CHRISdotTODD

If you've been following me, you know I've made predictions in 2009 and 2010 . While my first years predictions were rather light, I made 5 predictions as well as included further discussion of issues with my 2010 prediction. My record for 2010 wasn't so good, but that's only in a pure hit or miss view. In fact the subject matters I addressed, I believe were quite good, but change just didn't happen as quick as I had thought. See my recap post for further details and analysis on my 2010 predictions. Now that 2011 has started, I'll make another stab at what I believe will happen in the tech industry this year. This first one is rather easy... Facebook will release an email client , putting them in direct competition with Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! mail. The current email within Facebook is limited in functionality, but in 2011 this will change as Facebook continues to look for ways to grow and grab more "eyeballs." Last year I predicted Internet Explo

Note: These steps were written using Outlook 2003. Though most if not all versions should support this functionality, it may take slightly different steps in different versions. These steps will describe how to forward an email that contains a specific Subject, e.g. “the subject,” from a specific email address, e.g. "foo@foo.com," to another Outlook user, e.g. "Outlook User." 1. Within Outlook go to Tools >> Rules and Alerts… 2. Click New Rule… This will start the Rules Wizard 3. Select the “Start from a blank rule” option 4. Select “Check messages when they arrive” 5. Click Next 6. Select the two check boxes “from people or distribution list” and “with specific words in the subject.” This puts both phrases in the lower “Step 2” text box. 7. Click on the “people or distribution list” text in the lower box. This will open a new Rule Address dialog box, similar to the standard Address Book dialog box. 8. In the From - > field (at the

With my new Droid, it was extremely easy to get my Gmail, but I found the instructions for getting Exchange email not so clear. It's actually quite easy once you realize what's being asked -- the key is it's the same as your Outlook Webmail. Here's what you need to do: Click/Open the eMail App and choose Add Account. Enter your Outlook email address and password. If you want this to be your default email, be sure to check the box before clicking next. Select Exchange from the account type options. Complete the following Domain\Username : This will likely have your email username as entered in step 2. It may not be the same as your network username, which is required here. Most of us don't have to remember our domain, except when using Webmail, e.g. mydomain\myusername. Password : The password you use to login to your corporate computer, and therefore your email. It should also be the same password you use when retrieving Outlook Webmail. Server: This will likely ha

Most of us have Contacts spread among many systems and it takes a lot of effort to keep them in sync or they're not in sync and you find yourself re-entering contacts in each system. With the help of Outlook (2003), LinkedIn , Gmail , My Digital Life , and Contact Scrubber for Outlook , I was able to sync a majority of my Contacts. Here are the steps I used: I downloaded and installed the LinkedIn Toolbar for Outlook . With the toolbar app, I was able to add Contacts from LinkedIn into my Outlook Contacts -- the master list. Then I used TeamScope's Contact Scrubber for Outlook to merge any duplicates that Outlook hadn't already picked up. Next with the help of My Digital Life blog, I exported my Gmail Contacts and imported them into Outlook. Again I used Contact Scrubber for Outlook to merge duplicates. Then with the help of My Digital Life again, I exported my Outlook Contacts and imported them into Gmail. Notes: Contact Scrubber for Outlook is a Trial that works wi

I recently added a new email account to my Thunderbird client, and it failed in sending email (SMTP), though it did receive (pop3). I double and triple checked my configuration; I deleted and recreated the account; nothing seemed to work. I had two other SMTP accounts defined, and they never had the problem. Finally I found a reference (sorry I don't remember what website) that suggested trying to delete all my saved passwords. Sure enough, that did it. Even though when I had recreated the account I was challenged for password input on the first time, it had still failed. Also, I had copied and pasted the password from an alternate source, so I didn't make a typo. Some how the storage for passwords, just for the single account, was corrupt. If you use Thunderbird on Windows, to delete your passwords go to: Tools >> Options Click Privacy Click the Password tab Click Edit Saved Password Either click Remove All OR select the ones you want to delete and click Remove Click Clo

Brian Krebs, columnist of Security Fix in the Washington Post has been following a San Jose company McColo Corp due to it's contribution to spam. Over the last 4 months Brian has been gathering data, which he shared with the service providers of McColo on Monday. Upon reviewing this material, the ISPs shut down service to McColo. I think the results were bigger than Brian expected -- 75% of all spam has been reduced across the Internet -- that is 75% of all spam was coming from this one company. In his column, Brian has some graphs from a couple different sources that displays these terrific results. Congratulations and well done Brian!

For the last several months, Outlook 2003 has periodically been real slow. The most common time would be first thing in the morning, so I wasn't sure whether it was network related or startup related. I would also experience it occasionally when sending an email... it would hang for a long time before starting the spell checker, and then between words it would hang again. I did some research, and though it has not been long enough to be certain it has been corrected, it looks promising. Here are the suggestions that I tried: Archive everything older than 3 months (it was 6). This should reduce the size of your PST file -- mine was 2.6 MB. My understanding is that newer versions of Outlook do not have problems with large PST files, but why take a chance? Tools | Options >> Other >> AutoArchive... Start a new outcmd.dat file (C:\Documents and Settings\[your user name]\application data\microsoft\outlook), as it could be corrupt. Close Outlook, rename the file, start Outloo

The popular, safer alternative to the Outlook Express mail client Thunderbird , from the Mozilla folks, can be used for more than just POP3 / SMTP mail. If you did not know, Google provides POP3 access access, but all the other popular WebMail platforms do not. Lucky for us, Mozilla has developed Extensions to support the other popular WebMail formats from Yahoo to HotMail to AIM/AOL. Mozilla has made it fairly easy to setup too. First, you download their base WebMail Extension, and then individual Extensions for only the services you have. After the Extensions are installed, you have a new option, WebMail, in the Add Account interface, which takes you through a Wizard to configure. That's it!. I setup and tested both Yahoo and AIM/AOL. The only thing to watch for is that you enter your complete email address for the username (i.e. yourname@yourservice.com not yourname ). If you have not made the switch to Thunderbird yet, this is the time. In addition to the WebMail Extensions,

Did you know that you could use your Gmail account to store files? With nearly 3 GBs of space, this is an easy way to store files that you may want to access from multiple computers or that you want to make sure get archived off site. Rahul Jonna has created a simple Firefox Extension , making it very easy to store files from Firefox. I made a 1.5 minute how-to movie to demonstrate how this works. [The quality of the movie does not match my desire, but I had to use a program that would output a format that could be accepted by Google.] Be sure to watch the last 3rd of the video as it demonstrates how to write a filter in Gmail, so the files do not show up in your inbox.

I occasionally speak with people that are having problems managing their email -- usually these are the people that do not respond to your email or miss an occasional meeting. I started recommending a series from 43 Folders on managing your email, and these folks are having success. The series is called Zero Inbox . 43 Folders' Zero Inbox takes you through a fairly simple 10 step process that will lead you email success. If you find Zero Inbox helpful (or maybe you do not need it), checkout other "life hacks" such as building a smarter to-do list or procrastination dash . Procrastination... hmm... maybe that is a better place to start. What are you waiting for? Give 43 Folders a try.

As yet another security issue is found in Internet Explorer, it is a good time to remind you that Internet Explorer is used for more than web browsing. A few months back I pointed out how Microsoft Project had problems due to the ActiveX security settings I had set too high. Another such program is Outlook and Outlook Express. With the latest issue, you could receive an email with embedded code that would exploit your computer. This problem is big enough that Microsoft may actually release it outside their normal monthly patch cycle -- they have only done this once -- to fix a problem with their DRM. This problem is big enough, you can actually get a fix from a third-party . Perhaps a better fix, in addition to using Firefox (or Netscape) instead of Internet Explorer, use an alternate email program such as Eudora or Thunderbird (from the makers of Firefox).