I have an email problem. A stupid email problem.Many years ago when so many of us thought it was cool that America Online allowed access through it's service to the internet, I was an AOL customer. Once I had graduated from AOL, I kept my AIM account active to chat with my family. I did not know at the time what a stroke of genius this would turn out to be. Despite all my best efforts to shut my profile away from wandering eyes, I seemed to be attracting the attention of many curious young people (mostly underage girls). One of these curious young people eventually turned into my wife, which was the only good thing I could say about AIM at that point.
Flash forward, a bit. In an attempt to keep the man from perpetually sticking it to us we dropped our POTS for VOIP from Vonage. Vonage had many class leading features at the time, including one which I exploited to the best of my advantage: Voice mail. In the "olden" days of Vonage, you could email your voice mail audio files to a single email address, which was pretty handy if everyone using this single phone line could get to that same email address. I used a private Google Group as the destination for the messages, which could distribute the incoming messages to the other "members" of the group: Our individual email accounts, and the SMS email address for my phone (we could have done Allison's too, but she already had too many people chatting her up). Our cell provider conveniently removed the attached audio file, so the message going to my phone consisted of a time and phone number, which was better than nothing as the WAV file didn't make for a valid MMS, either.
When I got my first Sony Ericsson phone, the K790a, I was very excited to learn that it was able to log into POP and IMAP accounts all by itself. Aside from being able to email full size 3.2MP photographs taken by it's camera, this also meant I could actually go so far as to send complete voice mail messages to my phone for remote listening. The cool thing about Sony Ericsson is that their phones support IMAP's Push feature, so if you have an email provider that supports the same feature, you don't have to wait for whatever time interval to pass before finding your new message in your inbox. I set out to find an appropriate (read FREE) email provider supporting IMAP's Push.
In those days, Gmail was still in it's infancy, and was still having trouble supporting IMAP, so it wasn't even in the running. I looked high and low for free providers, and couldn't find more than one available in the US. Which one was it? That's right: AOL/AIM Mail. I was able to log right in and set it up with no problem. It worked really well. There was NEVER any spam. All I ever got was the messages I emailed to it, and the voice mails from Vonage.
Not long after this semi-utopia of voice mail retrieval was set up, my phone was sent through both the washer AND dryer.
Since that time, I went through a couple of phones, including WinMo and Symbian devices, neither of which could support IMAP push. They sucked. Then, we dropped Vonage. It just wasn't very useful to us any more, especially with Google Voice supplying each of us with extra phone numbers. I still kept the AIM email account so that I could email videos from the my phone to Facebook. In December, I got this email for AOL's President of Consumer Applications, Brad Garlinghouse:
Dear kEnny,
Today marks a very important milestone in AOL’s history – and future. As we separate from Time Warner and become an independent company, we mark the beginning of a fresh start and open the door to new opportunities. I believe this is a perfect time for rebuilding trust, confidence and passion around AOL and the products we bring you.
I realize that – at times - over the past few years, it’s been challenging to be an AOL Mail user. I’ve heard your feedback and we’re going to start making changes with a renewed focus on you. We can and will make our free AOL Mail product world class!
We’re starting today with three simple (but important) changes:
1. Significantly fewer ads
2. An easier AOL Mail sign-in experience
3. A new message reading pane that helps you get through your email faster
I know that some of you are comfortable with your current email experience. So, wherever possible we’ll provide you with the choice to disable new features and keep the classic email product.
This is just the beginning. I’m truly excited about what’s to come in 2010 so please stay along for the ride. Our promise going forward is to keep you well informed of the changes we make and the new features we launch. In the meantime, please continue to send us your feedback or suggestions as we work to build a world class email experience – focused on you.
Thanks again for choosing AOL Mail!
Sincerely,
Brad Garlinghouse
President, AOL Consumer Applications
Since then, I've gotten a few spamessages a day. Yesterday, I recieved my latest Sony Ericsson phone, and was able to see, in real time, what a turd this service has become. I think they've come a long way in making things better. Thanks, AOL!
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