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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.
The standard MQ is preferable to all gmail appellations for another slightly different reason. I, like many of my fellow Columbians, do not go by my legal name. As I have said, Maria Elena is a long, rather tedious and fruity name, so for efficiency’s sake I go by Mariela, which is a Spanish contraction for the name. Informally I’m known as Mariela, but in classes and on paper work, I’m Maria Elena. If I had a gmail account mariaelena.quintana or maria.elena.quintana might confuse people who only know me as Mariela. Likewise if my email address were mariela.quintana, it might confuse professors and doctors and other more official types who don’t recognize my shorter name. Although my name is rather aqueous with all its variations, my initials are unchanging as initials are wont to be. MQ works for everyone.
Furthermore, at Columbia, the ingenious hybridization of the uni and email address maximizes efficiency. You don’t need to memorize some cryptic code as your student ID number and each time you give your UNI to someone at your dean’s office or the registrar or health services they immediately know your email. Another efficiency bonus point is that all public computers instantly link to the CubMail webpage. With CubMail, you avoid wasting time typing in the gmail url and waiting for the page to load. This is a huge help when you’re in a rush to print a paper or check your email.
Another perk of CubMail is the Columbia.edu part. Admittedly, it sometimes can feel like awkward name-dropping when you give out your email to people who don’t go here. But there’s also an element of CC pride to it too. Yes, indeed I’m proud to be MQ2139@Columbia.edu. Roar, Lions, Roar!
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25 Comments
@... the concepts of these articles are each good but some of them are simply poorly written…
the first one about english was however well-written (maybe since they have a lot of practice writing in that major?)
@alright gmail nerds, i’m one of you — but you seriously need to chill the fuck out and save all that vitrol for something worthwhile.
she likes cubmail and posted on bwog… not that big a deal. you don’t pay anything for the privilege of reading bwog (I know one of you is gonna say you pay it in some fraction of tuition but you’re full of shit), and yet you’re going off the deep end about incredibly trivial shit like mail client preferences.
@YEAH AMEN BUDDY! I JUST CHECKED MY CUBMAIL AND IT WASN’T SO BAD!
@ummm you might want to delete your name and email, as spam bots will get a hold of it soon.
@bah gmail does everything. google is god.
@uhh 1. was this a defense of the cubmail interface, or the idea of cubmail?
2. there is only one lion.
@yes there is only one lion in the song.
http://www.wikicu.com/School_songs#Roar.2C_Lion.2C_Roar
@You know what? Sarah Palin would be in defense of Butler Camping and Cubmail. You want to be associated with that?
@biggest disadvantage cubmail has no searching. that’s lame.
@err cubmail does have a search function. It isn’t as instant or easy as gmail’s, but it does exist.
@for reference an old article on how to set up gmail:
http://bwog.net/articles/exciting_things_to_do_with_your_email_besides_delete_everything_from_reslife
@ugh who let her publish this?
@hey at least you don’t have to deal with (Barnard) webmail. It’s a thousand times worse.
@banard barnard girls use their columbia.edu emails for job apps- true story
@Lion-O Use Thunderbird instead. It has all the advantages of cubmail, except in an actual usable interface.
@Devil's advocate Gmail, while awesome, does have a serious flaw when it comes to Cubmail. It takes QUITE a while ( approx. 1 hour) for message received in Cubmail to be automatically forwarded to a gmail account.
This doesnt mean much when it comes to public announcements, etc. but for class cancellations and say, real-time discussion with professors and classmates it does become a drag.
@... you haven’t setup filtering right. if you setup a forward at this link, it’s instantaneous:
http://uni.columbia.edu/filters
@are you kidding? who the hell…
…look. this article is in defense of…your uni. not cubmail, which has nothing redeeming about it whatsoever.
cubmail is one of the most atrociously-designed mail clients ive ever seen. actually, the worst. anyone with an ounce of sense has their cubmail forward to something like gmail or has a third-party application like thunderbird access their mail.
the only point in this article that directly addresses cubmail is that “that all public computers instantly link to the CubMail webpage. With CubMail, you avoid wasting time typing in the gmail url and waiting for the page to load. This is a huge help when you’re in a rush to print a paper or check your email.”
lets completely ignore the fact that cubmail takes far longer to load and ages to search. lets ignore that completely.
let just take that point at face value, as the only one referencing cubmail in this piece. the article then becomes in defense of…being lazy/writing like a third grader.
awesome.
great work, bwog.
@what stupid said Also, it’s Roar, Lion, Roar.
@No, it's Drill, Baby, Drill!
@yeah Drill baby drill for real
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-g3zax7O8A
@You betcha doggone it Maverick.
@the one good thing – and I mean literally the only good thing – about cubmail, is that you can write an email to xyz1234 and not put in the ‘@columbia.edu’ part, and it will send to the right address. That is useful in emailing a person you have never emailed before (Gmail will recall the address the next time).
Otherwise, this post just reflects a lack of having ever understood Gmail. You can change your display name to “MQ” or “Mariela Elena” if you want, very easily. It’s a good idea for an in defense of though.
@STUPID Ugh, where to even START. You can have all Columbia mail forwarded to Gmail and even have the outgoing address set as your Columbia address as well, so everything is essentially the same except for Cubmail’s god-awful interface. Secondly, why not just set up your Gmail account as mq2139 and save us your poorly-constructed logic?
Lastly, “mistook” should be replaced with “mistaken”.
@Be nice Your comment is rude, and I urge a reconsideration of its tenor.