Boxbe Blog

The Associated Press is warning email users yesterday to be wary of coupons that they have received via email.

Instead of money saving deals, e-mailed coupons could lead recipients into “phishing” schemes where the consumer is redirected to a copycat site, whose real purpose is to siphon the user’s credit card information, passwords and other financial data, IBM Corp. security executive Christopher Rouland warned.

If you are a Boxbe member and have approved email from say Amazon.com, messages from a an address that claims to be from Amazon, but really aren’t, won’t make it through to your inbox.

Boxbe uses two email authentication methods (DKIM and SPF) to verify that the emailer is who they claim to be. DKIM and SPF are two email authentication standards backed by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and AOL. Boxbe blocks messages that come from senders who claim to be someone that they are not

Be safe out there this holiday season and let us worry about your email.
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image from Flickr user skrewtape.

We haven’t had too many email tips of late, but the blogosphere has plenty to hand out. I’ve collected some of the best.

How to Use Gmail over IMAP – Download Squad
It’s a bit tricky, but nevertheless, David Chartier over at Download Squad has instructions on how to set up Gmail to work over IMAP. Now, you will need another IMAP account somewhere else to make this work, but hey, if you love IMAP and Gmail, these are two great tastes that taste… well, you know.

How to write a 5 sentence email – Guy Kawasaki
Now, you know we love Guy Kawasaki and all his great advice so when he talks about the ten things you should learn in school, we take note. Number nine in particular caught my eye (and Merlin Mann, too), which was “How to write a five-sentence email.”

One final geek tip for today.

Move Outlook email to Mail.app – MacOSXHints.com
Any switchers out there? I know I’ve had to move email from Outlook to the Mac in the past and let me tell you, it’s not easy. If you’re handy with the Terminal, this tip is for you.

photo by Flickr user Nrbelex

If you need help with email etiquette, we don’t recommend using Stephen Colbert’s techniques. His guest in the clip below, Will Schwalbe, author of “Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home,” on the other hand, could probably help you quite a bit.

Will Schwalbe has quite a bit more email etiquette advice on his blog, Think Before You Send including “Warming Cold Emails,” “Cautionary Tale About Threatening Emails” and his list of “Possibly Obnoxious Phrases.”

Ever thought about sending yourself a reminder, but you don’t really use Outlook or other calendaring systems?

Despite the fact that I use Apple’s built in iCal, often times I’ve thought that sending myself an email might be the best way to reach my future self (and yes, I could use iCal to do this, but what fun would that be?). Fortunately, an informative thread on Ask Metafilter has made several suggestions to email yourself in the future.

Emailing the Future

I Want Sandy
A clever service called I Want Sandy, from the lads that brought us Stikkit, is an entirely email based “secretarial service.” Part of that service sends email reminders for future events that you tell it to remember.

Like a real secretary (at least from what I’ve seen in the movies), cc’ing Sandy with “Sandy, remind me about my haircut appointment on July 6 1-2pm” will result in an email reminder around that time.

More from Sandy’s blog

Google Calendar
Like I Want Sandy, Google Calendar requires a login, but if you already have a Gmail account, you have easy, no sign-up access to Gcal.

Adding an event to the calendar, you have the option of when and how (popup, email or SMS) that message is (re)delivered to you.

Future Me

Future Me does one thing, it sends you a message in the future.

It’s not a reminder service, so you can’t send yourself a message any less than 90 days in the future. If you truly only want to send yourself a time capsule email, this is the service for you.

No login required here, but you do have to verify the email address that you plan to send the message to.

Dear Future Self, …

I’m thinking of using one of these services to remind me of bigger goals in life like wanting to exercise more or learning to kayak, rather than a standard reminder like “clean out your inbox.”

That’s one thing I don’t need a reminder of.

Tim Ferris over at the Huffington Post posted a video as well as some tips from Robert Scoble about how to deal with 10,000 or more messages a day. Man… now, there’s email overload.

Robert’s tips center around Microsoft Outlook which he has been using since 1990 and include

• Keeping all Outlook .PST files under 2GB in size to optimize speed and prevent crashes.
• Removing infrequently used .PST files.
• Renaming or appending frequently-used folders to appear at the top of the list.
• Responding to fewer e-mail is the holy grail.

We’d love to help you with your email overload problem, Robert. We’ll talk soon about some work we’re doing with Outlook.

As we head into the long weekend (in the US, anyway), here are some last email tips to ponder in traffic going to your favorite vacation spot. Summer is here and you need email efficiency more than ever.

Have a happy and safe Memorial Day from all of us here at Boxbe.

10 ways to get a grip on your e-mail – Fortune Magazine
Authors of the new book The Hamster Revolution: Stop Info-Glut and Reclaim Your Life!, offer up ways to get through email and change the way you look at time spent looking at email.

Is a one word “thanks” email unnecessary? – Lifehacker
Lifehacker readers debate the finer points of whether or not to send a one word email response “thanks” to people who you would thank face to face in real life. Email etiquette is ever changing amorphous beast. Personally, as a someone who works remotely, this is the only way I have to thank most people, so I’m all for it, your mileage may vary.

How to crank through your Gmail – Web Worker Daily
Leo Babauta over at Web Worker Daily gives us some hands on tips and tricks for getting through your email account Gmail-style. Keyboard shortcuts, filter suggestions and more await you on the other side of this link.

Finally, a follow up to a link we gave you last month.

E-Mail Reply to All: ‘Leave Me Alone’ – Washington Post
Mike Musgrove at the Washington Post reports on Fred Wilson’s email bankruptcy post last month. Fred gave his inbox the heave-ho by blogging an apology to all the unanswered emails in his inbox to start fresh. Memorial Day might just be the time to send out that email to start over with your email.

Iwo Jima image from Flickr user bootbearwdc

Major Anti-Spam Lawsuit Filed in Virginia – Washington Post
“The company filed the suit on behalf of some 20,000 people who use its anti-spam tool. Web site owners use the project’s free software to generate pages that feature unique “spam trap” e-mail addresses each time those pages are visited. The software then records the Internet address of the visitor and the date and time of the visit. Because those addresses are never used to sign up for e-mail lists, the software can help investigators draw connections between harvesters and spammers if an address generated by a spam trap or “honey pot” later receives junk e-mail.” [via Ars Technica and Slashdot]

Before you declare email bankruptcy – Web Worker Daily
“Did you ever wish you could delete all your email without responding? Maybe you can. It’s called email bankruptcy. You realize you are never going to dig yourself out from under the pile of email in your inbox so you just declare that you won’t. You start afresh.”

Great tips on how to avoid an email overload calamity. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve considered doing this.

Classic DM tactics are spam for filters – Direct Marketing News
“More and more well-intended e-mail is ending up in the junk box as companies and individuals tighten the screws on their anti-spam systems.”

Interesting article about the multitude of false positives that are generated by standard email spam filters.

Photo by Flickr member Rosa y Dani

I’ve been using Gmail a lot more lately testing our integration with Gmail and figuring out if I could live without Apple’s Mail.app. There are a number of good reasons for ditching a desktop application for Gmail – mobile email, one online location for all my email, and a great interface to name a few.

Some folks live and die by their inbox and not knowing if that ever important email from the boss or a new client is waiting for you is a deal killer for most web mail. Sure, hitting refresh is easy, but it’s not quite like using Outlook. For me, as handy as getting Gmail on my mobile would be in a pinch, ultimately, I’m reading and responding to email at my desk.

Enter Google Notifier

Google Notifier is an app that sits in your system tray in Windows or in the menu bar on a Mac that alerts you of new mail in your inbox, upcoming calendar events and even lets you add events quickly to your Google Calendar.

Google Notifier can change all “mailto:” links (links to email addresses) in web pages to use Gmail as its default email application and making it easier to use Gmail as your main email application day to day.

The latest version for Mac OS X, adds a contextual menu to add events for Google Calendar direct from any application and a method for setting Gmail to alert you only when certain messages arrive. Cool tool, indeed.

Google Notifier is still in beta (naturally), but like most of Google’s apps, this beta seems to be fairly rock solid.

Download Google Notifier

Continuing on off of our announcement earlier this week, we’re busy making Gmail our email nerve center. Gmail recently released the ability to download your POP email into Gmail. If you like Gmail like we do, this is a great way to make Gmail your email communications HQ.

Before you get started, you should have your outside account information handy to add into Gmail.

Here’s how you set it up:

Click on Settings in the upper right corner of Gmail.

Click on the Accounts tab

Within the Accounts tab, click Add another email address.

Enter your non-Gmail address:

Now, if you are using another major email provider, like Yahoo!, Gmail will auto-fill some of the options for you.

Otherwise, enter in the relevant data. You should be able to get this from your email provider’s website.

Applying a label as new messages come in is a good way to keep track of messages from different accounts.

To finish, click Add Account.

Gmail allows you to add up to 5 email accounts so, if you have several accounts, Gmail might be a good way to consolidate email into one central location.

One of the many strengths of Google’s Gmail service is the ability to access most functions without touching the mouse. Now, I’m a WIMP interface kind of guy, whereas company CEO Thede might be using the Unix mail application. Fortunately, Gmail has us both covered.

Navigating

/ = Search
k = Move to a newer conversation
j = Move to an older conversation
o or Enter – Opens message
x – selects message for another action (starring, printing, etc)
s – Stars a message
Tab – Navigates down relevant fields
Shift Tab – Navigates up relevant fields

Reading

u – Returns to the message list
m – Mutes messages – Archives conversations and auto-archives all messages in the same conversation.
y – Archives messages
! – Report spam
y then o – Archives the message then goes to the next one.

Writing

c = Compose new message
r = Reply to message
a = Reply to all
f = Forward a message
Tab then Enter – Sends composed message
Control + s – Saves a draft

Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts
One page print view [PDF]

Mike Gunderloy, over at Web Worker Daily, has some great tips for organizing your email. From figuring out your organizational style, cool tools to use, to setting up rules, this article will help you take email organization to the next level.

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As you might imagine, we think about email a lot here at Boxbe. Email consumes a lot of everyone’s time, so there are always ways to get more efficient at getting through it. We’ll be sharing our favorite email tips on the blog from time to time. This first set is from the top notch productivity blog, Lifehacker.

• Backing up Gmail with Thunderbird
  
• How to set up a smart Out-of-Office auto-reply with Gmail
• 8 killer Thunderbird plug-ins
• Outlook Tip: Send an email without touching the mouse
• Mailredirect – Thunderbird plugin