3 Take Notice with a Notifier
You don’t have to log into Gmail every time you want to see if
you’ve got mail. Instead, download a Gmail notifier. Although it
isn’t prominently featured on the Gmail site, Google’s own Gmail
Notifier is a free download from http://mail.google.com/mail/help/
notifier/. If you’d rather not install a system tray icon, you can
always use a Gmail plugin for Firefox, which you can get from
http://addons.mozilla.org. Gmail Checker is a low-profile plugin
that requires barely a second thought to keep track of. But if
you want to check multiple Gmail accounts from within Firefox,
check out Gmail Manager.You don’t need special tools to track down spammers. Add
a plus sign and a tag to your address when you fill out web
forms to see who’s selling your address.2
Filter Your Mail with Positive
ThinkingThe lowly plus sign gets little respect in this crazy, mixed-up
world. But if you use it the right way with Gmail, it could become
your new best friend. By adding a plus sign and a filter tag to
your own Gmail address, you can figure out which of the sites that
you’ve brazenly given your address to are turning around, stabbing
you in your tender, fleshy backside, and selling it to every half-wit-
ted Pr0p3cia spammer on the net.
This little hack doesn’t require a single tweak to your Gmail set-
tings. Instead, just use the plus/tag every time you enter your address
into an online form. Our favorite method is to use the name of the site
you’re visiting as the tag, so it’s easy to track later on. So if you buy
some vintage kicks at Raresneakers.com, enter your email address as
[email protected].
Gmail ignores the plus sign and everything that comes after it, somessages sent to that address will still make their way to you. But if
that site sells your address to its spamifying associates, you’ll know just
by peeking at the To address in the header. How you choose to exact
revenge is entirely up to you.
You can also use this tip to set up filters for registration codes,
listservs, and anything else!Gmail Notifier
lets you know
when you’ve
got mail, even
when your
browser is
closed.4 Import Your Old Mail into Gmail
If you decide to switch to Gmail completely, you’ll probably want to
bring your old contacts and messages along for the ride. Importing
your contacts is easy (just click Import in the upper-right corner of
the Contacts screen and select a CSV file exported from your oldmail app). Importing your old email takes a little more doing.
One of the easiest ways to get your old mail into Gmail is to
download Mark Lyon’s Gmail Loader (aka GML), which you can
download from http://www.marklyon.org/gmail/. This simple little utility
will transfer messages in the mBox format (including Thunderbird,
Eudora, and Netscape mailboxes) into Gmail. Transferring your
mail is as easy as downloading the app, launching it, entering your
Gmail login info, browsing for your mailbox folder, and clicking
Send to Gmail.
To transfer Outlook mailboxes, try Outport (http://outport.
sourceforge.net), which can transfer messages from Outlook to a
host of other mail readers, including Gmail. Like GML, Outport has
a fairly simple GUI that’s easy to navigate, so you can get the job
done quickly and with a minimum of mucking around.
Sadly, Gmail will stamp all the imported mail with the date on
which you do the import, rather than preserve the original receivedGmail Loader quickly rounds up your old
email messages from Thunderbird and
transfers them into your Gmail Inbox.58 MAXIMUMPC december 2006
how (^2) ImprovIng your pc experIence, one step at a tIme