Beat Spammers With Disposable Email

Remember that last time when you really, really wanted that free e-book but were fretting to complete that "one-time, free registration" that promised not to sell your email-id to millions of spammers and businesses worldwide? Remember the feeling of helplessness as you slowly crawled across your keyboard, punching in each key with a growing dread and fearing the worst? Yes, spam can be a terrible, terrible source of headache for everybody. And it's not going to ease up anytime in the near future. Spammers are getting smarter with the techniques they use to get and abuse your email address.

So what do you do when you are faced which such a situation? Clearly, you can't NOT download that e-book because it's critical to your research. At the same time, you are really scared of disclosing your real email id. That's were disposable email addresses step in. Use any one of the services below and grab yourself disposable email addresses.

• 10 Minute Mail: Probably the simplest services available. The moment you visit the webpage, you are assigned a disposable e-mail address that lasts for 10 minutes. There is a handy link on the page itself to refresh the time for which the address will be active. On the bottom of the screen is the list of emails that have been received for that address. Go to 10 Minute Mail, and copy-paste the email address into that pesky registration form. [10 Minute Mail]
• Mailinator: "You are terminated!" You've heard that line in countless terminator movies (just four actually). Now you can hear it all it's glory every time you get spam from spammy sites. The good thing about Mailinator is that you don't have to get an email address from them (although you can) to use the system. You can just type "myspamkillingemailaddress@mailinator.com" (or anything else, as long the part after the '@' is the same) as your email address. And then you can head over to their website and use the same address to access any emails (useful, or otherwise), that you may have there. [Mailinator]
• GuerrillaMail: Although GuerrillaMail is similar to Mailinator in terms of what it offers, it does require one additional step before you can use your own addresses. You need to head over to their site and register the address you want to use. Once done, you have your own @guerrillamailblock.com email address, which expires after 60 minutes. It's also got a video tutorial on how to use the service. [GuerrillaMail]

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Boost Productivity By Managing Gmail Better

The Internet has permeated our lives in a clinical, ruthless manner. No matter where we are, we need to be connected. It's reached a point where an hour away from one's email inbox can lead to complete anarchy. I, for one, feel that having a cluttered Inbox severely stresses me out. It's like a pile of work that's pending. At the same time, I also realized that I'm using one of the most feature-packed webmail services in the world. So, I came up with a system that enables me to manage my Gmail inbox really well. Along with inspiration from Inbox Zero, I have managed to keep my email at bay, and tell it who's boss inside my inbox.

And today, you get to know all about it. I basically make use of many features inherent in Gmail, along with a few tweaks, to make my Inbox look really clean and tidy. Having a clean inbox lets me focus at the task at hand. Read on to know about my email kung-fu.

• Use Labels: Labels are a really cool way to deal with emails. It's like folders taken to another level. The difference is that one email can belong to multiple emails. So, in case I have an forwarded email from an important friend, it can go to two labels, one by the name of said friend, and the other that's conveniently named "Forwards". Go to Settings > Labels to create yours.
  
• Use Filters: If you haven't done so already, set up filters in your Gmail account. Filters are a really efficient way of sending the correct email to the correct places. Make sure that only the most important email reaches your Inbox. The rest can all be neatly sorted. The best part is that Gmail lets you export/import filters. To do so, just go to Settings > Lab > Filter Import/Export > Enable. My favorite filters are listed below. Create your own by clicking "Create a Filter" near the Search Box.
1. Forwarded Emails Filter: This filter simply looks for the strings "Fwd:" or "Fw:" in an email subject and applies the label "Forwards" to matching emails. It also archives the emails.
   
2. Social Networking Filter: This filter scans the "From:" field of all incoming emails and applies the label "Social Networks" to those, which originate from, well, Social Networks. It also archives these emails.
   
In case you don't want to go through the trouble of creating these filters for yourself. You can import my filters file provided below. Play with your filters to really unleash the power of Gmail. My Filters File
• Use the "+" Operator: What do I mean by that? Well, Gmail treats both "abc@gmail.com" as well as "abc+anywordshere@gmail.com" as the same. Now do you get my point? Suppose, you are signing up for the Technokracy Feed by Email. Then, you can use the email ID "youremail+technokracy@gmail.com" and still receive the emails at "youremail@gmail.com". Once you've done this, just setup a filter to redirect all emails addressed to "youremail+technokracy@gmail.com" to the label "Technokracy".
• Spruce Up Your Inbox: They say appearances can be deceptive. Well, you wouldn't mind deception once in a while, would you? Especially if you are using the default Gmail theme and have tons of email lying unattended? It just looks plain ugly if you know what I mean. Head over to my previous post about Pimping out Gmail and read how to make the whole interface look like you want it to. Author's Recommendation: Use the Mac OS X Snow Leopard Theme with Stylish.
  
• Use Firefox Extensions: This one is specially for professionals who are neck-deep into projects and tasks, but can't be bothered about using PIMs such as Outlook. Install the GTDInbox Firefox extension and see Gmail turn into a professional power-house. NOTE: This sadly just works for Firefox so far.
• Use Gmail Labs Features: Gmail is working on some really awesome features in their Labs. So head over there and enable the following life-saving features:
  
1. Hide Read Labels<: This feature manipulates the Gmail interface to only show those labels for which you currently have unread messages. Helps to draw your attention to the latest email.
2. Multiple Inboxes: Who needs one Inbox when you can have 5? OK. So five may be overkill. But once you enable this feature, you can head over to Settings > Multiple Inbox and configure more inboxes which will show up next to, above, or below your main Inbox. This way, you can have one inbox for all mail, one for mails from your boss, and one for mails that have attachments.

I have been using all the above tweaks to blaze through my email each morning for over a year now. I am pretty sure that once configured properly, you will be able to the same for your inbox. Go ahead and play some crazy Gmail games! 

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3 Reasons Why I Wouldn't Use Google Wave Yet

Google took a jab at redefining email when they opened Google Wave to the public earlier this year. Tomes and tomes of, well... webpages, were filled with how awesome a product Google Wave is. The entire Internet seemed to be waving and blipping with excitement. This was about redefining email. About changing how you and I interact. About being awesome as always, the Google way.

Don't get me wrong. It's still an awesome product. But I still don't and won't use Google Wave. At least not yet. And here's why:

• It's a void out there: Sure, it's just a selective Beta and there's always the option to use the "with:public" search term to get to the public waves, but do you seriously see yourself talking to a bunch of strangers? Wouldn't you rather just get on and Wave with a friend, or a colleague? The fact that invitations are not being rolled out quickly enough doesn't make the situation any better.

• If I wanted to crawl, I'd have been a snail: I mean seriously, what happened to all the gigahertz goodness I paid for? The moment you get 30 or above wavers onto a Wave, you start noticing a lag. And the system specs don't help (yours truly ran it on a pret-ty powerfuly rig). The best you can do at the moment is use Google Gears alongside your browser. But that only helps a little bit.

• It's for collaboration, not one-to-one communication: The idea was to reinvent email. While that was achieved in more ways than one (and you can call me a conformist for what I say next), I still feel that email exchanges are better off in their current state. I mean, I really don't want real-time messages on my screen when I'm writing to just one person, right? In its present state, Wave is best used when there are minutes to be exchanged between teams, technical documents to be written, or maybe even as live counselling rooms. But the bottom line remains that most of us won't move to a different platform just for dropping a line on our loved ones.

Google Wave has still got a lot of distance to traverse before it's ready for mass-market use. And maybe that's the point of the invitation-only Beta. But somewhere, I do feel Google could have tweaked it some more before unleashing it upon us. That could've been done by means of extra features, or maybe even by expanding the invitation queue to accommodate more people.

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Extensions Come To Chrome

Everyone knows that Chrome is an awesome browser. It's fast, it's free and it's Google! But the one advantage Firefox always had over Chrome was extensions. In fact, that's the only reason why a lot of users (including yours truly) didn't make a permanent switch from Firefox to Chrome. But all that is set to change. Google recently made extensions live in Chrome's developer version, and today, theextension gallery went online.

As of this morning, the extension gallery already has 411 extensions.

And here's how you can get them:

1. First, upgrade to the latest developer build. This involves opening your current Chrome installation, and going to the Chrome Beta page.
2. Once you've downloaded and installed the Chrome developer build, you are all set to go.
3. Just fire up Chrome and visit the Chrome Extension Gallery, and check out all the extension fun available online.

And that's all there is to it. Go ahead and take the new souped up Chrome for a spin! And to help you start out, here's my 3 favorite Chrome Extensions:

1. Chromed Bird (Twitter Client)
2. Aviary Screen Capture (Screen Capture)
3. Stumble Upon (Social Media)

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Setup Google DNS For Your Computers

Update 2: Conclusive results that Google DNS is blazing fast.
Update 1: OpenDNS responds to Google's latest offering

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Holiday season seems to be a time of festivity even amongst Google engineers. Last year, they unleashed a slew of Google Labs features upon the world, each more innovative than the other. It seems like they are upto it again with some useful as well as fun ideas coming through. This year we've already seen the Default Text Styling Labs Feature, Google's initiative to send your holiday card for you (US only), and now they've come up with Google DNS.

I can hear you swearing under your breath. Fear not comrades, for DNS isn't the devil. It's not even half as complex as it sounds abbreviated. I'll delve into DNS today and also show you just how to go about configuring Google DNS for your computers.

DNS (or Domain Name System for those who love it long) is actually one of the cleverest innovations of the Internet. DNS is what enables you to sit your ass in a chair, type a website into the browser, and whistle happily as the browser serves up your page.

This is how it works. When you enter a website into the Address Bar of your browser, the browser is initially clueless about what you want to see. This is because computers are nasty, arrogant dudes who simply fail to understand the finer nuances of human lingual abilities. All they understand are numbers. So when you hit the Enter/Return key on your keyboard, something called a Resolver kicks in and takes the text from the browser. Then, it compares that text to a huge, collosal database that contains numbers associated with the entered text. These numbers, called IP Addresses (Internet Protocol Addresses), make the Internet (or in fact any network) work. This database of IP Addresses is called a DNS Cache, which is stored at with your local ISP (the company that gives you your Internet connection). A website is displayed if the IP Address corresponding to a particular text is found. If it isn't found, the resolver broadens its search and looks for the IP Addresses in nearby DNS Caches until the website is found (now you know what they mean by "Website Found. Waiting for Reply..." in your browser status bars).

So what Google has done, is made a consolidated database of websites, which they've deemed safe (read malware free) and stored it across various datacentres across the world. They have also implemented certain mechanisms that enable the browser to redirect to the nearest DNS when you request a page. What this does is reduce latency and brings up your webpages quicker. So, with a bit of work on their part, Google has made the Web safer and faster.

Now that you have the background, I'll show you how to configure your computer(s) for Google DNS in Windows Vista/7:

1. Go to the Network and Sharing Center (Start > Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center)
2. In the sidebar, click on "Change Adapter Settings" or something similar. This will show you a list of network adapters configured on your PC.
3. Right click the adapter you are using (say Local Area Connection, or Wireless Network Connection) and select "Properties". This opens the Property sheet for that adapter.
4. In the Networking tab, double-click the "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" entry. This makes another window pop-up.
5. In this new window, select the General tab and then click the option that says "Use the following DNS server addresses". This enables the two boxes below the option.
6. In the first box "Preferred DNS Server", enter the value 8.8.8.8 (look at the screenshot left above).
   
7. In the second box "Alternate DNS Server", enter the value 8.8.4.4 (look at the screenshot right above).
8. Click OK for all the windows.
9. For optimal performance, go to a command prompt (Start > Run > cmd.exe) and type "ipconfig /flushdns" (without the quotes) and press Enter.
10. That's it! Welcome to the safer, quicker web!

For people who think Google is just a big company trying to get into each of your lives with every product, use OpenDNS. You can also configure Google DNS to work for your entire network of devices by entering the above settings in your router configuration page (usually 192.168.1.1).

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Related articles:

• Introducing Google Public DNS (googleblog.blogspot.com)

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3 Things I Miss in Mozilla Firefox

Everyone knows it. Mozilla Firefox is an awesome product, which shines as a bright beacon (read open-source and free), in an otherwise increasingly commercial software market. Recent stats show that if the number of Firefox users around the world were treated as a country, they would form the third largest country by population, preceded only by China and India. After conquering Antarctica and Europe in terms of penetration, it is catching up to Internet Explorer really quickly.

However, in-spite of being one of the best browsers on the planet and doing that one-handedly, there are certain features that I wish were a part of Firefox out-of-the-box.

• Domain Highlighting: This is something that the Firefox team can pick-up from Chrome. Chrome, by default highlights the current domain you are on. This acts as a safeguard against fraudulent websites as it automatically attracts the user's eye to the domain name. By doing so, the user more often than not, ends up taking a second look at the domain name. The user can then determine whether the domain being displayed is indeed the domain he/she intended to visit. There is, however, an extension that enables this very feature in Firefox (as well as a lot of other nifty features). It' called Locationbar2 and can be found here. It works well with all versions of Firefox up to 3.6

• Jumplists: Let's face it. Jumplists are probably going to be the most-used feature in Windows 7. I have talked about it in my post about Nifty Windows 7 Features. Sadly, Firefox users are going to have to wait for Jumplists till Firefox 4.0 is released. There is however, a workaround, which enables you to make use of the yummy Jumplists. It's called Winfox and it's available for both x86 and x64 versions of Windows. Find it here.

• Quick-start Home Page: Opera has Speed Dial. Chrome has a new tab page that shows your recently viewed websites, bookmarks, and recently closed tabs. Safari has the swanky Cover Flow lookalike. Hell, even Internet Explorer has a lame excuse for a new tab page. And that's exactly the reason why I believe Firefox should have a New Tab page of sorts. It's just something no modern browser can do without. However, like everything else, the extension gallery has a solution for this. You can install the New Tab King add-on to get a handy startup page. Once you got it up and running, you can go here to configure some of your other add-ons to work seamlessly with it.

And those are the 3 things, which I believe if implemented, can raise Firefox's awesomeness to new heights.

Do you have any brickbats about Firefox? Discuss them below in the comments section.

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