In my last tutorial I showed how easy it was to setup push email for my Google Apps and Gmail accounts on the Palm Pre. Earlier this week I discovered that setting up push email for the accounts I have setup with my web host was just as easy.

This is pretty exciting to me because I have avoided using these email addresses in the past because I didn’t care for the various webmail clients that were available to use with them and I couldn’t sync them to my phone. I suspect many other web developers and website owners feel the same way by the number of people I see using a Gmail address instead of an email address that utilizes their own domain name.

I would still recommend that businesses or heavy email users run their email with Google Apps for Your Domain and following my previous tutorial to sync it to your Pre. That way you get the benefits of Gmail with your domain name and it’s easier to use on your desktop. However, for setting up sites that require minimal email use, the Pre makes web host email accounts a viable solution.

With that said, let’s get to the tutorial. Below are the steps I used to setup push email for accounts I have with AN Hosting, my web host of choice.

Find the Manual Settings for Your Email Account

First you’ll need to log into the cPanel of your hosting account.

• Once logged in, click “Email Accounts”
• If you haven’t already created an email account you can do so at the top of this page. Follow the video tutorial if needed.
• Select the email you want to sync to your Pre from your list of current accounts and click “Configure Mail Client.

Select email account in cPanel and click "Configure Mail Client."

On the following page take note of the “Manual Settings.”

Your manual settings should look like this (note: I've erased mine for security purposes).

Add An Account on Your Palm Pre

1. Click the email icon to open your email.
2. Click the “Email” drop down arrow in the upper left hand corner.
3. Select “Preferences & Accounts.”
4. Scroll to the bottom and select “Add An Account.”
5. Click the “Email” drop down arrow in the upper left hand corner again.
6. Select “Manual Setup.”

Enter Manual Settings into Your Palm Pre

Mail Type: IMAP
Email Address: Enter your full email address (i.e. username@yourdomain.com)

Incoming Mail Server
Server Name: Enter the mail server address listed after “Incoming Mail Server: (SSL)” from your web hosts manual settings (3rd line down in the above screenshot).
Username: Same as you entered for Email Address above.
Password: Enter the password you use to access your email account.
Port #: 993
Encryption: SSL

 

Outgoing Mail Server
Server Name: Enter the mail server address listed after “Outgoing Mail Server: (SSL)” from your web hosts manual settings (5th line down in the above screenshot).
Use Authentication: On
Username: Same as you entered for “Incoming Mail Server.”
Password: Same as you entered for “Incoming Mail Server.”
Port#: 465
Encryption: SSL

Root Folder: leave blank

When all finished, click “Sign In.” Give the Pre a couple minutes to sync and you’re all set.

Final Thoughts

The only downside I’ve seen to this so far is that I have to log into the crummy webmail client of my hosting provider to create any folders I want in addition to the inbox. At the moment I’m not going to use this for any heavily used email accounts, but it’s a nice alternative to setting up another Gmail account to manage a site that seldom requires email.

Give it a shot and let me know if you have any questions.

It’s only day two with my new Palm Pre and to say I’m a tad excited would be a huge understatement.

So far one of my favorite features is how it manages email – particularly multiple email accounts. This is a HUGE feature for anyone like myself who has tried to manage multiple email accounts for different personal and work related endeavors. I set up my primary Exchange email yesterday and within 2 minutes, my calendar, email, and 600+ contacts were completely in sync with the Pre!

I was even more excited today when I sat down to add one of my Google Apps email accounts. It turns out that the Palm Pre supports the IMAP IDLE protocol, thereby enabling “push” email with your Google Apps email, or any Gmail account for that matter. After a quick review of Gmail Help I was off to the races.

Getting Started

1. Click the email icon to open your email.
2. Click the “Email” drop down arrow in the upper left hand corner.
3. Select “Preferences & Accounts.”
4. Scroll to the bottom and select “Add An Account.”
5. Click the “Email” drop down arrow in the upper left hand corner again.
6. Select “Manual Setup.”

Palm Pre Settings for Push Google Apps Email & Gmail

Mail Type: IMAP
Email Address:

• Google Apps users – Enter your full email address (i.e. username@yourdomain.com).
• Gmail users – Enter your full email address (i.e. username@gmail.com).

Incoming Mail Server
Server Name: imap.gmail.com
Username:  Same as you entered for Email Address above.

• Google Apps users – Enter your full email address (i.e. username@yourdomain.com).
• Gmail users – Enter your full email address (i.e. username@gmail.com).

Password: Enter your password.
Port #: 993
Encryption: SSL

Outgoing Mail Server
Server Name: smtp.gmail.com
Use Authentication: Yes
Port#: 465
Encryption: SSL

Root Folder: leave blank

Updates

July 7, 2009

A few readers have provided additional pointers that I wanted to update this post with in case you don’t see them in the comments.

1. As Eric Marschall points out, be sure you have activated IMAP in the Settings of your Gmail or Google Apps email account. Eric also mentions that you may need to unlock the captcha.
2. Kyle and Doc both point out that you need to have Wi-Fi turned off when setting up your email accounts on the Pre. Especially if you are behind a corporate firewall.

Thanks to all visitors for your comments and additional tips…keep em’ coming!

Final Thoughts

I love the Pre. It’s so easy to set up and navigate. Managing multiple email accounts on the Pre is easier than doing so on my laptop. The ability to view and respond to email from “all inboxes” or one specific email account is a productive feature that is long overdue with all email clients in general (i.e. Outlook). I’m going to do some more testing this week and if all goes as planned, it looks like it’s time to say goodbye to the old Exchange server to deliver my critical push email and hello to more Google Apps email!

I heart you Pre!

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

To celebrate, I present one of my favorite commercials featuring “The Most Interesting Man in the World.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stay thirsty, my friends!

Sure, Facebook has received its fair share of criticism over privacy concerns. For the most part I think they’ve done a pretty good job of addressing them by providing their users with a growing list of options for controlling who can see what.  The recently added ability to segment ones “friends” into lists is a nice feature that can help fine tune privacy settings even further.

However, in Facebook’s quest to become more like Twitter, they’ve compromised everyone’s attempt to secure their own privacy.   How might you ask? By making each user’s RSS feed, or “Friends’ Status Feed”  accessible. For those that have no idea what that means, just understand that its possible for your status updates to be viewed by others outside of Facebook. And as I’ve discovered, your privacy settings are rendered useless once that happens.

Below are a two examples that I’ve noticed over the last few weeks.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a popular application for managing ones Twitter activity.  A recent update now allows users to view the status updates of their Facebook friends within the same application.  The Facebook integration also allows TweetDeck users to “Tweet” or email the status updates posted by any their Facebook friends.

So what does that mean to you? It’s simple. With only a couple clicks of the mouse, any of your Facebook friends using TweetDeck could 1) email your status updates to anyone of their choosing, and/or 2) publicly broadcast your status updates to the millions of people and media outlets now using Twitter. Both without your consent, of course!

Google Reader

Google Reader is a web-based RSS aggregator that helps users organize and manage all of the information they are interested in. Since it accepts any RSS feed,  it’s very easy for one to add their “Friends’ Status Feed” to their list of subscriptions. Like TweetDeck, this allows users to view the status updates of their friends within an application other than Facebook, thereby creating the loophole that would allow them to do things with your updates that you may not approve of.

Google Reader will allow any of your Facebook friends to 1) email your status updates to anyone of their choosing, and/or 2) make your updates public to the Internet by “sharing” either a single update or their entire stream of friends’ updates – all with or without comment.

While testing the email functionality of Google Reader I noticed an even bigger problem: the recipient of the email is given a link to subscribe to the “Friends’ Status Feed” of the Facebook user who sent the email to them.

Options available to the email recipient when someone emails a status update out of Google Reader.

So what’s the problem?

For starters, all Facebook users are exposed. It doesn’t matter how selective you are in choosing your friends or how restrictive you are with your privacy settings.

It doesn’t matter if it’s your status update that gets emailed out.  It could be any one of the many updates that any of your friends receive on a daily basis. Think of it like this: What if you could add the total number of your friends plus the total number of your friends’ friends? Each member of that group represents an opportunity for your privacy to be compromised. And that’s if everyone made their updates available to “Only Friends” versus “Friends of Friends.”

Anyone that obtains access to any of your friends’ feeds can subscribe and view your updates – they don’t even have to have a Facebook account.

Lastly, the magnitude of this privacy outbreak could multiply exponentially for every person who receives the email…including those it could be forwarded to. Imagine what could happen if the email went viral.

Keep in mind, the privacy vulnerabilities exposed by TweetDeck and Google Reader existed even before Facebook announced their Open Stream API earlier this week. Doesn’t it seem fair to think that the additional “openness” and the applications that will be built around it could lead to even more problems?

Addressing The Problem

The underlying problem I see here is that although Facebook may provide an ample supply of privacy settings for users to control the information they share inside Facebook, they have failed to provide the proper education and measures for controlling the information shared about them outside of Facebook. Consider this excerpt taken from the Open Stream announcement:

“Consistent with our previous steps toward greater openness, we believe users must have full control and choice and that’s exactly how we’ve designed Facebook Platform and the Open Stream API. All Facebook Platform terms governing data use apply and an application or Facebook Connect site can only access a user’s view of the stream if the user gives the application permission.”

These terms may address the privacy of the person using the application but what about the privacy of that person’s friends?

With that in mind I spent a considerable amount of time scouring Facebook for an answer. I finally thought I had struck gold when I came across this tab (pictured below) within the privacy settings for applications. Note the line that reads, “You can use the controls on this page to limit what types of information your friends can see about you through applications. Please note that this is only for application you do not use yourself.”

When I first arrived at this page nearly all of the boxes were checked.  So I unchecked each of them, one-by-one, and tested how my information was being distributed across TweetDeck and Google Reader each step of the way.  Guess what?  It made no difference.  Trying to limit the information being shared about me outside of Facebook with these controls accomplished nothing.

Next, I found the following little gem way back in the basic settings of my profile.  On “Status and Links” I chose “Customize…” and unchecked the box under Subscription that reads “Allow friends to subscribe to my status.” I surely thought this would remove my status updates from all of my friends “Friends’ Status Updates” feed.  Strike two. After multiple tests it still didn’t work either.

Safety Precautions You Can Take Now

Ready for some spring cleaning on your Facebook privacy settings? These steps may not be the answer to the problem I’ve discovered, but they’ll go a long way to protecting your privacy and just might make you feel a little better.

1. Read here to gain a better understanding of how applications will interact with your information.
2. Check your privacy settings regularly to make sure you don’t miss any newly added options.
3. Review privacy best practices provided by Sophos and act as you see fit.
4. Segment your friends into lists as Amy Driscoll outlined here earlier this week.

Where Do We Go From Here?

At this point I’m at a loss.  I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems like the RSS feeds are the culprit here,  as opposed to something in the API. It seems like Facebook has good intentions based on the options I’ve shown above, but they’ve apparently missed something and it needs to be addressed.

I would think that a part of Facebook’s success could be contributed to the trust they’ve established with their users.  I don’t think people would post the same comments and photos if they knew they were going to be broadcast to the world versus their private group of friends. If Facebook wants to be more open like Twitter, that’s fine, but they better be sure that the community that got them this far understands what’s going on and they better give them the option to opt out of all the new found “openness.”

Here’s to hoping its a quick fix or yet another new setting I missed.

What say you @facebook?

I’ve been working with the Thesis Theme for WordPress for a little over a month now and for the most part I’m pretty impressed.  One of my favorite features is the ability to apply custom CSS to individual pages by creating classes in the name of the specific page you want to alter. For example, to apply custom styling specifically to your “About” page, use .custom.about in front of any of the IDs or classes in your stylesheet you want to change.

On one site I’m working on I wanted my “About” page to only have one sidebar instead of the two default sidebars that I’m using on the rest of the site. Using the same naming convention I mentioned above, I simply added the following to my custom.css file.

.custom.about #column_wrap {background:#4ebaff;width:890px;}
.custom.about #content {background:#fff; width: 770px; margin:0; padding:0;-moz-border-radius:.5em;}
.custom.about #sidebar_1 {display:block; width:120px !important;}
.custom.about #sidebars {display:none !important;}
.custom.about #sidebar_2 {display:block; width:0 !important;}

This was all fine and dandy until I wanted to use the same method to apply styling to my static home page. After numerous attempts I couldn’t find an answer. Finally I investigated the source code of my home page as it was being displayed and noticed this interesting little nugget body class="custom main-man". It appeared that this mysterious “Main-Man” was controlling the styling of my home page. So I raced off to my custom.css file, threw together some styling for my home page using the .custom.main-man naming convention, and “wahlah!” my problem was solved.

So who is this “main-man” and where did he come from?

Well, it turns out that I unknowingly created him. When setting up the initial site I named what would be the home page “Main Man” to avoid any confusion within WordPress if I named it “Home.” Later I changed the name of the title of the page but forgot to pay any attention to the slug. This just goes to show how awesome this feature of Thesis is.  Create a special CSS class using the naming convention of the page’s slug and presto, you’ve got a new custom page.

No kidding, you read that right.

I was reviewing a statement for one of my merchant accounts this morning and noticed a warning to avoid a new scheme to defraud merchants and cardholders that has been identified as “Cash Back” fraud. Apparently the bad guys are targeting gift shops and flower shops and transaction amounts have been ranging from $2K – $4K.

Here’s how it works. The “cardholder” ordering the flowers or gift will ask for “cash back” with their payment card order, typically received over the phone, email, or fax. Next, they’ll ask that the “cash back” be used to wrap the flowers or gift being purchased.

The victim merchant will be asked to wrap the gift in $10, $20, $50, or even $100 bills as a special “surprise.” The victim merchant may even be asked to send cash via Western Union or by bank wire to another party.

I’m sure you can guess what happens next. Seriously, who falls for this stuff? Who would ask to have purchases wrapped in cash, especially in this economy? And what business owner would actually take their hard earned money out of their register and do this? Probably the same type of people who wire money to strangers in Africa to help them escape their troubles. At any rate, you can now consider yourself warned.

IMO the best Superbowl commercial this year had to be this one from CareerBuilder.com. I had the chance to view it a few days before the game and nearly spit my coffee all over my monitor when I saw the koala bear got punched in the face.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sadly, the scenes in this commercial aren’t a far cry from the nonsense I witnessed with my former “corporate” gig. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much.

Welcome to my new slice of the web…allJeff.com.

Now, I’m sorry…I don’t have much to say at the moment other than it is going to take me a couple weeks to get things set up and running around here. Afterall, I am heading to the mountains for some skiing later this week. Until then, take care.

See you back here soon.