
Announcing the FastMail Calendar - sygma
http://blog.fastmail.fm/2014/06/23/announcing-the-fastmail-calendar/
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jstalin
I switched from gmail to fastmail about six months ago and I'm very happy.
It's fast, relatively cheap ($40 a year for 15 gigs of storage) and they
aren't scanning my email to serve up advertisements. The addition of calendar
is just another bonus that I'm immediately adopting.

Another great feature is the ability to use as many domains and email aliases
as you want. I have all of my custom domains set up with both send a receive
service, including DKIM. Also, if I ever need a throwaway email address, I
just set it up, send an email, and then delete the address.

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Dorian-Marie
Here is an actual screenshot of the calendar:
[https://www.fastmail.fm/static/homepage/images/calendar.png](https://www.fastmail.fm/static/homepage/images/calendar.png)

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toomuchtodo
I'd argue its a better presentation than Google Calendar, and I love Google
Calendar.

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Dorian-Marie
For comparaison:
[http://i.imgur.com/8i7w27C.png](http://i.imgur.com/8i7w27C.png)

I still prefer Google Calendar or Apple Calendar interface:

[https://www.apple.com/osx/apps/images/galleries/calendar_her...](https://www.apple.com/osx/apps/images/galleries/calendar_hero_2x.jpg)

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Oculus
What are the security benefits gained by using FastMail over Google (in the
context of a state-level eavesdropper)? Is it that FastMail is a smaller
target? If you take all your centralized information from Google and move it
over to FastMail, it's still centralized - what am I missing?

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bradfa
From a government spying perspective, I'd say there's no benefit. Fastmail
servers, at least for US customers are in the NYC area at nyi.net, iirc.

I imagine most customers (myself included) are using fastmail instead of
Google to avoid Google, or similar, not to avoid the governments.

~~~
tombrossman
This is exactly why I switched to Fastmail. It isn't for the 'tinfoil hat'
crowd, who already know to avoid any service with assets in the US. Some of us
think having an advertising company handle our email no longer makes sense.

I think anyone looking for a third-party commercial email service free from
government snooping is already off to a bad start.

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ppetty
This is great! Well done. And not just from the Google Apps alternative
perspective, the user interface is different. People might debate some of the
major differences; but the infinite or continuous calendar scrolling feature
along with the toolbar at the bottom makes navigating your calendar(s) easy.
It feels more natural than Google’s … The syncing was easy to set up too; and
will make transitioning off of Google a breeze.

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jackvalentine
I've been putting off switching away from google apps for my personal domain
until fastmail had the tripod of mail+contacts+calendar in place, now to wait
a couple of months for the initial bugs to be ironed out and it's happening.

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conradk
I've ben using beta.fastmail.fm since I signed up. The calendar has been in
Beta for months. Big bugs would most likely already have been fixed.

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jackvalentine
Always there is a difference between "bugs discovered in beta" and "bugs
discovered when you let your application loose on the wider public". I don't
have time to deal with bugs in my calendars, so will wait.

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sandstrom
Good to see someone taking up competition against Google/MS.

If only they'd move their servers to Iceland (they already have backups
there).

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winestock
There are only a handful of independent nations in the world. They are Russia,
China, Iran, North Korea, and "the international community."

Iceland is a part of the empire. I wish that it weren't so. I do sympathize
with your wish for privacy.

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dewey
This is awesome, especially the two-way sync with iCloud is really neat if you
want to use it on devices with no iCloud support.

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TarpitCarnivore
I was excited to see this, and it works quite well, my only wish is that I
could manage one calendar and have the changes push out to all connected
calendars.

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vayan
I'm waiting contact synchronisation and I'll only need google for the play
market ! pretty neat.

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dublinben
You should check out the alternative app store F-Droid. It is completely free
software apps, and all are Ad-free and high quality. There are alternatives or
replacements for just about anything you might want, and you don't need Google
anything.

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leejoramo
Very nice. Unfortunately for iCloud sync, you need to provide your Apple
iCloud account email and password. Not a very good security practice, but
Apple doesn't provide any other way to accomplish this.

Fastmail does use Google authentication to access the Google Calendar.

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garblegarble
What I'm really wanting is the ability to have completely separate IMAP
accounts for my various domains, but it's good to see they're adding
calendaring, that seemed like an odd omission

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hga
I know they've been working on it for a while, I remember reading at least one
progress report or the like.

They undoubtedly got diverted by being bought by Opera when they sold the
company to it in 2010 and did various things for it, then bought the company
back in September of last year. Now that they're again their own masters,
we've been seeing a lot of improvements ... and I myself am happy that I can
continue using their older "classic" UI because I don't think their New and
Improved one is, at least for myself and how I use it.

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ericcholis
This might be the feature that makes me switch my personal email.

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ericcholis
It's worth asking, is there a similar set of services that one could run on
their own? Controlling one's own data and all that...

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TarpitCarnivore
I guess you could try OwnCloud, but I'm unaware of it supports mail in any
capacity.

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Semaphor
OwnCloud's calendar doesn't support subscribing to changing calendars (like
Facebook event feed; you have to setup an automatic import manually).

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sinisterz06
This is excellent, I've been very happy since switching to FastMail and now
this just adds even more value. Keep it up FastMail!

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joelrunyon
I like this - really looking forward to a full featured google services
replacement coming out of them.

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2mur
Interested in switching off gmail. How are folks getting new email
notifications on mobile?

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keidian
I'm using fastmail and
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onegravity...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onegravity.k10.pro2&hl=en)
on push notifications, no issues at all. Very happy with it

