Help me migrate to a simplified and more professional email address and overall digital life.
June 1, 2010 6:04 PM   Subscribe

I want to simplify my digital life a little and have already taken some steps, but I am not sure what to do about my email address. I want a more adult and professional email address but a) I am unsure what my options are re migrating to its use with minimal labour and trauma and b) I am not willing to choose a handle which includes my real last name, so I am not sure what to pick to sound adult and professional. Advice, please!

Further details :)

1) I am already very wedded to the Google infrastructure. I keep most of my need-to-access-regularly stuff on Google Docs, have just deleted all my Firefox bookmarks and put them into Google RSS Reader for ready access, have my contacts and calendar stored there etc. All of this can be used on both home and work computers plus gets synced to my iPad, which is my main traveling equipment. I like that I never have to worry about backing stuff up as it all syncs automatically.

2) It would be a huge pain to remove all this data from my current Google account and transfer it to a new one unless there was a process for automating this somehow. It is possible there is such a process and I just don't know about it. But then I am not sure what settings to change to add the new address to the iPad and remove the old one without mucking everything up.

3) I know Google lets you associate more than one email with a given account. So perhaps my best bet is to create a new account and associate it with my Google one. If I did this, I could theoretically log into my Google account every day under Oldname, and continue to create documents, add files and calendar stuff etc. and not even notice the change. And somehow any email from my new address would come to my existing inbox under Oldname and be managed from there?

4) If the scenario above holds true and someone writes to me at Newname and I hit reply while logged in as Oldname, is there a way to set it up so that the recipient which shows up on their inbox when they get the message back is Newname?

5) And as to what handle to choose...I am not comfortable with something like jsmith because my last name is fairly identifiable and I never use it on-line. So what else could I incorporate into a handle which is unique to me but does not include my last name?

Any ideas for how to make this as simple and painless as possible? Ideally, there would be some sort of migrate function and simple iPad settings change? Or barring that, other options? And what to pick for a name?

I am trying to simplify everything and avoid using dozens of different sites which all take time to log into and need remebering. I like having everything all there, centralized, at Google. But this has made me so entrenched there that I am wary to leave even though I do want a new email address.
posted by JoannaC to Technology (8 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Your best bet is always to register your own domain name and keep it in force. That way you have full control over your online identity, and anything sent to @you.com will come to your Google inbox, assuming that you so configure it.

There are a multitude of suggestive or neutral names that can be used in front of the @ sign. Suggestive ones may reflect an interest or avocation: bellydancer@you.com - aviator@you.com. Neutral ones could be highbeam@you.com - mayfly@you.com - etc. (Two-syllable words that are easy to spell are essential for situations where you have to give the e-mail address out over the phone.)

GMail is quite flexible in receiving and filtering incoming mail and allowing numerous different e-mail addresses as senders, all from one account.
posted by yclipse at 6:37 PM on June 1, 2010 [1 favorite]


I don't have any good advice for you on a good handle, but I do know that gmail allows you to specify a default "reply from" address so that your email will all just gradually migrate to your new address when people either a) notice that you're replying from a different address than they're sending to or b) don't notice and their gmail account just takes care of it for them.

I have used oldname@gmail.com as my log-in since gmail was new, and even though that's still my log-in, I don't send or, for the most part, receive email at that address anymore. Only a few friends still hold out because I'm still in their address book at oldname@gmail.com or something.
posted by nosila at 7:26 PM on June 1, 2010


Seconding the register your own domain advice, but I'd go further. Once you've registered it, get it hosted at Dreamhost or the like. You can then make an professional looking email address such as [work-related-keyword]@[mydomain].com and have it forwarded to your gmail account. For example, I list stemcellassays@metasynthesis.net on my resume which I host on my own site. I use a different addresses for every site, so I know roughly where someone got my information from.

If you don't want to mess around with the different "reply from" address (which can cause issues with mailing lists) you can even set up Google Apps for your Domain, and handle everything from there.

That's what I've done and it works pretty well for me. Also, that link should get you a discount when you sign up (and a bonus for me, but I don't really care about that - use what works for you).
posted by Mr. Gunn at 8:02 PM on June 1, 2010


I asked a question like this a few years ago (minus the migration part). The solution I ended up was similar to Mr. Gunn's, but with a twist: I got my own domain name, but the email is hosted through Google Apps. That way I get most of the fun stuff the big G offers, but without having to teleport back to 2003 to get me@gmail.com ... plus, it's free!

GApps doesn't offer all of the features that a regular old Google account does, so if you use Reader etc. you should check to see that the features you want are available. Also, can't help you with the migration issue, but it would seem that if you could migrate your data anywhere, it would be to another Google-hosted account.
posted by harkin banks at 9:28 PM on June 1, 2010


Nthing the suggestion that you find a cheap domain that you like, register it, and host it via Google Apps Standard. I do that, and it's a piece of cake.

There is, as noted, the weirdness that what you get via a Google Apps account is a subset of what's available to your broader "@gmail.com" Google account, but between forwarding email and setting reply-tos and whatnot you can very much realize your goal of unique, anonymous email via Gmail with all sorts of added bonuses. You'll need to keep your current Google account for Reader and whatnot, but it'll all work out, and it'll only cost you something like $7/year, depending on what kind of domain you choose and whom you register it through.
posted by mumkin at 11:54 PM on June 1, 2010


It's easy enough to set one GMail account to forward to another. I have at least 6, possibly more accounts that do this.

Go to the account you want to forward from, choose Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP, and start forwarding to the new account.

Then, go the account you're forwarding to, choose Settings -> Accounts and Import, and input that address as a 'Send Mail As' account.

Set it up so that "When receiving a message" is set to "Reply from the same address the message was sent to", so any email sent to new@gmail.com will also get a reply from new@gmail.com, rather than old@gmail.com.

The one problem with this is that Google is very, very proper about how they set up the headers for this -- they will send the email out with an X-header that shows that the email was actually sent by old@gmail.com on behalf of new@gmail.com. Most mail readers completely ignore that and display to the end user that it was sent by new@gmail.com, but Outlook, which is pretty common, unfortunately, will show 'old@gmail.com on behalf of new@gmail.com' to your recipient. When they reply, it'll go to new@gmail.com, but they will be able to see your old@gmail.com info.

Most of the time, I don't care about that all that much since my old is not embarrassing, but for those instances where it's important to me that people not even see old@gmail.com at all, I keep new@gmail.com open in a different web browser and I pop over there and reply directly from the new@gmail.com account.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:19 AM on June 2, 2010


I migrated myself and the entire family to a domain i'd bought hosted on Google Apps Standard. Set up was easy and I just plugged in the pop3 details of their old accounts to suck down any existing emails. Anything sent to the old address gets to the new one with no more than a 20 minute delay.

Google Apps allows you to set your "from" header to either of the accounts but I wanted people to avoid using the old ones so fixed it for the new address.

Now they can access all their email on the desktop or phone (using IMAP) or away from home (via webmail) and everyone is happy.
posted by mr_silver at 11:21 AM on June 2, 2010


For a handle, may I suggest your first name + last initial. I did this for years and it seemed to be perfectly fine.
posted by funfetti at 11:24 AM on June 2, 2010


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