An Alternate Way to Write Long Tweets on Twitter

If you are to ever write a tweet that’s longer than 140 characters, you have a couple of options. You can either split the message into multiple tweets or you can use a service likepost.ly that not only lets you compose essay-style messages but you may also attach documents, pictures and other files to your tweets.

I wish to share one more idea here.

Twitter has recently rolled out the picture uploads feature to all accounts worldwide. What that means is you can include an image with your tweet and your followers, or anyone else who sees that tweet, can view the content of that picture inline without having to leave the Twitter website. See this tweet for an example.

The idea is that if you can convert your “long text” into a 317×317 image, people can read your message inside Twitter itself like in the following screenshot. And this works on mobile phones too.

Almost any photo editing tool – even Paint – can be used to create a text based images but remember to use the PNG or GIF image formats while saving these images.

Thankyou@datu.

Easily Find the Serial Number of your Computer

You’ve got a problem with your computer, you call their technical support team and the person on the other side requires the machine’s serial number (also known as the Service Tag) before he can even log your request.

If you using a laptop computer, you can easily find the service tag by turning the machine upside but for desktops, especially the older models, the sticker that holds the service tag is often placed at a more harder-to-reach location.

There’s a alternate way to find the computer’s serial number without you having to slide beneath the table.

Open the command prompt (Start – > CMD) and type the following command:

wmic bios get serialnumber

Another command that will also print the model number (or make) of your computer is:

wmic csproduct get name, identifyingnumber 

The system model number can also be found using the System Information program available under All Programs – > Accessories – > System Tools.

The above commands should work on Windows 7, XP and Windows XP Pro machine as wmic.exe didn’t ship with the previous editions of Windows. Refer to this page to learn about all other system details that you can retrieve with the help of wmic.exe command.

Thankyou@dattu.

JPEG or PNG – Which Offers Better Image Quality?

You can save an image in PNG, JPEG, GIF and dozen other formats. I have a detailed guide on choosing file formats for your images but if you still feeling confused, this slightly exaggerated comic courtesy Louis should help you pick the right file format.

Which File Format Should You Choose?

The help manual of a popular screen capture program offers the following suggestions

GIF format is limited to 256 colors and is a lossless compression file format, a common choice for use on the Web. GIF is a good choice for storing line drawings, text, and iconic graphics at a small file size.

PNG format is a lossless compression file format, which makes it a common choice for use on the Web. PNG is a good choice for storing line drawings, text, and iconic graphics at a small file size.

JPG format is a lossy compressed file format. This makes it useful for storing photographs at a smaller size than a BMP. JPG is a common choice for use on the Web because it is compressed. For storing line drawings, text, and iconic graphics at a smaller file size, GIF or PNG are better choices because they are lossless.

George adds – “JPEGs are for photographs and realistic images. PNGs are for line art, text-heavy images, and images with few colors. GIFs are just fail.”

Randall Munroe at xkcd and Matthew Inman at Oatmeal mostly use PNG for their web comics while Hugh MacLeod at GapingVoid uses the JPEG file format for his cartoons. Also note that the image illustration above is in PNG format.

Thankyou@dattu

Add a Subscribe Button to your Facebook Profile

Like most other Facebook users, I have a public page where I share updates from my blog and a personal profile which is private and I primarily use it for connecting with my offline friends and family members.

Most of the stuff that I share on my personal Facebook profile – like pictures of kids, songs, cooking recipes, etc. – would be extremely boring to the external world and, fortunately, they don’t get to see any of that.

Having said that, I occasionally post updates on my personal profile page that could be of interest to a wider audience and I would therefore be more than happy if people – who are not my “friends” on Facebook – can see or comment on them. How can you do that without making your profile public?

Let Non-Friends Follow you on Facebook

Facebook has just added a new option to profile pages that would let people “subscribe” to your profile just like the way people follow you on Twitter. Whenever you post an update on Facebook with the privacy set as “public,” it will appear in the news stream of your subscribers.

To put this in more simple terms, Subscribe is to Facebook profiles what Like is to Facebook pages. The only difference is that you get each and update when your “like” a Facebook page whereas you only get public updates when your “subscribe” to a Facebook profile.

You can subscribe to my public Facebook updates at facebook.com/agarwal.amit.

Add the Subscribe option to your Facebook Profile

If you would like to add the Subscribe button to your own Facebook profile, go here. Before you do that, it may be a good idea to double-check that only stuff that you really want to share with non-friends is public.

To confirm, go your Facebook profile page, hit the “View As” button and then click the “public” link to see what updates in your profile are public. You can have unlimited number of subscribers to your profile but you can subscribe to a maximum of 5,000 profiles.

You can download this PDF, courtesy the Facebook Public Figures page, to learn more about the new Subscribe option and how it differs from a regular Facebook page.

On a related note, Facebook is using the standard RSS icon with the new Subscribe feature which is confusing because, technically, these aren’t really RSS feeds – you can’t get them in, say, Google Reader.

Thnakyou@dattu.

Tips for Using Multiple Sign-in with Google Accounts

Google offers a handy multiple sign-in feature to help users toggle between their different accounts in the same browser without having to go through the sign-in / sign-out cycle. The facility is available in regular Google Accounts (that have @gmail.com address) as well as Google Apps accounts.

You may use multiple-signs with Gmail, Google Docs, Reader, Google Calendar, Web Search and couple of other Google products.

A: How to Switch Between Different Google Accounts?

Let’s say are signed into two separate Gmail accounts, using multiple sign-in, and would like to switch from one account to another? How do you do this?

The popular option is that you click your email address on the Google bar (see the screenshot above) and choose “Switch Account” from the drop-down menu to sign-in to your other Google / Gmail account.

There’s however a second option as well that is a lot quicker. Go to your browser address bar and simply change a digit in the URL. When you use multiple sign-in, Google appends a number to your Gmail URLs and you just have to change this number to switch accounts.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/ - Default account (n=0)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/ - Second account (n=1)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/ - Third account (n=2)

Alternatively, you may add the above URLs to your bookmarks bar to directly access the different mail account with the click without using that drop-down.

B: Set any Google Account as your Default Sign-in

When your open any of the Google websites that are enabled for multiple sign-in, like Gmail or Google Docs, it will automatically sign-in using your default account.

In some cases, this “default account” set by Google may not be your primary account and thus you have to switch to another account every time you open a Google service. Is there are workaround?

If you have multiple accounts, you can actually set the order on your own so that your main Google Accounts becomes the default (n=0), the next account you frequently use becomes the second account in the sign-in order  (n=1) and so on. Here’s how:

Step 1. Open google.com/accounts/Logout to sign-out of all your Google accounts.

Step 2. Next go to google.com/accounts/b/0/MultipleSessions and sign-in using the Google Account that you want to set as default.

Step 3. Now go to google.com/accounts/AddSession and sign-in to your other Google account. Repeat this step until you are signed-in to all your other Google accounts.

That’s it. You have now set a custom signing order for all your Google Accounts and that should save you some time. See additional tips on using Gmail and Google Docs.

Thankyou@dattu.

Put all your Emails on a USB Drive for Offline Access

How do you ensure that you always have access to all your emails – even at places where there is no Internet or when you aren’t carrying your own laptop?

One of the popular options is that you use a tool like Microsoft Outlook to download all your emails to the computer beforehand and you can then read them anywhere even in offline mode. Both Gmail and Hotmail offer POP3 access to help you download messages using any email client while there are easy workarounds for Yahoo Mail.

There are some downsides though. First, most email clients aren’t portable (can you carry emails on a USB drive?) and second, if all you want is offline access to your Gmail messages and nothing extra, Outlook is probably too heavy a tool for that purpose.

I have been testing a Windows-only utility called MailStore that seems like an ideal solution for such a problem – the tool is free, there’s a portable version for your USB stick and best of all, it works out of the box with your email account without requiring any configuration.

Step by Step – How to Backup your Emails

The way MailStore works is something like this. You install (or unzip) the software to a folder and then select the email accounts that you want to archive. They can be your Gmail accounts, Microsoft Exchange, your old Outlook PST files, Thunderbird and any other web email service that supports either IMAP or POP3.

The tool will pull your email messages from all these places into a central location. If you have a large mailbox, you may specify criteria to skip emails that are older than ‘n’ days. It skips the Spam and Junk folders by default but you may also manually specify any folders /labels that you wish to include (or exclude) from the backup.

That’s it. There’s a convenient search box allowing you to search all your email accounts from one place. You can copy the MailStore folder to your USB drive, or even your Dropbox folder, and access all the emails from anywhere, anytime. Since this is more of an email backup utility and not a full-blown email client, it cannot be used for replying or sending new emails.

To quickly recap, here are some scenarios where you may find Mail Store useful:

0. You want to backup all your web mails to a safe location.
1. You want to carry your Microsoft Exchange / Outlook emails on a USB drive.
2. You have multiple email accounts and need to search all your mailboxes from one place.
3. You want offline access to all your web-based email accounts.

Thankyou@dattu.

Most Contacted Email Addresses in Gmail

Here’s how you can find the list of most contacted email addresses from your Gmail account:

Step 1. Open your Gmail Inbox and click the Contacts link in the sidebar.

Step 2. Click the Export button and choose the “Most Contacted” option in the drop-down to export all those email address in a single CSV file.

Step 3. Save this file to a safe location as you might need it if your Gmail Account is hacked.

Thankyou@dattu.

Sending Mass Emails Using Gmail? Don’t Get Locked

The holiday season is near and you want to send personalized email greetings to all your friends, family members and customers using the standard Gmail (or Google Apps with Gmail) service.

How to Send Bulk Emails using Gmail

Since the web interface of Gmail doesn’t support personalized emails, you should connect your Gmail account with Microsoft Outlook (via POP3 or IMAP) and also import the Gmail address book into your Outlook Contacts.

Now you can use the mail merge feature of Outlook to send personalized messages to every single Gmail contact from the desktop.

This may sound like an easy plan but there’re strict sending limits and, if you aren’t careful,Google may even block your Gmail account temporarily for up to 24 hours and you’ll neither be able to send nor receive any emails during that lock-out period.

Email Sending Limits in Google Apps

If you are using Gmail with Google Apps, you cannot send messages to more than 500 unique email addresses per day.

For instance, if you send one email to Person A and another one is addressed to Person B and C, you have already exhausted three slots (out of 500) even though only two messages left your Inbox.

Email Sending Limits for Gmail users

If you want to send bulk mails using a regular Gmail account, the rules are similar.

You can only send out emails to a maximum of 500 recipients during a 24 hour* period but if you are using a desktop client (like Outlook), that limit is reduced to 100 messages in a day.

[*] The Gmail help site mentions this limit as 500 recipients per message but a Google employee on the Gmail support site has confirmed that this cap is not just per message but per day.

Workarounds for sending mass emails

With all these limitations in place, Gmail is obviously not the best option for reaching out to a very large customer base. However, if you have no other option, it may be a good idea to plan well in advance.

For Gmail: Distribute the mail merge process over 2-3 days so that you never exceed that 100 messages per day quota.

For Google Apps:   You can either upgrade to a Premier edition or create multiple accounts in Google Apps as each will have its own 500-recipients limit.

Thankyou@dattu.

My Gmail Account and Google Apps Got Hacked

My Gmail and Google Apps accounts were hacked recently but I could establish my identity, Google restored access in the next three hours. Here are lessons learned and tips that might prevent your Gmail and other Google Accounts from getting hacked.

I frequently get "password assistance" emails in my Gmail inbox that have a link to reset the password of my Google Account (see screenshot). Since I don’t initiate such password change requests myself, it’s clear that someone else is trying to hack into my Google account.

I generally ignore such emails as they also say:

If you’ve received this mail in error, it’s likely that another user entered your email address by mistake while trying to reset a password. If you didn’t initiate the request, you don’t need to take any further action and can safely disregard this email.

I got a similar email yesterday night and ignored it as usual. In the next five minutes, there was a message on my BlackBerry saying that the device is having trouble fetching emails from my Gmail and Google Apps account. Microsoft Outlook too had stopped working by then.

Things were now no longer in my control. Someone had successfully managed to change the password of my Gmail account, my Google Account and the most terrifying part was that the hacker also gained control over my Google Apps Account which is linked to labnol.org and other web domains.

When something like this happens, you tend to get that ‘sinking feeling’ because now all your private information (email correspondence, documents, bank statements, photographs, etc.), your identity on the social web (Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, etc.) and, most important, your online business is not in your hands anymore.

I make a living from this blog but if someone else takes control of the site (by changing a couple of passwords and DNS records), the going can get really tough.

How the Google Accounts were hacked and recovered?

I use a fairly strong password so it can be tough for someone to guess that string. And since I got a password reset email request in the first place, the possibility that the password was cracked can be safely ruled out.

I don’t use Gmail from any public terminal (therefore safe from password stealing keyloggers) and have never clicked on links that may point to a fake Google login page (so no phishing attack either). You cannot associate a "security question" with non-Gmail Google accounts so the possibility that the "security question was weak" is also ruled out.

My assumption is that since my Gmail account is was set as the secondary email address of my Google Apps account, he (or she?) somehow hacked into the Gmail account and from there he gained control of my other Google Accounts. This seems probable but I am not sure.

As soon as I discovered that the accounts were hacked, I posted a message on Twitter, contacted a couple of people at Google and filled up some recovery forms in order to verify ownership. I consider myself lucky because several people went out of their way to help me and access to all the accounts was finally restored in the next 3 hours. The nightmare was over.

Things to do before the hackers strike again!

I won’t ever know who that hacker was except that he left a brief message in my Inbox saying that he didn’t hack my Google account with bad intentions and that he "enjoys exploring the web for vulnerabilities". The note also says that he is in need of urgent money and asks for a specific amount.

Anyway, here a few important things that I have learned in the process that you might want to implement at your end as well though it’s hard to tell if one can really prevent a determined hacker from stealing your Google accounts.

How to Protect your Gmail & Google Accounts

#1. Log-in to your Gmail / Google Account and associate a phone number. This is useful because you’ll then receive an SMS text message whenever someone tries to recover your Google password.

#2. Create a new email address (on say Yahoo! Mail or Gmail itself) and set this as the secondary email address for your existing Gmail and Google Accounts. Check for emails on this new account manually or through a desktop client via POP3 / IMAP but do not enable auto-forward for the new email address as the original purpose will be defeated.

#3. Take a paper and write down the following information about your Google Account. You will need this to verify your identify to Google in case someone else takes over your Google Account and the secondary email address associated with your account.

• The month and year when your created your Gmail / Google Account. You can look at the last page of your Gmail Inbox (or go to Sent Items) to get an approximate idea of the date when you created the account.
• If you created a Gmail account by invitation, write the email address of the person who first sent you that invite for Gmail. Use a search query like "in:all has invited you to open a free Gmail account" to find that invitation email.
• The email addresses of your most frequently emailed contacts (the top 5).
• The names of any custom labels that you may have created in your Gmail account.
• The day/month/year when you started using various other Google services (like AdSense, Orkut, Blogger, etc.) that are associated with the Google account that you are trying to recover. If you’re not certain about some of the dates, provide your closest estimate*.

[*] For Analytics, look at the first date when it started collecting stats for your website(s). For Orkut, look at the last page of your scrapbook. For AdSense, you may take the help of your AdSense account manager.

#4. It goes without saying but do not use the same password for your main Google / Gmail account and your secondary email address.

#5. If you access Gmail and other Google services over a Wi-Fi network, make sure that you always use the secure URLs like https://gmail.com. Go to Gmail settings and set ‘Browser Connection’ to ‘Always use https.’ This might make your Gmail access a bit slower but your account will be more secure.

#6. Once in a while, do refer to that little line in the footer section of your Gmail Inbox that shows the different IP addresses from where your account is being accessed. If you find an unknown IP address, change your Google password immediately. The person who hacked my Gmail accounts configured them with his Hotmail account so he could effectively read all my email communication remotely from his Hotmail inbox without ever logging into my Google account again. I could figure that out only after I saw an IP address from a Microsoft server in my Gmail activity log.

#7. You should also consider copying emails from Gmail to another service (like Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail – it is effortless) so when your Gmail account is compromised, you at least have access to all your previous emails. Or you can configure a desktop email client like Outlook or Thunderbird with your Gmail account (via POP3 or IMAP) and thus you’ll have an automatic offline backup of your Gmail Inbox.

#8. Do a test run. Log-out of all your Gmail / Google Accounts and initiate the password recovery process for each one of them using this form. This will help you make sure that your SMS settings and secondary email addresses are configured correctly.

For Google Apps users

#9. You should always have a public email address on your website that others can use to contact you directly. This public email address will also help people find and connect with your on social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. However, you should make sure thatyou don’t provide administrative privileges to this email address in Google Apps because if someone hijacks this account, he will effectively take over your Google Apps domain. Create a new user in Google Apps as an administrator and never share this username with anyone else.

#10. If you have lost access to your Google Apps dashboard, you’ll have to create a new CNAME record pointing to google.com to verify that you are actual owner of that web domain. To reset the password for the administrator of your Google Apps domain via your domain hosting company, the URL is:

https://google.com/a/cpanel/xyx.com/VerifyAdminAccountPasswordReset

Thankyou@dattu.

How to Transfer Mails from one Email Account to another for Free

There can be several reasons why you may want to switch email service providers.

Reason #1. Your existing email address gets too much spam so you plan to dump the old account and switch to a new email address (a form of email bankruptcy).

Reason #2. You are leaving your existing job for higher studies and need to transfer all personal emails from the Microsoft Exchange server to your new university email account.

Reason #3. Your ISP’s email service isn’t reliable and you therefore plan to move to a free web based email service like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, etc.

Reason #4. You think the new email service from XYZ Inc. offers more features than your existing mail provider and hence want to make the move.

Moving Emails from One Account to Another

This illustration will help you visualize how to transfer email messages across the three most popular web email services. The transfer will happen online and you just need to specify the credentials (user name & password) of your old email account (from where you want to move message out) and your new email address (where you want to move messages in).

Moving to Windows Live Hotmail

Windows Live Hotmail is integrated with TrueSwitch so you can easily transfer emails from Yahoo Mail, AOL, Gmail, Live.com, .Mac, etc. to your shiny new Hotmail address. The same service may also be used for copying old email from an existing Hotmail account to a new Hotmail address.

Moving to Yahoo Mail

Like Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail too provides integration with TrueSwitch so you can easy copy mails from Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, Juno, Rocket Mail, etc. into your Yahoo! account. With TrueSwitch, you can also copy mails from one Yahoo! inbox to another without upgrading to Yahoo! Mail Plus.

Moving to Gmail / Google Apps

Gmail (or Google Apps for Email) has a built-in Mail Fetcher feature that lets you download email messages from 5 different email accounts that support POP access. You may therefore use this feature to move your old Hotmail or AOL messages into Gmail as both these service provide free POP3 access.

The migration from Yahoo! Mail to Gmail is slightly tricky but possible. Keep reading.

Trick: Move emails from Yahoo Mail to Gmail or Outlook without POP

The free account of Yahoo Mail doesn’t provide IMAP or POP3 access so you can’t move these emails into Gmail or a desktop client like Microsoft Outlook.

The Yahoo! Mail Plus upgrade will add POP3 access to you account at $20 per year but if you want to save some money, here’s an alternate but simple trick:

1. Create a new account at Windows Live Hotmail and fetch all your Yahoo! mails into this account using the free TrueSwitch Service.

2. Now that your mails are inside Hotmail, you can setup POP3 configuration to fetch those Yahoo messages into Gmail via Hotmail.

Migrating Emails Away from your ISP Account

TrueSwitch mentioned above supports all popular ISPs including Comcast, Verizon, CableVision, AT&T, etc. but if your ISP is not in the list and you don’t have the time to configure your email client for POP3 or IMAP access, check out Yippie Move.

It’s a online email transfer service similar to TrueSwitch but supports an even larger number of email service providers including the .edu addresses of certain colleges and universities in US. With YippieMove, you can choose folders (or labels in Gmail) that you want to copy to the new location without having to move the entire mailbox. The service is quick and easy but costs around $15 per email account.

Copying emails from Microsoft Exchange / Outlook

Every organization has a different policy with respect to corporate email so check with the administration if your Exchange service offers POP3 or IMAP access – if yes, you can easily transfer messages into any of the free web mail accounts directly as listed above. Also see these guides:

• Export Outlook email to your Gmail Account
• Copy Outlook Mail to Google Apps
• Transfer Mail to Hotmail via Outlook Connector

Email Transfer Complete? The Next Step

Now that all your message have moved to your new email address, you can set up a vacation responder in your old email account to auto-inform contacts about your new email address. Also check this guide on how to manage multiple email addresses.

Thnakyou@dattu.

What To Do When Your Gmail Account is Hacked

I just got a message from a friend whose Google Account was hacked and the password changed. That person is now looking for some kind of a Google helpline to help him restore access to his account.

It can be a nightmare if someone else takes control of your Google Account because all your Google services like Gmail, Orkut, Google Calendar, Blogger, AdSense, Google Docs and even Google Checkout are tied to the same account.

See related story: How to Protect your Gmail & Google Accounts

Here are some options suggested by Google Support when your forget the Gmail password or if someone else takes ownership of your Google Account and changes the password:

1. Reset Your Google Account Password:

Type the email address associated with your Google Account or Gmail user name atgoogle.com/accounts/ForgotPasswd – you will receive an email at your secondary email address with a link to reset your Google Account Password.

This will not work if the other person has changed your secondary email address or if you no longer have access to that address.

2. For Google Accounts Associated with Gmail

If you have problems while logging into your Gmail account, you can consider contacting Google by filling this form. It however requires you to remember the exact date when you created that Gmail account.

3. For Hijacked Google Accounts Not Linked to Gmail

If your Google Account doesn’t use a Gmail address, contact Google by filling this form. This approach may help bring back your Google Account if you religiously preserve all your old emails. You will be required to know the exact creation date of your Google Account plus a copy of that original “Google Email Verification” message.

It may be slightly tough to get your Google Account back but definitely not impossible if you have the relevant information in your secondary email mailbox.

Thankyou@dattu.

Easily Transfer Emails from Hotmail to Gmail Via Outlook Connector

Your geek friends have convinced you to make that switch from Windows Live Hotmail to Gmail but the problem is how to move old Hotmail email messages and folders to the new Gmail address ? Hotmail doesn’t support IMAP or POP3 and it will take years to manually forward individual emails from Hotmail to Gmail.

No worries, there’s a wonderful solution that costs $0 and comes from Microsoft itself – its the Office Outlook connector and works with Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007.

Here’s a step by step guide on moving emails from Hotmail to Gmail via Outlook:

1. Install the Outlook connector and then configure your MSN Hotmail / Windows Live Hotmail accounts with Outlook.

2. Once you have all your Hotmail email message available locally inside Outlook, configure Gmail IMAP access inside Outlook.

3. Now copy or just drag-n-drop the Hotmail folders (downloaded in Step 1) over your Gmail Inbox folder in Outlook. Its the same migration procedure as described in a previous tutorial – Backup Outlook Email to Gmail.

As your Outlook synchronizes with Gmail, all your Hotmail messages will become available inside Gmail as well. And if you have multiple Hotmail accounts, this trick will help you consolidate email messages from all those account at one place.

Thankyou@dattu.

Get Gmail Messages Delivered on Multiple Computers via POP

Do you access Gmail messages on two or more computers via POP clients like Outlook or Thunderbird. The problem (or advantage) with POP access is that once an email message gets downloaded onto one computer, it is skipped by other email clients.

To explain that further – let’s say you have configured both your personal laptop and work computer to download emails from your Gmail account via POP access. Now if the emails are downloaded to the laptop first, they wont be available on your work computer (and vice-versa).

While this is a time-saving feature, your emails are split across different computers. To trick your POP client into downloading Gmail emails that are already fetched by other clients, just use the recent mode in Gmail.

Open your Outlook (or other POP client) and add the word “recent:” to your gmail username. That means if your gmail address is “john@gmail.com” replace that with “recent:john@gmail.com”

This trick will also work on custom domains if you are using Google Apps with Gmail.

Other lesser known Gmail tricks – Mute Email, Dot Blindness.

For details, refer to Google Apps Support and Gmail Support.

Thankyou@dattu.

What is Gmail’s Daily Limit on Sending Email?

You can know that Gmail imposes a limit on the size of file attachments (20 MB) and theoverall storage space but you also have limited daily quota for sending email messages through Gmail.   If you break the rules, Google will disable you Gmail account temporarily without any warnings and it may take another 24 hours before you can regain access to your Gmail mailbox.

Thus, before sending an email message to a large group of friends using Gmail, read the following rules to avoid temporary shut-down of Gmail:

Rule 1. If you access Gmail via POP or IMAP clients (like Microsoft Outlook), you can send an email message to a maximum of 100 people at a time. Cross the limit and your account will be disabled for a day with the error “550 5.4.5 Daily sending quota exceeded.”

Rule 2. If you access Gmail from the browser, you may not address an email message to more than 500 people at a time. Try adding any more recipients in the To, CC or BCC field and your Gmail account will get probably disabled for 24-72 hours. Error: “Gmail Lockdown in Secton 4″

Rule 3. Always double check email addresses of recipients before hitting the Send button in Gmail. That’s because your account will get disabled if the email message contains a large number of non-existent or broken addresses (<25 ?) that bounce back on failed delivery.

Rule 4: This is slightly unrelated but still important – Google will disable your Gmail account permanently if you don’t check your Gmail email for a period of nine months. All the stored messages will be deleted and you Gmail address (user name) may be released for others to grab it.

Related tip: If you want to send personalized emails in bulk, use Gmail Mail Merge.

Thankyou@dattu

Check Your Gmail or Yahoo! Mail with Flock

Flock, the favorite web browser of social animals, now supports Gmail and Yahoo! Mail so you can easily check web emails without having to open separate browser tabs – the mail icon glows indicated you have new email.

Other than checking email, you can also share links of web pages and photos using web email without leaving Flock.

This may sounds similar to the GmailThis! bookmarklet of Firefox but its integrated in the browser so all mailto: hyperlinks open in Gmail by default and not in desktop programs like Outlook or Thunderbird.

Related: Make Gmail the Default E-Mail Client in Firefox

And if you like adding smiley icons or image signatures to your outgoing Gmail messages, Flock is a perfect choice – drag the image onto the web clipboard of Flock, then compose a new mail message and drag that same image from the web clipboard to the body of the email.

Flock is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Get Flock 1.1 | Flock Blog

Thankyou@dattu.