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AOL's New Alto Client Is Visual Email, and You Don't Need a New Address
pigrabbitbear writes "AOL, still looking to reboot itself from the dialup days, is shooting to actually change the way we deal with email. The company's new service, called Alto, isn't a new email client. You don't have to sign up for yet another email address, because as David Temkin, AOL's senior VP of mail said, 'We need another email address like we need a hole in the head.' Instead, Alto, which is in limited release starting today, is designed to be an intelligent aggregator of the email accounts you already have."
Well, since this means that you'll be reading your @gmail.com email through Alto, instead of through Gmail, it also means that you'll be seeing AOL ads and not Google ads. How long will it be until Google, Yahoo, and Apple change their API or terms of service to ban this?
"You have spam!"
A while back someone figured out how to spoof aol email and send stuff not just to your peeps, but to everyone cc'd on emails sent to you, like people 3 circles of friends away in joke forwardings.
This seemed to clear up a few months ago. Easy to mock AOL (or Wndows for that matter) but I wouldn't wanna be the engineers in charge of fighting off motivated engineers from shitholes around the world.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Right now, I get all of the mail from my gmail account forwarded though my company mail server with no ads, so I'm not so sure if they will.
Thunderbird or Outlook HOW?
.forward files don't cut it ?
Sorry. Stupid.
Well, I have a few holes in my head that are necessary for my survival. So you're saying Alto is necessary for my survival? Cool.
>> Alto...is...an...aggregator of the email accounts you already have."
Aha - a web-based email client.
Alto isn't a new email client. You don't have to sign up for yet another email address
Now, somebody enlighten me: since when, if one switches email clients, the one needs to get another email address?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Email clients today allow you to easily and effectively organize all of your email Addys in one UI, neatly broken out by Source and Content Folders. So I'm seeing Alto as a big fat question mark, except for the fact that AOL is now a company looking for a raison d'etre.
So they're gonna aggregate everybody's email, suck out the interesting bits, grow huge amounts of data on millions of users... OH, now I see... they wanna be a PoBoy Facebook. Well why didn't you guys just come out and say "Hey we need a cup of data to stay alive, please give a starving corporation a break."
Maybe y'all could invent a round thing to move heavy objects on.
The company's new service, called Alto, isn't a new email client.
Alto, which is in limited release starting today, is designed to be an intelligent aggregator of the email accounts you already have.
Sure as hell sounds like an email client to me.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Quoth, for instance: "Theyâ(TM)re like folders or labels, but managed through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, and allowing users to decide that they want to make large swaths of their email bypass the main inbox entirely, to be saved in Stacks where they can be read later."
So... like folders or labels, but with filters on them! You know, filters, like Thunderbird and gmail have both supported since basically the beginning of time?
Alto isn't a new email client. You don't have to sign up for yet another email address
Now, somebody enlighten me: since when, if one switches email clients, the one needs to get another email address?
Since the definition of "email client" changed from "software you use to read your emails" to "corporation that provides your email service via the web browser," apparently.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Since we were talking about AOL? You're "one stop shop" to the Interwebs, including their nice fancy proxies?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
AOL's 3 remaining customers are going to use a new application to aggregate their mail from services that already provide more functionality than AOL does in an attempt to show relevant value and usefulness. One of the 3 customers, known simply as "granma" was quoted as saying "Now I don't have to remember all those complicated things like gee mails and yahooie for when I need to tell my grandson that the guv'ment is going to start charging for email, or if I forward this message bill gates is going to give me a dollar!".
Cool story, would read again, +1, +like & stuff. Need's more bitcoin.
01:36AM up 426 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.05
Well, I have a few holes in my head that are necessary for my survival. So you're saying Alto is necessary for my survival? Cool.
Yup, just stick your noggin in this here clamp and we'll get the install going for you!
Now, should I use the 1/2" wood-bore or the concrete bit? Hmm...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Some companys just don't have the decency to lay down and die when their time is over... It's so sad.
My parents are still on Compuserve dial-up. It's all their fault.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
... is that you're expected to work 50 hour weeks. Forget annual pay, how much do these companies pay per hour?
A) Wrong thread
B) Base pay = $128,336
$128,336 / 2080 (hours worked in an year @ 40hrs/wk) = $61.70/hr.
@ 50hrs/wk, pay drops to $49.36/hr. Still not bad.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Since we were talking about AOL? You're "one stop shop" to the Interwebs, including their nice fancy proxies?
I am NOT a "one stop shop"!
I would like you to stop insinuating that I am!
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Been doing that since mid-90's, how's this new?
I've got to say it's certainly an interesting enough of an idea and interface to make me at least give it a shot. This is the kind of stuff that AOL is going to need to do if they want to have any shot at getting back into the market instead of resting on their rears and hoping the seniors keep paying out to them for a 15 year old service.
Never has a username been so relevant.
I tried to request an invitation for my self-hosted address. "That email system is not supported". Thanks. So it's only for people that have more than one account on the above list apparently.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
You're so l33t.
Knowing AOL's prior shit security (Coach Account Access, anyone?) how long until this shit gets cracked and emails get stolen?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Once it gets it's teeth in you, it'll drag you under water, spin you around sharply to break your neck, then stuff you under the bank to tenderize for a while.
What's that? OH, AGGERGATOR!!! Same advice really.
Hole saw.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
'Alto' = 'Stop' in Spanish...
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It only affects the people around you. Same thing when you're stupid.
Yes, but unfortunately you first have to fly to Palo Alto, where you'll have to use this service on a Xerox Alto.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
You know, if you just stopped subscribing to illegal Malaysian wombat pr0n sites, you wouldn't have to go to such ridiculous lengths to sanitize your email...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
David Temkin, AOL's senior VP of mail said, 'We need another email address like we need another hole in the head.'
There. Fixed it for him.
So what the hell is "visual mail"? On a mildly unrelated topic, I think people should make the effort of getting their own domain so they don't end up tied to a service they don't want. You should never need another email address if you have control over it ... just change clients (or use multiple ones).
I'm thinking of buying AOL, but have only one dollar bills in my pocket. Do you think they can make change? I'm not sure AOL is worth $1.00.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Yeah, not going to be supported even by MS soon; but that's beside the point. It's EMAIL, for cryin' out loud. It ought to work with Lynx, or by sending raw HTTP requests vial Telnet. Actually, POP3 itself is rasonably accessed via Telnet. Webified anything in a terminal is really not practical.
In other words, all the Web 2 million.0 kewlness is the first strike against it.
The 2nd strike is that it just introduces another point of failure. "Is my Yahoo mail server down or is AOL down?" is not a question I want to be asking. Ever.
Sounds like WAY too much of a pain in the ass for me to put up with. For me, email is and will continue to be simple.
As an aggregator, isn't that what this new service is? Seriously I'm asking since I haven't RTFA.
I have my own domain, but I recently switched from using an open-source mail viewer to piping all my mail to a gmail account. I can sort and reply through Google and they are received and sent via my domain. Best of both I think.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
It's a good thing the Alto design team religiously checks deep into 0-ranked Slashdot discussion threads for feature requests.
hehe, it started around 1985 using pine at the university and I built up on it ;-)
I originally quoted the parent saying "I'll stick with what I have, thanks"
The idea was that I stuck with what I had since the 90s. I was in no way recommending my setup to anybody but it still works fine for me.
Ask rms about mailing webpages to himself to get in the mood;-) I swear I still use pine as described above although and I find it efficient. You can even use the mouse in Pine when in X !
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
It's an email client that can be configured with multiple accounts ... just like all the other ones.
I have several email addresses as I am sure many people do.
I have an Email address for my own consulting company. ;)
An Email address with a company whom I do a lot of work for
A personal Email address
A hacker address
The LAST thing I want to do is combine them and possibly make a mistake. I have different clients and web interfaces for each. I know when I am here on this computer that I am taking care of this particular business.
Definitely not needed here.
The "auto image" display will mean that spammers can determine active email addresses. This goes away from the previous trend where images are only diplayed if you explicitly download so that spammers would have no idea if james.bog121@gmail.com is a real email address or not.
Tor Mail:
http://www.tormail.org/
which leads to the Tor Hidden Service:
http://jhiwjjlqpyawmpjx.onion/
AOL, can you provide a hidden service to match? Aww, I didn't think so.
They had a completely hidden one but for some reason nobody signed up
Every single time, ever, that someone has told me that something would "change the way I work", it never has. Not once. Except in a case or two where it "changed the way I worked" by stopping me being able to work, and then eventually getting scrapped.
And every single thing that *HAS* genuinely changed the way I work has come not from marketers telling me that would be so but by a stealthy, insidious insertion of something quite simple into my daily life and then one day realising I couldn't do without it.
So, by that history, this looks like something I'll say "And?" to and then never hear of it again. Can I come back in 5 years and see if I'm wrong?
Since we were talking about AOL? You're "one stop shop" to the Interwebs, including their nice fancy proxies?
I am NOT a "one stop shop"! I would like you to stop insinuating that I am!
No, I think he was talking to me...
I am NOT a "one stop shop"!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0zgj2p7Ww4
Visual email?
As opposed to what? Voicemail? Braille-mail?