Life without GMail and Google Reader
For several years now I have been using GMail to store my email and Google Reader to manage my RSS news feeds. Although I was content with this, in the back of my mind I was always concerned about Google having access to all my data and the unhealthy relationship they appear to have with the US government.
I don’t actually have anything to hide, however the recent privacy screw up by Google when they released Buzz really rammed home to me that all my data is with Google and I am trusting them to keep it safe! I do not believe the Buzz fiasco was an error by Google. Most Google products go through several years of beta testing (remember GMail just recently came out of beta) and all of a sudden a new product called Buzz was thrust upon us. I think this was all very intentional, and Google were just testing the water to see what they could get away with.
So with this in mind I set out to see how I could live life without GMail and Google Reader, and I found it extremely easy especially as I have a couple of VPSs which I have full root access to.
Moving all my email to a Dovecot email server was a breeze. I used isync to connect to GMail via IMAP and create the equivalent MailDir format. Job done.
I predominantly use Thunderbird 3 as my email client, though occasionally when I am on the road it is handy to access the mail via a webmail client, and this where RoundCube comes to the rescue. Don’t be fooled by it’s low version number, it is feature rich and a more than suitable replacement.
News Reader
This was bit harder to find, but I found a fantastic project called Tiny Tiny RSS Reader, it’s a breeze to install and use and even has a mobile interface for accessing from you phone. It was easy as pie to export my subscriptions from Google Reader and import them to Tiny Tiny RSS Reader, and after using it for a week or so in many ways I prefer the interface to that of Google Reader, lets face it Google are not renowned for their UI design.
So my online life is no longer tied to Google, and best of all I have achieved the same functionality using free, libre and open source software. I would like to thank the developers and community of both RoundCube and Tiny Tiny RSS for making this all possible. From the 1st March 2010, I will terminate my GMail account and presumably all the data associated with it will be sent to the big bit bucket in the sky….or will it? I guess I will never know.