For the second time yesterday, I awoke to find my Gmail account locked. This is the second time that this has happened.

The only notification is that it is locked for unusual activity. The “help” page states these as:

1. Receiving, deleting, or downloading large amounts of mail via POP or IMAP in a short period of time. If you’re getting the error message, ‘Lockdown in Sector 4,’ you should be able to access Gmail again after waiting 24 hours.
2. Sending a large number of undeliverable messages (messages that bounce back).
3. Using file-sharing or file-storage software, browser extensions, or third party software that automatically logs in to your account.
4. Leaving multiple instances of Gmail open.
5. Browser-related issues. Please note that if you find your browser continually reloading while attempting to access your Inbox, it’s probably a browser issue, and it may be necessary to clear your browser’s cache and cookies.

I’m pretty sure that I have not violated any of these. In fact since the last time it got locked I made sure that I kept Gmail closed as much as possible, since I thought 4 or 5 above could be a possible problem.

Anyway, I’m pretty irritated with the whole deal and am planning to make the move to either Windows Live Mail or Yahoo! Mail. I plan on continuing to use Google Talk to chat with those I know as well as all the other services of Google.

So, what do you suggest I shift to? Windows Live Mail or Yahoo! Mail or should I create yet another Gmail account?

After a quiet two days at home, I finally ventured out on Sunday evening for mass. I?ve realized that I can spend days at home without evening stepping outside and not even think twice about it. Pizzas always get delivered, don?t they?

Anyway, Sunday the 4th also marked the 28th Wedding Anniversary of my parents and since Dad isn?t here I decided to take Mom out for dinner. However, she chose to order home and so be it.

Dinner was Chicken Manchurian, Prawns Masala and Chicken Fried rice. We tried a smaller new restaurant near my place instead of the regular one I ordered. While the chicken was good, the prawns was terrible. Note to myself. ?Do not order sea food from small places?.

Monday and Tuesday were normal days. Aditya was in Mumbai yesterday on placements work and dropped in after that was done. Took him to InOrbit, Malad whose sheer size had him all amazed.

Got back home, bid farewell to him and got ready for Seema?s birthday party. We were at her place gossiping and chatting till post 10.30pm before I drove back home. Had no energy to make any of the blog posts I had originally planned. Had also decided to make my way back to Pune and so needed to get some sleep.

Caught the second Volvo to Pune. The last time I was on my way back the bus tire was punctured and the driver and cleaner spent a good hour fixing that. Fortunately, today I didn?t face any such problem, though the bus that I missed by a minute broke down on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. After our driver lent a hand, we were on our way.

Reached here in the morning, met up with friends and then got down to making those blog posts. The count of unread posts in my RSS reader is slowly mounting. As is the case of my Gmail inbox which seems to be locked due to Google detecting unusual activity. Now, me not checking my email for 20 hours is characterized as unusual Hopefully, this gets unlocked by tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a long day with a lot of lectures scheduled. We also have a so called Finance paper to work on tonight.

After having thought about it a while I’ve decided to use Google Apps for Your Domain for AjayDSouza.com.

I have already been using Google Apps to manage WebberZone email for a while now, and now AjayDSouza.com

What this means is now I have a 2Gb Email account, which has all the features of Gmail (which IMO is second only to Yahoo! Mail).
This is very useful because I can take a considerable load of my VPS. I have also found that Gmail’s anti-spam tools are a lot better than SpamAssassin.
I also have complete POP and SMTP access if I need to download any email.

I can also use my email address with Google Talk and Jabber.

Though I doubt I will use this, but I also have my very own Google Calendar for events.

One thing I don’t need is Google Page Creator.

The best thing is:

Organizations accepted by Google during the Google Apps for Your Domain beta period are eligible for free service for their approved beta users even beyond the end of the beta period, as described in the Terms of Service.

I have already added mail checking for my email to Netvibes. This will replace the default POP Mail account I was using.

If you look to using Apps for your domain and want to check email at Netvibes, then use the Gmail Module.

I have released v1.1 of the plugin to fix a minor bug that prevented the display of the widget in IE.

If you have downloaded v1.0, please upgrade to v1.1.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Read more and download >>

Gmail has been giving quite a bit of server errors on and off lately.

It reads:

Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.

Others facing a similar problem?

The meebo me Plugin for WordPress lets you display your chat widget from meebo me. meebo me lets you chat with your site visitors using your Meebo account.

Key Features:

• Generate perfectly valid XHTML code
• Set Widget ID and Size from within WP-Admin

Read more and download >>

Meebo has already gained a lot of popularity among the masses for their amazing web based chat service that lets you simultaneously login to MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, Gmail, AIM and IRC networks and chat with your friends there.

Though I usually login to my respective messengers, I have been using their service quite extensively and am a very satisfied user of the same.

With the launch of MeeboMe, they now let visitors to your site chat with you live, if you are logged into Meebo. While this is not a new concept, this is usually a paid service offered by several companies.

I am not sure if I will make full utilization of MeeboMe, but I have generated a widget as you can see below. (you may not be able to see it if you are using a feed reader)

Have given it a test run and I am pleased with the results so far. I may just decide to make it permanent!

One good feature I noticed is it’s tracking of the visitor even across browsers (I assume using their IP Address ?)
I’m sure this may be considered by users to be a privacy related issue. I don’t think it should be that much of a worry, because a good number of stat scripts are already doing basic tracking.

Just wish that they generate XHTML Compliant code. Or maybe I should write a plugin for this? The meebo me Plugin for WordPress is now available for download.

I have signed up at their forum and am providing some suggestions for making it even better.