Web Talk

The most famous service provided by Google is without any doubt its free Gmail e-mail account, having the following domain extension: yourusername@gmail.com. What instead you don’t know is that you have the chance to sign-up for free to another Google e-mail account having a more complete and recognizable Google domain extension and pointing to the same Gmail mailbox. The Google e-mail account I am talking is: yourusername@googlemail.com. So, for example if you have a Gmail with the following e-mail address: myname@gmail.com, all e-mails sent to myname@googlemail.com will also be delivered to the same inbox belonging to the other address, and vice versa (basically you will have two Gmails with different extensions pointing to the same account). But, why does Google have  got two different e-mails? GoogleMail is a simple workaround adopted by the big G in order to make its service available  in United Kingdom (UK) and Germany where there is a trademark fight on rights to own the name of Gmail. People liking this Google service might be interesting in having a more complete and  recognizable Google e-email  by having the word “Google” in the e-mail address itself. If you want to sign-up for a Google account and a Google Mail account, just follow this link here.

A few days ago I spoke about a nice trick which let you set Gmail as Firefox default e-mail client. Today I want to speak about a similar trick which lets you set Yahoo! Mail in a particular way, so that next time you click on any e-mail address link while surfing websites and blogs, Firefox will prompt you to use such an e-mail client. Here is the procedure to follow:

1. In Firefox 3 and further versions got to Tools.
2. Click Options.
3. Click on the Application tab.
4. Highlight Mailto and select Yahoo! Mail.
5. Click OK.
6. Done!

If you happen to browse websites and blogs, at a certain point you might want to send an email to ask information, to contact a websmaster or to talk with somebody. Usually in the Internet it is sufficent to click on a web address link (mailto: websitename@extension.com) to be prompted by Windows Vista or Windows XP with email clients such as: Windows Mail, Outlook Express, Eudora etc. After that you will be faced with a window which already contains the email address. All you have to do is write the object and the body of the email and click Send. Quite easy, right? But what happen if you have a web email such as Gmail? Of course you can not click on any link because Gmail, as you know, it is a web application and doesn’t have any email client. The solution here is to use a little trick to configure Firefox 3 (by the way, the trick works on Firefox 3 and up) to set Gmail as a default email client. Here is the procedure:

1. In the Firefox 3 Address Bar (and further versions) type: about:config and press Enter.
2. Click on the I’ll be careful, I promise! button.
3. In the filter box type: gecko.handlerService
4. You should get a list of services. The first one should be gecko.handlerService. allowRegisterFromDifferentHost
5. Double click on gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost and give it the value: True (it is false by defaut).
6. In the filter box type: network.protocol-handler. external.mailto and make sure it is set to True.
7. Now copy the following string in the Address Bar and press Enter:

javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler
("mailto","https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","GMail")

8. If you use a Google application use this string and press Enter (Change example.com to your own domain name) :

javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler
(”mailto”,”https://mail.google.com/a/example.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s”,”GMail”)

9. Firefox 3 should prompt you whether you want to add Gmail application. Click on the Add Application button.
10. From now on every time you click on any web address link, a small window will appear prompting you to use Gmail. Once you click on it you will be sent to Gmail web page.
11. For security reasons when you have finished with this procedure, type again about:config and press Enter. Set gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost value back to false.

If you wish to send large attachments but you don’t want to use the regular way, namely download the file into the email client (website), attach it to an e-mail and sent it, maybe you are interested in Docstoc OneClick which doesn’t use any attachment to send a file over the Internet, but a simple link the recipient will have to click to start downloading the file it stands for. Once you have installed the software, just right click on the file you want to send to instantly send it to any of your contacts via email. Its features include:

• The recipient can preview the file without any need to download it.
• The link will be autogenerate automatically. No Upload Wait Time.
• No limitation. Send as many files as you want.
• You can decide to send the file as Private or Public. “Email as Private stores your files privately on Docstoc so no other users can access them without the secret URL link. Email as Public will publically display the document you send via email, and they can be accessed via docstoc and search engines.”
• Once you have clicked on the file to send an email will be auto-generated using your default email client.

If you want to download it, click here. If you want to know more, click here. If you are looking for another way to send large attachment, click here.

Google Talk client is a very nice feature in your Gmail account because it lets you chat with your friends while writing emails. But its biggest limit is just this, namely it is impossible to use it outside Gmail…till now. As a matter of fact,  you can chat with your friends directly from the Firefox’s sidebar thanks to a simple add-on called gTalk sidebar. Once you install the extension the only thing you will have to do is to add a button to Firefox toolbar. To do that just right-click where all the Firefox buttons are (refresh, home, print, bookmark, go back, go forwards etc), click Customize and add the gTalk Sidebar icon by dragging it wherever you want.  Once you click on it, a sidebar will appear, on it you will be able to open multiple conversations in separate tabs. You can also open the sidebar by pressing Alt+G.

If you are a webmaster you know only too well how dangerous to put your email address on your website is. In fact, if you don’t use any protection to trick spam bots, in a matter of  a few hours or even less, your inbox could be pestered with hundreds of emails having the most different and dreadful topics. So, what solution do we have to prevent all this? A nice trick is to create an image of your email address so that malevolent bots won’t be able to read it. Another solution is to protect your email by converting it into an encrypted JavaScript code in order to hide it from spam bots, but at the same time make it  fully readable to human beings. The Enkoder Form does exactly this: hide your email address to email harvester aka spam. Once you have typed your email address in its form you will get a code which you will have to copy-and-past directly on your website without other worries such as: understand how it works, modify it etc. It doesn’t matter how tricky the code is, just put it wherever you want and you are done. Guaranteed!

So, this year Spam is 30 years old. The first spam ever emailed was sent on the 3rd of May 1979 by Gary Thuerk, owner of Digital Equipment Corporation (which doesn’t exsit anymore). Gary Thuerk had free access to Arpanet which was the USA defense’s Network (Arpanet is considered to be the first Internet ever invented). Basically, he managed to sent “just” 393 emails to people belonging to this network to promote some of his new products. People who got this email didn’t react very well and, of course, there were a lot of complaints, including the ones from the Arpanet administrators. If you want to know more about the first spam, the people involved and what happened, click here. Continue reading »

This open source, simple, light and easy-to use software (provided by Google) is a desktop utility that lets you upload your emails and contacts from applications like Microsoft Outlook into your into your Google Apps mailbox. Its system requirements include: Windows XP and Vista, Outlook 2003 and greater for Outlook support and a Gmail account, of course. To download it, click here.