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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Bakari Chavanu

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Gmail power tools | Business Center | Working Mac | Macworld - 0 views

www.macworld.com/...gmailpowertools.html gmail apple
shared by Bakari Chavanu on 28 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Gmail changed all that. Google’s free Web-based e-mail service offers a so-good-you-forget-it’s-there spam filter, multi-gigabytes of storage, custom addresses, and more, all for free.
  • On the Gmail Labs settings page (click on Settings, then select the Labs tab), you’ll find a list of more than 40 experimental Gmail features which you can selectively enable or disable. Google warns that these features may “change, break, or disappear” at any time, but I think a few of them are well worth the risk:
  • Canned Responses If you find yourself typing the same message over and over, you can instead type it once, save it
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  • Multiple inboxes You don’t have to stick with the default inbox view. You can instead stack additional groups of messages—all messages with a certain label, or drafts, or all messages from your spouse, for example—beside, above, or below your main Gmail inbox. This multiple inbox view is particularly effective if you have a widescreen display.
  • Mailplane
  • Gmail’s built-in mail fetcher lets you consolidate all your POP3 e-mail accounts into your Gmail inbox. In Gmail’s Settings, on the Accounts and Import tab, click on Add POP3 e-mail account. From there, you can enter your other accounts’ credentials; they’ll then appear in your Gmail inbox
  • Voice and video chat You can skip Skype or iChat entirely and chat via voice and video from inside Gmail. You’ll need a microphone, iSight or other Web cam, and the free voice and video plug-in (compatible with OS X 10.4 and above).
  • Managing Gmail deprives you of one (evil but necessary) feature of a desktop client: new mail notifications. You can remedy that by downloading the free Google Notifier for Mac to
  • Forgotten Attachment Detector When you compose an e-mail that promises a document and hit send without attaching the file, this embarrassment-saver asks if you meant to attach a file first.
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TidBITS Networking: Achieving Email Bliss with IMAP, Gmail, and Apple Mail - 0 views

db.tidbits.com/10253 gmail apple email
shared by Bakari Chavanu on 28 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Well, that's what I intended to do, anyway. The more I wrote, the more I realized how many aspects of the IMAP/Gmail/Mail universe are unclear or confusing, as evidenced by the many email messages I've received on those subjects, and as feedback to my books ("Take Control of Apple Mail in Leopard" and "Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail") and my Macworld articles on the topic. So, what I thought would be a straightforward article has turned into a manifesto. (That means it's quite long, and somewhat opinionated - fair warning!) And, I admit it: I've written it for a largely selfish reason, which is to save myself from having to explain this information repeatedly in email messages! But I do hope you'll find it interesting and helpful if you've ever struggled with the combination of IMAP, Gmail, and Mail.
  • POP and IMAP are both methods of retrieving messages from a mail server. (In fact, many mail servers support both protocols, enabling you to access the same messages in either way.) The most common way to explain the difference between POP and IMAP is this: With POP, you download all your messages to your computer, whereas with IMAP, all your messages remain on the server. That's more or less true, but it overlooks several important points.
  • In the first place, IMAP servers, unlike POP servers, can keep track of flags for each message, indicating things like which messages have been read, forwarded, or replied to. With POP, your local email client has to track this information. That means if you download a bunch of messages on computer A using POP but leave them on the server, and then switch to computer B, you can still download the messages again, but they'll all appear to be unread - computer B won't know which messages you've seen, filed, or otherwise dealt with, because that information isn't kept on the POP server.
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  • Second, speaking of filing, another key difference between POP and IMAP is that POP has just one mailbox - your inbox - on the server, whereas an IMAP server can have any number of mailboxes. So, if you check your email on computer A and move a certain message to your Read mailbox, and then check your email on computer B, that message will appear in the Read mailbox there as well.
  • If you use IMAP, you absolutely can have local copies of all your email messages, in their entirety, on your computer, and you can read, search, file, and do anything else you want to do with those messages even if you have no Internet connection at all - just as you can when you use POP.
  • And, as a bonus, you can use IMAP as a sort of rudimentary email backup. Even if your disk crashes or your computer is stolen, you'll still have a copy of all your messages on the server.
  • IMAP does have a couple of downsides, which may or may not be significant to you. First, most IMAP servers impose a storage quota on each user. If that quota is fairly low (say, 1 GB), you could run out of space for all your messages, forcing you to move some off the server to a mailbox that's stored only on your computer.
  • Apple Mail, which is a much better IMAP client than some, nevertheless has a handful of quirks in its handling of IMAP that can drive one to distraction. If you combine Mail's IMAP oddities with those of a less-than-standard IMAP server - Web Crossing, I'm looking at you - you could easily have unpleasant experiences that may lead you to the erroneous conclusion that IMAP itself is buggy or poorly designed. (Later on, I'll get into the even weirder ways that Gmail deals with IMAP.)
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Three ways to improve Gmail | Business Center | Working Mac | Macworld - 1 views

www.macworld.com/...gmaillabs.html gmail apple email
shared by Bakari Chavanu on 28 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Previews in Mail If you check your Gmail messages in Mail, you might tire of clicking on links to get to the videos and photos friends and colleagues send you. Several Labs features let you preview media stored on other sites within an incoming Mail message when the sender includes only a link. Examples include YouTube Previews in Mail, Picasa Previews in Mail, and Flickr Previews in Mail.
  • Filter your messages more effectively Gmail offers a basic but highly useful filtering system, which examines incoming messages and then takes some action based on each message’s characteristics. For example, filters can apply a label to all messages with a certain word in the subject, or from a certain sender; they can also archive messages (keeping them out of your Inbox), mark them as read, and take other actions. Although these filters aren’t as powerful as the rules features of programs such as Mail and Microsoft Entourage, they have the advantage of being able to presort your mail even when you’re checking your messages in a Web browser or on an iPhone or other mobile device that doesn’t have its own filtering capability.
  • To enable IMAP, log in to your Gmail account, click on the Settings link at the top, click on the Forwarding And POP/IMAP link, select Enable IMAP, and click on Save Changes. You can then click on the Configuration Instructions link to learn how to set up your favorite e-mail client to access Gmail via IMAP. (To learn more about the ins and outs of using Gmail via IMAP with Mail, see “Achieving E-mail Bliss with IMAP, Gmail, and Apple Mail”.)
  • Bakari Chavanu on 28 Sep 09
     
    "Gmail power tools"
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