1st newsletter sent by FastMail.FM

[DarioMor]

For the old guys, AKA anyone still reading this forum.

The 1st newsletter. I received it more than 21 years ago, [Sunday, July 14, 2002 08:00]

Can anyone guess who wrote it? It is not signed.

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

FastMail.FM News July 14, 2002

This is the first newsletter being sent by FastMail.FM. We will be sending these every month or so to keep you up to date with new features, changes, and so forth. You will only receive these if your "Communications Frequency" (click Options and then Account Preferences to see this) is set to "Chatty". Members are able to select here what kind of information you want to receive from us.

If you don't have time to read all this now, just read the next section right away (it is about an offer that expires in a week), and come back and read the rest when you have a moment to read about how to get more out of FastMail.FM. Browsers: if you are just browsing quickly, reading just the bits in italics will give you an overview of all the key issues. The topics covered today are:

• Save $14.95 on Full/Enhanced upgrades for the next 1 week
• Change your address to you@sent.com, or one of many new domains
• Full/enhanced users can now get personal support
• Monthly bandwidth quotas are now being actively enforced
• You can use the new Personalities feature to manage multiple email addresses
• FastMail.FM is undergoing many web interface upgrades
• You can now request for individual folders to be restored from backups
• Weekly uptime reports are now available
Upgrade promotion: Save $14.95 on Full/Enhanced Subscription

The Signup Fee Waiver promotion expires in just one week, on July 22.

Promotion Details:

As you probably know, normally to get a Full or Enhanced subscription, it costs $14.95 for the membership signup fee, plus $19.95/$39.95 recurring subscription for Full/Enhanced accounts.

Right now, however, you can upgrade to a Full or Enhanced account and save on the $14.95 membership fee. What's more, if at the end of your first year you decide not to continue with your subscription, you still get to keep your account at Member level!

Guests and Members can both take advantage of this--just click "Options" and then "Upgrade Account". Guests will be charged only the annual fee, not the $14.95 membership fee when subscribing to a Full or Enhanced account. Members will only be charged the difference between the membership fee that you have already paid and the subscription fee (so it's as little as $5 to upgrade to a Full account!)

Upgrading to a Full or Enhanced subscription gets you access to our great new domain (discussed below), advanced spam protection, virus protection, lots of personalities to organise to your emails (discussed below), personal technical support (also discussed below), and loads of bandwidth and storage (yes, more details on that below too!). Service level details here:

http://www.fastmail.fm/docs/pricingtbl.html

New domain for Full/Enhanced subscribers: Sent.com!

FastMail.FM has just added another domain to its portfolio: Sent.com! This will only be available for Full and Enhanced users, so if you want to use this short, easy-to-remember domain for your address, be sure to take advantage of our upgrade promotion now to save the $14.95 membership fee. Once you've upgraded, you'll be able to rename your primary account to use Sent.com, or you can use one of the free aliases included in your subscription to select this as an additional address. As well as Sent.com, there are heaps more new domains coming soon--all of these domains will be avalailable in the next couple of weeks:

http://www.emaildiscussions.com/...?threadid=6025

Updated bandwidth and support systems

Full and Enhanced subscribers now have access to personal technical support direct from FastMail.FM developers. Just email support@fastmail.fm with your question. You will get sent an automatic reply taking you to our new ticket system, that will first show you the information that may answer your question directly, and if that doesn't help you the system will send your request to the most appropriate FastMail.FM department. Please note that while only Full and Enhanced subscribers will have their request passed on for personal technical support, all users may use the new automated support system.

http://www.fastmail.fm/docs/faqparts...#SupportLevels

Some of you may have noticed that while we have published monthly bandwidth limits since our commercial launch, we haven't actually been actively enforcing these to date. We have now enabled the systems to track and enforce the bandwidth limits, so please be sure to either keep your bandwidth below your monthly quota, or purchase a little extra bandwidth (it's around $1 for 100MB!) using the Purchase Bandwidth screen on the Options page.

http://www.fastmail.fm/docs/faqparts/ResourceUsage.html

Great new Personalities system

For managing multiple addresses, you will love our new personalities features! Many of you have more than one email address coming into your FastMail.FM account--you may be using your free aliases with your Full or Enhanced account, or your Enhanced own domain addresses, or have your work email forwarded to your FastMail.FM account, or maybe you're using POP or Hotmail links to download mail from your other accounts. Just click "Personalities" on the "Options" page to set up Personalities to help manage your email. For help with using Personalities, see this FAQ entry:

http://www.fastmail.fm/docs/faqparts...osePersonality

When you reply to a message sent to one of your addresses, the correct personality will be selected for you automatically! What's more, different signatures and Sent Items folders can also be attached to each personality, as described here:

http://www.fastmail.fm/docs/faqparts...#ComposeSaveTo

Lots of Web interface updates

We have recently had the pleasure of welcoming webmail guru Kirill Miazine to the FastMail.FM team, and he is focussing 100% on creating cool new features for the FastMail.FM web interface. As well as the Personalities system mentioned above, you'll soon see the FastMail.FM mailbox screen be overhauled to match this great mockup (thanks to Steve from Zekotore Media for the layout):

http://mudzine.com/fastmail/inbox/inbox.html

You'll also notice that the Signup screen has been recently overhauled to make it faster and easier, and in the next couple of weeks the main login page will be updated with a great new design. In addition, Internet Explorer 4+, Netscape 6+, and Opera 5+ users will notice that on the Mailbox screen there is now a handy "select page" checkbox at the top of the selection column. Try it out! Also, I hope you've tried all the new style sheets on the Account Preferences link on the Options screen--they completely change the FastMail.FM experience. For instance, try Nebula, Provence, and Naturals to see the differences (these don't fully work on Netscape 4, unfortunately). With many thanks to generous FastMail.FM user Lisa, there's even a style-sheet gallery:

http://patriot.net/~lisa/stylesheets...ry/gallery.htm

Backups and reliability: Great news for peace of mind

FastMail.FM now offers a service to restore just one or more folders from our backup as required. Ever accidently deleted a message or a folder and wondered how to get it back? To request a restore, simply email webmaster@fastmail.fm and tell us your account name and folder name. It costs $25 to restore one folder, or $50 to restore all folders. When a folder is restored, all messages that have been in that folder any time in the last week will be restored! This is great insurance just in case one day something goes wrong--but hopefully you'll never need to use this service!

If you've ever wondered how reliable FastMail.FM is, you can now find out exactly what uptime each front-end server is experiencing with a single click. The monitoring server in Europe that checks all aspects of FastMail.FM around the clock now provides its statistics through simple web reports. The weekly uptime report is here:

http://admin.fastem.com/uptime_wk.html

...and a list of all reports are here:

http://admin.fastem.com/

Thanks for reading. Remember, if you don't want to receive these updates, click Options, then Account Preferences, and change your Communications Frequency. If want to terminate your FastMail.FM account for some reason, click Options, and then Cancel account.


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

[odedp]

Originally Posted by DarioMor

For the old guys, AKA anyone still reading this forum.

The 1st newsletter. I received it more than 21 years ago, [Sunday, July 14, 2002 08:00]

Can anyone guess who wrote it? It is not signed.
====================

The one and only Jeremy Howard, who else??
I still have this newsletter saved in one of my folders.
Btw, the 2nd newsletter arrived just 5 days later, July 19 2002 announcing the new sent.com domain

[n5bb]

I didn’t hear about Fastmail and get an account until a couple of years later in April, 2004. My first newsletter was received on June 14, 2003, with the subject “Fastmail.FM newsletter”. But the first line in the email has a major error and shows the previous year:
FastMail.FM News June 14, 2003

That newsletter (sent a little over 20 years ago) announced major improvements to webmail (HTML composition, advanced search, keyboard shortcuts, and protection from “webbugs”) and File Storage. I still use the File Storage feature with my personal domain all the time for long term backup storage of important files which I can share with my brother, simple websites, photo sharing, and URL redirection.

I use the Fastmail Notes and Files features every day. I’m very glad that Fastmail can continued to prosper and improve over the years without dropping these features which are so important to my daily activities.

Bill

[somdcomputerguy]

Originally Posted by DarioMor

For the old guys, AKA anyone still reading this forum.

The 1st newsletter. I received it more than 21 years ago, [Sunday, July 14, 2002 08:00]

Can anyone guess who wrote it? It is not signed.

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

Originally Posted by n5bb

I still use the File Storage feature with my personal domain all the time for long term backup storage of important files which I can share with my brother, simple websites, photo sharing, and URL redirection.

I use the Fastmail Notes and Files features every day. I’m very glad that Fastmail can continued to prosper and improve over the years without dropping these features which are so important to my daily activities.

I use the Notes and File Storage features quite a bit as well. In fact, I 'host', thru Fastmail, the EMD Members Photo Gallery. EMD Forum Members Gallery: jeremy howard

[odedp]

Originally Posted by odedp

The one and only Jeremy Howard, who else??

Maybe I was wrong, and it wasn't just Jeremy...
The first newsletter which was signed was sent on Dec. 6, 2002 and the signature says
Jeremy and Rob
FastMail.FM Webmasters
So the newsletter DarioMor asked about was probably also written by Jeremy Howard and Rob Mueller, two of the 3 FastMail founders.

[DarioMor]

Originally Posted by odedp

probably also written by Jeremy Howard and Rob Mueller, two of the 3 FastMail founders.

3 founders? Who is the 3rd and shyer one?

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by DarioMor

3 founders? Who is the https://www.fastmail.com/blog/fastma...of-the-owners/3rd and shyer one?

https://au.linkedin.com/in/bruce-davey-9782042
I think this depends on how you define “founder”. Rob Mueller wrote a blog article 13 years ago which discussed the early history of Fastmail and mentioned that Bruce Davey was one of the three initial owners of the Fastmail company. See:
FastMail sale to Opera: the story from one of the owners (by Rob Mueller in May 2010)

Davey has a profile on LinkedIn.

Bill

[odedp]

Originally Posted by DarioMor

3 founders? Who is the 3rd and shyer one?

https://www.google.com/search?q=fast...t=gws-wiz-serp

[akorvemaker]

Originally Posted by DarioMor

For the old guys, AKA anyone still reading this forum.

The 1st newsletter. I received it more than 21 years ago, [Sunday, July 14, 2002 08:00]

I didn't join until November, so missed the first. I feel so out of touch!