j a m s h a i d\’s blog

“How to use Outlook to backup your Gmail account” Thursday, March 9, 2006

With all the recent talk of Gmail accounts being deleted, this is a very helpful guide that you can use to easily backup your Gmail.

To use your Gmail e-mail account in Outlook, you must first make sure POP3 support is enabled in Gmail, and then you can add it to Outlook.

• Log in to your Gmail account
• At the top of any Gmail page, click Settings
• In the Mail Settings window, click Forwarding and POP
• In the POP Download section, select Enable POP or all mail or Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on
• Click Save Settings.

Next, we’re going to configure Outlook:

• In Outlook, on the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts
• Click Add a new e-mail account, and then click Next
• Click POP3, and then click Next.

Under User Information, do the following:

• In the Your Name box, type your full name the way you want it to appear to other people
• In the E-mail Address box, type your e-mail user name followed by @gmail.com

Under Server Information, do the following:

• In the Incoming mail server (POP3) box, type pop.gmail.com
• In the Outgoing mail server (SMTP) box, type smtp.Gmail.com

Under Logon Information, do the following:

• In the User Name box, type your full e-mail address, including @gmail.com
• In the Password box, type your password
• Select the Remember password check box

Click More Settings

• On the General tab, under Mail Account, type Gmail
• Click the Outgoing Server tab, and then select the My outgoing server (SMTP)
• requires authentication check box
• Select Use same settings as my incoming mail server
• Click the Advanced tab, and then under Server Port Numbers for both Incoming server (POP3) and Outgoing server (SMTP), select the This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL) check boxes
• Change the Outgoing server (SMTP) port number to 465
• The Incoming server (POP3) port number should change automatically to 995 when you select the This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL) check box
• Click OK

To verify that your account is working, click Test Account Settings. If there is missing or incorrect information, such as your password, you will be prompted to supply or correct it. Make sure your computer is connected to the Internet.

• Click Next, and then click Finish.

Notes * Do not select the Log on using Secure Password Authentication (SPA) check box. * Unless specified by Gmail, all server and address entries are typed in lowercase letters.

(via Microsoft)

Now, you’ll want to export all those emails you just downloaded into one singly, tidy file:

1. On the File menu, click Import and Export. 2. Click Export to a file, and then click Next. 3. In the list, click Personal Folder File (.pst), and then click Next. 4. Click the folder that contains the messages you want to back up. If the folder contains a subfolder that you want to include, select the Include Subfolders check box, and then click Next. 5. Under Save exported file as, click Browse, and then specify a name and location for your backup file, for example, Mail Backup. 6. If you back up a .pst file that you have backed up to before, click one of the following:

Replace duplicates with items exported Existing data will be overwritten with the information in the file being exported. Allow duplicate items to be created Existing data will not be overwritten, and duplicate information will be added to the backup file. Do not export duplicate items Existing data will be kept, and the duplicate information in the folder will not be copied to the backup file. 7. Click Finish.

(via Microsoft)

Now, go to Box.net, and set up a free online storage space (1GB is free, and 15GB is for a nominal fee). In all likelihood, your .pst email backup file is less than 1GB. Simply upload this file to your Box.net account. Your Gmail backup is now safe and you can now forever access it and load it into Outlook the event of a horrific Google crash.

Source: Betapundit

“Strange Google Links” Saturday, March 4, 2006

The other day while I was procrastinating from doing things I should have been, I found several interesting google links I have never seen before…

http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/why_use.html
http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/
This one is strange, everything is in “hacker speak” , and all the links work and keep that same encoding of the words…

http://www.google.com/3.html
This one is just old. It makes reference to indexing 3 billion pages. Rumor has it they are way passed that number.

http://www.google.com/lucky.html
Reminiscent of the old google, I’m not really sure what this one is.

http://www.google.com/default.reg
http://www.google.com/google_rsearch.reg
These two are just strange because they are registry files for internet explorer settings. I wouldn’t expect to see that in the google root directory.

http://www.google.com/ig/currentcomm/current_links_module.html
This one is only interesting because of the reference to the online file backup account…

http://www.google.com/ig/current
This is funny because this looks like their new customized home page…

http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=km&tab=di&ie=UTF-8
This is another interesting encoding of the google page

http://www.google.com/sitemap.xml
Maybe this isn’t a big deal, but I was surprised to see this xml sitemap in their root.

http://www.google.com/mozilla/google.xul2
I have never seen this before, so I thought it was strange. Looks like it is for a mobile device or something…

http://www.google.com/ie_rsearch.html
This one looks like what shows up in the IE sidebar at times. Maybe thats what the above one was for too?

http://code.google.com/webstats/2005-12/elements.html
If you like numbers, I just thought this was an interesting break-down of the pages they index and elements of those pages.

http://www.google.com/moms/
http://www.google.com/moms01/
http://www.google.com/googlefriends/may1998.html
http://www.google.com/translate_t
http://www.google.com/googleviewer/loading.html
http://www.google.com/ig/resetprefs.html
These don’t really do anything, just interesting or strange pages I found.

update:
Here are some more weird languages, thx Tekai for this

http://www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/
http://www.google.com/intl/xx-elmer/
http://www.google.com/intl/xx-piglatin/

Source: The guy who sent it to me & pipesnetwork

Google has launched Mobile News Friday, March 3, 2006

I found something new today at Google Mobile – Mobile News (Beta).
Here is what it says about it:

“Google News for mobile devices keeps you updated on current news articles when you’re on the go. You can access top headlines, browse through news categories, or search for exactly the stories you want — all in a phone-friendly format that’s easy to read and navigate. All you need is a web-enabled phone.”

IE7 Friday, March 3, 2006

Check out the Internet Explorer 7 website: http://www.ie7.com/

A great idea 🙂

Firefox rocks !

update 3/4/06: Firefox gets 150 million downloads