Making the jump from your traditional desktop email client, like Microsoft Outlook, into a webmail based system, like Google Gmail, is not without it’s challenges. One such point of difficulty is how best to go about migrating your address book you’ve collected over the years from Outlook into your fresh and clean Gmail Contacts list.

Thankfully the process is rather straightforward as Outlook is able to export your contacts in a CSV file which can then be used to import the information into Gmail. Here’s how!

Exporting Outlook Contacts

Within Outlook, from the toolbar click File -> Import and Export.

Click Export to a file, and then Next.

Click Comma Separated Values (Windows), and then click Next.

In the folder list, select the Contacts folder, and then click Next.

Browse to the folder where you want to save the contacts as a .csv file and name the file appropriately. Click Next.

Click Finish to initiate the export.

Importing Contacts into Gmail

Log on to Gmail, and then click Contacts from the left navigation panel on the page.

Locate and click Import.

Use Choose File to navigate to the export .csv file created above. You have the option to import the contacts into a new group by selecting the check-box.

Click Import and wait will the process completes – you’ll be redirected to a screen showing the results of the process. The imported contacts should now appear in your My Contacts group if you did not choose a new group from above. If an existing contact already existed in Gmail, the information from Outlook will take precedence!

As a webmaster I’m obsessive over having consistent and recent backups of websites I’m responsible for. There are certainly worse things to have OCD over but the thought of losing everything I’ve worked hard on is impossible to set aside. Generally, even the cheapest of web hosting services offer some sort of routine backups for their clients. They may not be daily snapshots, but for many any backup is better than no backup.

My web host at the time of this writing offers a daily backup but speaking from experience, this is not something you want to rely on to safeguard your data, unfortunately. The problem in my situation, the backups were stored on the same disk as my existing web files. This is conveinent in that if I need to restore anything I don’t need to go through the web host’s support channels – it’s already live on the file system. The major downside, while data eventually ends up on tape – or somewhere else out of my grasp, it doesn’t happen as frequently as the nightly snapshots they provide. A disk failure can potentially still leave you missing the last few days of data or content – as happened to me many months back.

The old adage if you want something done correctly, do it yourself applies aptly here. Therefore, I maintain my own backup system, in addition to the one provided by the web host, that provides off-site redundancy of all my data – the key to any disaster recovery backup system in my opinion. Transferring the actual files off site is pretty easy to automate but database driven web sites, which most are, requires another level of backup. Truth be told, for a majority of database driven web sites the database is easily the most important data set! Database corruption is very real and the results could be disastrous.

Off site backups may not be feasible for all users however. In this situation, Backup2Mail is quite the find. Leveraging your Gmail account and it’s theoretically limitless data store space, it’s possible to automate Mysql database backups and store them safely off site in your Gmail Inbox – assuming they fit under the 25MB attachment limit; a safe assumption for most web sites actually.

Backup2Mail is a PHP based script that runs on your web host’s server that dumps the Mysql database to a file, compresses the file, and emails it to your Gmail. Automation is leveraged through cron – the Unix/Linux scheduler. The installation and configuration is as easy as it comes:

• Launch cron with crontab -e command in a shell session
• Paste the line 0 0 * * * php /home/your_account/backup2mail/index.php >/dev/null 2>&1 in the crontab editor window. Exiting and saving when finished. This will execute the script index.php every day at midnight; the first 0 controls the minutes of the hour while the second 0 defines the hour, on a 24 hr clock.
• From your shell window execute crontab -l to ensure the job above was scheduled correctly
• Lastly, edit index.php from Backup2Mail and provide the necessary information for your Mysql and Gmail configurations.

Download Backup2Mail

Google’s Gmail is a fantastic product that can carry the cliched game-changer statement admirably. Gmail was the first free email service that obliterated the notion of an email quota. The service has evolved greatly since it’s introduction in April 2004 but even Google wouldn’t have foreseen the ways Gmail can be used for things other than just email. Today I have one such creative use for Gmail.

Using email is a common method of reminding yourself to do something at a later day – not unlike a traditional calendar or task list. While a calendar/task item is thought to be more appropriate, it’s often an unnecessary overhead for many users – users who don’t generally have all these tasks or events to keep track of. If my neighbor phones me at lunch to ask me to bring in the package FedEx left for them on their stoop when I get home I’d probably just email myself the reminder to my home address, rather than use another reminder system because, let’s face it, I need something to jar my memory as I’m going to forget the task from now, at lunch, until later that night.

Just as in the package example above, we can use Gmail to take care of things that we otherwise couldn’t at this exact moment. Specifically, downloading a torrent file from your office to your home computer – delivered via an email. MailBin 2 is a free portable Windows application written atop .NET that can check your Gmail account for emails containing a specific phrase and attachment and then, most importantly, act accordingly. Instead of emailing myself a link to a specific torrent file which I can then download when I get home, I can send the torrent file itself. MailBin 2 can then save the torrent file attachment into a folder on my home PC where my BitTorrent client can be configured to automatically load and initiate the download.

Sound a bit complicated and hard to implement? It’s not at all. Setting up MailBin 2 is as simple as providing -

• your Gmail account information
• the directory that your BitTorrent client will automatically load torrent files from
• the passphrase in the email that triggers the MailBin execution

That’s it!

Do you suspect your Gmail account has been hacked? Google has a feature available from within Gmail where you can see if more than one person or computer is logged into your account. If you are concerned that someone is accessing and reading your email without your knowledge this type of information can be revealed with this feature.

1. First, log into your Gmail account. Near the very bottom of the screen you’ll encounter a line that says Last account activity and a corresponding time period.



2. Clicking on the Details link will initiate a popup with a bit more detailed information such as:
   • Access Type – browser, mobile, POP, IMAP
   • IP Address – the computer address that the request came from
   • Date/Time – the time the access occurred.

   

3. If someone were to access your Gmail account while you are already logged in the last account activity line would change to reflect the situation. Here you can see my account is currently opened in two locations – thankfully both were initiated by me.

This is a wonderful feature to use if you suspect something strange is going on. While it is not the silver-bullet, you can see that I have three locations of access, it does help uncover anything foul. If you suspect you’ve been compromised, use the Sign out all other sessions button from Step 2 and change your password immediately.

Gmail Labs, the testing ground for “not quite ready for prime time” functionality for Gmail, engineers have rolled out their latest feature – undo send. I’ve written before about how to prevent inserting your foot into your mouth when composing email in Outlook and recently, Google has provided similar functionality in Gmail. Not familiar with the saying putting your foot in your mouth? Simply, it’s when you say something and immediately regret opening your mouth because of what just came out. In a similar fashion, this can happen in the digital realm. A nasty, scathing email may be composed and sent in the heat of the moment – but you may regret it a few seconds after clicking send. Gmail now has the ability to undo send and allow you to save face.

1. From inside Gmail, click Settings from the upper right portion of the screen. Chose the Labs tab from the resulting page refresh.



2. You’ll see a multitude of functionality extensions to Gmail itself. Scroll down until you locate the option in question, Undo Send. Choose the Enable radio button before scrolling to the very bottom and Saving Changes.



3. Still within the Settings page now click on General to configure the Undo Send functionality. Currently you have the ability to add a 5 second delay on outgoing emails, but Google has stated that a 10 second delay is coming in the near future. Setting the cancellation period to 0 seconds disables the functionality while not unloading the plugin itself.



4. Now when you are finished composing an email the dialog at the top of your Gmail window will give you an option to undo the send if you are overcome with regret during the delay interval. 5 seconds isn’t a lot of time though, barely enough to notice an embarrassing typo or errant recipient – but that’s about it. Still, a welcomed feature from me.

I’ve written numerous times about my migration and love of Google Gmail. Like many, Gmail is my portal to all my email – it’s configured to send and receive email from just about all my accounts throughout my Internet history. I say just about because until the other day, Microsoft’s Hotmail could not be easily integrated within Gmail. You see, Gmail has a feature that allows it to POP – a technical term that simply means receive – email from any email provider that provides a POP-based access point. Unfortunately, the free Hotmail accounts were the lone hold out on offering POP access. That has now changed with Microsoft’s further attempts to be open and play nice within the industry. Here’s how we configure Gmail to send and receive email via your long-standing Hotmail address. Additionally, this method can be tailored to any POP provided if you know the correct server parameters.

1. From inside your Gmail account, navigate to Settings->Accounts and click Add a mail account you own.



2. Enter your Hotmail or Live email address.



3. Provide the account details including: username, password, POP server, and port. You also have a few optional options available such as leaving the messages on the hotmail server or applying a specific Gmail label. Set these as you see fit – they are not required however. When everything looks good click Add Account.



4. If all goes well you should see on the next screen that Your mail account has been added. Click the radio button next to Yes, I want to be able to send mail as .. and click Next Step.



5. Verify that your name and reply-to address are correct. You can either have your emails still show up as coming from your Hotmail address or any other address you own.



6. Now Google will send a verification email to your Hotmail address in order to ensure that you are the proper owner of the account. Click Send Verification.



7. Once you receive the verification email from Google, interestingly enough I found the email in my Deleted folder as if it were spam, type it in an click Verify.



8. Now when you go to compose a new email from within Gmail you have the ability to select which email address the message appears From. You will also see your Hotmail account has been added to the screen shot from Step 1. Remember, this isn’t limited to just Hotmail but any email account that provides a POP3 interface.

I was a late holdover to the phenomenon of a free web-based email service. When Hotmail and Yahoo Mail really started gaining traction webmail was pretty slow and cumbersome compared to the experience of a traditional desktop email client – no surprise really. Any email power-user would quickly lose their patience if they were forced to use webmail for all of their correspondence. While I was never a heavy email user I still clung to my desktop email software nonetheless.

When Google decided to enter the webmail ring to the tune of a free service with an unheard of 1GB email quota – most of the others offered as little as a few MBs – it was time to begin rethinking my allegiance. Without belaboring this further, Google Gmail allowed me to consolidate all of my Inboxes into one view, while having acceptable performance, fantastic search, and access from anywhere with a PC.

While Google hasn’t yet claimed the #1 spot for webmail, it has without question changed the landscape and raised the bar. The notion of having an email quota is now laughable. Another unique, at the time, was the offering of webmail fully over an https connection – that is a secure and encrypted connection from your PC to Gmail. While Hotmail and Yahoo offered an encrypted session for your login, after a successful login you were redirected back over to the non-secure http connection. Theoretically, if you accessed your Hotmail account from a public network other computers on that network could also see your unencrypted webmail session and thus read your email. While not a trivial process, is it something you really want to take a chance with?

The only downside of Google’s initial offering was that the user would have to actively point their browser to https://mail.google.com to initiate the full encrypted session. Even though this was available with minimal manual effort, Google eventually decided to take it a step further and offer it as a Preference option from within Gmail – Always use HTTPS. Unfortunately, it is defaulted to off. Why? Well, SSL encrypted connections offer increased overhead on the servers handling the encryption and decryption. When you are offering a free service you tend to want to maximize the amount of users while dedicated the least amount of hardware.

All that being said, you really want to be using https.

1. From within Gmail click the Settings link at the top right of your screen.



2. From the General tab scroll to the bottom of the screen to Browser connection.



3. Here you should select the radio button next to Always use HTTPS. Lastly, click the Save Changes button to apply the setting.

At the office I’m forced to use Outlook as my main communication and scheduling tool. Outlook gets a lot of bad raps and while at one time I’m sure most of it was justified, nowadays it really isn’t that bad of a product – at least Outlook 2007. However, that doesn’t mean I use it outside of my main profession. Technically, I’m a Gmail user. Having your entire email spool in the cloud, accessible from anywhere, is a huge win for me. Obviously webmail existed long before Google got in the game but it was their unobtrusive interface and quick searching that converted. Still, there is something to be said for your traditional desktop email client. While I try a lot of new products and technology, I’m a very slow converted and suffer from attachment issues with the tried and true, irregardless of whether newer is in fact better. Because of this, I have my main Thunderbird install configure to pull mail from Gmail. It works for me, but that isn’t the summary for this article.

I am also an iPhone user, though just recently. Much to my chagrin, iTunes does not sync your iPhone contacts to and from Thunderbird – where all my contact information is stored throughout the years. A quick Google uncovered a few ways of linking the two, but I have to admit it all seemed a bit click and pray and not something I’d like to rely on. Knowing that iTunes can pull contact information from Gmail and coupled with the fact that I do use Gmail, even indirectly, I set out to use Gmail as my exclusive contacts database. Exporting and importing the addressbook is straightforward and perhaps a topic for a later date. That being said, I wasn’t particularly warm to the idea of managing my contacts with just the iPhone or in Gmail – I still wanted the flexibility of Thunderbird.

Today I found Zindus, a free Thunderbird extension that allows you to manage your Gmail contacts from within Thunderbird. Installation and configure is simple.

1. Download the extension and save it locally.
2. From within Thunderbird click on Tools->Add-ons.
3. Click Install and point it to the Zindus extension you just downloaded.



4. Still in Thunderbird, provide your Gmail credentials to the add-on from Tools->Zindus.



5. Click Sync Now.

Gmail’s Labs, the testing ground for “not quite ready for prime time” functionality for Gmail, engineers have rolled out their latest feature – canned responses. If you are a heavy email user you’ve likely encountered a subset of mail that warrants the same response. If you’ve said it once, you’ve said it a hundred times is the common cliche. Whether it’s confirmation for the meeting or lunch with a friend, saving just a minute or two by having the appropriate response already in the can really starts to pay off over time. While this functionality is commonplace in Outlook and Thunderbird, I’m thankful to see the migration into the Gmail’s interface itself. Here’s how to get started.

1. From inside Gmail, click Settings from the upper right portion of the screen. Chose the Labs tab from the resulting page refresh.



2. You’ll see a multitude of functionality extensions to Gmail itself. Scroll down until you locate the option in question, Canned Response. Choose the Enable radio button before scrolling to the very bottom and Saving Changes.



3. Now when replying or composing a new message you will notice an addition drop-down available below the To or Subject fields.



4. To build up your set of canned responses, first compose a reply or new email with the content you wish to repeat ad nausea. Then, from the Canned responses drop-down, choose Save->New canned response... Name the response something intelligent for later recognition.
5. Now the next time the response warrants your canned response just chose it from the Canned responses drop-down. Canned responses are also able to be used with Filters to set up an intelligent auto-reply system.

For most, spam has become the bane of email’s existence and because of the value to communication that email brings we’ve had no choice but to tolerate the inundation of spam into our Inboxes. To me, Gmail has become the defacto standard in how webmail and email in generally should be done. Google’s spam filter is phenomenal; at any given time I have over 20,000 emails in my Spam folder on Gmail. How many actually began in my Inbox, waiting for me to deal with the situation? A handful, daily. I can deal with that.

How have I been able to get a handle on the outrageous spam situation? Gmail’s built-in spam filter can take the bulk of that credit to be totally honest. While just about every email solution includes some sort of spam filtering, not everyone as successful as at combating spam as my setup with Gmail. So what’s the brilliant secret? Well, don’t give out your email address! I kid! Somewhat, at least. What I mean is, don’t provide your actual Gmail address on forms or registration pages across the Internet, rather, take advantage of a few Gmail hacks that you may not be aware of.

Here is a true example that I use regularly.

We all buy things online, it’s a way of life and generally a safe and pleasant experience nowadays. Most every online store requires you to create an account on their site which consists of a username/password, contact information, and an email address. You could just make up a dummy address but that probably isn’t advisable as the company likely will send the order confirmation to that address, or any other useful bits of information pertaining to your order. Perhaps you could have a second email address used just for situations like this? How often would you check it? Some free webmail providers nuke dormant accounts after a set time period of non use. That may be a problem in this circumstance.

If you use Gmail, you have a third option that is much more desirable. Technically, you have three options from within Gmail.

The Plus Hack

To be fair, this is not unique to Gmail but it’s my personal weapon of choice. When filling out those forms, just append a + after you’re the first part of your email address and then provide any word to uniquely identify the account. Confused? Here is what I mean. Let’s say your email address is adam@gmail.com and you are providing this address to your online banking profile. Give them the address of adam+mybank@gmail.com. An email to this address will still end up in your account. How does this block spam? Filters! Simply set up a filter to look for +mybank in the email address and do with it as you please. Obviously, you’d like to think your bank is safe and non spammy, so this is just an example.

An interesting side effect, it would be more difficult to fall to a phishing scam because this address isn’t publicized, it wouldn’t get on a spam list. The phishing attempt would be delivered to adam@gmail.com and not be flagged as if it came from your bank. Make sense?

The Dot Hack

Very similar to the plus hack above, you can place as many dots (.) in your email address as you’d like – Gmail removes them. If your true email address already has dots, first.lastname@gmail.com perhaps, you should know that email will also be delivered if it was sent to firstlastname@gmail.com. Using dots and filters like above, you can accomplish the same goal.

The googlemail Hack

Not nearly as great as the two above in my opinion but it could prove handy in certain situations. adam@gmail.com is the same account as adam@googlemail.com!

So there you have it, with some creativity and the knowledge above you will hopefully be on your way to a less cluttered and spammy Inbox.