I’ve received email from about half a dozen people in the last month who are victims of the shutdown, or impending shutdown of the @Home network, which was providing cable Internet branding and technical services to Rogers, Cogeco and Shaw cable systems across Canada.
All of my correspondents had email addresses @home.com, and all of them were forced to change to @rogers.com, @shaw.ca, and so on.
This is annoying. Not annoying to me — it’s just a quick change in my email address book — but annoying to them, I’m certain. You have to send out an email to everyone you know, and you’re certain to miss some people, so you’ll lose track of them or they of you. In some ways it’s worse than having to change your phone number — at least the phone company will forward your calls for 6 months.
I’ve had to go through this myself: I started out Internet life as caprukav@atlas.cs.upei.ca, then was peter@crafts-council.pe.ca, then peter@isn.net, then peter@digitalisland.com. Finally, when the company became Reinvented, I became “peter at rukavina.net” and vowed never to change my email address again. So far so good.
So a word to the wise (and not only the @Home refugees): it’s quite a simple matter to set yourself up with your own domain name. I deal with a registrar in Edmonton called Trinic, but there are innumerable others that can offer you the same services. Trinic will let you register your own .com domain name for $20/year, and will forward email from someaddress@yournewdomain.com to an email address of your choice for $34/year.
That’s a good deal, and something everybody should consider seriously. Not only does it mean that you can keep the same email address for life, but it also means that you’re no longer shackled to a particular Internet provider just to keep your email address. It also means that you can dispense with insane email addresses like @pei.sympatico.ca which never should have seen the light of day in the first place.
By the way, if your last name happens to be Rukavina, I can offer you an @rukavina.net, @rukavina.ca or @rukavina.info email address at no charge. Just let me know.
About This Blog
I am Peter Rukavina and this is my blog. I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.
To learn more about me, read my /now, look at my bio, listen to audio I’ve posted, read presentations and speeches I’ve written, or get in touch (peter@rukavina.net is the quickest way).
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Comments
Good points Peter. I started
Good points Peter. I started writing a reply and as it became unmanageably long, I decided it would be more appropriate to post on my own site rather than here on yours. Please give it a read.
Please pardon my hijacking your post ;-)
You can get domains
You can get domains registered for a cool 15$CDN at
http://www.registerfly.com and their service is ridiculously good. They will manage all of your DNS records AND do free e-mail forwarding… for 15$/year… No better registrar around. (I also transferred all of my domains to them,. All I did was sign a work-auth form and they did all of the legwork)
What happens when the company
What happens when the company that you register your domain name with goes out of business? Is it likely you can keep the same address and hand over to another company the responsibility for forwarding your mail and “maintenance” (whatever that involves) of your domain?
Two points folks:One: Be
Two points folks:
One: Be careful of discount registries. There have been times when domains have been lost because the central registrar did not get the form before someone else (later on) registered the same domain. We register enough of these to have met this issue a couple of times.
Two: ISN has had a standard offer that we will forward email anywhere for $24.95 a year. I make no pretention that that’s anywhere nearly as good as a domain of your own, but if you have to move, or get sick of me, you CAN, at least, stay in touch with your email until you get it switched, or if content with the fee, keep it for life. I have long felt if my major competitor did this I’d have about 200 new accounts in one month to cope with.
Anyway, no one gets “stuck” by using an ISN name. In fact, doesn’t peter@isn still bounce to you somewhere? … now, how much for back fees on that…?
I just received a change of
I just received a change of address notice from a “home” subscriber - and when I tried to reply to his new address, the email was returned. So I sent it to the “home” address and it went.
All of which took up time I didn’t wish to spend fooling around with email addresses - which is to say, count me in for the permanent email address.
And I like to think I speak for all simpletons who tend to be easily flummoxed by technology and would think more kindly of the whole business if it was just EASY.
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