Gmail Hacks

Filed in archive Online Services on September 3, 2007

While this is perhaps a litle old, "How to Hack Gmail" is still a timely and useful set of hacks to make Gmail really work for you.



With all the things that you can do with Gmail, Gmail is perhaps one of the most powerful "web mail" offerings there is. Perhaps the best one I like is where you can give out your email address with an added "+: and after the "+" you can identify the site where you gave out that email address.

The upshot of this is that your address now looks for the owner of the site an address of "username+site@gmail.com". As Gmail does not read anything past the "+" you still get to receive emails with that address. But the best part about it is that you can instantly recognize which site is sending you email as it is identified in the return address.



Besides this there are five other hacks that give you a great way to increase the usability of Gmail.



But do one other thing that this group of hacks does not even mention. In case Gmail goes down, or simply no longer recognizes your login do back-up your Gmail database. Now nothing like this has ever happened to anyone I know, but there is the day when something goes wrong at Gmail. And if you no longer have access to your old mail, where would you be? At least back-up the important files!