Importing Sent Mail Into Gmail With Preserved Dates
There are many sites out there dedicated to importing your email into gmail, this is not meant to be another. This little page is here to document the method that I used specifically to import sent mail into my gmail account with the correct date and have it show up in the sent mail section.
I used Mark Lyon's Gmail Loader on OS X (Mac specific instructions). Gmail loader just reads mbox files, parses them and sends them to you gmail account. When the mbox file is a sent mail folder, then it also sets the from address to be the gmail address you are sending to.
One catch is that the mail will be time stamped with the current time on google's servers rather than the time that the message was sent/received. A trick to get around this is to use a third gmail account. Use Gmail Loader to send all mail to a temporary gmail account, then setup your main account to pull mail from the temporary gmail account. When it pulls the mail it will correctly set the date and time.
This is where I ran into a problem. If I import sent mail to temp@gmail.com, it works fine in the context of temp@gmail.com. But as soon as it gets transferred to my real Gmail account it no longer is from me, but from temp@gmail.com. To get around this I simply edited the Gmail Loader python script. At the point where it sets the from field to be the destination gmail account (i.e. temp@gmail.com), I hardcoded it to be my real gmail account. For me this is at line 302:
fullmsg = re.sub(r'From: .*', 'From: my-real-email@gmail.com', self.msg.__str__( ) + '\x0a' + self.document, 1 )
server.sendmail(self.recipnt.get(), self.recipnt.get(), fullmsg)
else:
fullmsg = self.msg.__str__( ) + '\x0a' + self.document
server.sendmail(self.msg.getaddr('From')[1], self.recipnt.get(), fullmsg)
Google buys Feedburner; Expanding Their Ad Platform?
TechCrunch is reporting that the rumors of Google buying Feedburner have been confirmed. Google is going to pay the tidy price of $100 million dollars for Feedburner.
"Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, according to our source, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.
"The information we have is that the deal is now under a binding term sheet and will close in 2-3 weeks, and there is nothing that can really derail it at this point."
This is obviously a fantastic service to acquire for Google, besides the obvious fit into their blogging system it also gives them a very, very rich data source to play with. They know what people (the non-blogger people that is) are publishing, what people are pulling feeds and all kinds of information.
Everyone is abuzz with how much more big brother like Google is becoming as they expand their services and increase their data stores through acquisitions. I have no doubt that Google will exploit the rich information locked away inside Feedburner, but Google's true strength is the power and profitability of online advertising. Feedburner will fit very nicely into Google's expanding ad platform.
It is very clear now that the internet and online advertising are the next big ad markets. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are in an arms race to expand their ad networks to take advantage this opportunity.
Google's My Maps Feature Lets Users Customize Maps
Google has recently augmented their mapping solution by adding My Maps, a service that allows users to take a base Google map and add points, lines and polygons to it. Presumably this is a way to compete with some of the more advanced mapping solutions provided by Ask and Microsoft.
Both Microsoft's and Ask's mapping platforms are riddled with ultra cool features, are they just for show to try to one up the othe companies or are they real useful features.
Please share your thoughts here on what mapping features you like best and what features you would love to see.
