research system where emails w/ inline pics are the base

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

Normally an email forum like Yahoogroups or Google groups (others are Topica, BigTent, etc) is very good for archiving information, since each email = 1 url and the urls can have their Linkman keywords.  Thus, once you know the url (navigate to the page and bookmark) and add some keywords the material can be re-found easily. And the art of composing and sending is very quick using Eudora or any RTF email compose, combined with Abbyy Screenshot Reader (a $10 product, which has the OCR option when desired, to transform the pic text, when appropriate).

However, one limitation is hard to address. Inline .jpgs, can be an integral part of such emails.  When people receive them in the mail, through the forum (if they enable RTF which in Yahoogroups is "attachments") they show up fine (generally).

However the online Archive system of Yahoogroups, the one you would link to, is not designed to show the inline .jpg.  Instead it leaves a blank space.  So far, I do not know that any email group handles this properly, although I do plan to recheck.  The limitation of Yahoogroups on this is well-known, and work-arounds are clumsy, such as using box.net or Flickr or attachments.  All of which defeats the purpose of ... quick, easy and simple pics in each email (not the specialty, carefully done cases where I find Box.net or Flickr can be superb).

Now among the group forum moderator lists, and my own experementation, I am trying to determine if anything is really good with any email forum host.  So far, nothing.

However, what about alternatives like Evernote or Onenote or some Web Archiving systems ?  Do you know of any way to accomplish the same end ?  Here is the key:

Start with : email with RTF and inline .jpgs, composed with your home email editor.
Send the email: to some place.
And have the url reasonably easily accessible for that very same email, and have it show up as sent.

Any help accomplishing this, or coming up with an alternative method of accomplishing he same general :
(Does not have to be email.)

COMPOSE -- SEND -- LINK with KEYWORDS ... the goal... using any tools.

Please share away.

Thanks

Shalom,
Steven

[Renegade]

I'm a tad confused. (I don't use those groups though...)

By inline, do you mean just any image in the email, or a cid multi-part encoded image embedded in the email itself (as opposed to being linked to)? Is this web based? RTF doesn't display in a browser, so I think that's just plain old HTML (being called RTF).

Have you looked into listserv software? There are lots of them out there. They've been in use for time immemorial (internet-wise that is).

A lot only allow text...

MailMan: http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/features.html or http://www.list.org/

This might help: http://librarysupportstaff.com/4creategroup.html

Subetha? http://code.google.com/p/subetha/

A PCWorld article on the topic: http://www.pcworld.com/article/131747/mailbag_open_source_software_mailing_lists.html

Does any of that help?

I'm not sure if any meet what you are looking for.

[IainB]

@Steven Avery: I think either I misunderstand your post, or you have got it slightly wrong. You can already get what you seem to require here.

Emails sent/forwarded/posted to a Google groups forum show up almost exactly like the email - i.e., displaying any embedded images, and with icons for attachments. The attachment icons can be clicked on and the attachment either displayed in Google docs or downloaded to your client PC.

[Steven Avery]

Hi,

Thanks. I thought I had checked Google groups a year or two again.  I will check again.  If they do it, I am in clover city.

Later I will try to take a picture of one and show you what I mean, for those who find my verbiage explanatory a tad stultifying.  A picture is worth ...

This is simply dropping a .jpg pic or two into an email (i.e inline as opposed to either attachments or on the web with a pointer) and sending it out.

It looks like embedded may be the more techie accurate word than inline. I am trying to avoid anything with attachments or hosting, simply direct pics viewable.

Shalom,
Steven

[wraith808]

However, what about alternatives like Evernote or Onenote or some Web Archiving systems ?  Do you know of any way to accomplish the same end ?  Here is the key:

Start with : email with RTF and inline .jpgs, composed with your home email editor.
Send the email: to some place.
And have the url reasonably easily accessible for that very same email, and have it show up as sent.

Any help accomplishing this, or coming up with an alternative method of accomplishing he same general :
(Does not have to be email.)

COMPOSE -- SEND -- LINK with KEYWORDS ... the goal... using any tools.

I haven't actually tried to send rtf with embedded jpg to evernote, so that's the one bit that you'll have to research yourself, but evernote does give a unique e-mail address to send notes to in order to get them to show up on evernote, and you can set tags in that e-mail.  For more info on this feature, see https://support.evernote.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=547

As far as the link to a note, if the notebook is private, the links would have to be shared individually, i.e. you have to manually share it to get that link to work.  If the notebook is public, I don't think you have that step.  If it's just for you, then even the regular link will work- you just have to be signed in first.

HTH

[Steven Avery]

Hi,

I tried Google Groups. The mail goes to the receiver fine, identical to Yahoogroups.  Then the big issue is the archiving. Where it is better than Yahoogroups, but it converts the embedded .jpg to an attachment .jpg.  So the result is very different, especially if you have 3 or 4 pics in an email.  (You do not end up with one readable letter in the same format as people who receive the email). I will consider whether it might make sense anyway.

Hmm.. the pic does show up properly within a gmail account.  If the gmail account allows direct links to an email that would do the job.  This could apply to any web-based email that receives properly. However, I have never heard of that feature.

=========================

Evernote: I know that Evernote makes it easy to mail an email to your note, a very nice feature.  However the setting tags is not as versatile as an email forum, where you can simply bookmark a url into Linkman and have tags integrated with your web url info on the same topic. (I did not explain that earlier.) In Evernote any time you want to access the info you would have to go into the program environment and taggify. It is probably worth a trial to see the comfort level, overall it may be a fine way to approach the issue of research-organization, even if different from my initial idea.

=========================

Are there any email systems that give each email a disk file ?  (I would only use it for this research project, not multi-thousands of emails).  If so, the individual emails could be dragged-and-dropped into Linkman and that would work pretty good. This is a different idea, trying to do everything locally through email.   I could try this manually in Eudora, although it is a bit of a kludge.  Receive the emails into singular folders.  However none of this will work unless the email program knows how to take parameters, from a path, in a special way that directly brings up that folder.  That is asking a lot.  It might be an interesting project for a Bat! type.

Note: then I tried Gmail -- above.  That is more hopeful for this, since it already is url based, if they would just have a "one-email one-url" feature. 

=========================

And I could pose the question to the various WebArchive programs. Can they receive information and go from INPUT email ---> OUTPUT disk file. (Probably not, since they want to work in their native format, not thrashing hundreds of disk files.)

Steven

[wraith808]

In Evernote Any time you want to access the info you would have to go into the program environment and taggify.

I don't understand this line.  What do you mean by "taggify"?

[Steven Avery]

Hi,

When you enter the Evernote environment, you would navigate to the issues you want from tags, rather than by clicking a bookmark url (that you get to from tags in Linkman).

I see you can create the tags in the subject line, which is sufficient for that end.

Yes, it is an interesting idea in its own right, a lot better than many alternatives, so I will try it. However, not exactly what I am most hoping to accomplish (one email --> one url).

I have about 1000 of these emails on a topic, right now I access them in Eudora search, which is fairly capable, up to a point.  My goal is to improve it and allow access to a 3rd-party collaborator by direct url, short of a server or TeamViewer type of thing.

===================================

I just found this note:

"I have gmail. Each email opened has a unique website address so you can return to the email using a link. "

So there is such a feature, apparently.
Research in process.

===================================

Ok. That works.
That might be as good as I can get, it is as it is, what I need.

Set up a special Gmail account (account pw ok for collaborators). Mail to the special forum (probably Google groups rather than Yahoogroups but that is not a big factor).  Let the mail go the gmail account, and it can also forward back to my own inbox, or go directly from the forum.

Go online into gmail, with Linkman open, run down the emails and assign the keywords (often the subject line) in Linkman. For automation in setup consider a macro but not a big issue.

You also end up with a google search that is probably comparable to Eudora search. Place all the emails sent (or received, gmail forwards nicely) from/to the forum in their own Eudora email box for redundancy and for whichever searches better for a specific need.  (Eudora might be better for composing anew, that is improving and replacing.)

I know a lot of this might seem odd, however I do think this will help me a lot. Especially since I want to make the urls available to a research collaborator or two.

Steven

[wraith808]

Each evernote note has its own unique url in addition to the tag url.  I'm still not sure if thats the missing piece you were looking for, but there you go.

[Steven Avery]

Hi.

Ok, so Evernote I should try, if each email becomes a note ?

Then, I have one that should work, Gmail, and one to try, Evernote.

Problem reasonably solved. I'll next report back on the Evernote try.

btw, the Yahoogroups users have been on YG to have better archiving on this aspect, without success, making an official request thread.  Not sure if Googlegroups have had discussions about replacing the attachment archiving with embedded archving when receiving such an email.

Steven

[IainB]

@Steven Avery:

I tried Google Groups. The mail goes to the receiver fine, identical to Yahoogroups.  Then the big issue is the archiving. Where it is better than Yahoogroups, but it converts the embedded .jpg to an attachment .jpg...

... the pic does show up properly within a gmail account.

That doesn't seem to be quite correct, as proved by the following tests:
Test 1: Using Gmail, I just went through the process of dragging and dropping a .jpg image file into an email, and sending it to a Google group.
Results:
The .jpg image file showed clearly in the email during compose and was NOT registered as an attached file.
The .jpg image file shows clearly as an embedded file in the email posted to the Google group, and right-clicking on it shows the filename "image.jpeg".
The .jpg image does not show in the "sent" email in Gmail, is NOT registered as an attached file, but is represented by an icon embedded in the text of the email, and right-clicking on it shows the filename "image.jpeg".

I repeated Test 1, but with a .png image file, and got identical results, except the file gets named to "image.png".

Test 2: Using Gmail again, I forwarded an email to a Google group. The email - which had been forwarded to me -  contained embedded linked Picasa images from a friend.
Results:
The images showed up fine in the group post, except (interestingly) for some images which had been deleted from Picasa since the original email that had been forwarded to me.
The images showed up fine in the "sent" email.

Test 3: Using Gmail again, I pasted a .png image - which I had earlier copied into CHS (Clipboard Help & Spell) - into the email, and sent it to a Google group.
Results:
The .png image file showed clearly in the email during compose and was NOT registered as an attached file.
The .png image file did not show as an embedded image nor was it registered as  file in the post to the Google group - there was nothing to show that it had been there.
The .png image does not show in the "sent" email in Gmail, is NOT registered as an attached file, but is represented by a lot of garbage text embedded in the text of the email.

So, it looks as though you can do what you want, using Gmail and Google groups, if the images are embedded (not attached) .jpg or .png images, and have not been "pasted" into the email - they then seem to stay embedded in the text of the group post, just as they were in the text of the email.

[IainB]

@Steven Avery: I should perhaps add that Google groups changed its format early this year, and that my test results are from using the new format - you can still use the old one, which has not been phased out yet.
I always felt that the old format was a bit kludgy, and - though I am not sure - I suspect you might not get similar results if you ran the tests under the old format.

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

Yes, I was working with the new google groups, I sort of remembered that the old one was not real competent on this, so I did not check.

Ok, let's agree on terminology. I was using embedded, inline and pasted synonymously.  What I actually (generally) do is PASTE (using Abbyy Screenshot Reader) into the email.

Your embedded sounds like a pointer to external ? Or something else.

So my google forum test (the new adventures of the new google) gave me the icon-attachment result in Google groups, which, while reasonable and superior to Yahoogroups, doesn't quite mustard-cut.

Thus the switchover to Google mail, where the picture looked "pasted" properly to the google email wall .. ie. exactly as I sent it, more or less.

Goal: (gooaaaalll) I am avoiding anything having to do with external file holders, and avoiding anything to do with attachments. 

Perhaps that is a bit clearer ? 
So from that perspective, my options right now seem to be"

1) Google mail (this could even be a direct mail, rather than through a dummy group)

2) Evernote (tests in process)

I'm actually planning a 25 email test, maybe tomorrow.  To see how it goes, and then the full project quickly.

Shalom,
Steven