Time to deal with that pesky e-mail. Actually this is one that I *mostly* have under control, but I think there are a couple of valuable tips. Depending on how you approach your e-mail, your mileage will vary.
Broadly, there are four different types of e-mail you can have:
- Corporate e-mail address. Most people will have at least one of these.
- ISP e-mail address. Most of us will have one of these too.
- Web Mail address (Hotmail, Google Mail etc.), also very common!
- Your own domain mail address.
There are a myriad of options, but for my money, mail re-directors are the key. This is going to be different for each provider, but roughly speaking, most mail hosts provide you the ability to automatically forward your mail to other accounts. In some cases (typically web-mail) you can’t always forward, but you can consolidate multiple accounts in to one.
Again you’re own choices will vary, but my choices are as follows:
- Corporate mail - I can’t do much with this, so I like to have every thing come here. You may not want to answer your mail from here, but it’s nice to know you’ve got it during the day.
- ISP - I’ve re-directed my ISP mail address (which typically only receives mail from my ISP) to my own domain address.
- Web mail — I dispensed with these a long time ago, although there are reasons why I wouldn’t mind one. The major issue is that personal mail I recieve in my corporate mail account is branded as my company when it goes back out. This generally doesn’t bother me, but it may not always be appropriate. Web mail account would help me here, but I want one branded with my domain name (I think I can do this, but it needs some play time and signing up with GMail or Hotmail to try it out….).
- Domain Mail — All other mail, including multiple mail addresses on the binaryplex.com domain are eventually forwarded to one mail box, and this is copied off to my corporate address. This means I am notified when I get mail, but can access my mail from home later and be branded as binaryplex.com when I want to deal with it.
Ultimately a Domain Mail account with a web host is really powerful and lets you do lots of neat things. I like to have the ability to setup my own e-mail addresses and do so on occasion for web sites that I don’t trust for various reasons. I can then just delete the mail account when I need to.
So here is the newest step in re-factoring your digital life:
Step 2: Explore your mail hosts options and consolidate your mail into fewer accounts
May 20th, 2008 at 5:48 am
After I posted this, I found this useful information at GMail http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=22370&hl=en-GB
Essentially this means you can use your domain mail, auto-forward it to a GMail address and add your domain mail as an allowable “from” address for GMail.
Some mail clients will display something like “sent by mail@binaryplex.com from tjb6454@gmail.com“, but for my personal mail, I don’t see this as a big issue.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
It makes me laugh to see people still using ISP email addresses.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
@Charlie Agreed! It’s worth mentioning for those that don’t think about these things, inevitably your ISP will change, don’t tie your on-line life to it.
For those that have got an e-mail address they want to wean themselves off, say an ISP one or sexy-thing@hotmail.com which is no longer appropriate now you are older than 16, here’s what to do.
a) Get a new address — do. it. now.
b) Forward the old one to the new one.
c) Tell everyone you have a new one. Only use it in correspondence from now on.
d) Delete the old one in a years time. You should find no-one is using it any more.
May 21st, 2008 at 5:53 am
[...] Eclectic Architecture for enterprise technologists « Refactor your life step 2 - mail [...]
August 18th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Sorry to comment on an old post, but you did just link to it
I’ve went though the digital refactoring exersize a year ago, and I’m in the process of doing it again. The best solution i found for email is Google apps for your domain. I was running my own mail server for my personal domains and the upkeep of just the spam filtering was overwhelming me, then I had to move house and the server was going to be turned off anyway.
With google managing it, I see no more spam. I have no more availability problems and it just works. I can also have multiple domains and forward them anyway I like.
The best bit, is I’ve managed to free myself from Outlook, the web experience is easier than dealing with a massive PST file. I’m also using a blackberry and it works great with that, by setting up rules I only see on the handheld the things I want. Google have released a calendar sync tool for the berry, so my online calendar is in sync too.
When I’m at work, I can get to my personal mail without having to mess around with anything, and I can move between computers easily.
Sounds a bit gushy doesn’t it ? I know a lot of people fear the Google, but to be honest the slight privacy implications are far outweighed by the convenience of this solution… for me anyway.
August 18th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
@DamianM No problems, I always welcome real comments, new or old! It’s better than the eternal spam bots.
Great to hear that it works for you, I’ll admit I’m not making as much as I should of my Google account, but it is working OK. In part I think this is because I’ve been with my employer for so long that the distinction between my personal and professional is so blurred anyway that for now it doesn’t matter.