Tip - use Gmail and other Google services to avoid "lock-in"

The post [G] Welcome to the Data Liberation Front discusses Google's approach to Gmail data portability and zero "lock-in". Brilliant. This is one of the main reasons I like using Gmail and Google's other free services. They don't try to lock you in. It's YOUR data - e.g., they even make it easy for you to pack up and migrate your Google blogs to some other system.
It reminded me of my recent experience with migrating my NZ mobile phone number from Vodafone to the much cheaper - by up to 50% - 2degrees mobile network service.
The number was migrated *unchanged* in less than 24 hrs. That is, it included the Vodafone "021" network prefix. (I had thought I would at least be obliged to have that changed to 2degrees' "022" network prefix, but no.)
I never thought I'd see this - NZ government operating in the consumer interests despite the might of the telco industry lobbyists. (Money talks.) Yes, the NZ government (Commerce Commission) have - albeit belatedly - forced telcos to provide number portability. Thus, one's phone number has become one's property. Previously, it wasn't.
"Lock-in" was a term taught to me in ICL sales training in the '70s as being customer "lock in" - a powerful tool of the IT and telecomms industry. It makes the customer dependent on the service/product supplier. It was thus with Vodafone. Leave the supplier - lose your number!
However, it is still the same with default email addresses provided by ISPs which is why I never use/publish my email addresses with those organisations. (One of these is the NZ Telecom "Xtra" ISP, which a while back conspired with Yahoo! to force its locked-in email accounts to migrate to Yahoo! - but they are still locked-in. No email address portability there - that's the last thing they want. Nice try, but I was not buying into it.)
My email is Gmail, and I am not locked into it. I shall stick with it because Google provides a compellingly attractive set of associated services that makes any other service pale into insignificance by comparison. Google would already know that and presumably aim to keep it that way.

Tip - Use free Google Mail and other free Google services

I used a free Google product called Picasa as an entry to the free Google blogging system that hosts this blog. Picasa really seems to be a remarkably good piece of free software from Google, and it integrates really well with blogger.com and the blog site blogspot.com.

How did I get started on this? It all started in 2005 when I was invited by my son to open a Gmail account. I held the view that Google was becoming far too ubiquitous on the Net, and perhaps even predatory in the way it inveigled itself into search bars in browsers - especially in my favourite browser, Firefox. I don't like the way large companies start to become ubiquitous and predatory in the IT world - for example, that well-known company Microsoft. Why? Because it potentially limits the freedom of choice that we consumers have, and I have long disliked the way large corporations try to dictate to the market exactly what they will consume. That's why I am a strong supporter of consumer rights, consumer protection laws, consumer associations, and things like privacy - for example, I used to use JunkBuster (and later it's sister product Guidescope) to help to keep the ad-men and their annoying noise from my Net experience. On Guidescope's recommendation, I have dropped Junkbuster and Guidescope in favour of a plugin to my Firefox browser - the plugin is called Adblock Plus.

Anyway, I opened up a Gmail account, and was grudgingly impressed. Having initially been suspicious, I became assured that:

(a) my much-valued privacy was not going to be lost or exposed to the advertising spammer world, and

(b) I was not going to be inundated with advertising junk, either on screen or in my mailbox.

Then I started to check out the increasing number of utilities that Google offer, and I installed the Google desktop utility, and then Picasa2 onto my laptop. I recommend readers of this blog try out these and other free Google products. You might be as amazed as I was at how brilliantly these products work, what timesavers they can be, and how they open your world up to doing things in new ways and possibly changing your paradigms.