Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with email

Sending an SMS via email to a Google Voice number?

jaimev — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:23:49 -0800

I used to have an ATT mobile number and someone could send me an SMS via email by sending a message to XXXXXXXXXX@txt.att.net. I now have a Google Voice number. Can someone still send me an SMS via email? My googlefu seems to indicate a 'no' answer - which seems surprising to me.

How to send phone pics to a spartan web site via Flickr?

ehamiter — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:16:59 -0800

What's a minimal self-hosted "blog" that hooks into Flickr's API so I can send photos from my camera directly to my web site? Ideally, I want a blog that is not a blog. I don't want tags, or articles, or categories, or spam filters, or any of that stuff. A perfect solution workflow would be this:

I take a picture with my phone
I send it to Flickr via e-mail
Flickr then posts it to my website with no interaction

The ideal layout would be a main site title, and each time I send a photo it appears as the newest one, using the title I typed. There would be maybe 10 photos on the main page. You could access earlier photos by clicking "older" or something like that which would serve as the archives.

I can do this with wordpress, movable type, typepad, etc., but they are all way too huge feature-wise and not what I want. I can also do this with blogger or tumblr, but they are not self-hosted. I tried this recently with textpattern, but the templates and general admin are much too complicated for my needs.

It should be very simple, aesthetics-wise. You could maybe change the color scheme / typography via CSS, but that's about it.

Does something like this exist? For the Flickr hook-in it needs to be a MetaWeblogAPI Enabled Blog or other Flickr-approved application.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Alternatives to Fedex and fax?

ms.codex — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:43:30 -0800

Need to send something to England from the US. Right away. Does this sort of document delivery service exist? I need to get a 25-page Word document to someone in England by Monday (I'm in Philadelphia). He doesn't have access to a printer or fax machine. One option is overnight international mail, but that'll cost a fortune and probably will take at least until Tuesday, since today is Saturday and such things tend to take at least two days. Actually, come to think of it, I don't mind paying a fortune, but it HAS to get there on Monday. Ideally I'd like to email it to someone in England and have them use domestic mail or a courier service to get it to him. So: is there a British service that will be able to open my email, print out my document, and then deliver it within England? And will accept international payment? And has a one-day turnaround time (or works on weekends?)? He's in Kenilworth, England, if it matters.

IMAP over HTTP?

DU — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:49:45 -0800

IMAP through an uncooperative proxy? I'm pretty sure my ideal solution is technically impossible and that simplest workaround is going to be unattractive from a convenience or elegance POV, but:

At work, I can check my personal mail through webmail (i.e. over http(s)). But I would prefer to use Thunderbird. However, the firewall/proxy doesn't allow IMAP. Is there a way I can do this anyway?

My original thought was to tunnel over SSH, but even assuming I can do that on this end, I'm not sure how I'd do it on the server end. (It's a hosted account thing, so I assume I have some latitude, but I don't have full control.)

A coworker ssh's (in a terminal window) to his home machine and runs Mutt or something there, but the whole point here is that I want all my mail to show up inside of Thunderbird.

He also suggested I could do port forwarding on my home machine. It sounds like maybe this old AskMe is the same thing. That seems ugly. Plus I hate to potentially screw up my home network by installing new firmware just to get it working. But maybe that's the only way? And if I do that, is openwrt still the best or is tomato the new hotness?

Are .edu emails professional looking for recent grads?

fontophilic — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:18:05 -0800

Are .edu emails professional looking for a recent grad? Is XYLastname@gmail.com better?

I'm under-empolyed and freelancing, but always job seeking. Does .edu look like I'm still in school?

I'm looking to transition to a Droid, which means I need to get friendly with some google services. My university uses google apps, and I've got a gmail account previously used as a dump/spam account. Both will be compatible with the Droid, but I'm looking to simplify my "digital life."*

So, which is better looking to potential clients/employers?

Alumni are guaranteed email for life, so that's not an issue. Thanks.

*I loathe that term as much as you do.

Causes of failure on a free email account

TimTypeZed — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:04:56 -0800

When a free email account fails, what are the possible causes? About three weeks ago, I awoke to find that I could no longer log into my gmail account. This had also happened three months earlier, after four years of no problems with gmail. When I went through the password reclamation process, I would enter my email address, complete the captcha that appeared in response to the email address, and then be told that the address wasn't registered. On the previous occasion I was able to have the account restored through a secondary hotmail address that was used when I established the account. However, this time I found that I was also unable to log into hotmail for similar reasons. Having two email accounts through different providers disappear simultaneously made me worry that someone had gained access and was messing with my settings, but I didn't know who would bother doing that. Without the hotmail address, I was unable to answer enough questions about the account to satisfy gmail sufficiently that they would return it to me again. I lost the account. People have told me that mail sent to the old addresses bounces back with notice of permanent failure on that address. This is a relief, because I know people won't be sending letters to me into the void and expecting replies. It is also assurance that someone else hasn't accessed my account. While I am told that gmail no longer recognizes the address, the address is said to be not available when I try to reregister it.

In ten years I have lost one gmail account and two hotmail accounts when they failed to recognize passwords that I'm certain are the ones I've been using all along (yes, I checked the capslock). I'm unable to reestablish the accounts through whatever password reclamation process they have. Which has left me wondering, what could be possibly going wrong when these things happen. Hardware failure on whatever box my account is stored? Some sort of database corruption? Some response to peculiar activity on it, perhaps outsiders trying to access it, for example? You get what you pay for, and I was never that surprised to hear of emails to a hotmail address that never reached me or to see a couple years of stored email suddenly disappear, but I had a little more faith in Google. With Documents and other services, a person could be storing a lot of information on a gmail account. And losing an email address means losing contact with people I stayed in occasional touch with, because I can't remember their addresses to notify them of the change.

I need email updates on my blackberry from a private authenticated rss feed.

Chamunks — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:57:46 -0800

I need to be notified on my blackberry of RSS events on a secure authenticated RSS feed. These notifications can be sms texts or preferably plain text emails. They could and should filter for keywords as the site doesn't as far as I can tell. I was thinking of using yahoo pipes but I have no idea how to start but I've heard its a good way to start. I'm looking for ways to be notified immediately of events on member sites I go to. One in particular is https://ssl.what.cd and a keyword would be something like "freeleech". Its the only example that I can think of right now but I have many other uses for something like this any insight related to fulfilling my need here is fully appreciated.

Also if this (assuming but not limited to the use of yahoo pipes) pipe could also benefit from being able to push this feed to google reader as it would be nice to find a way to get authenticated feeds in google reader.

Please if you must troll over invites and morality issues please restrict them to direct messages to my user via mefimail I would prefer to keep this questions answers related to solving my problem and not a possible piracy flame war when that is not the focus of this question it was only an example.

Should I still break up with him in person if he asked about our relationship using e-mail?

coffeeflavored — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:18:28 -0800

I've been dating someone for a couple of months and I'm positive that I don't want to continue the relationship. I planned to break up with him in person, but he just sent me an e-mail asking if I'm no longer interested. Does this make it more appropriate to break up with him via e-mail? I've been seeing the same man exclusively since October, and I've concluded that he isn't the right person for me due to various personality conflicts. Since we started seeing each other, he writes me several times a day, and I usually only respond once or twice due to my busy schedule, which he has a hard time understanding. (The other reason I rarely write is because his letters never contain anything of interest and I can't think of anything to respond to them, but for obvious reasons, I've never bothered explaining this to him.) We see each other once or twice a week, so our relationship isn't terribly serious.

I planned to do the right thing and break up with him in person, but my grueling grad school finals schedule has put everything else out of my head and I haven't thought of him in a week or so. I won't have the time to see him in person for another week. This morning, clearly frustrated with my usual e-mailing patterns, he wrote to ask why we haven't been e-mailing and wondered if I'm no longer interested. Is it less hurtful to him to write an e-mail back explaining the same things that I planned to tell him in person, or is it less hurtful to make him wait until I can see him so that I deliver the news in person? If so, what do I write to him now? "Sorry, I'm so, so busy, and I honestly don't have a minute to spare to see you. Can we have coffee in late December?" Is a phone call an option?

It seems awful to make him wait. I know that conventional wisdom says in-person break-ups are the best route, but this particular situation leaves me confused, since the other party brought it up over e-mail himself.

How do I make my resume email friendly?

marimeko — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:38:17 -0800

What can I do to make my resume more email friendly? Also: Do I need to do anything? Maybe this isn't as bad as I think.

Problem: I wrote a resume using Word Perfect (a lot of people laugh whenever I mention Word Perfect, so I realize I might be in way over my head). When I test send it to myself and hit my resume attachment to see what happens (via g-mail) a box opens up where Word Perfect itself first uploads, then my resume opens up (not as a unique page, but as a page obviously within the context of Word Perfect - that is, as though the person is viewing my work-in-progress via WP).

Something tells me this is seriously awkward.

What I would like is for the potential employer to hit my resume attachment and have it simply open up to my resume. Or, if there is something even better (that I am woefully unaware of), I want that.

How do I (where do I) upload this WP document in my computer to make this possible?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Email lost in space?

MaudB — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 09:28:19 -0800

Where does email go when it's sent and then lost in the ether? I recently read -- or think I remember reading -- an article wherein the author explored where lost email goes - not lost in your email software, but lost in space once it's been sent. Now a friend wants to see the article and I can't find it anywhere and can't seem to Google it, either. Does this ring a bell with anyone?

Smartphones + Groupwise = What Rocks?

puritycontrol — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:45:33 -0800

I'd like your input on choosing a smartphone. The biggest priority is access to my email and calendar on Groupwise. I strongly prefer a physical keyboard, also. I've checked previous posts on smartphones, which have good advice, but don't address my biggest concern. I would like to know which platform (Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Android, etc) will allow me the easiest access to my email and calendar on Groupwise 7 (soon to be upgraded to 8). My university has BES, which I gather will sync email and calendar, so I'm curious about my other options.

I currently have an LG Vu and love having a touchscreen -- I find it more efficient to press one thing than have to scroll to get what I want. But I hate typing on it. I've actually grown to dislike typing on it more and more as time goes on. Granted, it has a rather small screen and smartphones tend to have larger screens, but I was still unimpressed when I typed on an iPhone. Therefore, I would much rather prefer to have a physical keyboard -- unless Groupwise access on an iPhone is light years better than anything out there. Then I might reconsider.

Access to email and calendar would be a huge convenience for me. I am not a power mobile emailer or texter by any means. All this talk about apps does nothing for me. Google Navigation piqued my interest but is not a necessity (already have a GPS). Web browsing would really only take place when I'm bored waiting in line or if I needed to look up the answer to a random question that pops into mind while out and about.

I'm on AT&T and I'm eligible for an upgrade in a month. My contract is up in May, so I would have to wait until then if I want to switch carriers. However, from what I gather, I'd have to pay more for our family plan on Verizon and Sprint; T-Mobile would be the same price. Therefore I would prefer to stay on AT&T because the addition of a data plan is already going to put a li'l dent in our budget.

So right now it looks like the frontrunners are the Tilt 2 and the BlackBerry Bold 9700. Because I've recently moved to a rural area, I have only been able to handle dummies of new phones. The Bold 9700 felt like velvety heaven in my hand, the DROID's keyboard was way too stiff, and I wasn't fond of the Pre's keys either. The N900 looks nice but I simply cannot afford to buy it unlocked.

Sorry for the long post -- you'd think I was asking relationship advice (I guess I am, kinda). Thanks in advance.

Type, copy, click, paste, type, copy, click...

SNWidget — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:56:57 -0800

I've been manually sending out emails about test results and then entering them into a database - is there a way to automate so part of this process? I'm a teaching assistant for a graduate department. Students in various classes come into the resource room in which I work and take a variety of tests that are required to pass their classes. They take the tests, we grade them, enter the results into a spreadsheet, and then send them an e-mail saying if they've passed of failed.

Since it's the end of the semester, I got caught doing about 30 of these today. Copying and pasting the same form letter over and over into an Outlook window after having entered these all into an Excel spreadsheet seemed stupid. I know there's gotta be a way to automate this process at least partially - can you help me with it?

Here's the general gist of it all.

Student takes test from one of 4 classes.

Results (a pass or fail) is entered into an excel spreadsheet. Each class has it's own spreadsheet. Each student needs to take multiple tests, and they can be taken in any order at any time during the semester. If the student fails, they must retake the test. They get an e-mail for every time they take a test, up to 3 times. Students can take multiple tests at once as well.

After the student takes the test, they are graded and entered into the database. The student's name, test type, and whether they passed or not, and the date is recorded. And e-mail is then sent to them with a list of which tests they took, and whether they passed or failed the tests. There's a bit more info on the letter, but that's all standard form stuff.

Which parts of this can be automated? And how do I do it? I know about mail merge, but because of the continual nature of this, I'm having trouble seeing how to make this work. If not, is this just something I'm going to have to do manually?

I have available a PC, Excel, and Microsoft Outlook.

We can't get him out of our lives, but help us get him out of our computers!

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:46:57 -0800

We know my ex-brother-in-law has been hacking into my sister and my mother's email. Now what? We, the entire family, have of course changed all of our passwords. Is there anyway that we can retrieve emails that he deleted? Is there anyway to know if he has installed malicious software on our computers? I have run all my virus checks on mine, but I still don't feel safe. My sister also has a feeling that he may have bugged her house. How can we tell?
Ultimately is there any way that we can stop him?

Sending mail...psyche!

Bobby Bittman — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:09:56 -0800

Why won't my iPod Touch send mail? Everything about my new iPod Touch (2G, 32GB) works great - except replying to or sending e-mail. At first it was sporadic, and then after I did the 3.1 software update it stopped altogether.

Receiving mail is perfect. Replying, forwarding and composing email always seems to go fine, it says "sending", there's a little progress bar to show that it's leaving...and then it just never arrives, and never appears in "Sent Mail", presumably because it wasn't really sent.

I suspect it has something to do with the Outgoing Mail Server, which is the Yahoo! SMTP Server, but beyond that I don't have a clue what to do.

One other possibly relevant detail: I also use Microsoft Exchange to sync my Google Calendar with the Touch's Calendar app, and I have a gmail account under "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" to make that happen. Could that cause a conflict?

What do you think?

Help me logon to my email!!

dmbfan93 — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 05:37:19 -0800

Please help me fix an internet/computer problem....I keep getting the message "Invalid Security Certificate" when I try to logon to my email accounts. I'm trying to logon to both my gmail account and my msn account and this morning I get the message "google.com uses an invalid security certificate"? This is just occuring, I was able to login last night. Does this have anything to do with a windows update that installed on my computer last night?

I try to logon to my MSN account and the exact same thing is occuring. The following message I get:

# This could be a problem with the server's configuration, or it could be someone trying to impersonate the server.

# If you have connected to this server successfully in the past, the error may be temporary, and you can try again later.

Please help me fix this!

Please help me get my email address back

Ollie — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:07:43 -0800

I just moved and canceled my Verizon phone and Internet service. Unfortunately, in the stress of moving, it didn't occur to me that my Verizon email account would also be canceled. Eek! As of today, Ollie_lastname@verizon.net is gone--along with years of contacts and emails. Verizon says there's nothing they can do. Am I out of luck?

Help me move email to word

RajahKing — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:29:38 -0800

How can one take a bunch of emails and easily move them in to a word document? What I would like to do is take a bunch of email correspondence (between myself and a friend) and move all the emails to a readable word document. I would say there are about 200 separate emails. Is there a way to do this that is less tedious than copy and pasting?

Thank you so much.

Embeddable widget to add names to a mailing list.

Ookseer — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:12:09 -0800

Looking for an embeddable widget for my blog that will let people enter their email address and collect them into a mailing list. The ideal solution would be (in order of preference)
- quick and easy setup
- small/customizable
- a captcha,
- some kind of mailing list management, especially automated removal.

I suspect what I'm looking for is part of some web sites CRM, and I'm open to suggestions that go well beyond my list.

Custom view for flagged emails in Entourage?

omnigut — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:24:59 -0800

Custom view for flagged emails in Entourage? I could set up folders, as this article suggests. But I'd like a one-click solution. Is there a one-click method of setting a message's priority to "high"? Then I could make a custom view for high-priority messages. Perhaps the other method would be to create various categories instead: "respond soon," "archive," "waiting," etc. Are there one-click ways of setting a message's category?

I get a lot of emails...

Thanks!

Why hasn't a new version of POP3 been developed?

HappyEngineer — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:13:51 -0800

Why is the POP3 mail protocol so slow and why hasn't a new version of POP been developed that fixes the speed problem? I'm pretty sure that it would be far faster to just download a compressed file containing all the messages and then unzip it and parse it locally. POP3 is fine when you keep up with your mail, but leave for a week and come back and I end up waiting quite a while to get all the mail downloaded.

Direct FTP please

Jason Land — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:52:20 -0800

How do I setup a FTP-like service without having a website? I'm of limited internet knowledge, but without using things like Rapidshare, I'd like to have an FTP-like function where I can open a program, have someone else also be logged on, and we can directly send large files to each other, without having to own and operate a website with a connected FTP server.

I guess it's technically like the AIM file transfer, but without using AIM, and more stable/secure.

I'm on a Macbook Pro, OSX 10.5.8. I have Cyberduck, if perhaps there is a hidden function there like what I'm asking about.

Little text manipulation help?

yesno — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:54:34 -0800

I need some help repairing some text files. I don't really understand regular expressions and so on enough. I have two badly formed mbox files.

One is missing the "From " indicator that a new message is about to begin. Instead, there's a "From: ." I need this second "From: " to stay there, as without it the messages all show up as having no sender when I import them into any client. Thus, I need a way to add a "From " to the line above each line where a "From: " occurs. As far as I know the "From " is just some mailer daemon's email that I don't really care about.

The second is the same, but the messages also show up has having a bad date. Currently, there is a field labeled along the lines of "Sent: Monday, January 13, 2003 1:11 PM." Properly mbox files seem to look like "Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 12:53:22 -0600." While just changing "sent" to "date" fix that, or do I need some really good regexing?

e-mailing multiple addresses within one Entourage Contact.

jmd82 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:43:21 -0800

Using Entourage to send to multiple e-mail addresses with one Contact. Staff members are using Entourage for e-mailing groups. These groups often contain people with multiple e-mail addresses, and for various reasons, all these e-mail addresses must be contacted. So Jon Doe will have a home and work e-mail. However, when sending to a Contact with a Group (or even individually), it will only send to their default address instead of all listed, like Outlook would.

So my question is: Is there a way to send to all e-mail addresses within one contact by default? Some users have hundreds of contacts, each with multiple e-mail addresses listed, in their distribution groups, and we'd rather avoid having to go back and modify all their groups.

Long-Distance Friendship for Introverts

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:49:20 -0800

Introvert Filter: please help me revive a friendship! I have lost contact with an old friend, for no particularly good reason--I like this friend a lot, but I just never got motivated enough to call or write. My friend sent a couple emails, and I didn't reply to them. I kept meaning to write back, but I never got around to it, and now several months have gone by and I feel really guilty about it. It's especially hard for me to write back now because of the guilt, and because I don't know how to explain why I didn't write back before. This has gone on for several months and is only getting worse.

I feel like it takes a huge amount of energy to stay in contact with people, even when I like them. The longer I wait to reply, the harder it gets, until it seems nearly impossible. Yes, I know this is beyond normal behavior even for an introvert and procrastinator, but I don't think I can explain it any better. (If it helps, I'm a little like the author of this question, but she might not make sense either.)

Another factor to consider is that even when I manage to overcome my inertia and talk to one of my far-away friends, I don't necessarily manage to do it for another. This is just because I find it easier to keep in touch with some people than with others, and because some are more understanding than others of my not communicating (which has never gotten this bad before).

(TL;DR details: I was recently visited by another friend that I do talk to, who had stopped by friend #1's workplace. Friend #1 wondered what had happened to me, and Friend #2 felt awkward for having been in contact with me when I was ignoring Friend #1. I also feel awkward about emailing Friend #1 and claiming my behavior was nothing personal, when in fact I wasn't ignoring other people.)

I really want to email my friend. Unless my friend is extremely angry at me, which I doubt, it's worth whatever unpleasantness I'll have to endure; I just want to minimize that unpleasantness as much as I can. (I already know it's my fault and I deserve it, so please don't rub it in.) What should I say? Should I try to be honest even though it won't make sense? Should I lie? (I think there are times when a white lie really is better than the truth, but what lie would work here?) If your friend emailed you after a long disappearance, what could (s)he say that would minimize your negative reaction?

One final note: please do NOT say things like "just say what you said here, because anyone who's REALLY your friend will understand." Real people aren't perfect like this, and I'm not sure I'd even want friends who are endlessly forgiving.) Thanks for reading!

Can I email a file to my webserver?

stupidsexyFlanders — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:07:46 -0800

I want someone to be able to put files on a webserver. I don't want to give them ftp access. I'd like to tell them: Attach your file to an email and send it to this address. Is there a way they can email an attachment so that it puts the attachment in a specified folder on the server? I know there are services that go the other way, and I know it's possible to interact with an ftp server via http. Neither of these would suffice, I would like to simply ask them to attach the file to an email.