email§

layout: post title: Free Email (and other options for not using web-based email) created: 1079064120 categories:

• Vancouver

I give people grief all the time for:

• using their work account for all their email, and/or
• using a web-based email service that gets filled with spam, doesn’t support very much email, and is really hard to use if you get a lot of mail

It turns out that the Vancouver Community Network offers free email accounts to registered members, which can be accessed via POP or IMAP (i.e. these are real accounts that you can setup on your computer). As well, you can also access them via webmail.

What about just using the email address that comes with your Internet connection? Well, the difficulty there is that if you switch providers, you lose your address. Since deals are always changing, or you might move, having your address being held hostage by your service provider is not a great option. As well, their webmail often sucks.

So, if you live in Vancouver and don’t have a personal account, go check out VCN. They even have virus filters installed! Thanks to Richard Eriksson, which is where I noticed the vnc.bc.ca address.

layout: post title: Asterisk for Tech Support Voicemail created: 1081199403 categories:

• VoIP

I’d probably be more excited about this if I had to perform day-to-day support anymore, but it’s still cool: an interface between the Asterisk VoIP PBX and the Request Tracker trouble-ticket system. This would probably be a great way to handle support voicemail in a small tech company. It’d be interesting to see what it’d take to route all support calls through RT; it’s pretty typical to have support email recorded in RT, so why not “this message may be recorded to ensure quality service” calls? *scottstuff*: Asterisk and Request Tracker

Scott continues to churn out new uses and abuses for Asterisk at a prodigious rate.

layout: post title: CBC removes agreement on RSS usage, my feedback email created: 1103262274 categories:

• Personal Publishing
• Canada

CBC has in the meantime removed the agreement I wrote about in my first post.

I sent them my feedback letter today. Here’s what I said:

Update: I got a (very fast) response, posted as well.

Dear CBC:

Thanks for implementing RSS for your website. I posted some feedback several days ago. I notice that you’ve now removed the agreement page — thanks for that. I have a few suggested links below that you might like to add. Also, I would request that you consider turning the feeds into full article content, or at the very least present "teasers". The current headline-only format is nothing more than a token implementation — it is very rare that I can tell by reading the headline whether the entire article would interest me. So, as it is, I tend to skip over 98% of the headlines that appear in my news reader.

For News Reader tools, you should add the following two links under the Apple section:
NetNewsWire
NewsFire

Gush is a Flash-based tool that works on all operating systems that you should also add.

MyYahoo is another web-based tool that can be used to read news.

I would be happy to discuss RSS strategy or any other questions that you might have. In my opinion, the more open CBC is, the better the online interaction can be for everyone, and that everyone wins.

And the response, signed with an actual person’s name:

We thank you for your kind feedback. We have also received similar requests from other users and therefore will consider your suggestions carefully.

Unfortunately, since there are so many News Readers available on the web, we cannot list all of them. However, we will keep your suggestions in mind when reviewing our list of readers, and will also recommend them to affiliates requesting support for CBC RSS feeds.

We thank you once again for your interest in Free Headlines. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

"so many News Readers available on the web"?! Again, might I point out that the ones listed under "Apple" I have never heard of either one of them?! And that typing in "apple news reader" into Google has NetNewsWire as the #1 hit?! Is updating the CBC website with additional links really THAT hard?

The rest of it is basically just saying that if enough people email headlines AT cbc.ca, they’ll consider putting in teasers. What are you waiting for? Go email!

• [[2026-05-02 12:05:51+00:00]] [[light@noc.social]] https://noc.social/@light/116504890664266829 pull

website: https://forwardemail.net/

A free, encrypted, and open-source email forwarding service for custom domains. Setup your [[DNS]] to use it as your MX records, then set forwarding email addresses as TXT records.

• #go https://git-send-email.io/
  • recommended by [[bouncepaw]]

A [[Serverless]] email server on AWS using [[AmazonS3]] and [[AmazonSES]].

git: https://github.com/0x4447/0x4447_product_s3_email

"an unmanaged email server with unlimited email addresses that also offers the benefit of easily organizing messages by adding the + character to the email names. The + is converted to a /, which correlates to an object path in S3."

via @brianleroux

All in one marketing tool to handle email newsletters, landing pages, transactional email, [[SMS]] and more.

https://www.sendinblue.com/