Download and install Spicebird. After you start it for the first time, you will be asked to set up new accounts. If you have skipped it at the start, go to File -> New -> Mail/News Account.

Adding a Google Apps Mail Account

I will be adding a Google apps account. Follow the steps below to configure it for your account.

1. Login to your Google apps email account. Now go to “Settings”.

2. Now in the “Settings” page, go to the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab.

3. In the “POP Download” section, select “Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded)” and then press the button Save Changes.

4. Now start the Account adding Wizard, select “Email Account” and press Next button.

5. Enter your name and email address and press Next.

6. Now in the next step where you are asked to configure Server Information, make the following changes :

• Select the type of incoming server you are using : POP.
• Incoming Server : pop.gmail.com
• Outgoing Server : smtp.gmail.com (In the screenshot, there is no such thing as I had configured it earlier. If you are adding it for the first time, it will be there.)

Now press Next to proceed.

7[a]. Now enter your usernames in the following window. Say your mail address is xyz@your_domain.com then your user will be xyz@your_domain.com. Press Next.

7[b]. Enter a name for the account. I will be naming it MTE Mail as this is my MakeTechEasier account. Press Next.

8. Cross check the details in the next window and press Finish if they are alright.

9. Now as the account gets created, go to Tools -> Account Settings. And click the item, Server Setting below MTE Mail in the left pane. Now make the necessary changes as shown in the screenshot below.

The account is now successfully added to Spicebird. Now every time you wish to fetch mail from that account, Spicebird will ask for the password of the account. Provide the password and all the mails will be fetched.

Adding a Gmail Account

1. I will be adding a GMail account now. Follow the steps below.

• Login to your Gmail account. Now go to “Settings”.

• Now in the “Settings” page, go to the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab.

• In the “IMAP Access” section, select “Enable IMAP” and then press the button Save Changes.

2. Open the Account Wizard, select Email account and then press Next.

3. Enter your name and email address and press Next.

4. Now in the next step where you are asked to configure Server Information, make the following changes :

• Select the type of incoming server you are using : IMAP.
• Incoming Server : pop.gmail.com
• Outgoing Server : smtp.gmail.com

Now press Next to proceed.

5[a]. Now enter your usernames in the following window. Say your mail address is xyz@gmail then your username will be xyz@gmail. Press Next.

5[b]. Enter a name for the account. I will be naming it “hsoumen@gmail.com”. Press Next.

6. Cross check the details in the next window and press Finish if they are alright.

7. Now as the account gets created, go to Tools -> Account Settings. And click the item, Server Setting below “hsoumen1985@gmail.com” in the left pane. Now make the necessary changes as shown in the screenshot below.

The account is now successfully added to Spicebird. Every time you wish to fetch mail from that account, Spicebird will ask for the password of the account. Provide the password and all the mails will be fetched. There is also an option to save your password.

That is all, if you face any problems configuring your own accounts feel free to ask via comments.

How to Configure Gmail And Google Apps For Spicebird originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

1. Trashmail.net

Trashmail.net provides a free temporary email service that allows you to forward emails coming in to the temporary email to your own email address.

To get your disposable email address, go to http://trashmail.net/.

Enter your desired email address in the New disposable email address edit box and select a domain from the drop-down list to the right.

Enter the email address to which you want the messages forwarded in the Your real email address edit box.

From the Number of forwards drop-down list, select the number of times you want messages forwarded from your disposable email address.

NOTE: As pictured above the starred options are only available with TrashMail Plus, which is $5.49 for one year. However, since this is a disposable email address, the free option is usually sufficient.

Select for how long you would like your disposable email address to last. You can select up to 1 month with the free option.

Select whether you want to use a captcha system to filter your incoming messages, and whether you want to be notified at your real email address when your disposable email address expires.

Click the Create disposable email address button. A new screen displays informing you that your account was created successfully, and summarizing the options you selected.

Now you can use the new disposable email address to sign up for downloads without worrying about getting unwanted spam at your own email address.

2. Mailinator

One of the best and top rated disposable email services is Mailinator. You create your own email address in the something@mailinator.com format without having to sign up for the service.

To use a disposable Mailinator email address, just create one, use it on a site to sign up for a download, etc., and then go to http://www.mailinator.com/ and Check your inbox by entering the email you created into the edit box. You do not need to enter the domain (@mailinator.com).

Once you give out this address, anyone can check your email by entering the email address on the Mailinator site. However, there is an alternate inbox for every email address you create. When you check your inbox, you will see an alternate inbox listed. Use this address to sign up for websites, to download files, etc. That way, when someone sees that address, they will not know what address to check at Mailinator to see your email.

3. Mailexpire

If you would rather specify a period of time than specify a certain number of times for email forwarding, you might want to use Mailexpire instead of Trashmail.net mentioned above.

To create an email address to use for forwarding, go to http://www.mailexpire.com/create.php.

Specify your Current email address, which is the address to which you want the email forwarded.

You can choose to enter a Reminder, so you remember to whom you gave the address to and why. This is useful if you create different temporary email address for different purposes.

Select the Lifespan for the temporary email address. You can select from 12 hours to 3 months.

You must select the check box next to “I accept the terms of use” to create your temporary email address. You must also enter the captcha code to continue.

Click on the Create new alias button to finish the process. Now you can use the temporary email address you created and get the emails in your regular email account without giving out your own email address.

What other temporary email services do you use?

3 Useful Temporary Email Services to Avoid Getting Unwanted Mails originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Try resetting your password

The first thing you should try to do if your email account has been hacked is to reset your password. When you first enter the site, click the link that will take you to the area where you can reset it.

Hotmail: Forgot your password?

1. Enter your Windows Live ID and CAPTCHA
2. Click the radio button next to the email address you want your temporary password sent to. You are given a choice of your Hotmail email address (doesn’t make any sense if that is the account I can’t login to) or alternate email address (if you have entered one).
3. Password reset instructions are sent to your alternate e-mail address
4. Click or copy+paste the link into your web browser
5. Enter your Windows Live ID, type in your new password and confirm it
6. Check the Make my password expire every 72 days check boxes, so it forces you to always change your password
7. Press the Continue button. Sign in with your new login credentials

Yahoo: I can’t access my account

1. Click the I forgot my password or My password doesn’t work radio button, and press the Next button
2. Enter your Yahoo! ID and CAPTCHA



3. Enter your alternate email (if you added one), your mobile phone number (if you use your smartphone), or click the I can’t access any of the above radio button
4. Press the Next button



5. If you select alternate email address, then password reset instructions are sent
6. If you select mobile phone, then a code will be sent that you will have to type in the next screen
7. If you select I can’t access any of the above, then you will have to answer two personalized questions that you chose when you created the account
8. Type in your new password and confirm it
9. Press the Next Button

Gmail: Can’t access your account? link.

1. Click the I forgot my password or My password doesn’t seem to be working radio button
2. Enter your User ID and captcha
3. Answer the personalized question that you chose when you created the account
4. Type in your new password and confirm it
5. Press the Reset Password button

Check your security options

Regardless of which email provider you are using, you should ensure that you have an alternate email address and security questions. You will need to log into your email account. There will be a link to check your account settings. In this area, you will be able to change your password, add an alternate email address, and check your security questions. Note: Please remember that a confirmation email will be sent to your alternate email address. You will need to confirm that is your account.

Please ensure that you are not choosing security questions that anyone who has an idea of you will figure out. You want to select the ones that will be hard for even your own mother to come up with.

Yahoo! has the additional security where you can add a sign-in seal. This seal is a word or an image that you have chosen that lets you know that you are actually on your sign-on page. These are the steps to add one:

1. On any Yahoo! sign-on page, click the Create your sign-on seal link



2. Choose Create a text seal or Upload an image
3. If you choose text, then create a message that only you will know
4. If you choose an image, upload one and select the color scheme
5. After you preview your text or image seal, press the Save This Seal button



6. It should now appear on the Yahoo! sign-on page

However, the sign-on seal is only for the computer you are currently on. Yahoo! should think about having the sign-on seal appear regardless of the computer you are on. Financial institutions have used sign-on seals as an additional security layer for years, and it doesn’t have to be specifically on one computer.

I can’t get access to my email account at all

There are times that you still can’t get into your email account. Maybe the person who hacked into your account already moved quickly and changed your password, alternate email address, and security quetions. What can you do then? You will have to work with your email provider’s Customer Support to get the problem resolved.

For Hotmail, you have go through numerous prompts before you able to access their Customer Support to fill out a form:

1. Click the Help Central link
2. Click any of the questions in the FAQs list
3. In the lower-right hand corner, click the Get More Help link
4. Click the Get Support link to get to the form

For Yahoo! Mail, it’s a little misleading if you try to use the My account may have been compromised option when resetting your password. The best way is to go directly to Yahoo! Help, and click the Report Abuse link. You will be taken to the form where you can have someone from Yahoo to contact you.

For Gmail, it’s very quick and simple to get some assistance.  Click the My account has been compromised radio button. A link to the account recovery form will appear.

Out of all three services, Yahoo! seems to provide the most security, and make it easier for you to get access to your email account, if you need to. Hotmail seems to be a little difficult to navigate, and Gmail is a little too easy for anyone to get into your email.

How to Gain Access to Your Hacked Email Account originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

An email filter allows you to categorize incoming emails based on a plethora of criteria and then assign them attributes, move them, or even reply to them based on those attributes. KMail provides a good deal of options, making it easy to wade through even large volumes of incoming messages.

Setting up filters in KMail is relatively painless, and once you go through our quick examples, you will be well on your way to the cleanest and most efficient mailbox in your home or office. In this example, we will tell KMail to take all emails sent to tavis at maketecheasier.com and automatically move them to a special folder within the Inbox. That way, all MakeTechEasier emails will have their own special folder.

To create a new email filter, start KMail or Kontact and follow these instructions:

1. Click “Settings” in the top menu.

2. Click “Configure Filters”
(The configuration dialog box will appear)

3.  Click “Rename” to change the name of the default filter.

4. Select “Match all of the following” or “…any of the following”. The first will check the message for every rule. The second will continue even if it finds only one of the rules.

Below the “match” criteria you will see three columns of drop-down menus. There is theoretically no limit to the number of rows you can add by pressing the “More” button, but for now, we will only work with one row.

The first column tells KMail which field to extract data from (i.e. Subject, To, Message Body), and for this example choose “To”. The second column tells it how to interpret whatever data it finds (i.e. contains, does not contain, is in category). Leave that on “contains” for now. The final column is where you enter the actual words, numbers, and/or characters that you want the filter to find. In this case, it will be my email address: “tavis”, the “at” sign, and “maketecheasier.com”.

In the bottom group box, you should see”Filter Actions”, which determines what the filter will do with the message once it has concluded that it matches the criteria. Among the options are Move into Folder, Mark As, and Forward To. For this example, choose “Move Into Folder”. In the second column, click the browse button with the folder icon to the right of it and select the Inbox. Then, click “New Subfolder”, and name it MakeTechEasier.

At the top, click the “Advanced” tab. Here, you can decide if you want the filter to only apply to certain accounts. You can also apply the filter to sent messages, although this setting is disabled by default. The “Add this filter to the Apply Filter menu” is a very important feature. What it does is allow you to institute retroactive filtering. Let’s suppose you have already received 500 emails from MakeTechEasier. This will allow you to apply your new filter to your inbox. It will scan the inbox and move any emails that match your criteria into your new folder. When you are finished configuring your filter, click “OK”. The new filter will start working immediately on any new incoming messages.  If you ever want to add new filters, click the “New filter” button in the bottom left of the settings screen.

With KMail’s filtering system, the possibilities are numerous, and they can even become quite complex. The system allows for regular expressions, numerical data, SPAM filtering, and much more. There is also no real limit to the number of filters you can have, making it not only easy to use but also extremely powerful. Next time you get that newsletter from your professional organization and contemplate dragging it to a folder, consider making a filter so that next time, it will already be there. There are many other types of filters. Test them, experiment, and improve your productivity.

How to create email filters with KMail originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

KMail, KDE’s email client, is a robust and still very popular choice for those who still prefer to have their emails on their desktop, even when they are offline. It is part of the Kontact PIM (Personal Information Management) suite and offers many useful and unique features.  Among those features is the ability to create advanced email templates.

Business and organizations in particular will find this feature beneficial. For example, suppose your business receives online orders, and you need to send custom replies to each customer. Most of the emails you send will contain identical information, but the name and other contact information needs to be different. KMail allows you to create such templates and even program KMail to use them in certain situations.

To begin creating a template, do the following:

1. In the menu, click “Settings”

2. Click “Configure KMail”

3. Click the “Composer” button

4. At the top, click the “Custom Templates” tab (You can also edit current templates in the “Standard Templates” tab)

5. In the top left, there is a text box. Type the name of your template, and click the plus button to create it

6. In the bottom right, where it says “Template type“, select the type you need. If it will be for new messages, leave it on “Universal”

7. At the bottom, click “Insert Command”

A menu will appear with several options: Original Message, Current Message, Process With External Programs, and Miscellaneous. For this example, you will create a reply message.

8. From the “Current Message” menu, choose “Time” and press Enter twice

9. From the “Current Message” choose “Day of the Week” and then choose “Date”

10. Next, skip a couple of lines and type the word “Dear,” followed by a space

11. Return to the “Original Message” menu and click “To Field Name”

12. Type “Our records indicate that you contacted our sales department”, type a space, and then from the “Original Message” menu, choose “Date”

13. Skip several lines, and from the “Current Message” menu, enter a closing statement followed by your signature

14. Finally, skip a few more lines, and type “%QUOTE”

The final reply template will look like this:

00:00 pm
Sunday 03 January 2010

Dear So-and-So,

Our records indicate that you contacted our sales department on Sunday 03 January 2010.

Body of your message

Your closing and Signature

Quoted original message

This is a basic template just to give you an idea of the flexibility you have with it. You can create multiple templates for various situations and recipients. When you receive an email that requires a reply with one of the templates you created:

1. Right click on the message

2. Select “Reply”

3. Move down to “Reply with Custom Template”

4. Select your template

Similarly, if you are creating a new message:

1. Click “File” in the top menu

2. Select “New”

3. Select “Message from Template”

4. Click on your template.

As I mentioned earlier, you can apply certain templates to particular email recipients. The easiest way to do this is to create a folder for the recipients of a particular template and then create a filter that automatically moves any message to or from a particular email to that folder (We will learn how to make a filter next week). Finally, do the following:

1. Right click on the new folder

2. Click “Properties”

3. Click the “Templates” tab

4. Check “Use custom message templates in this folder”

5. Modify the given templates or copy and paste the custom templates you made earlier.

Once you have your templates created, using them is just a matter of a few clicks. You can also go back and tweak them whenever you need something changed. With custom templates, whatever business or email activities you performed that once seemed laborious will now run smoothly and quickly.

How to Create Custom Email Templates in KMail originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Previously we have discussed how to access Gmail on your desktop and some Gmail search tips to effectively manage your email overload. This tutorial describes how you can use Multiple inboxes- a Gmail labs feature, that lets you check all your email’s at one place. You may have 5 or 6 email accounts but you can check all the incoming mails from your primary  email account at Gmail.

Following are the steps involved to link all your Gmail accounts and check email at one place:

1. Open your primary email account in Gmail. You would like to receive emails from all your other Gmail accounts here. Go to Gmail labs by clicking the green icon next to settings.

2. In the labs page that opens, scroll down until you find “Multiple inboxes” in the left pane. Select the radio button “Enabled” and hit “Save changes”.

3. Now sign out of your primary email account and login to your other email accounts one by one (let’s call it secondary email accounts). You will forward a copy of all incoming emails from these secondary email accounts to your primary email account. You would read the emails in primary email and even reply to messages from the primary email account only.

4. To enable forwarding of incoming emails, just login to your secondary email account. Go to Settings and select the “Forwarding and Pop/IMAP“ tab. After that select the radio button that says “Forward a copy of the incoming mail to” and put the email address of your primary account there.

5. Repeat the same step for all your secondary email account’s. Also do not forget to archive the email’s copy in the respective accounts. This way, you can always access them later and they do not get lost.

6. After you have configured all your email accounts to send a copy of the incoming mail, log in to your primary email account again.

7. Go to Settings and enable IMAP. You will find the IMAP settings under “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab.

8. Switch to the “Multiple inboxes” tab in the same page. Put all your secondary email addresses in the search query panes and give each pane a suitable title. Let us assume that your secondary email addresses are: harry@gmail.com, robert@gmail.com, mary@gmail.com, santa@gmail.com. Put all these email addresses in the search query pane as shown below

9. In the next pane choose how many conversation you would want to see listed in each of the mail accounts you added above. While you can use any number but it is advisable to keep it under 5.

10. We are almost done. Choose the position where you want to show the different inboxes. I prefer keeping the inboxes in the right so that i can keep an eye on the incoming messages without having to scroll down.

Here is how the email inbox looks after activating multiple inboxes in Gmail:

There you go. From now on, you will now get all the emails in your primary email account. Here is a wonderful screen cast that describes the above tutorial:

Let me know whether you were able to activate the multiple inbox feature in Gmail or not. Also check out some useful Gmail labs features to increase your email productivity.

How to Manage Multiple Gmail Accounts and Check Email at One Place originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

1. Removing keywords

A common websearch function applied to email. You can filter out items containing certain words. For example, if I want to get a list of all my MakeTechEasier messages, but not those relating to pingbacks, I can remove items containing that word from my results with the minus sign.

2. To: and From:

Probably the simplest and most often used search function is the ability to specify sender or recipient. By specifying a name or email address you can narrow results to items written by (or to) a name or email address. In this example, I’m trying to get all the emails I’ve written about MakeTechEasier to Damien.

3. CC:

Much like To: and From:, you can filter to show messages with a certain person in the cc or bcc fields. Here I am searching for all party-related messages that involve my good friend The Dude.

4. has:attachment

This one’s pretty self-explanatory – you can get only the results that have a file attached. In this example Im looking for all emails from my sister that may have pictures of her kids.

5. filename:

Similar to #4 above, but this time you can specify an exact filename, or even just part of a filename in an attachment. I can improve upon my previous search by specifying that I want only results with pictures attached.

6. OR

No search system is complete without at least a few boolean operators, and GMail is no exception. While AND is implied in most searches, sometimes you need OR to get the results you want. In this example, I’m trying to get messages about Christmas plans from both sisters.

OR, by the way, does have to be in caps.

7. is:

Another very handy one, is: lets you see only messages in a certain state, like read, unread, or starred. Here, I’m trying to get any emails from Damien which I had previously marked as important (starred).

8. label:

Labels are already a very useful GMail feature, and the search function only makes it better. You can tell the search to return only messages with a particular label attached. If I have a Work label for all my work-related emails and I want to find a message relating to last year’s company picnic, I can use label: to avoid getting messages relating to my countless other picnics of 2008.

9. (Parentheses)

I just recently learned about this, and I’m very glad I did. Using parentheses you can group items for use with things like OR. Parentheses can shorten what might otherwise be a long search string. Let’s say I’m searching for the XBox Live names of my friends Adam, Galt and Joe. I could write out three separate from: statements much like #6, or I could use parentheses to group items together.

10. Combinations

A few of these examples have combined the search options into single queries. GMail gives nearly unlimited flexibility when combining complex search options. You can get extremely detailed results by combining the options to return exactly what you want. The following is an attempt to bring up all messages from both of my sisters about all our prior Christmas plans, that also have pictures attached, but not including our trip to Kentucky.

10 Useful GMail Search Tips originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Tabbloid let’s you create a pdf newsletter from a group of Rss feeds of your choice. It’s way simple and you don’t have to be a geek to get started. You choose one or more feeds, give them your email address, set the time you want to receive the newsletter and forget the issue. Tabbloid will pick the latest articles from the feeds and will merge them into a singe pdf document. You will receive the document in your email inbox at your preferred time.

How to set up your own Tabbloid

1. To get started with creating your own Tabbloid, you do not need to register or set up an account. Just open the Tabbloid Homepage and click to get started.

2. In the next page, choose the Rss feed url and enter it. Here we are using the Maketecheasier Feed as an example.

They also provide you with some sample subscriptions like technology,business,politics etc which you can subscribe to but i would prefer subscribing to MakeTechEasier to get an idea how things work inside Tabbloid when you subscribe to an individual site or a group of sites.

3. As soon as you paste the feed url the site will present a confirmatory message asking you whether you really want to subscribe or not. Just hit the big Yes button to subscribe to the feed and add your preferred feed in Tabbloid list.

4. In the right hand pane you can see the list of feeds you have subscribed to. You can remove a feed from the pane and add another one at any time.

5. Now you need to set up the email details and delivery options.

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As you can see, it’s pretty simple and straightforward. Enter your email address where you would like to get your Tabbloid, set the day and time save the delivery options. You can set a daily or a weekly delivery of your pdf newsletter.As i am a web addict and check my email daily so i would love to get the newsletter daily.

As soon as you save the options a confirmatory email would be sent at your given email address.

Now that you have confirmed your email address, it’s time to actually preview the pdf newsletter by clicking the “Generate Sample issue now” button. A Tabbloid of the rss feed will open as pdf inside your browser.

Here is how the Maketecheasier Tabbloid looks

You can view the complete Tabbloid sample here

The daily email you receive as part of the newsletter will contain all the contents of the recently published articles in the feeds you have subscribed. Along with the email, you will have an attachment which will contain the pdf.

You can subscribe to multiple feeds and get a compact newsletter if you want. All in all, it’s a very handy way to get all the blog updates as pdf documents delivered straight in your inbox, daily.

Tabbloid: Convert Rss Feeds into PDF Newsletters and get them as Email originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

So what is it exactly?

According to Google:

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Intriguing, but not very specific. Suffice it to say, each “Wave” is like an email thread or message board post. The difference is that you’re not just posting a series of replies (though you certainly can use it that way), you’re making changes to a single document. Each change becomes a branch of the original message. You can roll a wave back in time to see how the conversation has evolved. If you get added to a pre-existing wave, you get the whole thing – the document (or thread) as-is, along with its entire history. Waves can be embedded into blogs, so any time a change is made to that wave it can show up in something like Blogger in near real time. We’ll cover the most interesting Wave features in more detail as we go.

Using a Wave

The Wave exists online, and can be accessed a few different ways. The most common would probably be through a “Wave Client”, ie a GMail-like web app that displays your Waves in the browser window. Here is an example of the main wave.google.com

On the far left we’ve got a pretty familiar webmail style menu, with the usual Inbox, etc. Below that is your contacts. Wave seems to have imported my GMail contacts and added those who are also signed in here. The center pane shows your message history much like any email client, including the pic for each participant in the wave.

Things get more interesting when we get to the right pane. Here we can view, edit, and create waves. In this example, I wrote a Kurt Vonnegut quote to Crystal. She responded not by creating a separate reply, but by editing my original words. When I get back to Wave and see her message, Wave highlights the changes she has made.

This means you could use a single wave to have multiple people, say, write a paper for school or collaborate on a family Christmas list. All changes are essentially real time, each change creating a new branch with a complete backup history. In fact, Wave provides a playback feature that allows you to step through the document from creation to the present.

Extensions

Wave expects and encourages user-developed extensions. As it’s still in development, there aren’t many choices yet. The extensions that do exist are all fairly useful. First, you can perform a Google search and include the results in the wave. No real surprises there.

Next is the single-click Yes/No box. Of all the things to include in an early release I’m a little surprised the Yes/No box was one of them, but I suppose it demonstrates some of the things you can do with extensions.

The results were unanimous.

There is also a Maps extension, which is another single click surprise. I have to admit, this would make it a lot easier to exchange directions.

As I write this, a new wave just arrived in my inbox for the Google Wave Extension Gallery. I can browse and install new extensions from within the wave. Presumably the wave will be updated as new extensions come out.

Conclusion

There is FAR more to Google Wave than I could possibly cover here, and this is still a fairly early development version. For those who want all the details, you can find a LONG (80 minutes) video of the tech demo here. For something with so drastically different from email on the technical side, Wave manages to feel surprisingly comfortable. The technology is certainly impressive, and it’s easy to adjust to the Wave way of doing things once you’ve spent a few minutes using it. As for usefulness, that’s a little harder to judge. From what I’ve seen, Wave only works if everyone else is also using it. As great as the map feature may be, the recipient would of course need to be a Wave user as well. Not that this is a flaw in Wave exactly, but it does place a limit on how useful it can be. I think it’s got a lot of potential, and I’ll be keeping a Wave tab open for a while to see how things go, but I won’t go closing my webmail tab just yet.

Google Wave – The Future of Email? originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Happily there is a simple way to create an XML file to store your settings and turn this into a CAB file which will apply your IMAP and/or POP3 settings for single or multiple email accounts.

This process will work on Windows Mobile 6, 6.1 and 6.5 devices.

Tools You Will Need

In order to build the CAB file, you’ll need to know the following:

• CHARACTERISTIC TYPE – give your email settings a name
• CHARACTERISTIC TYPE – this time visit www.guidgenerator.com to generate a GUID to enter in this field.
• SERVICENAME – The name you give to your email account in Pocket Outlook
• SERVICETYPE – This will be POP3 or IMAP4, depending on your email setup
• INSERVER – Your incoming mailserver name
• OUTSERVER – The name of your outgoing mailserver
• NAME – Your sender name
• AUTHNAME – Email account username
• AUTHSECRET – Email account password
• DOMAIN – The email domain – not usually required for webmail accounts
• REPLYADDR – The address you require emails to be replied to.

This information can be acquired from your existing email account setup or your email provider details.

To carry out this task, you’ll need the following free software:

A good text or XML editor – I would recommend Notepad++, the superb open source alternative to the aging Windows notepad text editor, which is available free from Sourceforge.net.

Microsoft Cabinet Software Development Kit – this tool, free from Microsoft, will create the CAB file that holds your email settings and can be run whenever you need to restore your details.

The Code

In order to begin, first of all download and install Notepad++.

Next it’s time to create your email setup. The code required should be copied from below, and pasted into a new text file in Notepad++.

<wap-provisioningdoc>
<characteristic type="EMAIL2">
<characteristic type="">
<parm name="SERVICENAME" value="Example IMAP"/>
<parm name="SERVICETYPE" value="IMAP4"/>
<parm name="INSERVER" value="imapmail.example.com"/>
<parm name="OUTSERVER" value="mailto.example.com"/>
<parm name="NAME" value="Your name" />
<parm name="AUTHNAME" value="yourmailloginname"/>
<parm name="AUTHSECRET" value="password"/>
<parm name="DOMAIN" value=""/>
<parm name="REPLYADDR" value="yourmailname@example.com"/>
<parm name="LINGER" value="15" />
<parm name="RETRIEVE" value="2048" />
<parm name="KEEPMAX" value="25" />
<parm name="DWNDAY" value="3" />
</characteristic>
</characteristic>
</wap-provisioningdoc>

You might also want to configure SMTP Authorization settings if your email host required it – insert these lines above the first </characteristic>.

<parm name="SMTPALTENABLED" value="1"/>
<parm name="SMTPALTAUTHNAME" value="yourmailnameauth"/>
<parm name="SMTPALTPASSWORD" value="smtpauthpassword"/>
<parm name="SMTPALTDOMAIN" value="smtpauthdomain"/>

Once you’ve copied this across, save it as “_setup.xml”.

Next, you’ll need to complete the blank fields, as explained above.

Once you’ve done this, take a look at the final 5 lines. Some of these can be altered, depending on your preference:

The setting “DWNDAY” value=”3″ sets Pocket Outlook to retrieve only messages that arrived in your inbox within the last 3 days.

“KEEPMAX” value=”25″ – this will retrieve up to 25 emails.

Finally, “RETRIEVE” value=”2048″ will retrieve only 2kb of each email message, with the rest of the message being downloaded when required. This allows headers, sender and subject details to be downloaded, although it is possible to set this value to “header only”.

As long as the fields are all complete as required, save the document and exit.

(Note that multiple email account details can be stored – simply remove the lines:

</characteristic>
</wap-provisioningdoc>

…then copy the previous code again, filling in the  secondary account details. As long as the file ends with the 2 lines you moved, all should work fine.

Creating the CAB File

Next, unzip the Microsoft Cabinet Software Development Kit. Cabsdk.exe is a self-extracting executable that needs to be unpacked somewhere memorable, such as C:\CABmaker.

Once completed, go to Start > Run and type CMD to open the Command Line.

Switch your prompt to the location of your _setup.xml file, and enter:

makecab /D COMPRESS=OFF _setup.xml mail.cab

This will create a file – mail.cab – in the same folder as _setup.xml – and that’s it!

Copy this to your Windows Mobile device memory card, or keep in a safe place on your PC.

Next time your Windows Mobile device has been reinstalled or had factory settings restored, simply run the mail.cab file on your handset to populate your email settings!

How to Retain Your Email Settings Following a Factory Reset In Your Window Mobile Handset originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

FreePOPs acts as its own POP proxy transferring data between your web-based interfaces and your choice of email program (i.e. Microsoft Outlook). Another nifty feature is FreePOPs ability to convert RSS feeds into emails allowing you to easily share your favorite feeds as you’re also able to download your feeds onto your desktop. This web application works with very closely with HTTP proxy servers and gives you the option of using a spam and virus filter as well for added protection and additional layers of security.

OS Support

FreePOPs supports a wide variety of operating systems, here’s a brief list defining a few:

• Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/3/XP/Vista
• Mac OS X
• Linux/Unix

Just a Free Email app?

FreePOPs is a simple, reliable, and exceptional way to download messages from web based email account to your email programs located on your desktop. Years ago when web based email readily became available, many used to wonder how to make these emails available to them without having to constantly login to their accounts. Finally there is a solution to the once hard to gain ease and comfort of always knowing what is in your mailbox with FreePOPs.  With this app, you’re able to gain access to your email within a matter of seconds while there is no required setup and configuration.

ScreenShot of FreePOPs checking a Gmail account to download the contents to your desktops POP account.

Our POP Journey Has Come to an End

Even though FreePOPs has few flaws like not being able to mark downloaded email as read or the ability to support SMTP settings that would allow you to send email, it is still a display of one’s creativity and ability to further innovate services and applications for a more beneficial use. As times progress we hope that FreePOPs will include more features like the ability to send emails, IMAP access, easier module configuration and more to come.

Click Here for a quick and free download of FreePOPs.

Download Webmail to POP & RSS Reader Tool originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)