After a bit of nosing around and researching, I came up with some startling features of Gmail that I would really like to share with you. This is something that would allow you to have practically an unlimited number of email addresses based on your current Gmail account. Do note that your storage won’t increase, it’s just that ay mail will get forwarded to your current inbox.
- The dots in life: Gmail ignores any dots while directing mails to a user’s inbox. So, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] or any other such of placement of dots in the user ID directs the mail to the same inbox. Which effectively means you could try to impress your friends by making a (very true) statement like “I’ve got about a 6^1000 Gmail IDs”. However, I’m not very sure if it’s a very bright idea, because although it may be a fun feature for those already using Gmail, newer users will face a lot of frustration when trying to sign up since variants differing only by dots (like [email protected] and [email protected]) are automatically rejected by Gmail. When they come out of beta and open it to the public, I guess Gmail will be under fire. What’s the point of allowing dots anyway, if not to provide late entrants some choices? And for anyone who insists that he has dots in his ID, stick your tongue out and tell him he’s a moron as far as tech is concerned. During signing in though, correct order of dots (if any) has to be maintained.
- Want more? Just + it!: In mood for more? Did you know that [email protected] directs mail to you account, and you can have an UNLIMITED number of these. So [email protected], [email protected], etc go to your inbox. What’s the advantage you ask? Well, you can give the ‘+’ email ID to someone as yours, set up a filter to apply a label to it, so that they can be filtered. For example, tell your dad that your ID is [email protected]; and you’ve setup a filter that applies label ‘Dad’ to any mail sent to address ‘[email protected]’. It makes filtering much easier and foolproof. The drawback though is that the ‘+’ is not recognized as a valid character in many email systems and forms. Another way you can use this is that while signing up for any service on the web, use the + feature to assign a different keyword to every such account. For example, while signing up at dpsrkp.com you give your ID as [email protected]; and set up a filter. Then, if at a later stage they sell you email address to spammers, then you can easily modify the filter to delete all mails to that combination. The good thing about this feature is you don’t have to ‘tell’ Gmail you want to create the ID, it automatically gets created if someone uses that suffix.
- Case doesn’t matter: Unlike some other systems, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc will all end up at the same place. Most email providers ignore case anyway, so nothing big, but [email protected] definitely looks better on a webpage / visiting card that simply [email protected]
I wonder if you knew this, and do tell me if you like it. If you know more Gmail ‘hacks’ that you think are worth noticing, do leave a comment.
