One Tip A Day » email

How To Send And Receive Files from a Remote Computer

Umar — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:10:14 +0000

Sending files as attachments of an email is a common practice. We usually do this for files smaller than 10MB. Emailing larger files is usually not supported by the most popular email services. A way around that problem is to span your large file over a series of smaller archive files and email these smaller files. Obviously this method consumes more time as you end up sending multiple emails. Alternatively you can upload your file onto a file hosting site and give the file URL to your recipient. However file hosting sites have their own drawbacks: file size limits and slow upload speeds.

The best method for file transfer therefore becomes establishing a direct connection with the computer you are sending the file to. Many easily available programs do this. They usually require at least a basic networking knowledge; this prerequisite makes usage slightly difficult for the average user. Furthermore these programs are made operating-system-specific i.e. if a program has been designed for the Mac, it will not be compatible with Windows. Therefore you will not be able to use such programs if your file recipient is running a different operating system.

Thankfully the developers of BelugaFile observed, analyzed, and resolved all these problems by a single great product. BelugaFile is an amazingly user-friendly application that lets users send file to and received files from a remote computer. The application is based on Air which means its crossplatform so you can now easily share your files with a friend running whichever operating system.

In order to take advantage of this convenient program, the sender and recipient both should have BelugaFile installed. The download file is merely 1.18MB large and you can have the program running instantly. You connect with other BelugaFile users by sharing your unique Host IDs with each which the program provides to you.

Once you are connected, you can see the files you have up for sharing and the files your peer has for sharing categorized that way.

All you do now is start adding files by clicking the ‘Add files’ button. The recipient will accept on his/her end and the smooth downloading process will begin.

And here is the best part: there is no size limit on the file you share!

No more pesky conditions to abide by, you can transfer incredibly large files from one computer to the other via a simple internet connection that allows UDP traffic.

(UDP is the only requirement and is met by almost all connections.)

Offline Gmail: Choose What Messages To Download

Umar — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:10:38 +0000

Having your emails stored on your PC rather than your online inbox can provide you with easy offline access to your emails. This way you don’t need to log in to your inbox each time you want to read your email. As a result, you save a lot of time by spending no time on logging in and getting right down to business.

However, your email inbox might be too large i.e. too large for you to want to save it all on your PC. You might only require certain messages to be saved for offline viewing. For instance you might want only those emails to be downloaded which are from your professor who sends assignments and notes via emails.

Choosing individually which emails to download can be quite time-consuming. But now, with a great new feature of Offline Gmail, you can work around this time-consuming issue.

By enabling Offline Gmail in the Google Labs, you can already have your emails/messages downloaded for offline viewing. Now however, Offline Gmail has been made to facilitate you further by enabling you to save only certain messages. Say you want to download all conversations in the last month which were labeled with a keyword which you can assign. With Google Gmail, you can do that with ease:

If you do such a maneuver and click ‘Save,’ and Gmail has already downloaded some messages from your previous usage of Offline Gmail, the new messages (according to your specifications) will now be downloaded and the messages which don’t plan to read will be removed off your hard drive, reducing clutter.

With this step Gmail takes free emailing service to another level.

How To Remove On Behalf Of Message In Gmail

Tony Williams — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:50:04 +0000

Gmail is a great email product and is gaining a lot of users and is now the 3rd most used email service after Yahoo mail and MSN hotmail. Not only does it provide novel ways to manage lots of emails, but it also allows you to add other email domains to the inbox.

Until recently though any messages sent this way from a personal domain via gmail had an annoying ‘on behalf of” added to the sender field in certain email clients. Now you can finally remove the ‘on behalf of’ message within gmail as you can now add your own smtp servers:

Click on ‘Settings ‘then ‘Accounts and Import‘
Click on ‘edit info‘ on the account you want to change in the ‘Send mail as‘ section
The following popup box will appear:
Check the option to use your own smtp servers and enter it in the field
Click ‘Save Changes’

Omnistar Mailer – A Powerful Web Based Email Marketing Software

Tony Williams — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:37:32 +0000

Omnistar Email Marketing Software is a powerful and well-built piece of software for email marketing. It makes it very easy for you to manage and deploy email and newsletter campaigns. The best thing is that you can control it entirely from the web. Its easy to use system is just perfect for creating, sending, and tracking setup reminders, surveys, and newsletters. The software also offers a step-by-step getting started wizard with plenty of customizable email templates. This way, even if you do not have any technical expertise, you can still create professional HTML emails easily.

Omnistar Mailer helps you maintain the list of your customers and create surveys to get feedbacks from them. The entire system is very easy to use. In fact, if you still have some confusion about how to use a particular feature, you can take advantage of their audio-video tutorials. If you are maintaining the list of subscribers yourself, you will have a very tough time doing an analysis manually. On the other hand, this PHP/MySQL software program automates the process for you by generating analytical reports so that you could easily tweak and test different campaigns and optimize their performances by working on the areas of improvement.

Omnistar Interactive is offering our readers a fantastic 10% discount to One Tip A Day readers by entering the promo code: onetip at their order form.

Omnistar Mailer – A Powerful Web Based Email Marketing Software

Omnistar Email Marketing Software is a powerful and well-built piece of software for email marketing. It makes it very easy for you to manage and deploy email and newsletter campaigns. The best thing is that you can control it entirely from the web. Its easy to use system is just perfect for creating, sending, and tracking setup reminders, surveys, and newsletters. The software also offers a step-by-step getting started wizard with plenty of customizable email templates. This way, even if you do not have any technical expertise, you can still create professional HTML emails easily.

Omnistar Interactive is offering our readers a 10% discount by entering the promo code:

onetip

at their order form.

Use A Language Filter To Reduce Gmail Spam

Tony Williams — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:41:49 +0000

Gmail is fantastic at removing spam. I receive about 20k spam emails a month, because I own a few domain names. Even so, only a handful make it through to my gmail inbox, which is fantastic.

However, every now and then the spammers come up with a new technique that fools the gmail spam filters. One method that can tip up gmail is spam not in English. Even though you can’t read it, it’s still annoying, so here’s how to stop it.

Click on ‘Create A Filter’ next to the Gmail search engine
In the ‘Matches’ field enter ‘( lang:af OR lang:am OR lang:ar OR lang:az OR lang:be OR lang:bg OR lang:bh OR lang:bn OR lang:bo OR lang:ca OR lang:chr OR lang:cs OR lang:da OR lang:de OR lang:dv OR lang:el OR lang:en OR lang:eo OR lang:es OR lang:et OR lang:eu OR lang:fa OR lang:fi OR lang:fr OR lang:gl OR lang:gn OR lang:gu OR lang:hi OR lang:hr OR lang:hu OR lang:hy OR lang:id OR lang:is OR lang:it OR lang:iu OR lang:iw OR lang:ja OR lang:ka OR lang:kk OR lang:km OR lang:kn OR lang:ko OR lang:ku OR lang:ky OR lang:lo OR lang:lt OR lang:lv OR lang:mk OR lang:ml OR lang:mn OR lang:mr OR lang:ms OR lang:mt OR lang:my OR lang:ne OR lang:nl OR lang:no OR lang:or OR lang:pa OR lang:pl OR lang:ps OR lang:pt-PT OR lang:ro OR lang:ru OR lang:sa OR lang:sd OR lang:si OR lang:sk OR lang:sl OR lang:sq OR lang:sr OR lang:sv OR lang:sw OR lang:ta OR lang:te OR lang:tg OR lang:th OR lang:tl OR lang:tl OR lang:tr OR lang:ug OR lang:uk OR lang:ur OR lang:uz OR lang:vi OR lang:zh OR lang:zh-CN OR lang:zh-TW)
Choose ‘Skip Inbox’
Create a new label, say ‘Foreign Spam’.
Choose ‘Delete’ so all the messages are deleted automatically. If you are worred that you might delete a genuine email, don’t worry as it will stay on the gmail servers for 30 days.

Thanks to Digital Inspiration for the tip.

Free Websites to help you Avoid Spam

Umar — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:33:09 +0000

It’s really common for a spam bot to easily steal email addresses written on websites and blogs.They collect e-mail addresses from the Internet in order to build mailing lists for sending unsolicited e-maila known as spam. Their purpose is to gather e-mail addresses from Web sites, newsgroups, special-interest group (SIG) postings, and chat-room conversations. Because e-mail addresses have a distinctive format, spambots are easy to write.

Following are some of the free web-services that can help you fight against these kind of bots and avoid spam.

Mailinator

Mailinator is a free disposable email service that promises to protect your identity on the internet. It allows you to easily create an on-the-spot email identity that provides anonymity and fights web inertia in one easy step.

It doesn’t really require any registration and helps thousands of people every day avoid spam. Simply create your free email id that is followed by “@Mailinator” and check your inbox after sharing it with any anonymous person out there.

The company had introduced a feature in March which adds “Alternate Inboxes” to Mailinator and can definitely come in handy. For example, if you check any inbox on Mailinator (say, binkypop), listed on the page is the alternate inbox name. All alternate inbox names start with “M8R-”. For example, for binkypop, the alternate inbox name is M8R-yg1hkn@mailinator.com.

HideText

Another great way to avoid spam is HideText. A free web service that allows you convert text to an image. This means you can easily hide passwords, personal messages, pieces of code, or any kind of private information on forums, blogposts, emails, irc, msn-aim chats. Your text becomes unGoogleable and leaves no traces at all.

Spam Proof Email Generator

Here’s something similar to HideText. Spam Proof Email Generator is considered nothing but a simply program that helps you fight against a Spam Bot that crawls a website and gathers all the email addresses written there. Since they’re are not able to read images and won’t get a chance to copy your email address.

You can easily fool these bots by simply using the form on the website to create a picture of your email address.

Send Large Files With Sendago

Tony Williams — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:17:22 +0000

One area that I think many webmail services need to revisit are the limits on sending large files. Many have caps of 10-20MB, which is nothing these days and can make sending large files problematic.

A potential solution if you need to send a large file is to use Sendago. This application allows you send files that are too big to send as an email attachment. The service also comes with 10GB of online storage, so you don’t have to keep uploading files if you want to share them with more than one contact.

Accessing files is easy and can be done via a browser i.e. without having to install the Sendago software.

Latest Version Of MyAvatars Plugin For MyBlogLog Released

Tony Williams — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 13:00:40 +0000

I’m amazed by how many of my readers have registered for MyBlogLog. I can tell because I use the MyAvatars Plugin For WordPress that displays MyBlogLog avatars for commenters if they have one. I’m convinced that the plugin is one of the main drivers of registrations for MyBlogLog.

The latest version of the MyAvatars plugin has just been released that fixes a number of issues that have emerged as MyBlogLog have updated their systems. The full features of the new MyAvatars Plugin are below:

Added nofollow for avatars
“No image bug” solved
Title attribute for avatars in english
“Big images” bug fixed
Improved XHTML validation
Gravatar support (not active by default)
Trackbacks/Pingback support (Works good, but it’s not perfect)
Support for blogs with more than 1 author, works very well
Separated CSS Style
Email address is now safe!!!
Customizable title for the avatars
Gets MyBlogLog avatars of your commenters
Links directly to their MyBlogLog profiles
Easy installation & template integration
Added email support for retrieving profiles
If not MyBlogLog member will prompt the registration page

Upgrading the MyAvatars plugin isn’t as simple as just loading up the new version, so make sure you read the instructions.

BugMeNot – Instant Disposable Email Addresses

Tony Williams — Tue, 22 May 2007 23:51:03 +0000

Many sites make ask for you to provide an email address when you register. No matter how good their intentions, the only reason for adding this requirement is because they intend to send you emails in the future.

If like me you already receive enough emails each day and you definitely don’t want anymore spam, then check out BugMeNot. This very quick service allows you to create temporary email addresses that you can use to register on sites.

BugMeNot even lets you check the mailbox for your temporary addresses in case you have to click on verification links (emails are only kept for 24 hours).

Using the service is easy. Just visit the BugMeNot site and create an address. It’s that simple. Oh, and of course, no registration is required!

More: BugMeNot

50 Web Usability Tips

Tony Williams — Sat, 19 May 2007 19:21:17 +0000

Web usability is something that many site owners don’t pay enough attention to, even though it can be the key factor that will make your users come back over and over again.

Maki over at DoshDosh has spent a considerable amount of time compiling a list of 50 web usability tips, which he’s even taken the time to categorize. The post also has a list of additional references so that readers can really through themselves into the topic.

Some of the tips I found most interesting were:

Remove the ‘homepage‘ link on the homepage because it can increase navigational confusion. This will make the user doubt that the homepage is indeed the actual homepage.
Follow conventions for web design (”blue for hypertext links“) This will allow site visitors to mainly focus on your content instead of using their mental power to learn how to use your website.
Simplicity is Rule #1 for usability. The less features there are available in a design, the less there will be to compete for the user’s attention.
Try to mainly rely on typography instead of bloated designs and graphics. The goal is to enhance appearance without delaying the response time. The blandest sites can get the most page views and users.
Change the color of visited links. This will allow users to decide where to go next on your website. Links that don’t change color can cause navigational disorientation in users.

To read the full list click here

SpamAid: Spam Filter For Outlook

Tony Williams — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:50:33 +0000

I use Gmail as my main email client and the spam filters are pretty good. However, I need to use Outlook to synchronise my contacts and my mail with my PDA. I’ve never found Microsoft’s inbuilt spam filters to be any good, so luckily I’ve just been asked to review SpamAid by ReviewMe as a sponsored review.

SpamAid 4.0 uses Bayesian filtering technology that claims to identify about 98% of incoming spam messages. Any spam caught is placed in a spam folder. I’m a big fan of services that do this as no service is 100% effective, and it’s good to have a way to recover mistakes.

The service normally costs $29 (there’s a 30 day free trial), but luckily I was given a key to try out the service for free. Installation was simple and went without a hitch even though I’m using Outlook 2007 which wasn’t listed on the site. Once SpamAid was installed it automatically add my Inbox and Sent Items folders as the folders to be scanned.

One very nice feature SpamAid has is that it can scan emails you’ve already received, which can be handy if you didn’t have any protection previously. I had 2,065 emails in my inbox so this provided a good opportunity to test the filter. SpamAid found 60 spam messages, however 14 of these were genuine messages. This is where the Bayesian filtering comes into play because as part of the installation a toolbar is added to Outlook that allows one-click correction of mistakes. SpamAid learns from it’s mistakes so the next time I get an email from those contacts or with similar content, it won’t tag them as spam.

Overall I quite like the service and it’s way better than the Zone Alarm filters I used to use. The only quibble I have is with the price, although you don’t have to buy updates so the $29 spent should be a one-off charge. If you’re looking for a good spam solution for Outlook that actually works and learns from it’s mistakes then you should definitely consider SpamAid.

Add Google Talk To Your Google Homepage

Tony Williams — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 18:38:49 +0000

I’m not quite sure when this was launched, but if you’re a Google Talk user then you can now add a Google Talk module to your Personalized Google Homepage, which allows you to chat directly to your friends without leaving the page.

I think this is such a cool feature. I used to be a big user of MSN messenger, but every since Google added Google Talk in a similar manner to Gmail I’ve found that I’ve been using Google Talk more and more. I just love the fact that it automatically tells me if someone I email or who has emailed me is a user.

All I need now is a way to use Google Talk on my cell and I’ll be in IM heaven!

To add Google Talk Gadget to your Personalized Hompage, go to google.com/talk and click on ‘Add to your Personalized Homepage’ button.

More: TechBuzz, CyberNet

How To Access Hotmail From Within Gmail

Tony Williams — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 11:44:10 +0000

Today’s tip will be useful for those of you who haven’t made the switch over to Gmail, or are still maintaining both a Gmail and a Hotmail address. By following the simple instructions below you will be able to access your Hotmail messages from within Gmail, so you will only have to login once.

Step1: Register With IzyMail

Step2: Add Details To Gmail

Open up Gmail and go to ‘Settings’ and then ‘Account’ and near the bottom of the page ‘Add A New Account’
In the first window that pops up enter your Hotmail address e.g. yourname@hotmail.com and click ‘Next step’
In the second window enter your hotmail username and password in ‘Username’ and ‘Password’. In the ‘POP Server’ field’ add ‘in.zymail.com‘
Now click ‘Add Account’ and you’ve finished

If you found this tip helpful or if you have any questions then please leave a comment below.

Thanks to Javed Mandary for the tip

How To Add A HTML Signature To Gmail

Tony Williams — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 22:37:10 +0000

Gmail is slowly eating away at the dominance of Yahoo! and MSN Hotmail in the wemail space, as in my view it’s brought a fresh approach to using email.

One of it’s major limitations was however it’s inability to add a HTML signature to emails. As always, some enterprising person who hasn’t seen daylight in months has come up with a solution to this problem whihch is very simple to implement.

If you’re a Gmail user all you have to do is the following:

Download and install Greasemonkey if you don’t already have it.
Install the script
You’ll need to have the HTML code for the signature that you want to insert. Once you have that just go to the Greasemonkey script manager and edit the script’s HTML signature to whatever you want.

Viola – you have one tricked out signature ready to go! Thanks to Ryan for showing me the way to this great tip.

If you haven’t switched to Gmail yet, why not? It just gets better and better each month.

How To Remove Gmail Image Spam

Tony Williams — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 19:30:57 +0000

I’ve used Yahoo Mail and Hotmail in the past, but Gmail is the best webmail service by far for me. That is until recently, until the amount of Image Spam I received got out of control.

Spammers latest trick is to embed the spam content in an image which is included as an attachment. Gmail unfortunately doesn’t scan attachments so the spam emails make it through.

I’ve been playing around to find a way to block these image spam emails and I’ve finally cracked it. To get rid of the image spam do the following:

Go Into Gmail and click on ‘create a filter’
Type ‘multipart/related .gif’ in the ‘Has The Words’ fields
Optional: If you receive photos or images from friends, then to stop their emails being identified as spam and deleted then enter their email addresses in the ‘doesn’t have’ field
Tick ‘Has Attachment’
Click on ‘Next Step’
Then tick on ‘Delete it’

This will move all image spam emails to your gmail trash folder where they will be automatically deleted after 30 days.

How To Display Just Unread Email And Much More In Gmail

Tony Williams — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 00:40:17 +0000

I love Gmail. There are very few things it can’t do, but until today there was one small thing that really bugged me – I couldn’t display just unread email.

Then I discovered a link to a page that lists all of the useful searches that you can do. Did you know that if you type “is:unread“ in the search field, only your unread email will be displayed? Other gems listed include:

from: – Used to specify the sender
to: - Used to specify a recipient
in:anywhere – Search for messages anywhere in your account*
after: or before: – Search for messages sent during a certain period of time*

To view the full list click here.

Avoid Spam Create Disposable Email Addresses With Gmail

Tony Williams — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 20:24:35 +0000

No matter how hard your email service tries, spam always gets through. Sometimes we have to register with services that then end up becoming spammers. If you are a Gmail user then you can avoid this by using ‘disposable email addresses’. Here’s how:

(i) Gmail uses plus-addressing, which lets you put a plus sign after your address and then anything after the plus sing, with the email still arriving at the right place.

(ii) If your address is say onetipaday@gmail.com, then you can also use onetipaday+junk@gmail.com as one address or onetipaday+spammer@gmail.com as another address. Basically you have an unlimited number of e-mail addresses you can use.

(iii) Then if any emails come into your inbox addressed to any of your disposable addresses then setup a filter to either archive or trash the offending message, without it cluttering up your inbox.

Using Gmail Overseas: Unlock Extra Features

Tony Williams — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:35:00 +0000

Google are quite slow at rolling out new Gmail features to international users. In some countries it doesn’t even have the same name – in the UK it’s called ‘Google Mail’.

For some reason, features that are available in the US aren’t available overseas. If you are one of the unlucky international users of Gmail there is a quick way to unlock the extra features including Google Talk integration.

All you have to do is change your display language in the GMail settings from French, German, UK English etc to US English. Once you’ve done this you will automatically get all the cool features that are only available to Americans.