Uneasy Rhetoric

Is this the end of the story, or the beginning of a legend? Yahoo! acquires Oddpost.

The Oddpost web-based email interface has been an extraordinarily good thing, but I think for about 60% of the time I’ve had an Oddpost account I’ve been accessing them via IMAP using either Eudora or Firebird. In fact, my main reasons for staying with Oddpost were 1) I had a fairly short email address and 2) it gave me a good-sized IMAP system, which most web-hosting companies don’t do (there are a few that do).

Oddpost was well on their way, though, to creating a full-fledged email interface that would rival any desktop-based system. It was only a matter of time before I would no longer need the IMAP access.

I’m hopeful that the acquisition will only improve Oddpost — it certainly could go a long way toward improving Yahoo! Oddpost has must better spam filtering than Yahoo! The interface is eons beyond Yahoo!’s. Oddpost had the foresight to include an RSS newsreader; I don’t use Oddpost’s reader only because I find Bloglines to be signifcantly faster.

The one thing I’m hoping will happen to Oddpost is cross-browser support. Right now, it only works on Internet Explorer, which, at the time they began, was a good decision because 90% of the public was using Explorer. However, with all of the attention on Explorer’s security problems, I think many more people may be switching to other browsers. For example, I use Firefox most of the time now.

All in all, this is a good thing, especially since it may mean I’ll get to test a new Yahoo! email system. My question to the folks at Oddpost is, since I’m already an SBC/Yahoo! DSL subscriber and thus have paid Yahoo email access, when the time comes, will I get to role my Oddpost email into my DSL services or will I still have to pay more money to maintain my Oddpost email address?

Sadly, the answer to that is probably “pay more,” which means that, one more time, I’m going to have to change my email address again. john at uneasyrhetoric.net is fine for people who may read my blog, but my Oddpost address was a little easier to say, to spell, and to remember.