Computer and Web Articles

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/.

Using great anti-spam software isn’t the only way to fight spam. You can actually prevent a great deal of spam from getting sent to you in the first place if you can remember to never, ever, ever use your main e-mail address to sign up for anything on the web.

Whether you’re signing up for a user account at a great new online store or you’re signing up to receive a business eNewsletter from a reputable organization, using an alternative e-mail address will help keep wicked spammers from finding and exploiting your main e-mail address. Many sites make a good deal of money by selling e-mail addresses they collect to spammers. Other sites have weak security and therefore they - and your e-mail address - may be prone to hackers. Other sites (such as forums) often post e-mail addresses right onto their pages, practically handing your e-mail address over to e-mail harvesters.

If you have your own domain, create a “throwaway” address, such as signup@yoursitename.com, that you use for nothing other than signing up for services and logging in to online accounts. If you don’t have your own domain, simply set up a free e-mail account at Hotmail or Gmail instead.

This simple step packs a mighty punch and keeps new spammers from finding your main email address. Unfortunately, however, if you’re already on all the spammers’ e-mail lists, you might not notice a big change.

One day a fellow by the name of Michael Scrivo got fed up with having to go through a series of windows to access his Outlook Calendar. Being that people use their calendars to organize their daily lives, he didn’t appreciate the unnecessary number of clicks it took just to access the Outlook calendar.

To address this nuisance, Michael developed a program called “Outlook on the Desktop,” which he now allows people to download and use for free. The program places Microsoft Outlook’s calendaring system right smack dab onto your monitor’s desktop. Your calendar is pinned there (so that no windows can show up behind it) and it stays there “all the time in plain sight so you can always see what’s upcoming.”

The Outlook calendar keeps all its functionality - such as direct editing, drag and drop file capabilities, and switching between calendar, inbox, contacts, and tasks views - and suddenly the task of staying organized takes far less effort.

Michael’s program runs on Windows XP and Vista with Microsoft Outlook 2000 SP3 or higher. Learn more at www.outlookonthedesktop.com.

So you’ve had your Gmail account for a couple years now and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to locate specific e-mails when you need them. No worries; let’s review a few useful search tips that will help.

Let’s say you’re only interested in browsing through e-mails sent to you by Mary. In your Gmail search box, you’ll want to type in from:Mary.

If you’re looking for an e-mail in which you used a specific phrase (say, something like …. “and she was totally eating lots of glass grasshoppers”), then you’ll want to type “and she was totally eating lots of glass grasshoppers” into the search box — quotes included.

If you’re ever interested only in viewing e-mails that had attachments, type the following into your Gmail search box: has:attachment. And if you’re looking for an e-mail from Robert that came with an attachment, type in from:Robert has:attachment.

Perhaps you’d like to only look through e-mails sent to you after the first of September. In your search box, you’ll want to type in after:2008/09/01. And let’s take this tip one step further; if you were looking only for e-mails sent to you after the first of September and in which snowboarding was mentioned, you’d want to type in: snowboarding before:2008/09/01.