Gmail: 10 Gotta Have Free Applications
Posted on November 9, 2007
Filed Under Communication |
A few months back I convinced the children’s ministry director at our church to switch to gmail and after a few weeks she told me, “Gmail is changing my life.”
Of course she was saying that tongue and cheek, but she was serious in realizing that gmail is an amazing e-mail system that will improve how you communicate with e-mail.
Why is gmail so great?
1. It if fast…darn fast. It sends, receives, sorts, and searches (more on that later) Google fast.
2. The spam filters are second to none. Once a week it seemed that I would have a legitimate e-mail filtered from a member of my church. Now I just have everything come through and while gmail has filtered a couple of newsletters I wanted, not once a stand alone e-mail from a church member.
3. Lots of storage space so you never have to delete an e-mail. Since gmail archives both my incoming and outgoing mail, I never have to worry about losing an important e-mail. They keep adding storage. I get a lot of e-mail and after a year I am up to using 6% of my storage. Their constantly increasing capacity is out pacing my use.
4. The layout is quite intuitive. You will be up and running in minutes.
5. Searching. This is the best feature…put the power of Google to work finding your important e-mails. For example, if you once had an email sent to you with the cell phone number of Betty in your church but can not find it, just type “betty” and “cell” in the search box and you will have it in seconds. It is amazingly faster than the search in Outlook, Outlook Express, or any of the other web mail programs.
Now, you may be thinking that you hate the idea of telling people that you have a new e-mail address and don’t want to bother. I understand that and feel the same way…and I did not. Nearly all e-mail addresses set up on their own domain (example: you@yourchurch.com) can forward to your new gmail account. Then when people send you an e-mail at you@yourchurch.com it will end up at you@gmail.com. You can then reply from your gmail account taking advantage of the all the features that gmail offers. If you don’t know how to do this, have your church’s resident geek help set it up for you.
When you sign up with gmail you have the option of using it with a traditional e-mail program (Outlook, Outlook express, etc) or via a web page interface. Most popular web mails (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc) allow you to only use it on a web page unless you choose to pay for the extra service…gmail does not charge for this or any other service. I recommend Thunderbird and will write more on that in a future date.
At a minimum you will want to go to gmail and set up an account because having a Google account will allow you to do other things in this list of “1o Gotta Have Free Applications”.
Also see:
- How to set up a gmail bookmarklet with Firefox from Smartpastor.com.
10 “gotta have” free application series:
2. Gmail with Pop Access: November 9
3. Web Clipping Software: November 12
4. Meebo: November 14
5. Skype: November 16
6. Open Office: November 19
7. RSS Readers: November 21
8. Mozy: November 23
9. Free System Tools: November 26
10. Jott: November 27
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