Coredump

I love the command line. (It shows. Heh.) Coupled with `screen`, I also use `mutt` and `irssi` extensively. Only at home, though. At work, `screen` is more than enough.

I used to have `fetchmail`, too, but with the recent iteration of `mutt`, which fetches POP and IMAP (almost an MTA in itself now — my, my, look how it’s grown), I have fine-tuned my command-line experience, almost contrarian to the Unix philosophy of “doing one thing, and doing it well”. But, hey, I use whatever works.

Without further ado, here’s my very minimal .muttrc

# Gmail settings
set imap_user = "user@gmail.com"
set imap_pass = "password"
set smtp_url = "smtp://user@smtp.gmail.com:587/"
set smtp_pass = "password"
set from = "user@gmail.com"
set realname = "User Name"
set folder = "imaps://imap.gmail.com:993"
set spoolfile = "+INBOX"
set postponed="+[Gmail]/Drafts"
set header_cache=~/.mutt/cache/headers
set message_cachedir=~/.mutt/cache/bodies
set certificate_file=~/.mutt/certificates
set move = no
set sort = 'threads'
set sort_aux = 'last-date-received'
set imap_check_subscribed
 
# Some tweaks
set imap_keepalive = 300
set mail_check = 90
set timeout = 15
set charset = iso-8859-1
 
ignore *
unignore From Date Subject To Cc
hdr_order Date From To Cc

If your Gmail space is a bit cramped, it may take a while to download all the headers, so tweak imap_keepalive, timeout, and mail_check accordingly. I know, imap_keepalive should be left untouched in keeping with the RFC default of 30 minutes, but I’m not sure Gmail even follows that.

Google recently unveiled GMail Labs, experimental features that Google engineers are working on out of their 20%.

The idea behind Labs is that any engineer can go to lunch, come up with a cool idea, code it up, and ship it as a Labs feature. To tens of millions of users. No design reviews, no product analysis, and to be honest, not that much testing. Some of the Labs features will occasionally break. (There’s an escape hatch.)

I’ve been testing a few features, and already I’m loving some of them.

Quick Links lets me add bookmarks to access searches, conversations, and even shortcuts to specific GMail settings.

Email Addict puts you offline for 15 minutes and renders your GTalk status invisible. Great for those who need to walk away from the computer once in a while. Problem is, reloading the page will undo the lock-out.

Those are my two picks. I’m not particularly hot about the other features so far: Superstars, Muzzle, “Old Snakey”.

One other feature caught my eye, though: Random Signature. Remember when you used fortune for your random sigs? Well, here’s the Web 2.0 version: the feature allows you to use a feed for the random signature. I plugged in my tumblog feed, and watched as “Compose Mail” generated a random feed entry — surreal and almost Zen-like.

GMail Labs is supposed to be also available for Google Apps, but like @JeromeGotangco, mine doesn’t seem to have the feature yet.

Sweet GMail labels oozing with Googly goodness.

Kinda reminds me of the Label Colors Greasemonkey script, done by — surprise! — a Google engineer off his 20%.

Okay, now how do I turn this thing off?

Kinda defeats the purpose of labels instead of folders. And, oh, where are the threads?

From the FAQ:

Why aren’t my messages threaded?

Like POP, IMAP treats messages individually and not as a threaded conversation. If you move a message to an IMAP folder in your mail client, only that message in the conversation will move to that folder. However, in the web interface, the whole conversation will be given the corresponding label. The same rules will apply to labels applied through filters.

Additionally, IMAP clients store a copy of a message for each label in which it appears. For example, if one particular message in your web Gmail account has the labels, ‘From Best Friends,’ ‘Classmates,’ and ‘Soccer,’ then the same message will be stored four times in your mail client; three times for each label and once in the ‘All Mail’ folder. If the message is starred, it will be downloaded a fifth time in the ‘Starred’ folder.

Hoookaayy… Thanks, GMail, but no thanks*. I’m sticking to the web interface for now, until you’ve got GMail Offline all sorted out.

*Yes, I have POP/IMAP already. Big deal.

Delete all mails marked as spam, in the morning, upon log in. Then forget about them. Go to the spam box again in the afternoon, and again delete all. Simple, but effective. Also helps unload my GMail storage.