Managing the daily onslaught of incoming email with filing systems, keyboard shortcuts, and batch processing will only get you so far. When a flurry of new email snows you in within an hour of every inbox sweep, it’s time to dig in and get to the source of your email traffic. You’ve accumulated a sizable email archive over the years, and a new breed of analysis tool can extract meaningful statistics from that data to help you conquer email overload. Who sent you the most email messages last year? What hour of the day do you receive the most new messages? Which of all the mailing lists you’re on are the most active? A new command line tool called Mail Trends works with Gmail over IMAP and can give you all that information and more.
Windows XP and Vista only: Google releases an open source email uploader that moves existing email and contacts in your desktop client into your Google Apps Gmail account. (That’s Google Apps Gmail account, not vanilla Gmail.) Download and install the Google Email Uploader, and choose mailboxes from Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and/or Thunderbird to start uploading. After the jump, screenies from the process.
The following post was originally published in Chapter 1 of our new book, Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better. You’ve finally decided to move all your email online to Google’s web-based service, Gmail. Great! But what about messages still going to your old email address(es)? You don’t have to notify all your contacts that your email address has changed—again. Gmail is not only an email host, it’s an email client, which can fetch mail from any number of external services and consolidate it all right there in your Gmail inbox. Here’s how to move your email to Gmail without missing a single message from an existing account.
Windows only: Freeware email application eM Client is a full-featured mail application that comes with a calendar, task manager, and contact manager out of the box. With an easy to navigate graphical user interface that has the familiar feel of Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird, eM Client doesn’t really require much of a learning curve. The eM Client team also promises to deliver Google Calendar and Google Contacts synchronisation, ActiveSync mobile phone synchronisation, and full-fledged CalDev support. Later development promises widget support from Meebo, Facebook, and MySpace. eM Client is a freeware application for Windows only.
eM Client [via Download Squad]If you’ve finally succumbed to the email tractor beam that is Gmail but still have email sitting around in other accounts, it’s not hard to suck in those old messages into your Gmail archive. The Official Gmail blog runs down how. In short, you’re setting up Gmail’s POP mail fetcher to grab messages from your old accounts, with a little automatic label-and-archive action thrown in for good measure. Tips for importing old email to Gmail [Official Gmail Blog]
Mac OS X only: Freeware Mail.app plug-in Mail.appetizer notifies you of incoming messages by displaying a preview of their contents. Growl users may wonder why you’d choose Mail.appetizer instead of the GrowlMail plug-in, which offers the same functionality. Well, GrowlMail has a buggy history, especially with Leopard. (In fact, I suspect it’s the reason why Growl’s currently broken for me). The Mail.appetizer plug-in is freeware, Mac OS X only. The current version is a beta, so be prepared to run into a few bugs. Mail.appetizer [via Cool OSX Apps]
For the next two weeks, readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. If you own a domain name with an active catch-all email address, you know how spammers can pummel you with junk mail to every anyword@yourdomain.com email address they can automatically generate. When you have your own domain, you can to use site-specific addresses when you register for web services to track down spam sources (like amazon.com@yourdomain.com), but once you do that, you’ve got to keep your catch-all address open to junk mail as well. But Google Apps user Ray has a clever system that filters out catch-all junk but still lets him track exactly who’s selling out his address. Here’s how to set it up.
If you’re the type who doesn’t keep a virus-scanning program running on your desktop out of memory concerns, or you find yourself at a system without your preferred scanner, you might want to think twice before downloading any suspicious attachments—even if the boss sent them. Luckily, previously mentioned service VirusTotal offers the same multi-AV-scanning service through a utility email address. Simply forward your email, attachment included, to scan@virustotal.com, with the body cleared out and “SCAN” in the subject. After running McAfee, AVG, F-Secure, and other apps over it, VirusTotal will email you back to let you know whether the attachment is infected. High thanks to Digital Inspiration, which offers a link to similarly useful email addresses at the link below. Is That Email Attachment Clean or Infected with some Virus ? [Digital Inspiration]
Blackberry users ony: Mobile speech-to-text service Jott has released a beta plug-in for Blackberry phones (series 8800, 8300 Curve, and 8100 Pearl only) that lets you respond to those ever-present emails with a “Reply with Jott” feature. The main advantage is that if you notice a message while driving, you can speak your reply and have it sent as an email, rather than drastically increased your chance at an accident. The program should work with most Bluetooth headsets as well, but users have noted that the program defaults to speakerphone mode upon hitting reply, although I don’t have a model myself to see if that’s configurable. Jott for Beta is a free download (while it’s in beta, at least), and be downloaded by pointing your Blackberry to jott.com/bb. For ideas on getting more out of Jott, see how to get things done over the phone with Jott. Thanks Joshua! Jott for Blackberry
Windows only: Never email another Microsoft Office document from Outlook that includes private hidden data again with the SendShield Outlook plug-in. We’ve all heard the horror stories of revisions, comments and author notes revealing more than the document sender intended, like when a Google employee inadvertently published internal secrets in the notes of a PowerPoint slideshow. The SendShield Outlook plug-in scans office documents you attach to new messages for hidden data and alerts you if there’s potentially sensitive info included, listing each item within Outlook’s interface. You can even delete the hidden data right within SendShield’s list, without modifying the original file, and scan documents attached to incoming messages as well. SendShield is a free download and works with Outlook 2003 and 2007—Windows only, of course. SendShield [via Geeks Are Sexy]
