A few weeks ago I took control over my email.  Not only did I clean out my inboxes, but I also converted everything over to Gmail.  Why would I do this?

1. Always online and availabe to me.
2. Doesn’t take up space on my webserver.
3. The labeling system is fantastic.  I didn’t really know this until I really started using it.
4. Integrated nicely with Mail.app or other email applications like Thunderbird and Outlook.
5. I can send and receive email from multiple accounts via one Gmail account.
6. iPhone ready.
7. Email is up even if website is down.

I keep hearing people say that they got their inbox down to zero or their email is so organized and I never knew how they did it.  Then, last weekend, I sat down and started organizing a few messages.  Before I knew it, I was cleaning out my inbox and got it down to only a few messages.

So how’d I do it?  Here are my keys to success.

1. Create folders for topics that best match your email style.  Like Friends, Family, Shopping, Wife.  Think of who you get the most email from or what topics you get a lot of email on.  Then create folders to file all those emails into.

We’ll I’ve been on Entourage 2008 for about three weeks now and the ride has had its ups and downs. I’m happy with Entourage for the most part, but it’s flaws are hard to ignore.

Things I love:

• Projects - Projects are cool in the fact that I can group emails together, file them away, yet have easy access to them. I need to dig into this more and use it.
• Full Calendar Support - No more Outlook meeting request issues or confusion. This was a big factor in changing to Entourage at work.

I’ve been a big fan of Thunderbird for a while now, but I’m moving on. Entourage 2008 is calling my name at work and I’m listening. I’m a bit sad to say goodbye to Thunderbird, but yet excited at the same time. So why the switch?

The process of exporting email from Outlook to Thunderbird on Windows is really easy. Exporting it from Thunderbird and importing in to Outlook is not hard either, just time consuming. Both ways can be done.

Outlook to Thunderbird
This is actually really easy. The first thing you need is all your email in Outlook. Then, when you setup Thunderbird it will ask you if you want to import your Outlook email. Say yes and it does all the work. No, Thunderbird doesn’t have an import function for the PST file, but it can import anything that’s in Outlook on the same machine. It’s as easy as that.

I’ve been doing a lot of spam research lately and trying to figure out why certain email messages were being tagged as [Spam] in the subject line and others weren’t. Now, this isn’t your typical spam, it’s legit emails and ones that shouldn’t be marked. All the obvious items were checked into and no issues were found. No pills were sold, no unsuspecting targets, but the issue remained.

My main issue was with SpamAssassin. I know that it was tagging the subject of a lot of emails with [Spam] and I wanted to know why. They only thing I could really come up with was that those that were marked had FORGED_RCVD_HELO in the header source. But what does that mean?

If you use Gmail and a Mac, Mailplane is a must have application. It’s really the first program I’ve seen that really takes a web based application to the desktop.

At it’s core, it’s really just a webkit browser (or so I assume) that shows Gmail. But then there is so much more. It has all Gmail features built into the application itself. Not only does it have a toolbar with all the standard buttons like new message, reply, forward and delete, but it also ties into iPhoto, has drag and drop attachment abilities, keychain support and Growl notifications. The latest version even works with GTalk to take it out of Gmail and into it’s own little window.

The other day Hawk Wings tipped us off about a new mail application that is coming to the Mac. It’s called Correo and it’s sound like it has a lot of potential.

Think of it like Camino, the cousin of Firefox that’s Gecko powered, but Mac pretty. Well Correo is the same thing. Gecko powered like Thunderbird, but Mac pretty.

Correo Mail Application Screen Shot Hosted on Zooomr

The current version is 0.1 and it’s off to a great start. It already includes POP & IMAP support, multiple accounts, two or three pained layouts, MacOSX spell check, excellent icons and really, all the basics.

I’ve been emerged in an extremely cool project for the past week or so and my email has just been piling up. so many that I’m kind of dreading going though them. When did email stop being fun and start being a hassle?

I can remember back to when I first got an email account. It was so cool and I wanted anyone to email me. Email was revolutionary as we could communicate in seconds around the world! Now I get so many emails that I can hardly keep up. I’m not even talking about spam, but real email.

Hosted on Zooomr

Well Lycos is the newest contender in the competition to win over your email business. So, jumping on the bandwagon, I gave Lycos Mail ago. Overall, it’s nice, but lacking.

The interface looks really nice. It has a good color scheme and an up-to-date graphics. However, the graphical ads kill it. It tarnishes the nice look and feel horribly. However, if you block ads, I guess you could get past that. You could also pay for email and then the ads would be removed too.