April 2005 Archives

Wow - accessing my Gmail account from work this morning brings up the following:

Our system indicates unusual usage of your account. In order to protect Gmail users from potentially harmful use of Gmail, this account has been disabled for up to 24 hours.

If you are using any third party software that interacts with your Gmail account, please disable it or adjust it so that its use complies with the Gmail Terms of Use. If you feel that you have been using your Gmail account according to the Terms of Use or otherwise normally, please contact us at gmail-lockdown@google.com to report this problem.

Natural reaction is one of stunned outrage - my Gmail account is my main non-work account now - I'm pretty dependent on it. I'm not running anything like GMailFS, I don't think I am even taking an Atom feed from my mail account. Google didn't warn me - they've just stopped my email for up to 24 hours. Emailing them gives an automated response:

Hello,

Our system has detected unusual usage of your Gmail account. For your protection, we have temporarily disabled all access to your account.

If you suspect that the unusual usage of your account has been caused by a third party, we recommend that you change your password and secret question once you are able to log back in to Gmail. You should be able to access your account again within 24 hours.

If you are using any software that automatically logs in to your account, or automatically sends and receives messages, we ask that you disable the software before accessing Gmail again. Please note that the use of such third-party software is not supported by Gmail.

Sincerely, The Gmail Team

I'm still sitting here stunned - checking it again just to make sure it's not some kind of system glitch rather than an automated withdrawal of service for some unspecified reason. Whatever - as soon as it comes back, I'm sucking out all my email, and unless there's a really good reason I can't see that I'll ever go back again - my email is just too important to me for someone else to deny me access whenever they feel like it. But suddenly I find myself not trusting Google and the people at Google.

[**Update Lockdown over - I can access my email. No explanation of why the lockdown occurred yet - waiting to see if I get one. Still planning to get my data out of Gmail when I get home and revert back to my previous solution. I posted some more on this here.

Bru asks in the comments if there's been any explanation: nope, nothing. Not a peep out of Google - disappointing.

I noticed that Jason Calacanis got hit by the same problem, although he thinks it might have been firefox going into a mad refresh loop.]

Technorati Tags: gmail, gmail lockdown

I woke up this morning, and with no girlfriend to look disapprovingly at me, turned on the hotel TV almost at once, and was able to continue for a few more minutes without engaging my brain.

Sequentially flicking through the channels I thought I heard someone (on TV) say "blug". And sure enough, as if I'd asked my deity of the week to send me a sign, there on national TV, was a little segment on blugging, sorry - blogging. A young(ish) kid, complete with ponytail, gave a quick, and engaging, walkthrough on how to setup a blog, using BlogLibre. Made it look really easy - if I was a blogging neophyte, I wouldn't have been at all intimidated by that (I think). Good piece, and very appropriate after the long good LesBlogs day.

More interestingly, it was on national, terrestrial TV - I think TF5. Can't imagine an equivalent piece on British morning TV yet - which shows that blogging seems to be further along the adoption curve in France than in Britain - something I hadn't even considered until yesterday. Eye opening.

Spent a lovely morning walking around St-Germain de Pres, buying chocolate tartes, lovely long thin bread, foie gras and smelly cheese.

As for the conference itself - in the main enjoyable and worthwhile. Same issues as Blogs in Action from last month: not enough time for real conversation, too much emphasis put on putting people up on a stage and having them teach us, when in reality we all could really do with learning from each other. Wasn't alone in thinking that - Lloyd, Euan, Lee were amongst the folk thinking the same.

Organisation was slightly chaotic, but one constant was the smiling happy face of Loic le Meur who was simply charming the whole day. Not sure if that makes up for the non-existance of coffee for the whole day !

We were also treated to the slightly unedifying spectacle of Jason Calacanis and Gaby Darbyshire of Weblogs Inc and Gawker respectively, descending into a bunfight over Gizmodo vs Engadet, luring authors away, and a whole load of stuff that was mostly unimportant and trivial.

For so much time to be devoted to such a facile use of blogs did depress me: blogs as a replacement media for printed paper with the sole aim of selling ads is hardly a revolution, is it ?

Lee Bryant, Euan Semple and Ross Mayfield's panel on internal blogging got sadly squeezed by the move to lunch and the late starting, so ended up being rushed. Also, it may have been a bit out of tune with the audience who were much more into the Gawker/Engadget "let's make money" theme. Someone in the Maiinstream Media panel said something about €5 million per year, which prompted an excited yelp from the 2 French girls next to me followed by 25 minutes of quite loud conversation which only ended once the "boring stuff" started and they left.

But the "boring stuff" saved the day for me - Yossi Vardi pleading with us to recognise that "we are wired for collaboration", Hossein Derakshan showing us how blogs are windows into Iran as it is today - and the act of viewing cannot but help perturb the thing being viewed, followed by an eye-opening 10 minute drive-by from Yat Siu look at the state of the Asian blog and internet world. Most of the focus was on China,Japan, and Korea - I couldn't help think about India's 1.7% internet penetration and think about the opportunities and challenges there.

Doc Searls gave a interesting end-note, meandering (in a good way) around a number of topics while making the point that blogs should be treated as speech and protected as such.

All finished off by cocktails and more finger food at Alcazar - where I chatted with some people, found out that hugh gapingvoid mccloud was nothing like I thought he would be (little things like i thought he was an English guy who lived in London - whereas he's basically an American in Cumbria). Neil McIntosh and Euan Semple seemed like they'd known each other for years, despite only having physically met that day, and Alistair Shrimpton from Six Apart is another really nice guy. I

'll post pictures when I find my connecting cable.

technorati tag: lesblogs although I don't know why I bother as technorati is ignoring me at the moment!

Well - sat in the main room at Les Blogs - slow entry procedures have delayed the start - but plenty of people here now. I'd like to say i'll be blogging live - but I know I won't. Still - lots of people will be - so check out technorati:lesblogs technorati tag: lesblogs

Steve Crescenzo with a nice consulting war story – read the comments for a nice alternative. [via Allan Jenkins]

Looking forward, at Les Blogs,  to seeing people I haven’t seen in a while, and meeting new interesting people. I’m particularly interested in discussing anything related to blogging inside the firewall (internal blogging). This encompasses blogging, culture and behaviour change, communication issues, measurement, tool usage (like how do we use tools like bloglines and del.icio.us for internal feeds and links), stories, opportunities, etc. I have some ideas I’d be happy to share, and would also love to listen and learn !

technorati tag: lesblogs

Well, I’m all set. Arriving Paris Sunday evening on Eurostar, staying at the lovely La Villa Saint-Germain, attending Les Blogs, and leaving Tuesday lunchtime. Happy to meet up Sunday night for drinks / dinner and to practice my appalling French !

[Update] – having dinner at Bofinger with Vasco and some other bloggers - drop Vasco a note if you want to come.

technorati tag: lesblogs