You may remember me stating in the past that I have an aversion to e-mail signatures. Well, I found something that is the sure-fire cure to those overly long e-mail sigs.

And that’s Krunchd (pronounced as it looks, "crunched").

I created a Krunchd page http://krunchd.com/menga. I included the all the social networks I participate in, my web site and so on. It was stupidly easy to do and only took a few minutes to set up.

Once you have your Krunchd URL you’ll receive an e-mail where you can add/remove/modify anything on your Krunchd page. So if you happen to join up with a new social network or have other blogs you author, etc., this can come in really handy.

Krunchd is especially handy as an e-mail address signature. As you know, you can’t modify e-mails you’ve already sent. Once you’ve sent them, that’s the way they are for life. But with a Krunchd link in the signature, any time someone clicks on it, your most up-to-date information is present.

Very cool, very easy, very useful.

Check it out at www.krunchd.com.

Situation: You’re up in the wee hours of the morning (around 1 or 2am) and find this oh-so cool YouTube video that you want to e-mail to your friends.

However if you send off the link at that time of the night everybody knows when you sent it. You are basically admitting to all “Yes, I was up at two in the morning doing stupid stuff on my computer.” Oh, the ridicule. Oh, the shame. Continued

Y’know ordinarily I don’t crown the title of "best" to any particular application because there’s usually something better. However, this… THIS… is the best mail backup I’ve ever used.

KLS Mail Backup is free and it will backup your mail so easily it’s a wonder someone didn’t write something this good sooner.

Observe:

Not only will KLS backup your mail, but it does the Address books, certificates, saved passwords/forms (which you can uncheck for security reasons if you want) and a whole bunch of other stuff.

In addition, it will backup from Microsoft Outlook Express, Seamonkey/Mozilla, Windows Live Mail and/or Mozilla Thunderbird.

Talk about cool.

Even better: It’s not just backup - it will restore mail back to a client as well.

When you run this thing, it will gather all you tell to get and pack it up nice and neat into a single ZIP file. After that you can toss the file on a CD or flash drive.

It literally doesn’t get any easier than this.

Note to Hotmail users: Now you have a way of easily backing up all the mail in your account. Just use the Windows Live Mail client to download all your Hotmail locally, run KLS and ta-da - it’s all backed up!

For Gmail users: You can do the same thing. Just use the mail client of your choice to download via POP and back up the mail.

THIS is how mail backups should work. Easy, simple, effective.

I give this app two huge thumbs up.

Get it here: http://www.kls-soft.com/klsbackup/mailb_index.php

It’s easy enough to forward one e-mail address to another. However it’s a different story when it comes to migrating a domain-based e-mail address.

• You have a domain, www.example.com.
• You have a hosted e-mail address, you@example.com.
• You want to keep your domain host where it is, but host your e-mail elsewhere (such as Google Apps or Windows Live Admin Center).

The biggest problem when doing this is that you don’t want to lose any mail after the migration has taken place. During the transition some mail will be delivered to your old mail host and some to the new.

There is a way to do this so you don’t lose any mail. Read on to find out how.

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You have a Gmail account but want to switch to another one. Most people do this when they want to set up a “business” Gmail account or simply because they found an Gmail e-mail name they like better.

You could enable POP on the old account and retrieve the mail in the new Gmail account that way, but then the timestamps get all reset to “new” and the Sent Mail gets all screwed up.

Is there a way to migrate from one Gmail account to another while retaining all proper timestamps and Sent Mail?

Yes there is and this article will explain exactly how to do it.

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You heard all the wonderful things I said about cloud computing in the last article, and I mentioned that the transition process - while easy - takes a bit to explain how it’s done.

This article explains how it’s done in easy-to-understand terms.

We’ll be using Outlook Express 6 as our example. There are many who use this program as it comes free with Windows XP and feel that they’re stuck with it. No, you’re not. You can migrate all your mail over to Gmail or Hotmail easily. All it takes is a minimal amount of setup and a small amount of your time.

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Modern day home computing is not as it once was. Not-so long ago it used to be that in order to bring the most potential out of your computer box you had to use proprietary software.

Any app that runs solely on a specific operating system is proprietary. And yes there’s still lots of this stuff out there.

For the past few years I have been slowly transitioning the stuff I do on the web to being as cloud-based as possible. You’ve heard the term "cloud computing" so much that it probably makes you sick to hear it at this point - but you have to do it if you expect to make smooth transitions in the future from computer to computer.

If you don’t start transitioning now it will be very painful and stressful to get it done later.

A plain English description

"OS-less" means to be able to do what you do on a computer without the need for any specific operating system.

Using myself as an example, here’s a few things I do:

For my photos I made the decision to push those all to Flickr. It’s web-based. I can access it on any computer using any OS.

For my e-mail I decided to switch over to Hotmail (or to be more specific, Windows Live Admin Center). Previous to that I used self-hosted IMAP and before that plain ol’ POP. I can get to my mail from anywhere on any computer using any OS in any web browser - and it’s all there. It’s backed up and readily accessible.

For important documents that I need to hang on to (and even the not-so important ones), I push those over to Google Docs. This acts as my backup that is just as accessible as my mail is. Once again it’s accessible on any computer/OS.

Are you still in the stone age?

If you’re still using apps that are OS-proprietary and local to your computer only, you run the risk of losing all the data you have without warning. Let’s say for the moment you’re really good at backing things up routinely. What if your hard drive fails and the backup doesn’t work? What then? You basically curse and swear, then realize you lost it all and start from zero.

Nobody wants that to happen.

And what happens when you buy a new computer? Do you really want to go thru the process of reinstalling all your apps all over again, configuring them and wasting hours of time when all you want to do is just get going?

Of course you don’t.

Is it possible to go completely OS-less?

Not at present. However you can move over a significant chunk of what you do to cloud territory now. The more you move out there, the better.

Get your docs, photos and e-mail out in the cloud

No matter how much of an old fuddy-duddy you are (as in the type who positively refuses to try anything different), bear in mind the transition is stupidly easy to do for docs, photos and mail.

Docs

Google Docs is still your best bet. Get an account and upload them. Don’t worry, they’re all private uploads unless you specifically enable a share-out option (which is off by default).

Photos

If you use Flickr, get Windows Live Photo Gallery (Windows), Flickr Desktop Organizer (Linux) or Flickr Uploadr (Windows, Mac). Get a Flickr account and start uploading.

If you use Picasa, the Picasa client is well known to be super-awesome and super-easy to use. Works in Windows, Mac or Linux. Uploads stuff easily. It’s a no-brainer.

E-Mail

This is the one people fear the most - especially those who use POP and are under the impression it would be absolutely impossible to move hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of mails to another account.

Your two best bets are Gmail and Hotmail - and yes you can move all your mail over to either.

The short version of how to do it:

All modern e-mail clients support multiple e-mail accounts.

With Gmail, you can set up the new account alongside the old POP account in Outlook Express, Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Mail or any number of other clients that support IMAP.

With Hotmail, you use the Windows Live Mail client. It will easily import all your old mail from Outlook or Outlook Express. Then you set up your Hotmail account alongside your POP account.

No matter which method you choose, once you have the multiple accounts set up you just drag and drop the mail from the old to the new. All the timestamps are saved and nothing is lost. Everything is moved over including the sent mail, attachments and so on. Furthermore the mail is instantly accessible on the web as well as in the client at that point via hotmail.com or gmail.com depending on which you chose.

Once done you no longer have to rely on your computer to send, retrieve and store your mail. All of it is in the cloud, backed up and accessible at any time. You can also still use the mail client if you feel like it. You can get to your mail either way when you push it to the cloud.

The long version of how to do it:

I go into grotesque detail on how to do this and it would take way too long to explain here - so watch for another article on it soon!

I am telling you now - start transitioning to the cloud

Said honestly, don’t put this off. You’ve got your docs, you’ve got your mail and if you take photos, those are most likely local to your computer box as well. Push this stuff out to the cloud (that being the internet).

You can continue (obviously) to perform local backups, but when (not if) the time comes that you get a new computer, the painful process of moving everything over will be so much less painful when you realize you can just open up a browser and get to everything - instantly.

Yes it’s true that there will be things you simply can’t push to the cloud (yet), but for the stuff you can get out there - do it.

Do it if for no other reason to have a secondary or tertiary free backup. The price is nice and all it costs is a small amount of your time.

This series is dedicated to specific e-mail providers on the internet. In this installment, the service provider concentrated on will be Google’s Gmail.

Gmail, launched in March 2004, has grown to be one of the most-used free e-mail services on the internet. While it doesn’t have a large of a userbase as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, it’s still a force to be reckoned with.

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This series is dedicated to specific e-mail providers on the internet. In this installment, the service provider concentrated on will be Google’s Gmail.

Gmail, launched in March 2004, has grown to be one of the most-used free e-mail services on the internet. While it doesn’t have a large of a userbase as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, it’s still a force to be reckoned with.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

Most people will see the title of this article and think "Um… forwarding an e-mail is like the easiest thing in the world. How could you possibly do it wrong?"

Trust me there’s a right way and a wrong way.

I am very much against anyone forwarding me jokes and/or chain letters in e-mail. However there are some people you will make exceptions for (usually friends, family members, or your girlfriend).

Here’s the wrong way to forward an e-mail using just one e-mail sent to me as an example:

1. It freakin’ huge.

Yes, this is an e-mail that’s 5MB in size.

2. It’s been forward a ba-zillion times.

Note the subject line above.

3. When you open it, you have to click on it again to open it further.

This is because it was forwarded as an attachment and not inline.

4. Upon opening it, you discover it’s the same e-mail repeated 5 (or more) times over.

Note the scrollbar for the attachments at the far right. This e-mail literally has the same crapola repeated more than 5+ times. This is why it’s such a huge e-mail. I’m betting it was originally less than 500k.

Commence facepalm here.

Don’t forward e-mails to people like that.

And if you ever encounter anyone who trashes your inbox with these, forward this article to them and say "Hey, I found something that was written just for you!"

Hopefully they’ll understand.

This series is dedicated to specific e-mail providers on the internet. In this installment, the service provider concentrated on will be Google’s Gmail.

Gmail, launched in March 2004, has grown to be one of the most-used free e-mail services on the internet. While it doesn’t have a large of a userbase as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, it’s still a force to be reckoned with.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

This series is dedicated to specific e-mail providers on the internet. In this installment, the service provider concentrated on will be Google’s Gmail.

Gmail, launched in March 2004, has grown to be one of the most-used free e-mail services on the internet. While it doesn’t have a large of a userbase as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, it’s still a force to be reckoned with.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

This series is dedicated to specific e-mail providers on the internet. In this installment, the service provider concentrated on will be Google’s Gmail.

Gmail, launched in March 2004, has grown to be one of the most-used free e-mail services on the internet. While it doesn’t have a large of a userbase as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, it’s still a force to be reckoned with.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

This series is dedicated to specific e-mail providers on the internet. In this installment, the service provider concentrated on will be Yahoo! Mail.

Yahoo! Mail is one of the oldest free e-mail providers on the internet. It was originally launched on October 8 1997, and to date has one of the largest userbases in the world.

Getting Started With Your Seal

On the signup page there is something unique to Yahoo! Mail; the ability to create a sign-in “seal” (see right side):

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Spam control is a necessity if you use e-mail which the vast majority of us do. And although PCMech has covered spam control with several articles on the subject, the methods change from year to year - so consider this an update for the 2008-2009 era of e-mail.

Client Side

With e-mail clients you have free and paid options but I concentrate on the freebies because I don’t consider spam protection worth the cost unless it’s in a corporate environment with hundreds and/or thousands of users.

The best freebie spam protection I’ve used client-side is the adaptive junk mail filter in Mozilla Thunderbird. Adaptive translates to "learns as it goes". When you first enable the filter Thunderbird will still deliver spam to the inbox until you flag it. The more you flag, the more the filter "learns" what is spam and what isn’t and filters appropriately over time. When used in concert with its built in address book (for whitelisting - more on that in a moment) it does the job well.

For those that would ask "How long does the ‘learning’ process take?", it’s all dependent on how much spam you get. The more you get, the longer the process takes. But even if you receive a ton of spam to the tune of 200 per day (which is extreme), the adaptive filter will be able to learn most of that in a few weeks.

Server Side (Domains)

If you have your own domain and pay for web hosting, you most likely use domain-based e-mail, such as you@your.domain. There are server-side options you can set in your web host’s control panel to slow the spam down.

SpamAssassin

Most web hosts (even the cheap ones) have SpamAssassin - which is an awesome spam filter. Lots of options, lots of control. Under most circumstances you should be able to instruct SA to modify the subject line or e-mails it thinks are spam. For example, if a spam is received and the subject line is "hello", SA will change it to "*****SPAM***** hello" before delivery to your inbox so it’s really easy to spot upon receive.

In addition, if you use the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client it has options to "trust" SpamAssassin based on e-mail headers.

SPF

Sender Policy Framework is an absolute necessity when using domain-based e-mail. This is not a filter per sé but rather a "challenge response" to stop spoofed e-mails.

If you run into the situation where all of a sudden you see tons of "Message could not be delivered" for mails you never sent, all with spam-ish looking subject lines, your domain mail is being spoofed. SPF will take care of this 99% of the time. Once enabled it takes a few weeks and then the spoofs will stop.

Whitelisting / Blacklisting

You can whitelists (addresses you want to receive mail from) and blacklists (addresses you want to block) on a server side level but there is some debate as to how effective it is compared to having a client do it.

If you’re the kind that uses a web-based version of your domain-based e-mail, utilizing server side lists of this type would serve to your advantage. If using a client, let the client do it.

Web-Based Free E-Mail

Example of freebie web-based mail services are Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, AIM mail, Gmail and so on.

Freebie web-based e-mail compared to clients and/or server side differs because your options are much fewer as to what you can do. However there are things you can do now to take control of the spam.

Always use your Contact List / Address Book

With most freebie web-based mail, anyone listed in your Contact List is automatically whitelisted. So for friends, family, biz contacts and other types of mail you want, use that list and use it often.

It is better to have direct delivery instead of forwarded mail

Mail which is forwarded to you from another e-mail account runs the risk of bypassing the spam filters (even on Gmail) because it is in fact a forwarded mail addressed to you.

You’re better off not having anything forwarded, trust the spam filters provided by the freebie service and let the filters do their job. The more mail you have forwarded in, the more likely you are to have spam directly in your inbox - no matter how many times you flag it otherwise.

Stay inside the web interface

Spam filters work better on freebie web-based mail when using it in its intended environment - the web browser.

Example using Gmail:

Instead of using the Gmail interface you decide to access the mail using a mail client instead such as Mozilla Thunderbird. When spam comes in you flag the spam in Thunderbird, but it’s not using the Gmail reporting method but rather the internal client method. Gmail is never notified of the spam you reported so it will continue to arrive in your inbox. If you stay within the Gmail interface and flag spam there, Gmail "learns" what is spam and what isn’t - which is what you want to stop it from appearing.

For other e-mail services where you download mail via POP, the same applies. Flagging spam in a client never notifies the e-mail service you flagged it, decreasing spam prevention.

Not using your true e-mail address

The reason web sites like BugMeNot exist is because people get sick and tired of signing up for stuff only to find it nearly impossible to "de-sign" your e-mail address later.

You do have a few options here, all of which work well.

Using an alternative "don’t bug me" e-mail provider

The best example of this is Mailinator. You can fabricate e-mail addresses out of thin air in seconds. However there’s one serious drawback - you always have to go to that site to get the mail delivered there (very inconvenient).

Linked accounts

This is by far the absolute best way to have a "throw away" e-mail address you can easily access while still using your primary account.

The service that does this best is Hotmail because it’s stupidly easy.

If you use an @live.com, @msn.com or @hotmail.com account, login to it, then go to Options and click "View and edit your personal information" under "Manage your account". On the next screen there are options for "Linked Windows Live IDs". From here you can link other Hotmail, Live and/or MSN accounts to your primary account. If you want to add one, go ahead. If you want to add more than that (I have 5), go ahead.

When you’re done, in your normal Hotmail interface at the far right you will see your e-mail address. This can be clicked and you can switch over to your other account instantly.

The beauty of this setup is that your e-mail addresses stay separate. They are linked but do not share inboxes. So whenever you want to check the other account, all it takes is two clicks.

This is free to do, by the way.

To note: AIM mail and Yahoo! also have linked account options.

Gmail does have the ability to poll mail from other accounts but has no linking ability (as in link 2 Gmail accounts together in concert).

What did I miss?

Do you have any spam prevention tips I missed? If so, please feel free to tell everybody in the comments. Any spam prevention is good spam prevention.

GMX is "Global Mail Exchange", found at www.gmx.com. This is a free e-mail service chock full of features and goodies that, said honestly, surprised me at how good it is.

A few of the features:

• Ability to choose an address ending in gmx.com, gmx.us or gmx.co.uk.
• Can import mail over from several popular e-mail services including Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL Mail and a ton of others.
• You can add up to 10 additional GMX mail accounts right from within your primary account, all with separate e-mail signatures.
• Has autoresponder and forwarder capability.
• Has the ability to delete mail on a schedule. You can create a custom folder and instruct GMX to "Delete mails after [this] many days". Very, very trick.
• Full right-clickability inside the interface.
• 5GB storage

When I say I was surprised at how good this mail is, I meant it. Absolutely none of the other webmail providers have everything GMX has.

Check this out:

Above: When I right-click an e-mail, look at how many commands are assigned to literal keyboard shortcuts (that work). In addition, look at all the options I have. I can blacklist/whitelist/filter/spam/move all from just this menu.

You’re probably saying to yourself "Wow, looks just like an e-mail client". You’re right, it does - and GMX does it right.

Above: In the options panel you get way more control compared to the other guys…

GMX is really fast and has tons of good names still available, but what surprises me more than anything else is how GMX was literally able to produce a truly kick-ass webmail that obliterates everyone else in the functionality department.

This is the first webmail I’ve seen besides Yahoo! Mail that truly feels like a local e-mail client - with the speed of one.

In addition to that, it’s stupidly easy to use.

You seriously need to check out GMX. Even if you don’t want another e-mail account, get one anyway and try it.

I signed up two of them.

Thanks for the tip, Drew!

One of the very few e-mail signatures that I don’t consider a complete waste of space is ASCII art. This is because getting a signature where letters form a picture or cartoon-like figure is not easy and difficult to get right.

If old-school ASCII is your thing, there is a Java application (runs on any OS that supports Java such as Windows/OS X/Linux) called JavE that is a full GUI-based ASCII “image” editor.

In the video below I show you how to get it, use “fonts” within it and how to convert images you have into ASCII text for use as an e-mail signature.

In a few short months it’s going to be 2009, and a ton of stuff has changed in the world of computing over the past almost-ten years. Some of the modern advancements have proven to be a notable improvement while others still produce the same crapola they did nearly ten years ago.

In this installment we’ll be taking a look at something called netiquette. This is the word etiquette with an n on the front to symbolize internet etiquette.

Netiquette is a word that’s been around a very long time. It is known to those that understand how to be polite and courteous, and that excludes the vast majority of the internet populous worldwide.

Let’s take a look at how netiquette has and hasn’t changed.

~ ~ ~

Etiquette is easy enough to understand; the word is literally defined as “Rules governing socially acceptable behavior”. However as far as your online behavior is concerned there are “rules” so-to-speak that only apply to the internet.

These rules I speak of aren’t technically rules. Netiquette is not like written law where you must obey it else you will be penalized. Rather it’s a set of online social guidelines. These guidelines change periodically as online technology changes.

The best way to exemplify netiquette is from what’s happened with text communication (particularly e-mail) over the years.

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A really, really long time ago, people accessed their e-mail using text-based clients. One popular (said loosely) client was PINE. When I say text-based, I mean text-based. No GUI. No JavaScript. No images. No formatted fonts. No HTML. Nothing but text.

There are a smattering of people on the internet that to this day swear by PINE and absolutely will not use anything else. Why? Because it works. And it’s easy (as far as text-based apps go). Unfortunately PINE discontinued support a while ago.

However… the modern variant of PINE is Alpine. It comes from the same place the original PINE did, Washington University. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a Windows version. There’s also Mac OS X binaries in addition to the traditional source code, RedHat/Fedora RPM packages and Debian .deb packages. So no matter what OS you’re running, you can use Alpine.

Being that Alpine connects with IMAP enabled e-mail easily, some would say "Cool! Can I access Gmail with Alpine?"

Yes you can.

Here’s how using the Windows binary version:

When installing the application, choose to "Use local configuration file", like this:

Next, enter in your Personal Name (your name), your Gmail e-mail address, imap.gmail.com as the mail server, tick the option "This server is an IMAP server", your login name as you@gmail.com (your Gmail e-mail address) and the SMTP server as smtp.gmail.com.

After launching Alpine it will try to connect to the Gmail IMAP servers and fail (we haven’t set up the SSL connections yet). This may take up to a minute. Don’t get scared if you see the hourglass for a little while.

Looks like this (note the red bar).

From here we press S (Setup) then C (Config).

Use your arrow keys (remember, no mouse) and highlight User ID, then press Enter. Change this to your full Gmail e-mail address. Press Enter when done.

Use your arrow keys and highlight User Domain. Change to gmail.com.

Highlight SMTP Server (for sending). Change to smtp.gmail.com:587/tls.

Highlight Inbox Path and change to imap.gmail.com/ssl/user=you@gmail.com. Alpine will ask you what folder to use for INBOX. Just press Enter here to use "inbox" (this works).

Highlight Default Fcc (File carbon copy). Change this to Sent Mail. Case is important here.

Press E to Exit Setup, Y to save the changes then Q and Y to quit Alpine.

Restart Alpine.

On restart you will be immediately asked for your password. Use the password you use for your Gmail account. (Note: If you want the password saved, be sure to check "Preserve this password for future logins").

On the Main Menu, press I for the message index (your inbox). You should see all your mail now. To go back to the Main Menu, press O (letter O, not zero) then M.

Now we need to compose a new e-mail. To test this, compose a message to yourself.

From the Main Menu, press C. Type in your e-mail address next to To:. Press TAB three times and put in test mail as your subject line. Press TAB again, type something in the body of the e-mail ("test mail" for example).

Press CTRL-X to send. At the bottom you will be asked "Send message?" Press Y to send.

At this point you will be asked to enter in a password to send the e-mail out for SMTP server authentication (and again, you can optionally have it save the password for future use). Use your Gmail password.

In a few moments the mail will be sent and seen in your inbox shortly thereafter since you just sent a mail to yourself.

~ ~ ~

Yes, the setup is a pain to get working but once done it works like a champ.

This is a really long roundabout way of using e-mail, however bear in mind that e-mail worked primarily like this for years before GUI clients and web-based became the norm.

As mentioned earlier in this article, some people truly enjoy using e-mail this way. Or if you’re the type that wants to earn some easy "geek points", using PINE or Alpine is definitely worth bragging about for those that care about that sort of thing.

In a few short months it’s going to be 2009, and a ton of stuff has changed in the world of computing over the past almost-ten years. Some of the modern advancements have proven to be a notable improvement while others still produce the same crapola they did nearly ten years ago.

In this installment we’ll be taking a look at e-mail.

~ ~ ~

The first experience I had with internet was in the late 1990s with web browsing. The second was e-mail.

E-Mail is one of those forms of communication that will exist as long as computers do. Through thick and thin, e-mail has survived the test of time and is still considered to be an absolute vital means of internet communications.

Electronic mail does predate the internet all the way back to 1966 when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wanted a means to send electronic messages from computer to computer – and did so successfully.

The internet as we know it today still uses e-mail widely and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down.

Let’s take a look at how e-mail has changed from 1999 to 2009.

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In both Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail (but not Gmail) there is the option of using a "Blocked sender" list.

In Hotmail: Options Panel / Safe and blocked senders

In Yahoo! Mail: Options Panel / Block addresses

What is a Blocked list? It’s a friendly term for a blacklist.

More than likely you were already aware of this feature but there are more than a few that don’t truly understand how this feature works.

If you add an e-mail address to your blacklist…

Will e-mails received from that address go to your "Trash" folder? No.

Will e-mails received from that address go to your "Spam" folder? No.

What happens is that upon receive the e-mail is deleted and you never see it, period. It will be absolutely nowhere in your e-mail no matter where you look - and that’s the whole point.

Will the person you blacklist ever be aware of this?

No. The mail sent will still be received by the server, but will be deleted instantly upon arrival and never get to your inbox (or anywhere else in your e-mail).

In instant messaging, when you block someone they are aware of it because there are many ways to check someone’s online status via profile pages. When you block someone on IM, that someone just checks your profile page, sees you’re online and knows he’s been blocked at that point.

This isn’t the case with e-mail. When you blacklist someone, that someone can send mails until his fingers fall off and it doesn’t matter because you’ll never receive them. Ever. And there’s no way the person on the blacklist will ever know he’s been blacklisted by you (not unless you tell him).

Gmail doesn’t have this feature?

No. The closest equivalent is to set up a filter. You can enable the filter so that "If a mail is received from [this e-mail address], delete it." The problem is that it goes straight to the "Trash" to where you could still go in there and view it if you wanted to (temptation rises…)

Is blacklisting a spam prevention feature?

No. Spam filters and blacklists are two separate things. You have complete control over your blacklist whereas with spam filters this is controlled by the mail provider itself.

Blacklisting ensures that once you add an address (or several or just block out a whole range), you will absolutely never receive mails from it ever again.

Everyone’s heard tips on how to manage e-mail, deal with spam and so on - so here are a few other bits of info to help make your e-mail more manageable.

Forwarded e-mail sometimes has a tendency to bypass spam filters

You’ve been a good e-mail user but for whatever reason there are still spams that get thru to your inbox, even though you’ve flagged them a ba-zillion times and they still seem to get thru.

The answer could be you may have forwarded mails that are bypassing the spam filter.

In this instance I’m not referring to e-mail that other people send to you but rather the e-mail that you are downloading in from other e-mail accounts you have.

For example, in Gmail there is the option to bring in mail from other accounts via POP. Other mail services such as Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail also have this feature available. The mail that comes in from these accounts is usually deemed as "trusted" because after all, you did want it there.

If you are currently bringing in other e-mail from other accounts via POP, not doing so may decrease the likelihood of spam bypassing the filter and getting to your inbox.

If you send out mail to over 25 recipients at a time, many mail servers will flag that as spam

The general rule of thumb when it comes to mass mail-outs is that if you’re sending a mail to over 25 different addresses, there is a strong chance several of those you sent the mail to will have it flagged as spam by their mail server.

Some mail providers rely on stronger spam filters (like Gmail and Hotmail) while others operate "by the numbers" to decrease the spam flow. Many ISPs for example will do this. Some have a recipient mail-out limit as low as 20.

The solution to this is either to send out the same mail a few times with the recipient list "broken up" not to exceed 25 at a time, or alternatively use a separate mailing list service.

There are free options for mailing list services such as Yahoo! Groups, MSN Groups and Google Groups. If your recipient list is over 25, I strongly recommend at least checking those offerings to see if they can work for you. Additionally you can also use social media means of lists such as MySpace and Facebook (posting bulletins is essentially the same as mass e-mailing since everyone in the group will get the message).

Sending mail where the recipients are undisclosed

Although this is a simple tip, many people are unaware of how to do this.

When sending an e-mail to multiple recipients, most people usually just put everyone’s e-mail address into the To field. The problem with this is that everyone who receives that mail can see everyone on the list.

Using the cc (carbon copy) field doesn’t help because everyone can still see everyone else’s address.

The way to send a mail to multiple recipients where your address is the only one visible is to do it like this:

1. In To, put your e-mail address.
2. In cc, leave blank.
3. In bcc (blind carbon copy), this is where you put all the other recipients.

If you bcc everybody on the mail you send out and have your address as the only one in the To field, nobody will see the list of addresses. Instead they’ll only see yours because you’re in the To field.

Why do you have to put an e-mail address in the To field? Because it’s required, else the mail won’t send. There must be at least one address there, hence the reason you put in yours.

In Gmail, bcc is done by clicking Add Bcc just below the To field.

In Hotmail, bcc is done by clicking Show Cc & Bcc at the far top right when composing a message. When clicked, the Cc… and Bcc… fields will become visible.

In Yahoo! Mail, bcc is done by clicking Show BCC at the far top right of the To field when composing a message. When clicked, the Bcc: will become visible.

Whenever you take a photo with a digital camera the resulting JPEG file is obviously quite large both in dimensions and file size.

Many people like to send photos as file attachments in e-mail. While it’s true most e-mail services will auto-resize photos for you (like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail), the rest do not.

The Online Image Resizer at www.resize2mail.com is the easiest solution I found for a quick resizing of any GIF or JPEG image to attach to e-mail afterwards. All you have to do is browse for the image file, select the size you want, crop it using your mouse (it’s very easy) and then re-download the file to attach.

A web site like this is especially helpful if you’re with your digital camera at someone else’s computer and need to send out a quick photo e-mail. On your PC you have the image editing tools you like but not when using another computer.

Other ways of sending photos:

When I send photos to people I usually don’t send as a file attachment but rather just a link. This is due to the fact that many e-mail providers have over-zealous spam filters that flag any e-mail with an image in it.

Photo services that require a sign-up:

• Flickr
• Picasa
• Zooomr
• Photobucket
• MySpace

Each of these will allow you to send plain text URL links to any photo you have uploaded to your account.

And yes I know I linked the infamous MySpace, however they do make photo-sharing relatively simple.

Photo services that require no sign-up:

• ImageShack
• TinyPic

Can’t be bothered to sign up for yet another account? No problem. Just use one of the freebie no-reg-required sites above. I’ve been using ImageShack for a while now and it works great.

To note: These freebie no-reg sites are really handy to know when you need a quick-fix style way of sending images to someone else fast - not only for e-mail but for instant messaging conversations as well.

For users of Windows Live Hotmail you may have noticed that for some (but not all) forwarded e-mails and newsletters that contain images show these images as nothing but little gray boxes.

In particular, this gray box:

http://gfx1.hotmail.com/mail/w3/pr01/ltr/i_safe.gif

This is a relatively new issue that seems to have sprouted up with Hotmail. There is no issue otherwise with it.

Is this a setting you can turn off?

No.

Why can’t I just click "Show content?"

In this specific issue the yellow bar at the top which prompts you to click "Show content" isn’t there so you’re forced to deal with it.

Is there a workaround?

Not in the web-based version. However you can alternatively use the Windows Live Mail client to access your Hotmail and it will show all inline images for forwarded e-mails and newsletters (when you tell it to by allowing it to show content).

Why does this happen in the first place?

Unknown, but were I to hazard a guess it would be that Hotmail’s safety filters are working a little too well.

If you happen to be a Gmail user you probably noticed (as if you couldn’t) that the mail was down recently. Was it your fault? Of course not. It was Google’s fault.

Regular readers know that I (Rich, not Dave) don’t exactly have a fondness for Gmail due to its beta-riffic way of working - correction - not working in this instance.

More than a few have said that e-mail is going the way of the dodo but this Gmail outage definitely proves that to be 100% wrong. E-Mail is still an absolute vital means of internet communications that will continue to exist for many, many years. Proof of this is exemplified in the outpouring of outright anger from Gmail users when the mail didn’t work.

If one were to evaluate the importance of e-mail to other internet communication mediums, here’s how it fares out:

If a social networking site such as MySpace or Facebook has an outage, nobody really cares. The reaction is always the same. "Well.. it always sucked, so.. I guess I’ll just wait until they fix it." This also applies to microblogging sites like Twitter.

If an instant messaging service has an outage, people somewhat care. The typical reaction is "Well, that’s okay. I can send a text message via my phone until the service comes back online in a few hours."

When the mail stops flowing, this is when people go nuts because that’s where the truly important stuff happens. Online banking and a ton of billing systems are tied to e-mail. Attachments of important documents, other files and the like are stored in e-mail. Your electronic receipts for things you buy are in there. When the mail stops - even for just a few hours - this is bad.

One quickly comes to a realization that yes, the communications that matter really do happen in e-mail and nowhere else.

And although I don’t use POP3 mail, this outage does score a point for those that use it because even if the mail is down, you’ve got a local copy stored in the mail client. At least in that instance you’re down but not out. When all your mail is stored on the internet and your mail service goes down, you are truly down and out until it comes back.

In this tutorial I will instruct you how to get a you@your_domain.com e-mail address for $15 a year. There are no catches, no strings attached, no nonsense. You can get reliable domain-style e-mail this cheap and you don’t even need a web host.

The steps below will instruct you how to do this.

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ComputerWorld reports that MobileMe users (Apple’s replacement to .Mac) were quite upset due to the fact the e-mail service had a four-day outage. In the world of e-mail, days can seem like years and this is especially true for mobile users who send tons of e-mail.

To the best of my knowledge I have never known any e-mail service to be down for 4 days in a row; this is absolutely unheard of.

And it’s even more rare that paid e-mail service (which MobileMe is) has this kind of outage. Ouch. If you’re e-mail is free then it might take the sting away a bit… but when you pay for it? That’s just bad all around.

It would seem that Apple users are better off using free Gmail.

I send and receive quite a few e-mails. Years ago I used to have quite a hefty e-mail sig on every one of my e-mails that looked something like this:

[First Name Last Name here]
E-Mail: [e-mail address here]
AIM: [AIM screen name here]
Phone: [phone number here]
Web Site: [web address here]

This original sig was 5 lines long. And to the best of my knowledge it never assisted me in keeping communications with anyone.

Starting in late 2007 I came up with new signature, that being no signature at all. I eliminated it completely. Any e-mail I send now has absolutely no information at the tail were the sig would go.

The end result: People who communicate with me regularly - including new people - don’t have any problems keeping the information flow going. So it would appear (at least as far as I can tell) that the e-mail sig truly is a waste of space that serves to be nothing but e-mail clutter.

If you’re the type that absolutely must use an e-mail sig and don’t want to let it go, here are my suggestions:

1. Don’t use custom formatting and/or fonts.

Sooner or later you’re going to end up e-mailing someone using a Mac or a PC with Linux - and they’re not going to be able to see your Windows fonts at all. Stick to unformatted text. No bold/italic/underlined stuff. No custom fonts.

2. Don’t put an image of yourself in your sig.

If you do this, every e-mail you send has an image file attachment. And that means some (if not a whole bunch) of the e-mail you send will be flagged as SPAM. There are tons of people - including yours truly - that don’t open attachments at all. So don’t do it.

3. Do only input things in your signature that matter.

You only want to have information in the e-mail signature that people could actually use.

For example, having your name, instant messaging screen name and web site is fine.

Having your e-mail address in the sig is not okay because they already have it the moment it arrives in the recipient’s inbox.

Having "taglnes" with funny quotes is not okay because this is nothing but clutter. Have you ever received an e-mail where the signature with tagline is longer than the actual e-mail itself? I bet you have. I have and I can’t stand it.

General rule of thumb: If your e-mail sig is longer than the actual e-mail content, your sig is too frickin’ long. Shorten it or get rid of it.

Most of you out there already pay for e-mail and probably aren’t even aware of it. If you are the primary account holder for your internet service (meaning the service is in your name and you pay each bill as it comes due), your ISP does include e-mail service. E-Mail is part of the package so yes, you do pay for it.

What is the single largest difference between using a free webmail account from a provider (such as Yahoo, Microsoft or Google) and your included from-ISP e-mail? The difference is that your ISP has an obligation to keep the e-mail service running whereas the free providers do not. Continued

This chapter is a video presentation.

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