July 02, 2005
Gmail - Still Beta After All These Years
"Years" is an exageration, but not by much! Gmail has been in beta going on 15 months. I mentioned a while back that I was moving from Mailblocks to Gmail, and promised to let you know what I thought of it, so here goes.
Changing email programs isn't always easy. Because you use email day in and day out, a certain amount of muscle memory develops, and even if the new service/software is better, it takes some re-training. Switching to Gmail was a fairly easy change, as changes go, with a couple of things requiring some adjustment.
For one thing, Gmail doesn't offer the traditional folder set up where you create folders and move your email into those folders in order to keep them organized. Instead, you have "labels", which serve pretty much the same purpose with the added advantage of being able to put more than one label on an email. Of course, I'd heard about this and understood it, but still felt a little disoriented for a few minutes.
One of Gmail's best features can also be a tad confusing, that is, it groups emails and their responses together, so that the entire thread is in one place. You can open the thread and see the full-text of all the emails in that thread, or just click on the one you want to read. New messages are automatically expanded. Just be careful...if there's more than one new email in a thread, it can be easy to miss, though Gmail shows you the author of the new message, with a downward arrow pointing you to the right direction. Again, this just takes a little getting used to. But being able to see the complete thread has WAY more advantages than disadvantages.
There are a few small Gmail behaviors that I'd like to adjust. Most functions are 2 clicks away. For example, I'd like message options such as "trash", "reply" and "reply to all" to automatically display. Right now I have to click "more options" to see these frequently used commands, or use the drop-down menu, which also requires 2 clicks. I couldn't spot any configuration option set "unhide" as the default, but I was unsuccessful. I'd also like Gmail to automatically move to the next message when I trash one, but no such luck; gain, two clicks are necessary.
I almost forgot about the ads, because they're so inconspicuous, they're easy to overlook, unlike's Yahoo's ads, which are REALLY in your face. Gmail's ads are contextual. Gmail's computers scan your email messages for key words and deliver ads based on those keywords as you browse your email. The ads are strictly text, and take up very little space on the screen. And as long as it's just computers reading my email, I'm okay with it. A more significant concern is the housing of your entire collection of email on a remote server. I download saved messages regularly so I have copies on my own computer, but others might be worried about all that information living elsewhere.
So those are my minor quibbles. All in all, Gmail is bare bones, and there are advantages to that, though I do miss some of the bells and whistles of Yahoo email, like the ability to regularly sync your address book and collect POP email from other accounts. But I suppose that's part of its charm, kinda like the Google search box, simple and clean. It does the job.
I suppose my biggest complaint is that I can't seem to get it to work on my Blackberry. But then, there's lots of web sites that don't work on my Blackberry. However, I must say that Yahoo mail works fine.
Most importantly, I now have 2 gigs, yes, that's 2 gigs of email storage. (My Mailblocks account gave me 15 meg.) I can attach numerous photos to my emails without a care in the world. If I want to backup a small file, I can send it to Gmail. I can save emails that I have no inkling I'll ever need again. And I have the power of the Google search engine to search all that stuff.
For a recent review of Gmail, see PC Magazine, "Google's Gmail."
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)May 24, 2005
Mailblocks Revisited
I should have paid better attention when AOL bought Mailblocks. I've been using Mailblocks for well over a year, and was really liking the clean interface and disposable email addresses, though I'd given up using their challenge-response system. (People just figured the challenge email was more spam, and almost never responded.) But for the last few months, I was getting annoyed about the space limit of 15 meg on my basic (paid) account, when Gmail was offering 2 gig, free of charge.
I also found it odd that no new features had been added to Mailblocks for some time. And I took note when Genie Tyburski reported the difficulty in getting technical support when she experienced blocking of email from Mailblocks by certain services, such as, ironically enough, AOL. But I was sending to AOL members just fine, so I wasn't concerned.
Duh. After all, what did I think AOL was going to do with a web email service? They're quite clear in the press release, which I probably should have read before now! They purchased Mailblocks to get their award-winning spam-battling technology for AOL members, which would not be me.
So when technical troubles hit Mailblocks last week, getting them fixed was probably a low priority for the folks at AOL. That's when I checked the web site and realized they weren't taking new customers, which I must say made me question their commitment to the original Mailblocks product. Oh well, obviously time for me to move on.
Okay then, I've been meaning to try Gmail for some time, now's my chance! I'll report on my impressions of Gmail soon.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)May 05, 2005
E-Mail Addles the Mind
I was feeling a tad stressed the other day. I'm sure you know the feeling. I was trying to keep up with all the emails coming my way, and also attempting to concentrate on a project that needed to be completed. Finally, I turned off the email notification feature in Outlook 2003, you know, the one that pops up the little message in the lower right-hand portion of the screen to let you know you have new mail. And I felt so much better for it.
Now come to find out that once I stopped monitoring my email in real time, my IQ probably went up 10 points! If you, too, suffer from info-mania, you might want to read this article from the San Francisco Chronicle, E-Mail Addles the Mind. (Thanks, Joan!)
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)March 28, 2005
Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload
Considering how much we use email to communicate, day in and day out, it would behove us to use it as effectively as possible, or we could spend our days doing nothing but reading and responding to email. I've read many articles on using email efficiently, but never found one that offered more than common sense advice.
That's why I really espcially enjoyed Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload by Steve Robbins.
He starts by noting that he receives over 100 REAL emails daily, and that "at three minutes apiece it will take five hours just to read and respond." But let's get real, I don't know about you, but if I spent 3 minutes per email, I'd never get anything done! Perhaps that's why email communication can be frustrating...people tend to skim, me included, sometimes completely missing the critical point.
In order to get the full advantage of his suggestions, you need to get cooperation from those who send YOU email, and manage to improve THEIR email habits. For example:
Use a subject line to summarize, not describe. This tip will help you get the attention of those who are reading your missive.
Give your reader full context at the start of your message. I think this one is particularly important. I get some email messages that append 6 or 7 emails, an entire discussion. If the upshot of those emails isn't summarized, with an indication of what action the sender wants ME to take, I may have to spend 10 minutes digging through all the information to figure it out.
When you copy lots of people...mark out why each person should care. And if it's not clear in the message what the recipient is supposed to do, the work may not get done.
Or, you can make good use of his final suggestion. "Ignore it." Hmm, that's definitely tempting!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 09:53 PM | Comments (0)March 04, 2005
Editing Emails in Outlook
I only recently realized how easy it is to edit existing email messages in Outlook. I guess I assumed that an email message was "locked down" somehow once it was sent. But that's not the case, so I often add a note to a saved email to remind me of an action I need to take, or a conversation that I had with the sender.
In Woody's Office Watch, Woody points out how to edit emails and how to tell when an email has been edited. See "Has an Outlook Message Been Edited?" in the Feb. 16th email with a follow-up today discussing the pitfalls of assuming that email messages can't be tampered with and changed.
According to Woody, "It's worth remembering that not only received items can usually be edited but the 'Sent Items' copy of message you send can be edited after sending. So it is possible for someone to change their record of an email that was sent."
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)October 16, 2004
Storing Knowledge in Public Folders
We all know that there's an amazing amount of knowledge contained in simple email messages. As I've mentioned in several presentations, I often use Microsoft Exchange public folders to easily make such emails available to groups of users.
Public folders look just like your own email folders, but they can be shared with other individuals or groups. You can set security to limit access, or make them available to everyone on the network.
So how would you use public folders? If you have an internal email mailing list for the firm's reference librarians, there's likely valuable information being passed back and forth, so you might want to store all such emails for everyone's viewing pleasure. To do that you can easily set up a rule in Outlook to automatically move all messages sent to the list into their own public folder. Or perhaps you'd like to store selected emails on a topic in their own public folder by moving individual emails from your inbox to the folder. By making this information public, you may be able to avoid individuals having to store these items in their own, private folders. And you have searchable, though primitive, knowledgebase.
But navigating to public folders can be tedious, depending upon the number of levels in your hierarchy. That's why my favorite way to share folders is to link to them from the Intranet using Outlook Linker, a handy utility that creates a link or URL to public folders or to specific emails in those folders.
I'll admit to being momentarily panicked a couple of months ago when my computer was migrated to XP and Outlook 2003. Suddenly the public folders were no where to be found. After several days, and a few calls to the help desk, we figured out that in the new interface you need to go to the "folder list" view to find public folders. Hmm, isn't that intuitive. :-)
Another tip: I quickly learned that all of my links to public folders no longer worked on XP. Turns out the "#" sign in the name of the folder caused the link to malfunction. The # sign has been removed from the name, and all is well. Don't ask me why # was fine in Windows 2000, but unusable in XP. Just another Microsoft mystery.
It may be best not to get too attached to public folders. Microsoft seems less than enthusiastic about them of late, and seems to be suggesting that Sharepoint, their portal product, would be a better method of making information available to the enterprise, though they swear that public folders aren't going away in the near future.
For more information on where public folders are headed, see "Are Public Folders Dead?"
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)September 14, 2004
Managing Your Email Remotely
Taking time off from your email responsibilities can result in big problems down the road. Vacations, business travel, or just a trip across town can make it difficult to monitor your email inbox. Checking email on a regular basis when I'm away from my home computer is a necessity, or things will get out of hand very quickly. But how can you be two places at once? When it comes to email, it can be done!
Continued in [Managing Your Email Remotely, originally published in Searcher Magazine, June 2004]
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)July 19, 2004
The Information Architecture of Email
Dan Brown writes an excellent article on Gmail's email management tools including, of course, searching, as well as threading, labels, filtering, and spam handling. After reading this article, I can see that I really NEED Gmail. Now if they'd only add a feature for POP email, I'd be good to go!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)July 05, 2004
More on Gmail
Gmail has been available on a limited release for 3 months now. If you're wondering what all the fuss is about you'll want to read Rich Wiggins' article in Searcher Magazine, GMail: Google Storms the Webmail Market. This is the most comprehensive and informative article on Gmail that I've seen, with comparisons to other web email services, a complete list of features, a discussion of Gmail's aversion to folders, and a review of privacy concerns, not to mention details on the flaws the privacy advocates haven't noticed that could open your Gmail email up to public scrutiny.
I did finally get an invitation to Gmail (thanks, Tim!) but have a problem. My current email account won't forward, and Gmail, as Rich mentions, doesn't support POP email, as does Mailblocks and Yahoo. So I have an account with no email in it. But that's okay, I'm sure POP support will come soon, and when it does, I'll be ready! In the meantime, I'll follow Rich Wiggins' blog to keep track of all the Gmail developments.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 03:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBackJune 27, 2004
Managing Your Email Remotely
I recently wrote an article for Searcher Magazine called "Managing Your E-Mail Remotely - Advice on Maintaining Your E-Mail Relationship." (Sorry to say the full-text is not on the Information Today web site.)
In the article I discuss web-based email, as well as remote desktop access via tools such as GotomyPC.com. So I was particularly interested in a PC World article this month, "Access Your Desktop From Wherever You May Be" which describes how to use free tools to remotely connect to a computer at another location.
If you have Windows XP Professional on the computer you'd like to connect to, you can use the remote desktop feature that's included. For other versions of Windows, a free program called RealVNC is available free. The article provides detailed instructions on how to setup both options.
To my mind, what with firewalls and all, it gets a bit complicated. It's no wonder that Gotomypc is successful, considering that they make this process very straightforward. Still, if you want to save a few bucks, the Windows options may be worth a try. If you do try it, let us know!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)June 09, 2004
Google's Gmail - Friend or Foe?
On April 1st, Google announced their free web-based email service called Gmail, currently in "preview release and limited test." An astounding 1 gigabyte of space is included as well as, what else, but a robust search engine designed to make archives and folders for organizing email, and for that matter, the act of deleting email, totally unnecessary. (Most free web-based email offers storage in the one-digit megabyte range.)
Incredulous industry watchers were uncertain....was this actually an April Fool's Day joke? It's been almost two months now, and I think it's safe to say that Gmail is no joke. But the hub-bub surrounding the product has been entertaining. If you haven't been following the Gmail controversy, let me summarize for you. Of course, it's all third-hand....I wasn't one of the select few who received and invitation to take Gmail for a spin. [sigh]
Google is a for-profit company, soon to be a public one. So the first question is how do they plan to make money while giving away 1 gigabyte of storage per user? By doing what Google does best with a slight twist. Your interests will be determined based on the text of your email rather than your search terms and targeted ads will be displayed based on those interests. No pop-ups, mind you, just the regular, text-based ads that you're used to seeing on your search engine results and on some web sites as well.
For example, you receive an email from a friend about her new digital camera, and, like magic, the Google ad shows you ads for great deals on digital cameras. At least, that's the theory.
This creeps out a lot of people, including 28 privacy groups. For a brief run-down of privacy concerns relating to ads, see "Will Google Read Your E-Mail" (PC Magazine, June 8, 2004).
California State Senator Liz Figueroa expressed her displeasure by introducing a bill with language intended to stop Gmail from scanning incoming email without the consent of the sender. Though if you look at more recent versions of the bill, you'll find the language has been watered down considerably. (For more information, see Gmail under attack in California)
Selected legislators and privacy groups may be upset, but I'll admit, the ads don't bother me a bit. It's a COMPUTER scanning your email and presenting related ads, not a person. After all, many computers read your email messages as they make their way to you over the Internet, including spam filters.
There are other concerns, for example, your email would be stored, indefinitely, on a Google server. Though this is true of all web-email services, it's more of an issue on Gmail because of the abundance of storage space they offer. And on Google, email might never be deleted. (I'm uncertain whether you actually CAN delete email from your Gmail account if you so choose. )
The fact that your email is stored on another server that is not completely within your control is a possible worry, though I suspect that your own computer containing all of your deepest, darkest secrets is probably less secure than the Google's servers.
The trade-off? The power of Google to search for that elusive email you received 4 months ago that you now desperately need. If you ask me, this is huge. Email contains an incredible amount of information that most people want to tap again and again. But I haven't found a web-mail service yet that allowed ANY kind of searching, and Outlook, though improved with 2003 according to all accounts, isn't quite there yet when it comes to search.
Will all this worry kill Gmail? It seems unlikely considering the demand for the preview Gmail accounts. There are rumors of Gmail accounts fetching sizable amounts on Ebay and even cartoons on the subject. (Cartoon reference courtesy of Steve Bass.)
To hear about Gmail from someone who actually has an account, and is a compulsive blogger (according to an article in the N.Y. Times), try Rich Wiggins' blog. Note that he points out some privacy protections that are lacking in Gmail, though not the ones that are most talked about, such as the lack of strict time-outs. One can hope, WILL be added before they go public with Gmail.
If you can't sleep at night knowing that a computer somewhere in Silicon Valley is reading your email, not to worry. If you don't want to use Gmail, you don't HAVE to. It's your choice. No one will force you. Really.
For more information see:
Web-Based E-Mail; Gmail: Google's E-Mail Winner
Privacy Issues Plague Google's Gmail
Google’s New 1 Gigabyte Webmail Service
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 07:26 PM | Comments (0)May 24, 2004
Why Your Email Requests Get Ignored
Considering how much we use email these days, it's particularly important that we use it effectively. So here's a tip that may save you some grief. The more people you copy on an email, the less likely you are to get a response. Not exactly intuitive, is it? Yet that's exactly what a recent CNET news article claims.
If you think about it, it makes sense. There is a certain sense of responsibility involved with being the sole recipient of a request for help. A message sent to a large group inevitably leads to the conclusion that the other guy will help out.
Of course, I'm not sure this applies to librarians. Send an email message to a large group of librarians, and you may get a large number of responses! We're just such a darn helpful bunch.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 07:47 PM | Comments (0)February 16, 2004
One Woman's War on Spam Continues....
My quest to find the perfect spam solution continues. As I reported last week, I decided to try Spamex to solve my spam woes. I've since moved on to Mailblocks, and think that this may be the one for me.
The concept of disposable email addresses (DEAs) used by both Spamex and Mailblocks is a good one. On Spamex I set up several different DEAs, including one for all my mailing list email such as law-lib. I received messages without a problem, but even after following all the instructions carefully, and sending email via the Spamex interface, I was unable to post to the mailing lists. So back to the drawing board.
Mailblocks, rated highly by both PC Magazine and PC World, is a different kind of animal. It provides a web-based email interface which includes spam-fighting capabilities, unlike Spamex which concentrates solely on DEAs.
The Mailblocks DEAs are called trackers. All messages addressed to trackers arrive in your inbox just like any other email. But should you start receiving spam addressed to a tracker, you can delete the address, stopping the spam in its tracks without effecting any of your other email addresses.
But Mailblocks offers much more in their "challenge/response" system.
The Mailblocks challenge-response system works as follows.
1. An email arrives addressed to you.
2. If the sender was previously approved by you, or included in your address book, the email is delivered to your inbox.
3. If the sender is new to you, it goes to a pending folder.
4. A "challenge" email is sent to the sender, asking the sender to type a confirmation number into a box.
5. Upon completion of the confirmation by the sender, the email is moved from your pending folder to your inbox.
That should stop spam in it's tracks!
So as of today, all of my mailing list email being sent to a Mailblocks tracker address. By the way, mail coming in to trackers is not subject to the challenge-response system, which is important for automated mail. After all, there's no one on the other end to respond to the challenge! I have no problems posting to the lists I'm subscribed to. I simply choose the correct address from the drop-down box in the compose window.
Ultimately I can filter ALL of my email, including my Yahoo account, and my main email account through Mailblocks. I'm on my way to a spam-free, or almost spam-free existence. How's that for optimism!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)February 08, 2004
Can Email Survive?
Email’s reputation as an efficient tool for home and business communication is being questioned these days, mainly because the spam that is flowing into our inboxes is devouring our day. You can judge the state of email by scanning such article titles as “Can E-mail Survive?” (PC Magazine, Feb. 17, 2004, p. 65)
Why the wailing and gnashing of teeth? The spam blockers we’re employing are not just blocking spam, but also blocking legitimate emails. For those of us hooked on email, the value proposition may start to wane when we have to follow up important emails with a phone call to make sure that our recipient actually received it.
But for every problem there's somebody out there trying to solve it. "Can Email Survive" reviews a variety of such efforts including email clients, web mail, utilities, antispam filters and more. Editors' Choice includes Microsoft Outlook 2003, Mailblocks Extended Service, Norton AntiSpam 2004, and Qurb 2.0.
New spam fighters have come on the market since this article was published, for example, Zoemail, announced just last week, promises a better life online by providing a spam-free existence for a dollar a month. If they can deliver on that promise the world really would be a better place.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)February 01, 2004
Spam Spam Spam Spam
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more! I've had it with spam. I shouldn't feel like I need a shower after going through my inbox.
So I'm preparing to take a momentous step, at least momentous for me. It's time to retire my Earthlink email address of many years and move on. But such a move needs careful consideration and strategizing, or, as we all know, I'll end up right back where I started from. So here's my plan, disposable email addresses, or DEAs as they're called.
A relatively new phenomena, disposable email addresses are available from several different web sites. These services allow you to register your REAL email address, then provide temporary email addresses for you to use for web site registration, subscribing to listservs, etc. Any messages sent to the disposable email address is forwarded to your REAL email address.
It's recommended that you use a different address for each web site which requires it, then, once the spam starts flowing in, you can cancel that address, cutting off the spammers immediately. A side benefit of these service is that you can change your REAL email address without cutting off the mail you actually WANT to receive, by just going to the service you use for the source of your DEAs and change the forwarding address. Another side benefit? You find out who's sharing your address with spammers.
There are several web sites out there that offer this service. SpamMotel is available free of charge. Spamex charges $9.95 per year to create disposable email addresses on the fly. And web-based Mailblocks offers DEAs as one of several ways to reduce spam. I'm trying Spamex on a 30-day free trial.
What anti-spam strategy works for you? If you have a favorite spam-blocking program, let the rest of us know about it. We need all the help we can get.
Now the question is, should anyone get my REAL email address? Do I trust my friends, my family, my co-workers? Nah! In the war on spam trust no one.....
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)November 11, 2003
Outlook's Journal Feature
Sometimes I wonder if my memory is worsening with age or whether it's just always been like that. Either way, there's no doubt I need all the help I can get.
So I've been on a quest to come up with a system to log conversations, events, meeting notes, etc. I'm still looking for the perfect solution, but in the meantime I've started using Outlook's Journal feature.
I use the journal feature to make notes about conversations I've had with contacts so I don't forget all the important details. This way there's no doubt in my mind when I requested information from vendor, or what transpired in our last phone conversation.
As is typical with Outlook, the implementation of the journal isn't ideal. For example, I don't find the format for viewing journal entries by subject to be very helpful. But at least on Monday, I can remember what I asked the Lexis representative the prior Friday.
For information on how to configure and use the journal feature, see this tutorial on Outlook or this help page
Do you have any tips for tracking projects, meetings, conversations or anything else? If so, please share!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 06:34 PM | Comments (0)
