’s Shared Workbook

Posted on 2014-12-21 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

Excel is a great tool that I thought was poor for distributed work because of the locking of the file inconvenience. When many people wanted to access a document right after they receive notification to update the document in their email, there is a log jam and some people may forget that email.

When I found out about Excel’s Shared Workbooks, I was really excited since for a business setting where everyone has access to a shared network drive, being able to update an Excel document as the same time as excellent and productive. I have been using it and have enjoyed its success so far.

Some downsides that are glaring at the lack of features. This is a trade-off allowing multiple people to access the document but tables are replaced by filters along with other features. Pivot tables are removed as well, a critical part of excel. I found that creating a second excel spreadsheet with references to the first will solve this problem. Make sure the pivot tables are on refresh and you will enjoy your Pivot Tables again and everyone else updates your data in the shared spreadsheet.

Having to save every so often is annoying. Excel should have a feature to auto-save to the network drive every few seconds/minutes instead one needs to write a macro for that. More saves (similar to Google Drive) decreases the need to merge changes. Look up a macro if you are seeing a lot of merge conflicts.

The inability to remove sheets is annoying since I always see “Sheet 2” and “Sheet 3” and want to clean that up. Someone smart should be able to fix Excel so that it can support simple deletes. One can always copy and rename the .xslx and then delete the original, and then rename the copy to the original though, probably a manager’s job.

Give it this tool a shot at work and everyone will be impressed, even though this is likely common knowledge in the business world. Reply if you have any issues with Shared Documents that you want a suggestion for!

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Owncloud complaining that “You don’t have permissions to upload files here”

Posted on 2014-11-30 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

There are few likely reasons for this to happen because I have actually seen this issue a few times in differ situations. It is frustrating because OwnCloud might have had the permissions previously or it has access to the files through have 777 permissions. It is an issue because the desktop client will become out of sync with the server client. A huge issue since the point of OwnCloud is to keep these two in sync.

Most likely

You need to make www-data the owner and group of your OwnCloud directory.

cd /var/www/owncloud/data
chmod -R www-data:www-data *

Also likely

If you are using an external hard drive, be sure to make www-data the owner of the hard drive, or at least the folder that OwnCloud is referencing. Use the “chmod” command above.

Least likely but it happened to me:

OwnCloud lost track of the files and you need to tell it to rescan your files. oneseventeen describes the solution to his own question in the sources. Depending on your owncloud size, this may take a while but it cleared up the problem for me.

cd /var/www/owncloud
php console.php files:scan --all

Sources:

Posted in How-To, Nextcloud/OwnCloud | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Windows 8 to 8.1 upgrade but updates not downloading

Posted on 2014-11-22 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

To upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1, you need to install all of the Windows 8 updates before you can install Windows 8.1 from the Windows Store.

windows 8.1 in windows store

Two ways to install updates

Update Center

  1. Move your mouse to the top right of the screen
  2. Select PC Settings
  3. Select Windows Update

Windows Update 0 percent dialog from pc settings

Windows 7 Style

Windows Update 0 percent dialog

  1. Move your mouse to the top right of the screen
  2. Select Search
  3. Enter “Update”
  4. Select Settings
  5. Select “Install Optional Updates”
    1. Windows Search Results for Update

Windows Updates Not Downloading

On one of the machines that I upgraded from Win8 to Win8.1, I found that the Windows Update Dialog was not progressing. I waited a while but the progress bar was stuck at 0%. See the screenshots above for an example of what I saw. There are two solutions to this problem:

Turn off metered connection

Some people has this issue and I think it comes from Windows 8 trying to play on more than just laptops. The solution is in Reddit Source 2 – Turn off metered connections but not for me and for some others, the data metered was in “Devices” and “Sync Settings”.

Wait it out, it will work eventually

You might have to wait upwards of an hour before you see the dialog change, but this seems to be the more popular solution. It is stupid but o well, Windows.

Prove to yourself it is downloading

If you cannot take it any longer and need to verify the downloads are downloading, you can go to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution and look in the Download folder. It should be increasing in size as files are added.

A more advanced way that is better proof:

  1. Open Task Manager
  2. Select Performance
    1. You should see a higher than normal level of Disk Access
    2. Task Manager screenshot
  3. Select at the bottom “Open Resource Monitor”
    1. Open the Disk Section. Sorted by File.
    2. You should be able to find the SoftwareDistribution folder being accessed.
    3. Resource Monitor screenshot

Sources

  1. Reddit Source 1 – Wait it out – Solution by Original Poster in his comment.
  2. Reddit Source 2 – Turn off metered connections
Posted in How-To, Windows | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

SSH to your machine from outside your home

Posted on 2014-11-18 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

Trying to SSH to your home computer is tougher than it sounds but it is actually easy. If this is the first time you are setting up SSH, then this post will be helpful. See, the Internet will return solutions to two different issues, both of which you need. Here is how to do it:

Your Router

If you want to get to your machine from outside your home network, you need to know your home network’s IP address – http://whatismyipaddress.com/. Then, you need to go into your router’s configuration page (usually 192.168.1.1) and forward port 22 to your designated computer. There are plenty of websites that can help you do this.  Once this is set up, you can test your connection from outside your home using http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/. If this is your first time though, you will likely need this second step.

Your SSH Server

Try to SSH to your computer from your own computer or from another computer in your network: ssh localhost

If you get a “port 22 connection refused error”, then it is likely not the router anymore. You probably do not have a SSH server running on your machine. If you have used Linux machines at work or school, then you are accustomed to having SSH running and ready to go but that is not how it is in the real world. Try some of the following commands to see if SSH is running and/or on your PC.

  • ps -C sshd
  • netstat -a |grep ssh
  • ls /etc/init.d/*ssh*

If nothing is getting returned, you need a server. You can install a good one called openssh-server from your Software Manager. You can also try adding it from the command line. The service should start and you can check with service ssh status. Since this is a service, you can also start | stop | restart the service if it dies.

False Positives

  • You will not need to SSH on port 2222.
  • You will not need to do NAT.

Sources:

  1. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-networking-3/enable-ssh-329138/
  2. http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=259571
  3. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=168636
  4. http://portforward.com/
  5. http://whatismyipaddress.com/
  6. http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/
Posted in How-To, Linux | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rooting the LG G3

Posted on 2014-11-16 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

Since CyanogenMod is not ready yet for the LG G3, most users will be stuck with the stock OS for some time until CyanogenMod is ready. Until then, a good way to get by is to root one’s phone so you can really control it. There are multiple ways described by #4 in the Sources, but Stump Root has really won the Root competition so far. It does not require a computer, just an apk you can download from the XDA-Developers forum post (Source #1). Some of my experiences with Stump Root v1.2:

The application requires a lot of permissions. Since I was uninstalling the apk after installation, I did not investigate. The application is giving you root access so I assumed it would need all of the permissions.

When I downloaded the apk and allowed Google to check the apk, Google gave me a warning that the application would touch low level pieces of the software, but that is what you want. I suggest not letting Google check out your applications next time.

My phone’s Software Build number KVT49L.D85110m had not been supported yet. The very similar KVT49L.D85110c and T-Mobile LG G3 release firmware were though so I was confident this would work. After pressing Grind, my Build version was not found (expected), but the correct location for app to work with was found in about 10 seconds.

I suggest visiting Source #1 for instructions or #2 or #3 since they will be updated more frequently than this post. I do suggest downloading a root checker before installing SuperSu just to make sure Stump Root worked.

Sources:

  1. XDA-Developers 
  2. Android Police Description of Stump Root
  3. Droid View Description of Stump Root
  4. Droid View Explanation of Multiple Rooting Procedures
  5. CyanogenMod Download Page – You can check for LG G3 downloads here.
Posted in How-To, LG G3 | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Windows 8.1 Non-emotional review

Posted on 2014-11-10 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

I have friends that do not want to switch to Windows 8 because they have heard bad things about it. Windows 8 they have an argument for because the user experience is a big difference and seems to be aimed at tablets. Windows 8.1 though has plenty of fixes from Microsoft that address the issues presented in Win8, plus it is a free upgrade if you already have Win8 so I am all for upgrading to Win8.1 if you are using Win7.

I am primarily a Linux user though so Win8.1 to me has been used for Microsoft Office when LibreOffice won’t do (e.g. complex pivot tables in Excel of resumes in Word) and for using specific applications that are not supported in Linux (e.g. syncing of heart rate monitors). Here are some other thoughts.

The search functionality is great over Win7. Win8 had search results return in groups while Win8.1 searches your entire computer and returns results in one group. The search has seemed powerful so far.

The lack of a start button and menu turned off many Win8 users so Win8.1 added back in the start button. There are freeware programs that can mimic the start menu that has been around in Windows forever but I believe the search functionality makes a start menu useless. Even in Win7 I searched more often than I clicked through the start menu.

The start dashboard is probably good if you have a tablet but annoying if you are forced to drag and drop your apps around. The widgets they have they update are cool but the desktop widgets from Win7 is what I believe most users liked.

The apps that are in the Windows Store are lacking and I would rather have a good desktop OS than these flashy apps that I can just use a webpage for. I have seen other users excel at using these apps so if you found a good one, let me know in the comments. Since I am mostly in Linux I have not explored the apps at all.

Win8.1 and even Win8 felt like Win7 with a huge speed boost. Redundant processes were killed and critical processes like copying files and managing your start-up applications were enhanced. No need for third-party apps in these locations anymore.

The configuration for the mouse was hidden because in order to increase the speed of the mouse, the setting is not accessible through the control panel. One needs to open the mouse settings in the Control Panel, described in Source #1 below.

Sources:

  1. http://www.windows8freedownload.com/blog/increase-decrease-mouse-pointer-speed-in-microsoft-windows-8
Posted in Reviews, Windows | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Flash Player for Browsers on Linux

Posted on 2014-11-02 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

On Linux, depending on which major browser you have, there are different solutions to get a flash player installed into your browser. Below are the solutions for some major browsers. Make sure to test your flash player ability before and after running the steps below at Adobe’s website.

Firefox

Running the following command in your terminal and accepting the download of additional dependencies will get Firefox running with a flash player.
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

Chromium

Run the following commands in your terminal and wait till it is complete. Before running the second command, be sure to close Chromium if you have it open.
sudo apt-get install pepperflashplugin-nonfree
sudo update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree --install

Chrome

Chrome comes installed with a flash player. No additional work is needed.

Source:

Posted in How-To, Linux | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Website for tracking your TV shows

Posted on 2014-10-20 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

I found a great website that I want to share with those that watch TV but sometimes forgot what episodes they have seen. For example, you are starting to watch a show after a long break or you want to make sure you caught all the episodes of last season. Maybe you switch between different streaming services and the real TV or you just forget things. Some people may use Wikipedia because it has good series guides but this is a manual process and not straight-forward. I suggest to use http://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/ for all of your TV watching tracking, “The Original Calendar TV Listings Guide”.

In your profile you can select TV shows that you have watched. You can quickly check off marked seasons and then check of the episodes you have watched. They generated stats of how many shows you have seen, which make you want to watch less TV. The calendar view on the front page makes marking off recently aired shows easier while navigating to a TV shows you all the shows you have seen (with descriptions) and which one is next.

I have lived by this site because it lets me switch between TV shows without having to re-watch parts of episodes or read episode plots/spoilers to determine where I am. I highly recommend checking this site out.

Bonus 1: This website also produces a Google Calendar TV episode guide so you can see when you TV shows are coming up.

Bonus 2: You can discover other shows to watch and other premieres coming up.

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Mounting encrypted Linux hard drive with Live USB

Posted on 2014-09-27 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

For some reason you have reached the point where you are trying to save your data on your computer by using a Live Linux USB drive. Since this is not a normal occurrence, I hope this post helps you reduce the stress level associated with recovery data.

So, your home directory in Linux was encrypted and it is keeping you and other people out. Here is for you to get in and to copy the data off your hard to somewhere safe.

  1. Your Linux home folder should be on your mounted internal hard drive:
    1. /media/mint/lots_of_letters/home/<user_name>
  2. Go into theecryptfs folder, the folder that we need to get the data back.
    1. cd /media/mint/lots_of_letters/home/.ecryptfs//.ecryptfs
  3. Run the following command and enter the password you used to encrypt your hard drive:
    1. ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase wrapped-passphrase
    2. For me, it was the user account’s password, the one I use to normally log into the system. 
    3. If you cannot get back your pass-phase, keep searching the Internet for your answer because I do not have it. 
  4. If all went well, you should have your pass-phrase! Save it, it is important.
  5. To get a decrypted version of your files
    1. cd /media/mint/lots_of_letters/home/.encryptfs/
    2. ecryptfs-recover-private
    3. Let it run, but since you pointed it close to a directory, it should be quick.
    4. Your LOGIN pass-phrase should be your standard password. (Though I entered junk and it worked.)
    5. Your MOUNT pass-phrase is the one we just got. Enter it!
  6. You should have your directory in /tmp/ecryptfs.blahblah/ for copying.
  7. Open your graphical folder manager with elevated privileges for copying.
    1. sudo nemo
    2. For Linux Mint, there is also dolphin and nautilus  

Sources

Posted in How-To, Linux | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

CyanogenMod nightly updates causes breakage

Posted on 2014-09-23 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

I have done a few incremental nightly builds with CyanogenMod and twice after doing the upgrade, the phone first lost mobile data and after a second upgrade to undo the damage important phone processes like phone and media kept dying. The phone displays a popup alert constantly, rendering the phone unusable. I found this is the best way to recover your phone:

  1. To reduce the popup alerts until you get home, turn on airplane mode. Though getting to Settings to turn it on will be difficult.
  2. When you are able to, reboot your phone into recover mode and factory reset the phone. You will lose your phone’s data but you will get your phone back.

There are likely other ways to resolve this issue but this is a good one.

Posted in CyanogenMod, How-To, Samsung Galaxy S3 | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Owncloud and an external hard drive

Posted on 2014-09-15 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

When installing OwnCloud, you will probably have an external hard drive that you will want to have as your data directory. You can place the entire owncloud directory on your hard drive but this will result in slower performance when really all the large data files will be in /data. By moving /data, you have gigabytes or terabytes of extra storage that your desktop machine cannot run. Getting OwnCloud to recognize that external hard drive is tougher that you think. Here is my solution following the different threads I found online:

You could change /var/www/owncloud/config/config.php ‘s datadirectory to look at the new location, but that never worked for me. Rather, we are going to create a mount point and not a symbolic link. The symbolic links have a permission issues that “mackey” discovered and they will cause you a huge headache.

  • Notes before reading:
    • Some of these may need a sudo in front to execute.
    • You can apply stricter permissions in the chmod step.
    • If you mess up the mount step, you can edit /etc/mtab to remove your mounts or you can use umount folder_you_mounted to clean up your mounts.
  1. So, create your folder on your hard drive, let’s call it
    mkdir /media/user/your_hard_drive/owncloud_data (Updated on 3/12/2015)
  2. Stop your webserver service (updated on March 4, 2017)
    apache2: sudo service apache2 stop
    nignx: sudo service nginx stop
  3. Copy your data directory to the new location
    cp -rT /var/www/owncloud/data/ /media/user/your_hard_drive/owncloud_data/
  4. Rename your data directory to avoid confusion
    mv /var/www/owncloud/data /var/www/owncloud/data_original
  5. Apply the proper group and read permissions onto the hard drive’s data directory
    chown -R www-data:www-data /media/user/your_hard_drive/owncloud_data/
    chmod -R 755 /media/user/your_hard_drive/owncloud_data/
  6. Make the folder that will be mounted
    mkdir /var/www/owncloud/data
  7. Apply the proper permissions onto this soon-to-be-mounted folder
    chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/owncloud/data
    chmod -R 755 /var/www/owncloud/data
  8. Make the mount
    mount --bind /media/user/your_hard_drive/owncloud_data/ /var/www/owncloud/data/
  9. Verify your server is up and running. (added on Jan 9, 2016) (updated on March 4, 2017)
    apache2: sudo service apache2 restart
    nginx: sudo service nginx restart
  10. Verify you can access your owncloud server (typically localhost/owncloud)
  11. Verify in top right Username>Personal that you have a large amount of storage space left.

Sources:

  1. http://forum.owncloud.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7118
  2. http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r29286602-open-basedir-prohibits-opening-var-www-owncloud-data-owncloud.db
  3. http://backdrift.org/how-to-use-bind-mounts-in-linux
  4. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/can-i-cp-hidden-files-627605/
Posted in How-To, Linux, Nextcloud/OwnCloud | Tagged , , , , | 23 Comments

Upgrading from Linux Petra to Qiana

Posted on 2014-09-07 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

If you followed my previous blog post of going from 15 to 16, well I am back with 16 to 17!

https://manandkeyboard.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/upgrading-from-linux-mint-15-to-16/

This time I am following another great blog posted online:

http://www.yourownlinux.com/2014/06/how-to-upgrade-to-linux-mint-17-qiana-from-linux-mint-16-petra.html

Do your backup of files. The author suggests backing up certain apt list, I suggest backing them all up with

mkdir ~/apt_backup

sudo cp /etc/apt/*.list ~/apt_backup/

Update your files before updating everything. Resolve any update errors.

sudo apt-get update

When doing the backups of the apt sources, I hit an error that the following did not exist. You can ignore the error, it just means the auther had an apt list that you did not have.

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-source-repositories.list

If you run your update script again to check, you will see that your .bkp files will cause an error. You can move them

  1. sudo apt-get update
  2. sudo mv *.bkp ~/
    1. or if you followed my suggestion above: sudo mv *.bkp ~/apt_backup

Change the source directories. I copied and pasted the below commands, removing the command prompt.

sudo sed ‘s/saucy/trusty/’ /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo sed ‘s/petra/qiana/’ /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo sed ‘s/saucy/trusty/’ /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
sudo sed ‘s/petra/qiana/’ /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list

sudo sed ‘s/saucy/trusty/’ /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-source-repositories.list
sudo sed ‘s/petra/qiana/’ /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-source-repositories.list

sudo sed -i ‘s/saucy/trusty/’ /etc/apt/sources.list.d/getdeb.list
sudo sed -i ‘s/petra/qiana/’ /etc/apt/sources.list.d/getdeb.list

I received two errors below for the last four commands. Ignore them because they are telling you that you do not have an apt list that the author had:

sed: can’t read /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-source-repositories.list: No such file or directory

sed: can’t read /etc/apt/sources.list.d/getdeb.list: No such file or directory

I actually suggest an additional step to the instructions if the update failed for you. Since some people have different apt lists, update all of them in the folder.

sudo sed ‘s/saucy/trusty/’ /etc/apt/*.list
sudo sed ‘s/petra/qiana/’ /etc/apt/*.list

Verify that the changes worked because it did not for me.

grep saucy *
grep trusty *

Manually edit the returned files replacing saucy with trusty and petra with qiana.

Sources

Posted in How-To, Linux | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Autistici email on smartphones

Posted on 2014-08-19 by Brian Agrawal Goodacre

Email on the mobile phone is important nowadays, and if you use an email account hosted on autistici.org, there are some extra steps that are easy, but not as easy as downloading the GMail, Outlook, or Yahoo app and hitting the ground running. This is because you need to use a 3rd party app and you need to tell if how to connect to autistic. Since autistici values privacy highly, it suggests using an app called K-9 Mail that is an open-source project. From what I can tell, K-9 Mail will work on multiple platforms, not just Android. You can use the information in the tutorial to set up another app but K-9 Mail seems very good. The tutorial on their website will get you through it but since the screen-shots are in French with English translated subtitles, I figured I could give some additional guides for where you might find trouble.

Configure your email

  • If your email is not in the autistici domain, be sure to include it. For example, email@onenetbeyond.org

Account Type

  • IMAP is the way to go.

Incoming Server Settings

  • Username will include the domain. So not “email” rather “email@onenetbeyond.org”
  • IMAP server will be mail.autistici.org, not mail.onenetbeyond.org
  • Security: SSL/TLS (always)

Unrecognized Certificate (if you receive it)

  • Accept Key. It should be good.

POP3

  • If you did IMAP, skip that image.

Outgoing Server Settings

  • SMTP server will be mail.autistici.org, not smtp.onenetbeyond.org
  • Security: SSL/TLS (always)
  • Should be auto-filled, but your username will include the domain. So not “email” rather “email@onenetbeyond.org”

Unrecognized Certificate (if you receive it)

  • Accept Key. It should be good.

Account options

  • Set them up!

Bonus

  • In K9, select Settings > Display > Theme > Dark. I think it looks so much better.

References:

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