Twitter question-- I want to block my nephew temporarily to ask others a question about his Xmas present. If I block him, will he have to re-follow me when I unblock him?

Steph,

what kind of Nokia phone do you have?

The low-end 6086.

I went to this meeting of Army wives last night - it's a group of about 25-30 of us and the woman in charge is responsible for passing out all sort of information via email. Given that she's sending several emails a day, I suggested a listserv (I was thinking Yahoo Groups because I'm familiar with it). Everyone liked the suggestion but someone pointed out that .mil email addresses are unable to receive/participate in listservs.

Does anyone here know if that's true? If it is, is there a way around it? Anything better than Yahoo Groups?

Joe is checking with the military communications people, but this board is my go to tech place.

Steph, I got an "Black Friday" preview email from Apple today, and it looks like the iTouch is gonna be regular price -- the bene is free shipping. So I'd buy at your store.

I suspect that it's either a matter of policy on .mil's part, or at most there could be some kind of mail filter -- there's no technical issue on the list software side.

If there are either policies or filters keeping them from using their official addresses for those purposes, just tell 'em to get a gmail account; if they have that kind of policy, they need to be separating their official and unofficial comms anyway.

amy, I am so with you on the "just get a gmail account". But the wife of the commanding general is one of the big .mil account users and I think the Army actually gave her that account to use for all her quasi-official activities.

Does an email coming from a listserv "look" different than a regular incoming email? I actually googled everything I could think of related to .mil emails not accepting listserv messages but found nothing helpful. Maybe I'll just set one up and test it with Joe's email.

I actually liked all of the women I met last night - and a listserv just seems like the way to do it in 2009 - but I am by far the youngest in the group and everyone else seemed sort of mystified by the idea. I'm now sort of wishing I had kept my mouth shut, but getting so many emails a day (with all the forwarded stuff on top) just offends my sense of organization.

- and a listserv just seems like the way to do it in 2009

A listserv seems like the way to do it in 1999. Where have these people been? I feel your pain.

Does an email coming from a listserv "look" different than a regular incoming email? I actually googled everything I could think of related to .mil emails not accepting listserv messages but found nothing helpful. Maybe I'll just set one up and test it with Joe's email.

My Canadian Gov't email account often marks my listserv mail as probable spam, but that's mainly the spam filters they have set up.

A listserv seems like the way to do it in 1999. Where have these people been? I feel your pain.

Srsly.

The big thing with a listserv is that the "to" address is the list name rather than your individual address; that's the main thing that allows your mail client to say "hey, this isn't just a normal email". But honestly, especially if we're talking older and not-too-technical ladies, they're either thinking of a policy thing (at a guess, aimed at not signing up for fun mailing lists back when people used one email for everything and mailing lists for fun), or of something misunderstood or very very outdated. If anyone on base has a departmental email address that goes to everyone in the group, that's a listserv. There's absolutely no way that they're actually unable to receive it, whatever the policies may be.

I think I will just have to test it with Joe's email and see what happens.