Gmail down again

This is the second time in a week I've been unable to get my email... this time it isn't  critical for me, but it still drives home the point that even one of the smartest and richest players in the world cannot yet make "software as a service" 100% reliable. Can I live with some downtime? Yes. But what it means is I need to make sure I don't leave critical information that I might need in an emergency sitting in the googlesphere. I cannot trust it to always be there for me when I need it... yet.

Comments

[Tony]

I don't know if it's because I have been in gmail page all day so I can use the chat function from work but it hasn't been down for me at all so far.

[Des Paroz]

This is the reason why in my predictions for 2006 I predicted that someone would come out with an API based interface to Gmail that has local storage, while maintaining labels, etc

[william dutton]

des, i think that would be my guess as well, or you just pop download without deleting anything once a day so that you got it now, not when the api comes out.

[phil]

I have been thinking about this Cam. I like you use gmail solely these day and use it by the web app.
If I understand your main problem, which is the same as me, that is you have received information via a trip etc and it is gmail and you cant get at it. So, they are not new emails that are concern but old reference material.

So, seems to be a couple of solutions to me -

1. copy all reference material to something like evernote or esnips. The problem here is that it is manual and you may not do it when you get busy.

2. have a light email client like outlook express or thunderbird just sitting in your tray minimised downloading all your email for this purpose. In other words taking a copy for the times when gmail goes down. Another way to do this would be with another web email service that can use pop/imap as what are the chances of two email services going down at the same time.

Anyway they are my musings.

[fanhongwei]

I want gmail !Give me an invite please!