Google Apps for Metafilter?

August 28, 2006 3:36 PM

Google apparently now provides email, calender, and IM services for your own domain. Do you think this would be a useful addition to MetaFilter?
posted by monju_bosatsu to Feature Requests at 3:36 PM (26 comments total)

This seems like an easy way to offer metafilter.com email addresses, as well as making it easy for users to communicate with each other and share calendars, for meetups and whatnot.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 3:44 PM on August 28, 2006

I checked this out when they first announced the domain email, but it was never clear to me if there was any API for it. Ideally, I'd like to write one line of code and suddenly everyone with a username gets a google account, instead of having to do anything by hand.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:45 PM on August 28, 2006

didn't Google buy MetaFilter a few years back??
posted by PenguinBukkake at 3:49 PM on August 28, 2006

Penguin, actually it was kuro5hin.org that bought MetaFilter back in 2002.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 4:04 PM on August 28, 2006

BTW, I thought that they would've fired Haughey by now...he must know people in high places to still run this place.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 4:05 PM on August 28, 2006

This sounds awesome. A google made solution to so many pony requests.

I would definitely like to have this implemented.
posted by dios at 4:08 PM on August 28, 2006

If there's any miscorrespondence between allowable email handles and allowable mefi handles, you'll have to do at least a little bit of coding—including a test and workaround for name collisions if two transformed-to-acceptable usernames are identical after cleanup.
posted by cortex at 4:19 PM on August 28, 2006

I think you can upload a CSV file of all your users, and that would be easy enough, but you'd have to redo it manually every time a bunch of new users joined. Which would suck.
posted by smackfu at 4:47 PM on August 28, 2006

I... I... Just Had An Idea...
*rushes off*
posted by boo_radley at 4:48 PM on August 28, 2006

I'm currently using Google's hosted email for my domain. The limitations are 25 user accounts (you can ask for more, but they are kind of hinting that they might charge in future), which can have unlimited aliases pointing at them (ie. [e-mail] and [e-mail] can both redirect mail to [e-mail]). However, there is no facility for aliases that do not point to a non-local account (ie. you can't make [e-mail] redirect email to [e-mail]).
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:53 PM on August 28, 2006

It's a normal GMail account, so you can do forwarding from within the account. Also, the group I'm associated with has 100 free ones :)
posted by onalark at 5:13 PM on August 28, 2006

"I would definitely like to have this implemented."
posted by dios

dios/monju sockpuppet shippers, start your engines!
posted by Eideteker at 6:06 PM on August 28, 2006

dios/monju sockpuppet shippers

Jesus. That's worse that FBOFW slash.
posted by mendel at 8:06 PM on August 28, 2006

There's really no way MetaFilter could realistically use the free version of this. I imagine even if Matt filled out the application/signup sheet, they'd say "umm, you're metafilter. How about we talk to you when we have our 'Premium' services active?"

On the other hand, maybe we'd get to test drive some stuff.

It's just an IM system and e-mail and calendars, though, do we really need those things? Calendars really have nothing to do with Metafilter, e-mail maybe but we already all have e-mail addresses or we couldn't have signed up. IM would be cute, but, eh.
posted by blacklite at 9:17 PM on August 28, 2006

https://www.google.com/a/

You know, that's a really shonky unsemantic URL, unless there's some ubergeeky meaning I can't parse out. Google's weird sometimes.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:07 AM on August 29, 2006

We have spaces on usernames. We have a user called !? (or backwards, whatever) We even have a cent-sign in a user name. This would involve at least a script to translate spaces into dots, remove accents, decide what to do with symbols. No way this last part can be completely automated (no satisfactory automated process I can think of would translate !? into a decent mail address).

IF all other problems raised had been solved, I think the only way matt could do it would be to have a form in which each user fills in his desired email address. Still, much more than a line of code.

That's why I say yay for single-word-lowercase-usernames!
posted by qvantamon at 7:30 AM on August 29, 2006

(no satisfactory automated process I can think of would translate !? into a decent mail address)

Are you forever unsatisfied? I think that "bangsnuh" would make a great email address, frankly.

Plus I like totally made this point already. METATALK DESTROYS YOU!
posted by cortex at 7:32 AM on August 29, 2006

IF all other problems raised had been solved, I think the only way matt could do it would be to have a form in which each user fills in his desired email address.

Eh, it's not that bad. Just find a regex that matches valid email addresses, and make only the people who fail that provide a new username if they want email.
posted by smackfu at 7:43 AM on August 29, 2006

That adds even more complexity to the project, though.
posted by boo_radley at 10:46 AM on August 29, 2006

That's why I say yay for single-word-lowercase-usernames!
GMail requires addresses to be at least 6 characters, so there's another thing your script is going to have to figure out.
posted by dg at 3:07 PM on August 29, 2006

ain't no thang, deegee
posted by cortex at 3:23 PM on August 29, 2006

I'm honestly kind of intrigued by the idea of putting together such a username filter now. Not even for any good reason—just as an exercise.
posted by cortex at 3:23 PM on August 29, 2006

don't you have songs to write and sell and CD comps to wrangle?
posted by terrapin at 5:13 PM on August 29, 2006

Oh, don't worry, I'm not actually going to do it—but allow me the gentle pleasing tingle of contemplation during an otherwise frenetic workday, won't you?
posted by cortex at 5:40 PM on August 29, 2006

no satisfactory automated process I can think of would translate !? into a decent mail address

Use an entity hashmap that substitutes email-friendly code strings for untranslateable characters.

! -> exclam
? -> ques
* -> astri
+ -> plus
% -> perc
' -> apos
[space] -> underscore
etc., etc., etc.

When building the email name, loop through valid characters and surround look-up characters with underscores.

[e-mail]

You could also use the UTF-8 character codes, but that could get really ugly since there's no "real world" symantics to it.

---

Alternatively, just have email addresses that are the user ID. I would be [e-mail]. Generating mailto: addresses would be dead simple.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:02 PM on August 29, 2006

If we got metafilter accounts, we could have jabber back!!!!!
posted by filmgeek at 7:06 PM on August 29, 2006