Archive for January, 2007

Gmail for Your Business?

gmaillogo.gifAre you a user of free email? Most folks are. Personally, I’ve been a huge fan of Gmail since it made its debut. In fact, I’ve been such a fan that I have forwarded all of my other email accounts into my Gmail account so that I could easily read and respond from one interface. Actually, the one interface for all was far less important to me than the ability to quickly search and organize my messages. But this hasn’t been without its fair share of problems.

First of all, I tend to use the same Hosting Service for all of the sites I create and maintain. I use Hurricane Electric. And for $9.99 per month, the service has been fantastic over the years. But email has been another story. Using HE’s POP email hasn’t always been reliable. When I’ve tried to rely upon their smtp gateway, I’ve seen delays in my messages making it to the desired destination. Often times I’ve been blacklisted as spam for unknown reasons. My take is that they’ve perhaps been susceptible of being used as an open relay. But who knows.

But forwarding my email to Gmail hasn’t been without its problems too. In order for the forwarding to work, I still have to rely on HE’s mail server to do the forwarding. So delays still apply. But sending email under an aliased domain within Gmail is also a bit risky. You see, Gmail acts as a bit of a proxy for your forwarded accounts. If I were to send an email from my wildernessvoice account, it would have in its headers that it’s “via” my Gmail account. I can’t tell you how many times folks have commented on my im2bz2pee user name. It’s been a little embarrassing at times. But that’s minor to being flagged as spam again. Some companies view the whole email via another domain as a spamer’s trick. I can’t say I blame them.

Well, I’ve found the answer to having my cake and eating it too. I can still forward my emails to a single Gmail account. And I can still send messages in the above fashion. All of this is handy from time to time. For example, if I want to see everything that’s going on from my phone, I’d rather have a single account to access.

But the folks at Google have gone further. They’re now offering all of the Google/Gmail services for your domain. All that’s necessary is for you to update you domain’s MX records. I did this and the changes took effect in less than an hour for both my wildernessvoice and my sullego domains. I was pretty impressed. And take a look at the interface.picture-1.pngUp in the right hand corner you can see that the email address is from my business domain and not from gmail.com. On top of that, I’m able to customize the interface with my own logo as opposed to the Gmail logo, not that that’s a really big deal. Most importantly, as an administrator, I can create up to 50 mailboxes for others in my company. Sure, I may exceed that at some point. And I plan to. But until that time comes, why worry about not having robust search, calendar and other messaging capabilities? I can operate like a big company for very little. BTW, Gmail for domains is also available for your personal domains. You don’t just have to have a business to use. And best of all, it’s still free!

2007
01/26
CATEGORY
Techy Stuff
2 comments

Adding Multiple Signatures in Gmail

I've been making some transitions, lately, in how I manage all of my emails. Up till now, I've been using my Mail application within Mac OS X. However, with close to 12,000 emails in my inbox, it's getting slower. And I really don't like the search capability of that app. If I search for a particular pattern such as a sending email address, the results come back in a disorganized fashion. I need something that can also sort by date and other criteria.

So... I've decided to forward all of my email accounts to my Gmail account and use the multiple account feature there. This allows me to go to one application, a web-based one, to get all of my emails. And when I respond to an email, Gmail is configured to reply from the account the message was originally sent to. Pretty nifty, huh?

The problem with this is the signature capability. If I send an email from my personal account, I tend to simply sign with my name. Sometimes I sign with my name and my number. But when I sign with my business account, I prefer to have all of my info included with my emails.

Oh yeah, I like to only use my signature when I send a new message. By default, Gmail only allows you to have one signature for all of your accounts. And if you have the feature enabled, it will always include your signature with each message and each reply. That gets pretty ugly fairly quickly.

To get around all of this, I've added a javascript to Firefox. This is made possible via the Greasemonkey plug-in. The plug-in allows people like you and me to extend the capabilities of Firefox to solve specific needs without requiring us to all be Software Engineers. Currently, there are hundreds of available scripts to solve simple problems. For my purposes, a simple Google search brought me to the Gmail Tweaks: Multiple Signatures. Hmm... pretty descriptive. Don't you think?

The problem with using this script is that there is no real place to add your signatures. You actually have to modify the javascript to add them. But there are escape sequences used to add returns where necessary. And if you're new to programming, these can mess you up. Even though I knew what I was looking at, I couldn't quite figure out why things behaved a bit screwy. Changes that appeared reasonable seemed to break the script. After a bit of "tweaking" I got things to display as I like. I'll share with you my simple changes for having two signatures.

MIKE'S CODE SNIPPET
JAVASCRIPT:
  1. // To setup, edit the 3 arrays in this script:
  2. //    * email_array,
  3. //    * sig_array,
  4. //    * col_array,
  5.  
  6. // values must match GMail "From:" dropdown options
  7. email_array = [
  8. 'myoung@wildernessvoice.com',
  9. 'myoung@sullego.com',
  10. // If you want more signatures, add them after this one. Use single quotes and end each one with a comma.
  11.  
  12. ];
  13.  
  14. sig_array = [
  15. '-- \\n' +
  16. 'Mike Young\\n\\nP: (970) 555-1212 | F: (970) 555-1213\\nEmail: myoung@wildernessvoice.com\\n',
  17. '--\\n' +
  18. '' +
  19. 'Mike Young\\nCEO, My Company\\n\\nP: (970) 555-1212 | F: (970) 555-1213\\nEmail: myoung@mycompany.com\\n' +
  20. '\\n',
  21. // The "\\n" are the escape sequences I mentioned. They insert a line return.
  22.  
  23. ];
  24.  
  25. col_array = [
  26. '#FFFFFF',
  27. '#FFFFFF', // These color values determine the look of within Gmail. They don't alter the text color. So, leave as is. Add another one if you have another signature.
  28.  
  29. ];

These changes should be pretty simple. And if you have any issues, please contact me. If you would like me to edit your script for you, just give me the necessary info and I'll do it.

When all is working well, you should see the added signatures next to the "Use Identity" label. Simply click on the appropriate signature and it will be inserted into your email. And that's it.

Gmail Screenshot

By the way, if you look at the bottom of the pic, you'll notice I've got my Blogline feeds showing up within Gmail too. If you're like me, you have lots of windows opened up usually. Well, the last thing I want to do is to be flipping back and forth from email to blogging. It's just another little thing I've added via Greasemonkey to make my life a little less chaotic.

2007
01/25
CATEGORY
Techy Stuff
8 comments

Better Watch My Mouth

I suppose I may need to be a bit careful what I say. In yesterday's post, I was venting on our recent experience with Fedex and their poor performance, relative to UPS, in our area. And guess what I found in my statcounter log? Numerous hits from various fedex.com offices and sites. I even found some from UPS' corporate site.

Perhaps Tink was right about advertising. I have no idea how folks made it this way. It's not like my posts are top listings in any of the browser tools. We're talking about 20 pages in, I still don't see my post show up. Oh well. They're getting here some how.

Frankly, I think it's neat. I just hope that it somehow turns into a little improvement. When I wrote about the problem I had with Frontier, my preferred airline, I did receive a call from them. They asked for my feedback and said they were going to pass it on to the management at the San Jose airport. Hmm... I wonder if I should now fly Southwest ;) They may have my mug up on a wanted poster. "If you see this man, lose his luggage!" Gee I hope not.

Anyway, thought some of you might be interested.

And Gordan... if you happen to read this... Go USPS! :) I hate to go in to the post office, but ya'll are making it easier for me to avoid it. I just wish I could use you to ship my 70+ lb items.

2007
01/19
CATEGORY
Misc. Rants
6 comments

Thirteen Reasons I’m Preferring UPS over Fedex (T13 #19)

tt9.jpg
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Okay, I've been absent on T13's for the past three weeks and I'm sorry for that. It was the close of the year and the beginning of a new one and I simply didn't feel comfortable with some of the topics floating around in my brain. I think I've got a bit of that worked out now.

This particular T13 has been motivated by some really POOR performance on the part of Fedex recently. You should note that for years Fedex has been my preferred carrier. Not anymore.

  1. So, when the last big storm hit, I had several key deliveries I was expecting from Fedex. These were shipped via standard overnight delivery. But did they show up? Nope. Fedex didn't even make an attempt to deliver. They immediately held them in the sort facility in Greeley for pickup. But did they call me? Nope! I had to call them when the packages didn't arrive. I didn't get them till the next day when I drove 45 minutes to get there.
  2. No storm yesterday, but had numerous packages for the business. This time the Fedex guy came-- to the driveway that is. He turned around and started to drive off. Emily had to hop in my car and chase him down. He didn't even bother to try a delivery. The guy should be fired!!!
  3. The UPS guy, on the other hand, managed to make his deliveries. In fact, when we've had severe snow, he has marched all the way up the driveway to make a delivery. Our postal person does the same thing. She always makes her deliveries. But Fedex? Nope!
  4. Oh yeah, I have a very important delivery for a client and ordered a server chassis via Fedex priority overnight. The item was shipped from one of my vendors in San Jose. The same vendor also shipped two motherboards to me that same day. All of this was picked up at the same time with my sales guy supervising to make sure I got what I needed, when I needed it. I got the motherboards yesterday morning. Where was my chassis? In Indiana. Indiana? How'd it get there?!? There's no telling. But they were kind enough to say on the status that it was picked up AFTER the deadline. Hello! What about the motherboards? They suck!
  5. Recently opened Fedex and UPS accounts for my new business. UPS provided me with all sorts of shipping materials to get started. Fedex? Nothing!
  6. Earth tones have been in style for the past year. Brown is in ;) (running out of stuff)
  7. What does Fedex mean, anyway? What's so Federal about it?
  8. UPS dude has a big truck and looks like he means business. Fedex guy comes out in the Urkel mobile.
  9. UPS is cheaper.
  10. UPS sort facility is in Loveland, only 20 to 25 minutes from us.
  11. Fedex is 45 minutes away and smells like a combination dump yard/dead fish. The place stinks!
  12. Okay, so neither of them have great uniforms-- not sure what that has to do with anything ;)
  13. UPS is quicker to spell.
2007
01/18
CATEGORY
Misc. Rants
Thursday Thirteen
4 comments

Avatars Supported– Sort of

I wanted to let you all know that I'm one step closer to getting avatars supported on my site. Now, I am having issues with trying to be able to include Blogger avatars. Ultimately, this is what I wish to get to. But it may take me a bit longer. I have some ideas, no thanks to their published APIs.

For now, when you leave a comment, I can go ahead and display your website's favicon as your avatar. You ask, "What's a favicon?" It's that little picture that displays in address bar window, next to the website url. For example, if you opened up my site in Firefox, you should see my favicon, which consists of a small "w" and a large "V".

If you'd like to have your own little favicon displayed next to your comments, follow these steps:

  1. Find a favicon.ico that you really like, or
  2. Create a favicon from an existing image.
  3. A favicon needs to be square, and typically 16 pixels by 16 pixels. But the next step should take care of that. Just generate a version of your image that is square.
  4. Go to Favicons from Pics and upload your newly created image. This will create a favicon.ico of your own that you can preview on their site. If you like what you see, you can download the favicon in a zip file.
  5. Save the image to your desktop, or wherever. You're going to have to get this favicon.ico onto your site. But there are some caveats.
  6. If your site is hosted through your own service provider, you simply need to place this file in your website's root directory. For my sites, this is "public_html". But it does vary.
  7. If you are on one of those freebie hosted sites like Blogger and you don't have the ability to access your root directory, you can still have a favicon show up. But you'll have to upload the favicon.ico file to some picture hosting site like Photobucket or Flicker.
  8. Once you have the favicon.ico saved, you'll need to edit your template with the following lines:
    MIKE'S CODE SNIPPET
    HTML:
    1. <link rel="shortcut icon" xhref="http://wildernessvoice.com/favicon.ico" />
    2. <link rel="icon" xhref="http://wildernessvoice.com/favicon.ico" />

  9. You'll have to change this to reflect the actual path to your favicon.
  10. That's it.

Now, if you're actually hosting a site on WordPress, there are some changes you'll have to make to your site in order to be able to display such icons next to your comments. You'll need to install a plug-in for Favatar support. The directions are pretty good there. So, follow them and you should be okay.

I wanted to display these favicons next to Username of those leaving comments. In order to do this, I had to make some changes to comments.php. Most notably, I had to figure out where in the comments' loop to place the additional code.

The easiest thing to do is to look for

MIKE'S CODE SNIPPET
PHP:
  1. <?php comment_author_link() ?>

This is the php code that fetches the name of the commenter. I wanted to display the favicon next to this username, so I placed the following snippet,

MIKE'S CODE SNIPPET
PHP:
  1. <?php comment_favicon(); ?>

just before it. This function works with the favatar plug-in you've hopefully installed and will get the actual icon. There is a little formatting issue with this. The icon and the username seem to get squished together. To fix this, I used the following

MIKE'S CODE SNIPPET
HTML:
  1. &nbsp;

in between the two functions. This places a very definite html space between the output of each. A bit technical for most, but I can always walk you through it if you have questions.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this new feature. And wish me luck on getting the Blogger Avatar code working.

2007
01/14
CATEGORY
Techy Stuff
15 comments