Chrome/Firefox: There are plenty of reasons you might not want to give out your real email address when signing up for a site or service. Maybe you're really big on privacy; or, more likely, you just hate spam, and figure the fewer places that know your real email address, the better.
Keeping your email inbox under control is a constant battle for everyone. Don't make life harder for other people by incessantly forwarding emails without explanation. Simply adding 'FYI' is a cop-out.
If you've been on the internet for any substantial amount of time you've likely accumulated your fair share of email addresses. Old school addresses, an assortment of free web-based addresses from Hotmail and Yahoo, and so on all contribute to you having too many addresses and little desire to keep checking the old ones. What can you do to cut down on your email excess? Wired Magazine has a how-to guide to help you consolidate your past email addresses without simply abandoning them into the digital void. In other words, you are a slave to an e-mail address that you don't want or which makes you use an interface that sucks. You can't give it up because thousands of your close personal friends only know you as [email protected] or [email protected] A blind switch to a new e-mail address is out of the question — you probably don't even know everyone who has the old one, and grandma wouldn't understand anyway.
iTunes, Amarok, or any podcast aggregator of your choice—they do a great job of fetching and organising your favorite periodic mp3s, but what if you just have one or two shows you occasionally listen to? The Geeks are Sexy blog recommends using an Rss-to-email service to have your podcasts sent directly to your email. For podcasts that regularly turn out smaller mp3 files, it's a feasible solution, and it gets you the shows immediately, rather than relying on your memory or an always-open pod-catcher to check for them. Better still, users of Gmail and other web-based email can often play the files directly from the message with built-in players. For another podcast alternative, try using Netvibes as your aggregator. Have podcasts delivered directly to your email
Rely on AIM as your nerve centre of workplace communication? You can forward instant messages to your cell phone whenever you're not signed on using the Mobile AIM Service. All it takes is an AIM username and password (that is, you don't have to use the AOL Instant Messenger program as your chat client; you just need an account). After you register, your AIM profile will change to "On JiveTalk" whenever you log out of AIM on your computer and all new IMs will be forwarded to your phone via SMS (that means you'd better have a good SMS plan if you expect to receive a lot of mobile IMs). To unregister your phone, just send a dummy SMS message to 265021. For more details, check out their IM Forwarding Users Guide (PDF alert).
