Computer and Web Articles

Attention all Gmail users!

No longer must you search through individual eNewsletters from which you wish to unsubscribe, looking for the tiny “Unsubscribe me” or “Remove me from your list” buttons/links. Google has recently added a new feature that makes the process of unsubscribing from just about any newsletter or email list as easy as cake.

To use Gmail’s new feature, simply click the “Report Spam” link, then choose the “Unsubscribe and report spam” button in the box that opens up.

Or, if you’d prefer to unsubscribe from the newsletter without reporting the email as spam, click the “Show details” link in the top-right corner of the email, then click “Unsubscribe from this sender”.

Google will automatically send a request back to the sender on your behalf so they’ll stop emailing you. Like I said — piece of cake!

When you’re using your email program (Outlook, Outlook Express, Mail, Thunderbird, etc.) to send out an email to a group of people who don’t know each other, make sure you don’t drop everyone’s email addresses into the “To” or “CC” fields. Instead, use the BCC field and put your own address in the “To” field.

BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy, and not only should it be used when your recipients don’t know one another, it should also be used when your recipients shouldn’t be able to know who else received your email – as in the case of a company sending out an email to a group of clients.

Awayfind does not solve the eternal problem of too much email. Instead, it helps you handle that eternal flow of emails in the most productive manner possible – whether you’re in the office, on the road, or on vacation.

If you dread opening your inbox each morning, or if you waste the most productive hours of your day answering emails, Awayfind can help.

Awayfind can…

• text-message emergencies and time-sensitive communications to you or others when you’re not checking your email.
• route messages to others while you continue to do your work.
• inform people as to exactly when and how you can be reached.
• let you keep an eye on critical developments without having to read through hundreds of other messages in your inbox.

Awayfind offers a Basic plan for free as well as a Professional plan for $6.95/month or $49.95/year (the Professional plan comes with a 30 day free trial). Learn more at www.awayfind.com.

Surely you’ve experienced something along the lines of this before? You’re sitting at your computer, type-type-typing away. You finish up the email you’re writing and tap the Send button in your email program–only to experience an instant, horrible, all-encompassing sensation of dread. In the fraction of the second it’s taken your finger to begin lifting off your left mouse button – the very mouse button you clicked to depress the “Send” button on your screen – your brain starts shooting off massive red fireworks because SOMETHING IS WRONG.

You sent the email to the wrong David. You forgot to remove the notes from the top of the email. You accidentally cc’d that explicit, horrible, dirty video to your ailing grandmother. You attached your tax-return form instead of your resume and sent it to your potential employer. You sent the lengthy, venting, smack-talking email about Sarah …. to Sarah.

What you wouldn’t give to go back in time – even just a few seconds back – so you could unsend that email and make the growing pit in your stomach disappear. Well, as you may have guessed by now, there *is* a way. This particular solution doesn’t work after a long delay, and it’s specifically for gmail users, but I have a hunch it just might be the type of functionality that could really make someone’s day.

In Gmail Labs under Settings, just turn on “Undo Send” and you’ll then see an Undo link on every sent email confirmation. Click “Undo” while the send request is processing or within 5 seconds of the email being sent through and Gmail will reopen the email for editing without sending it off to its intended (or potentially unintended) recipient(s).

Not long ago I extolled the importance of using email autoresponders to provide your customers with a “heads-up” if they should expect to experience a delay in receiving a response; setting one up while you’re away in Hawaii on a three-week vacation would be a great example of wisely using an autoresponder.

I had previously assumed that, when it came to constructing an autoresponder’s text, common sense would be an adequate guide. . . but perhaps I assumed too much.

Earlier this week I emailed the owner of a company who had been looking to retain our web design services. Within moments of sending my email to him, I had received an autoresponder from his email program containing nothing other than “Hello, I am unavailable to read your message at this time.”

This type of vague, automated response can actually cause more harm than good. In my case, I had no idea if the business owner was out of the office momentarily, for the day, for the week, or for the month. I had no clue as to how long it might be before he *would* be available to read my message. I couldn’t understand the purpose of the message I’d just received; I was just downright confused.

Our goal here is to inform customers, not to confuse them. If you use autoresponders to share important information, simply remember to provide all the relevant details in a polite, clear manner. You’ll help strengthen, not weaken, the relationships you have with your customers.

After all these years I still get them, and I’m guessing you do, too. Those annoying conspiracy/warning/beware/disaster/gossip forwarded emails that your friends and coworkers send out to every person they’ve met since kindergarten.

I’ve seen them all — from the email claiming Obama refused to cover his heart with his hand during the National Anthem to the email stating that disposable chopsticks are loaded with carcinogens to the email with the story about the Concentration Camp survivor coincidentally reuniting years later with the girl who had secretly helped feed him.

Unfortunately, whenever I receive one of these emails, I know there’s a ridiculously low chance of the forwarded information being correct. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the emails contain nothing more than urban legends or myths.

Please, please stop blindly forwarding these emails. I’m so very tired of receiving them and, to be honest, so are all your friends and coworkers. The next time you receive an amazing or terrifying or disgustingly sappy email and you feel the urge to share it with everyone you know, please first go to www.snopes.com and determine whether that email contains a single shred of truth.

If you reach a point where you decide, once and for all, it’s time to close down and delete your Hotmail email account, just follow the steps below. (Why they made this process so difficult, I have no idea…)

1. Log in to your Hotmail account.
2. Click on the Help link.
3. Then in the search box, type in “Cancel Account” and press ENTER.
4. Now you’ll need to click on “How do I close my account or why was my account deleted?”
5. And lastly, go ahead and click on “Close a free Windows Live Hotmail account”, then the Windows Live Hotmail Close Account link.

At least once a month I receive a panicked email from a client or reader asking what should be done in regards to an email (or series of emails) that just showed up in their Inbox. The emails in question are almost always “Delivery Failure Notification” emails that look like they were sent out by the client–with the client’s email address in the “From” field.

These Delivery Failure Notification emails are nothing more than fake messages sent out by spammers. The advice I give my client is the same I’ll give to you: delete these emails and then go about your day with a smile. There’s very little you can do to stop these emails from being sent.

To learn a bit more about this annoying and deceiving form of spam, visit http://tinyurl.com/c68b3.

Oh how I wish this program worked on PCs! But alas, it doesn’t – so listen up and listen up well, Mac Mail.app and Entourage users: MailTemplate increases your productivity and saves you time by streamlining the process of composing email messages.

MailTemplate uses predefined templates that integrate directly with your address book and OS Finder to help you quickly generate new or reply messages with pre-written content.

Individual licenses are cheap – just $14.95. And for all the skeptics, you can download a trial version of the program for free and take it for a test run.

Learn more at http://mailtemplate.mactank.com/.