The froshpeople seem to have gotten the hang of things already, but you old fogies who still use CubMail directly are in for a rude awakening. Over the last few weeks, CUIT has been shuffling your shit in preparation for the move to Columbia’s new Google-powered platform, LionMail, on July 31st. That’s tomorrow. To avoid adding one more headache to your weekday hangover, here’s what you need to know come morning:

• As many of you who have already evolved beyond the troglodytic CubMail likely already noticed, Gmail users can no longer use their UNI as an alternate e-mail address.
• In a similar vein, those of you sneaky enough to have created a UNI@columbia.edu personal Google account will have encountered the conflicting account alert some time in the last few weeks.
• Any e-mails larger than 25MB were not transferred to LionMail. To move any such monolithic messages to LionMail, sort your CubMail inbox by message size and forward them to yourself tomorrow!
• If you want to set up LionMail access on your mobile device or an external client, you’ll need a special device password (distinct from your UNI password). CUIT has prepared step-by-step instructions for configuring most popular mobile and e-mail client platforms.
• Though LionMail will give you access to a university wide directory of UNIs, CubMail address book entries with multiple contacts will not be copied to your LionMail address book. To re-create them, copy the e-mail addresses into a text file and then paste them into a new contact group in LionMail.
• LionMail comes with the incredibly powerful Google Calendar; check out CUIT’s introduction to the system, including how to import your New CourseWorks schedule (!!!)
• Obviously undergraduates without prior access won’t be able to log-in until tomorrow, but the link for your bookmarks is the ever-straightforward lionmail.columbia.edu and sign-in is with your UNI and UNI password. If you really want the user manual for first-time login, check out CUIT’s guide.

The effect this will have on your life if you already use forwarding

In an e-mail sent out earlier this afternoon, CUIT’s LionMail team informs you that they have their grubby hands on your data and they’re doing some fancy new-fangled shuffling—but don’t worry, they’ll be gentle:

Dear Undergraduate Student,

We hope you are excited about your upcoming move to LionMail @ Columbia.

On July 31 you will be start to use [sic] your new LionMail account. Beginning July 13 your existing CubMail messages and folders will be migrated to LionMail. This process will be transparent and will not affect your use of CubMail or any other email clients.

Before the process of moving your data begins, please review some brief information: <http://cuit.columbia.edu/lionmail-pre-transition-steps>

If you have any questions or concerns about the transition, or any other information, please contact the LionMail help team at askcuit@columbia.edu.

Sincerely,

The LionMail team

Semi-Transparent Square via Wikimedia Commons

This little Cub has no idea what's about to hit him.

Knowing that real lions graduate without doing the swim test, Bwog too was titillated by the prospect of casting Cubmail into the Hudson and watching it drown. But first, we had some questions about the planned switch to Gmail. Columbia Student Affairs’ Director of Communications and Special Projects Katherine Cutler answers.

Does Dean Shollenberger have any comments as to why or how this decision was made?

The decision to make the switch from CubMail to Gmail and Google Calendar came after much consideration and conversations with student leadership, various offices across the University, and the deans of Columbia College, SEAS and General Studies. Columbia been in discussions with Google regarding the new email system and contract for over a year.

What should Columbia students expect from the changes?

Beginning with a pilot phase in March, this transition from CubMail to Gmail will consist of a three phase migration process.

• During all transitions, students will keep their same email address and still rely on UNIs and passwords to access Gmail.
• iPhones and other smart phones can be configured by the students to access Gmail and calendaring, following directions to be provided.
• Email clients like Outlook and Apple’s mail client can be configured by the students, again following directions to be provided.
• The CUIT Help Desk will support Gmail and Google calendar, and a user adoption website will be able to answer many questions.

When will they be in effect?

The pilot phase of approximately 80 people, including students selected by Deans Shollenberger and Halvorson in partnership with student government from SEAS, CC and GS, will begin in March. After the pilot, there will be two other phases. Phase one of the migration will begin in the late spring 2012 and involve moving approximately 1,000 students. During phase two, all remaining undergraduate students will be moved to Gmail and Google calendaring by end of 2012.

Cubmail’s spirit animal via Wikimedia Commons

Bad news, friends: we now have one less thing to bitch about. By the end of 2012, your Columbia-provided email address will change over from Cubmail to Gmail. That’s right—no more of this.

According to Spec, to start, “50 to 80 students [...] will be selected for the trial run by Shollenberger.” What we want to know is, to whom should our parents make the check out?

2012 Update: Columbia has finally made it easy! Just go the forwarding page and put in your gmail address.

Freshpeople (and regularpeople just a little behind the times), pay attention! Being a Columbia student means dealing with email. Craploads of it. If you haven’t switched from Cubmail to Gmail yet, something is terribly wrong. In case you haven’t realized yet, Cubmail is a dinosaur in today’s technology landscape, and you’d do yourself a huge favor by getting a colorful Gmail account from our friends at Google. Why? “Infinite” storage space, rapid-fire messages that don’t clutter your inbox, the best spam filter available, a constantly updated library of experimental new features… and of course, Gchat. For the past few years to the benefit of freshpeople everywhere, Bwog has been posting adapted versions of Mark Holden’s September 2006 guide for how to forward your Cubmail to Gmail, and we’ve brought it up to date again for your sanity’s sake.

Step 1: Join the club

First, you need to get a Gmail account if you don’t have one already, and shame on you if you don’t. To sign up for an account, simply visit http://gmail.com and click the large “Create an account” button in the bottom-right corner. We’ll wait while you sign up and read the all-important Terms of Service; this one is super-long.

…Done? Good! Next, we need to forward all your Columbia mail to Gmail. To do that, log in with your UNI and password to INGO, a way to manage your Columbia email account. Once logged in, at the top of the page, click the “Forward” button. In the big box shown, enter your Gmail address. Since we don’t want your Cubmail quota to be filling up, uncheck “Keep a copy of messages in this account.”

See how difficult it is dealing with Columbia’s mail interface? Luckily, this is the last time you’ll ever do so. Say your bitter goodbyes; if you feel any sort of nostalgia, slap yourself in the face right now.

Learn about sending emails from your Columbia address after the jump.

If only this were the bike-sharing we meant.

The Bloomberg administration has plans for this cool bike-sharing thing, and they think they have a plan to deal with theft and graffiti.  Talk about idealistic! (NYT)

There was an unusually violent fight at Rikers, and officials won’t say why.  Bwog suspects inmates are understandably upset that Weezy is gone. (NBC New York)

Other people are picking up on the CUSJP checkpoint protest/counter-protest.  We’re a forum for dialogue!  (YNetNews)

CUIT is considering switching to Google Apps, but apparently they  “[haven’t] heard many student complaints about CubMail.”  Also, apparently some people still use CubMail at all instead of forwarding.  Come on, people! (Spec)

Update: Those new TSA scanners may cause cancer, according to a Columbia doc.  (The Consumerist)

Image via Wikimedia

2011 update: Some things have changed. Check out the latest guide!

Fresh-people, it’s the first day of school. If you haven’t switched from Cubmail to Gmail yet, something is terribly wrong. Being a Columbia student means dealing with e-mail. Craploads of it. You have an account through the school, but you’d do yourself a favor by getting a colorful Gmail account from our friends at Google. Why? Infinite storage space, accessibility from any computer, rapid-fire messages that don’t clutter your inbox, the best spam filter available, and a fun chat feature! Bwog dug through our archives to find Mark Holden’s September 2006 guide for how to forward your Cubmail to Gmail, and we’ve brought it up to date for your sanity’s sake.

Step 1: Join the club

First, you need to get a Gmail account, if you don’t have one already, and shame on you if you don’t. To sign up for an account, simply visit http://gmail.com and click the large “Create an account” button in the bottom-right corner. We’ll wait while you sign up and read the all-important Terms of Service; this one is super-long.

…Done? Good! Next, we need to forward all your Columbia mail to Gmail. To do that, go to http://uni.columbia.edu, click “Login to Manage Your UNI Account,” and log in. Once logged in, click “Email Forwarding” under “Configure Mail Settings.” At the top of this page, click the “Forward” button. In the big box shown, enter your Gmail address. Since we don’t want your Cubmail quota to be filling up, uncheck “Keep a copy of messages in this account.” 2011 update: CUIT completely changed the way you set up e-mail forwarding! Now you have to log in with your UNI and password to INGO, a way to manage your Columbia email account. Once logged in, at the top of the page, click the “Forward” button. In the big box shown, enter your Gmail address. Since we don’t want your Cubmail quota to be filling up, uncheck “Keep a copy of messages in this account.”

See how difficult dealing with Columbia’s mail interface is? Luckily, this is the last time you’ll ever do so. Say your bitter goodbyes; if you feel any sort of nostalgia, slap yourself in the face right now. Learn about sending emails from your Columbia address after the jump.

Welcome back to SocketHop, a newish, occasional feature in which we seek to help you with your technology.  This week, we take Gmail and make it even better.

A horrifying example of an outdated electronic mail message client.

Just say no.  To drugs, unless it’s Adderol; to sex, unless you paid for it; to Cubmail, unless Gmail is down.  And even then it’s a tough decision to make.

We at Bwog recieve hundreds of emails every week and we would drown if it weren’t for the geniuses in Mountain View.

If you haven’t already, fetch all your Columbia email through Gmail.  It’s quite easy to do; here’s a nifty tutorial.  Benefits include threaded conversations, simple and powerful organization, and the constant distraction of Gchat.

Using the incredible tools found in Gmail Labs, we’re going to show you some ways to make Gmail even more powerful and effective for managing all those emails from the CCE.  Offline emailing, multiple inboxes, and automated organization after the jump. (more…)

For those of you who were wondering why Gmail looks a little funky, fear not. The change will cut down on the amount of time you can possibly spend organizing your email. Don’t worry, you’ll find other ways to procrastinate.

If you do use “Labels” in Gmail (like folders, except that messages can belong to multiple labels instead of just one folder) you’ll probably be jumping for joy at this development. You’ll remember with a grimace how involved the whole process used to be. You had to click Labels, select the one you want, and then click �Archive.� Oh, the wasted time of our young lives.

No more archiving! One fewer clicks! Just select the label and you�re done. And shortcuts (L for Labels, M for Move to � make sure you have Keyboard shortcuts enabled) reduce the necessary clicks one further. Keystrokes minimized by the auto-complete feature � meaning you type R-I and it knows you mean to assign the label �Richard Bulliet and his curse words.�
(more…)

In light of the tragic Cubmail Outrage, there have been several requests for us to re-run our tutorial on how to forward your Cubmail to your Gmail account. So, we proudly present “Better Living Through Gmail” by Mark Holden, way back from September 2006: 

Being a Columbia student means dealing with e-mail. Craploads of it. You have an account through the school, but you’d do yourself a favor by getting a colorful Gmail account from our friends at Google. Why? Infinite storage space, accessibility from any computer, rapid-fire messages that don’t clutter your inbox, the best spam filter available, and a fun chat feature! Bwog staffer Mark Holden offers this guide to the best e-mail system out there.

Step 1: Join the club 

First, you need to get a Gmail account. (If you already have one, skip to the next paragraph.) As we’ll see shortly, your account name doesn’t matter, so sign up for whatever’s available. If you have a cell phone (you do have one, right? you are a college student, right?), you can sign up directly at www.gmail.com; if you don’t, you need to find a friend to invite you; if that fails, try emailing hottchik6969@gmail.com for one (read on to find out); if all of the above fail, look here for more options. So get Gmail and come back when you’re done. Bookmark this page if necessary. I’ll wait…

…Done? Good! Next, we need to forward all your Columbia mail to Gmail. To do that, log in to Cubmail, go to options, then delivery settings, then “edit your delivery settings,” then “edit your email delivery settings,” then “Login to edit your UNI account,” then about 2/3rds down click “Email forwarding.” (Do you still wonder why you’re switching? Good grief.) Enter your new Gmail address and click save. Phew! (more…)

Welcome back to Bwog’s latest feature, “In Defense Of…” Here, a writer defends something that most students consider useless, inferior, or downright loathsome. In doing so, Bwog hopes to bring you a new perspective, and give the subject the appreciation it deserves…or not.   This time, you guessed it, it’s CubMail.

Although google is taking over the world and accruing more and more gmail fanatics by the hour, there remain a few traditional CubMail users. I am proud to be one among them.

The simplicity of CubMail is what I like best. The terseness of the email addresses it provides lends itself to people with long, cumbersome, hard to spell names. With CubMail, Maria Elena Quintana becomes a tidy MQ2139.  To follow the gmail trend, I would have to go with some like mariaelena.quintana, which eliminates the all important space between my first and second name and leaves me with stuck with an unpronounceable string of vowels in the middle. If I threw in an additional dot, I would get maria.elena.quintana, which is more aesthetically pleasing than the former but ultimately just as confusing. In this situation, Elena could easily be mistook for my middle name, which would leave me as Maria and cause an identity crisis among other confusing things.

(more…)

The alcohol-fueled, after-bar emailing session! A venerated tradition that’s worse than a drunken phone call because it involves spelling and it’s archived, forever.

But, as Gawker reported, one American Hero/Gmail Engineer has designed a program that will prevent you from sending drunk emails. 

It’s called “Mail Goggles” and it harnesses the power of simple arithmetic to keep you from embarrassing yourself.

When activated, Mail Goggles will gently remind you that “it’s that time of day,” and will then ask you to solve a series of math problems before allowing you to send an email. You can set it to only do so late at night, and even switch around the difficulty of the problems.

And speaking of brilliant Google features, the company has honored their tenth anniversary by bringing back their index from 2001. Put in a search, and it responds like it’s 2001. For example: Meet a young upstart from Illinois named Barack Obama. 

Free TimesSelect is here with the wave of your Columbia/Barnard email address.

And although you have to give your CU email to the Times, (and to all your professors and Michelle Diamond and Lee Bollinger and Austin [!] Quigley), that doesn’t mean you have to deal with CubMail, Columbia’s the homage to 2002′s latest technologies. After the jump is Mark Holden’s guide to forwarding email to Gmail. It ran about a year ago and remains some of the most usable and earnest advice Bwog’s ever given. (more…)

Political Science Professor David Epstein showed up on a friend of Bwog’s G-chat contact list at 12:30 AM.

His away message: “funniest site I’ve seen in a while: http://blackpeopleloveus.com/”