Leaving Google behind

[woodsmoke]

Hi
as to the voice recognition "storing" your voice, I don't think so, but emphasis is on the "think".

As I understand it, there are only two or three "speech recognition engines" that are in full play.

If it is on your computer, then yes it will listen to your voice and record it.

An example is the labourious stories that one had to read for DragonNaturallySpeaking.

However, not so for Microsith's "speech recognition", starting with Vista.

The engine for MS requires an almost SILLY set of interactions, just five minutes or so of saying "i like talking to my computer", "talking to my computer is fun". etc.

AND it was almost scary about how good it could interpret what it said.

But to the point of the question about storing your voice.

I use the voice thing on my android almost constantly and it ALWAYS gets the same words wrong, seemingly a lot of simpler words, but very complex words, such as deoxyribonucleic acid, it gets with alacrity.

HOWEVER>>>>>>....I think that the translation is actually done "in the cloud" because I will sometimes get an "cannot access server"... and the voice thing does not work for a while then does.

So....I think that your speech is "transposed to text" ...on the cloud and probably not "recorded", probably because even a zetabyte system couldn't store all of it, but...it "could" be recorded" if someone in the cloud stream wanted to intercept it and record it.

As to an alternate mail system...

I used to run mediacom as cable and internet. And, I had "@mediacom.net" as my very personal e-mail, I didn't use it except from my home computer. And do not know about a phone version of it.

woodsmoke

[dmeyer]

I've made it a general rule for me to avoid anything that has "Google" on it like the plague.
For Firefox, I recommend the plug-ins "NoScript" and "DoNotTrackMe" to block crap like googleanalytics.

Google's terms of use are downright scary. They claim ownership of all content you submit using any of their services (Chrome, Google Mail etc.) and reserve the right to do whatever they want with it (selling it, modifying it as the please, whatever). If you use Google Mail, it's not your mail anymore, it's Google's mail.

Not defending Google but all cloud companies have similar TOS because they need them to provide their service. See Ubuntu One, SkyDrive, DropBox and all the others.

[Shimapan]

I've made it a general rule for me to avoid anything that has "Google" on it like the plague.
For Firefox, I recommend the plug-ins "NoScript" and "DoNotTrackMe" to block crap like googleanalytics.

Google's terms of use are downright scary. They claim ownership of all content you submit using any of their services (Chrome, Google Mail etc.) and reserve the right to do whatever they want with it (selling it, modifying it as the please, whatever). If you use Google Mail, it's not your mail anymore, it's Google's mail.

By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.
11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may
(a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and
(b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.
11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

[Stosskraft]

You never seen Hushmail?

No I haven't. Will check it out, thanks.

Is it as safe as they claim?

http://www.cybercrimereview.com/2012...d-e-mails.html

I am using Zoho calendar now,and they offer mail also. GMX seems alright but I still prefer gmails conversation interface.

I came across this yesterday https://startmail.com/ by the guys who do startpage (mt favorite now), looks interesting, but on FB they said is was not going to be free. I dont mind paying for the security, but I want a nicer interface that the standard outlook/GMX style .... some options would be nice.

You never seen Hushmail?

[SteveRiley]

My ad blocking script will also thwart Google Analytics.

[Simon]

Google has an "opt out" plugin for Chrome. Which according to the experts (I am not an expert) will not block but limits the amounts of data sent. Also they have a disclaimer that the plugin only works, if the webpage you visit allows it to work. Sounds to me like a waste of time put there to give user a false sense of privacy. Meanwhile some Windows users have added these two lines to the hosts file to detour the data;

127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com

The Linux host file is found in the /etc directory off the root. It doesn't have a file extension and you need root access to edit the file. If you disable Javascript then you might not get a page to function. Unless there is better opinion this was my opt out for analytics. With Google, Bing, and Yahoo grabbing all the internet real estate, it would be next to impossible to "dump" any of them. So now the question is; Are you browsing the internet, or is the internet browsing you?

[jlittle]

Well guys the real "scary thought" here is with Google Analytics, you can't really leave it behind...

I try to block it (and many other trackers) with NoScript, is that not effective?

Regards, John Little

[Simon]

Well guys the real "scary thought" here is with Google Analytics, you can't really leave it behind. Other web pages, not even owned by Google, run this to gather and report information. Google has their so called "opt out" plugin but I have my doubts. I use Yahoo email and for a clean search engine (more or less) use http://www.altavista.com it is a Yahoo search. But it gives you the Google clean look to it and I don't stall out waiting for analytics to upload my data.

When my Yahoo Email gets bogged down with spam, I switch to my alternate email, inform my friends, and I put up my vacation response but tell the sender they have reached an email no longer in service. After some time I return to my original email account and spam emails are very rare. Also I never add people to my contacts list, I keep their email in a draft. This assures me that Yahoo isn't using my contacts list to spam my friends.

[Stosskraft]

I am using Zoho calendar now,and they offer mail also. GMX seems alright but I still prefer gmails conversation interface.

I came across this yesterday https://startmail.com/ by the guys who do startpage (mt favorite now), looks interesting, but on FB they said is was not going to be free. I dont mind paying for the security, but I want a nicer interface that the standard outlook/GMX style .... some options would be nice.

[blackpaw]

Does GMX support integrated Calendar and Addressbook with an open API? couldn't see anything about that onsite.

[SteveRiley]

I understand what you mean by running it through the different emails. Have you tried fastmail? I am really happy with gmails interface, the conversation view... I really didnt like the GMX interface.

I'm unfamiliar with GMX. I gave up Google (mostly) some time ago, starting with running my own mail server and domain to replace Gmail.

Startpage on my PC and goduck on my phone, I am not sure but I read that the less services I can use, the less information they have.

Startpage, when I was using it a lot about a year ago, sometimes showed fewer relevant results than Google directly. Maybe I should check it again.

I guess I cannot really dump google if I have an android phone? though I am minimizing the amount of products I am suing with them...

The only Google things remaining on my phone is the Play Store, and my Google account so that I can use the Store. I deleted the browser app and use a combination of Dolphin and Firefox. I deleted the Gmail app; I use Maildroid for personal email. I use the regular Android mail and calendar apps for work email and calendar (connected to an Exchange server), and I use the regular Android calendar app for personal calendar. Sticking with a single calendar app merges their contents together for display, which is handy. I deleted the Google search app and replaced it with DuckDuckGo. I use the Android Logging Test App to kill various loggers scattered about the operating system.

You could go completely Google-less on an Android phone if you root it, install a build without "GApps" (the collection of Google Android apps), and select an alternate app store.

Is it true they have a copy of my voice if I use the voice thing to speak on my android phone?

Uh, what "voice thing"?

[SteveRiley]

KIO slaves are one of those little KDE goodies that I keep forgetting about. Just tried this now -- very cool! In my case, I had to use imaps:// rather than imap:// because my server allows only SSL-protected connections. Dolphin prompted for my password, and my mail folders appeared. I could open individual emails with either KMail or Kate. Neat.

[dmeyer]

Configure an IMAP account in KMail that points to your Gmail. Configure a second IMAP account in KMail that points to your GMX account. Then just drag-and-drop messages from your GMail account folders into your GMX account folders.

Another fun way, and possibly even better if he just wants to back his files up, would be to use the imap KIO-slave. So essentially you could type imap://username@your.mail.server/ This way he could just copy and paste everything to a local destination and have a perfect back-up without ever even touching kmail. This is ideal if GMX is self hosted like roundcube and you can copy it into an accessible directory.

Though, if he just wants to move them across then your way is the easiest/best by a long margin.

P.S. There is a kio-slave for imap, imaps, pop3, pop3s, smtp, smtps and mbox.

[Stosskraft]

I understand what you mean by running it through the different emails. Have you tried fastmail? I am really happy with gmails interface, the conversation view... I really didnt like the GMX interface.

I guess I cannot really dump google if I have an android phone? though I am minimizing the amount of products I am suing with them. Startpage on my PC and goduck on my phone, I am not sure but I read that the less services I can use, the less information they have.

Is it true they have a copy of my voice if I use the voice thing to speak on my android phone?