Organizing Your Email Inbox (Outlook 2007 & Gmail)

Years ago, in the days when server storage space was expensive and small, I was forced to get into the habit of ruthlessly filing all of my emails out of my Outlook inbox and into personal folders which were stored on my hard drive.

Fortunately, storage capability has increased and cost has decreased over the years, so it's no longer necessary for your IT department to dole out email storage space like Ebeneezer Scrooge.  My habit of filing email has served me well, however, so I've stuck with it and refined it a bit over the years.

I create a folder for each project or client, sometimes with multiple subfolders under it for various major topics.  As I receive new emails, I read them, then if they don't require action from me, I file them in the appropriate folder.

For any items that I might need to reference later, I color code them by client/project so that they can be found in a "categorized mail" search folder that I've created.  I only leave items in my inbox that are essentially my "to do" list.  I color code the items in my inbox as well, so that I can see all of the ones I might need for a particular project at once in the "categorized mail" folder.

If I need to find an old email, I go to the folder for that client or project, or I search from the top level (inbox) and find it.  I don't like to keep hundreds of emails in my inbox, I just don't function well with it.  I don't like to have a lot of papers on my desk for the same reason (and I file those just as ruthlessly).  I find the clutter of papers or an overly full inbox to be distracting.

I can also color code my meetings on my calendar by the same categories, so my emails and my meetings for the same client/project are the same color.  This makes it easy to see at a glance where I'll be spending my time for the week (this also is helpful when reporting time).   Unfortunately, Outlook 2010  is a little tricky to set up with categories, at least in my experience.

I also use Gmail, which has categories, but they work more like labels than an actual folder.  Any item that I mark with a category will still appear in the "all mail" view.  They all still basically reside in the same location, but the views like "starred" or "important" allow you to see different subsets.

Protect Yourself from Identity Theft

I've noticed a lot of news stories lately about data thefts, identity theft and other similar issues.  Personally I have been lucky to never experience anything more than a few invalid charges on a credit card which have been noticed immediately.  I try to be smart about keeping my information private and not clicking on links in emails from strangers, all of the obvious stuff.

As a general rule, I try to follow these common sense guidelines:

1. It's never a good idea to use the same password for everything that you do online.
2. It's also not a good idea to use obvious passwords such as birthdays, the names of family members, etc. - these are too easy to guess or to find through a little light social mining on your facebook page.
3. It's good practice to change your important passwords occasionally.
4. Make your life easier when it comes to passwords and invest in a password manager like Roboform.  It will remember your passwords for you and keep them encrypted.  See roboform.com for more information.  This is one tool that I've used for a long time and I've recommended to a lot of people because I use it personally, it's easy and inexpensive.
5. Don't carry your social security card in your wallet.
6. Use a  password on your mobile devices like your tablet and cell phone.  Also, if available, set up the app for "where's my iphone" as appropriate for your device.  It will locate a lost or stolen device for you and also you enable to wipe its data remotely if necessary.
7. Never try to put electronic devices like phones, tablets or laptops in checked luggage when you fly.  This may seem obvious but some people do still try to do it and it never ends well.
8. When using public wifi hotspots, try to avoid doing anything sensitive such as banking, just in case someone nearby is monitoring the wifi and capturing information from it.
9. Use a password on your home wifi network.  This prevents anyone from using your connection and it also gives one line of defense against someone who tries to pick up your data from it (see #7).
10. If you receive any offers for credit in the mail, you should shred them before throwing them away.
11. You should check on your own credit report periodically, or at least annually, to confirm that there is nothing fraudulent on there.

Have any good tips to share?  Feel free to post in the comments.  Stay safe everyone.

Important Things to Consider When Choosing a Web Developer or Hosting Company

I've recently heard the term "refugee client" used to describe website clients that come to me from another provider, typically after a bad experience.  That got me thinking about what I would advise any small business owner when they are considering vendors to create them a new website, update an existing site, or host their site content.

When it comes to hiring a website developer, there are several issues to consider.

First, of all, as the owner of the business, you need to be SURE that you will OWN your website.  By that I mean, you need to be sure that you (or your company) own both the domain name and the contents of the site itself (all of the images, text, links, etc.).  I have had clients lose all of the content of their entire site because their former vendor "held it hostage" due to a billing or support dispute.  It is a very sad (and expensive) situation when a client has to start from scratch and have a totally new site created, all because they didn't know that their contract with their vendor did not give them ownership of their own website (or the domain name where it resides).

Secondly, be sure that you are clear on the pricing, timing and duration of the contract to develop a new site or update an existing site.  Is the pricing based on an hourly rate, and if so, does it have a cap at a maximum amount?  You wouldn't want to get an unexpected bill at the end of the project because the vendor couldn't create the site as easily as they thought.  You also wouldn't want to be waiting for months to get your site live on the internet.

Third, you as the business owner need to be involved in the project to develop or update a website for your business.  You'll need to collaborate with your vendor to find a design that appeals to you and is appropriate to your business.  You'll likely need to provide logos, photos or other images for your site.  You also may need to provide some or all of the textual content of the site.  Your vendor may be able to write some of it, but you'll need to review all of it at the very least.  You can't give total control to a vendor who does not know your business or you may not get the results you want.  The more that you are involved, the better your site will reflect and promote your business.  You'll also need to plan for periodic maintenance of the site, in order to keep it current, so make sure that you have a person at your company who is prepared to take this role.  Even if the vendor is going to make the changes, they'll need someone to tell them what to update on a regular basis, and also to provide new prices, photos, etc. as appropriate.

When you are looking for a hosting vendor, there several additional important things that a business owner needs to know.  Your hosting provider is essentially renting you "space" where the content of your site will reside so that it can be seen by internet users (like a rented storage unit).  Your site's domain name is linked to the specific location of the vendor's server where it resides.   This link is recorded with a company that keeps the record of your ownership, or registration, of the domain name (such as GoDaddy).  That company is called a domain registrar.  You will typically renew your ownership of the name on a periodic basis, typically annually.

In order to change from one hosting provider to another, there are two steps - you (or your website vendor) have to change the link where the domain name points to be the new location, and then you (or your website vendor must) move the contents of the site.  If both of these things are not done, your site will still be accessed by internet users on the old location, and it may be turned off by the old vendor if you stop paying the bill.  You could actually be paying for two different vendors without realizing it, or be paying the new vendor while your site still resides with the old vendor (or resides with both vendors).  Any of these scenarios can lead to losing your site and/or duplicate charges.

You need to either have a vendor who gives you the login credentials to your domain registrar, or have a strong enough trust in your vendor to know that they will take care of it for you.  It helps if you insist that the contact information for the domain name includes you (or your company) as the administrative contact and the vendor as the technical contact.  Then the domain name registrar company can contact you if needed (and not just your vendor).  You should always "own" your domain name, not your vendor.  If your contract with your vendor includes them renewing your domain name for you, make sure that it also says that you "own" the name itself.  Then if you leave that vendor, you hopefully could at least sue them to get your name back if needed.

Please feel free to contact Tepato Systems if you find yourself in any of these unfortunate scenarios.  I can try to help you to rescue your domain name and your website, even if you don't need my services for other website work.

Holiday Shopping and Technology

Holiday shopping can be fun and hectic at the same time.  I'm trying to do more online this year and I'm having pretty good luck with it.

We are big Amazon users, so I've been able to find decent prices on quite a few items on there (and our Prime membership gives free shipping, to sweeten the deal).  For movies I haven't found great pricing, but I've had good luck with books (especially odd ones that are not available in regular bookstores).

This year we've gotten some great deals on electronics, including a 50" LG TV for a steal from Walmart, as well as a great price on a basic BlueRay player (also from Walmart).  Their website now allows store pickup, which gives me the best of both worlds - the convenience of shopping online without the wait and cost of shipping.  A few online retailers are doing that now and I like it.

Email coupons are also huge this year, so I'm trying to keep them in a separate folder in my email in order to find them easily on my phone.  The tricky part for me is to remember that I have the coupons at all.  Without a piece of paper in my wallet, they are easy to forget.

For clothing I don't know if I'll ever really do much shopping online, since I prefer to see colors and feel fabrics in person.  Unless it's a retailer whose products/fabrics/sizing are very familiar, I'm hesitant to buy much online.

Every year we create holiday cards online using my usual photo printing service (Snapfish.com).  I try to watch for a good sale in November on their cards, order them early and get them done.  Of course I have all of my addresses on my computer and I use a mail merge to create labels, so it's a pretty quick process to prep them for mailing.  We send out about 100 cards, so anything that I can do to make it simple and quick is a very good thing.

Happy holidays and a prosperous new year to all!

Email Transition - Update

I've learned a couple of things as I'm slowly transitioning my email from Comcast to Gmail:

Email newsletters sometimes have a link at the bottom to change your subscription to use a different email address.  Sometimes they just have an unsubscribe link.

When changing an email address with a provider, even one who has a "change subscription" link in their newsletter, it doesn't always stop emails to the old address.  Sometimes I've had to change the subscription to use the new address, then unsubscribe the old address when I get the next email twice.

Some websites use an email address as your login ID, so those are easy to find and change using the list I printed from my password manager.  However, most websites still use your email address as part of your profile or contact information, even if it's not your login ID.  I've found that I have to change pretty much every account, even if I don't use the email as the login ID, because somewhere in that profile they've got my old email.

Using Gmail to Download Other Email Accounts

I used Outlook for all of my email for years, and I'd gotten tired of some of its quirks and limitations in the more recent versions (I currently have 2010).  It was useful to have all of my email loaded into a single user interface, so I wanted to find an alternative that would still give me that option.

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, a friend recommended Google's apps and email interface, so I've now converted to using Google for all of my email rather than Outlook.  I've been able to set up Gmail so that it downloads my email from multiple sources (Comcast, my Tepato website, etc.), so I am able to have a "one stop shopping" set up which I prefer.  To see how to use Gmail to pick up your other email accounts, see these instructions:

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/21289?hl=en

You can define a default email and have it always used as the "reply to" email.  Or you can choose to have it automatically just reply from the same address where the message was sent (if they send it to your Gmail, it will use your Gmail as the reply address, or if they send it to your Comcast, it will use that one as the reply address).  Gmail gives you 15 GB of storage space for free, and I've found that I'm using a pretty small portion of it.  More space can be purchased but so far I'm more than fine with the free 15 GB.

The spam blocker in Gmail seems to really work great.  Not only do the suspected spam messages get automatically put into a separate folder (so they aren't loading my inbox), but I seem to get a LOT less of them.  I've literally gone from getting multiple dozens in a day, down to less than 1 dozen most days.  I'm loving that aspect.  The spam messages are automatically deleted after 30 days in my spam folder.  I typically do check that folder at least daily, just to confirm that nothing legitimate ended up there by mistake, just to satisfy my paranoia.

I've recently helped a customer of mine to get set up to use Gmail to fetch his website email, and I'm curious to see if he experiences the same great result for spam.   He gets hundreds every day and I'm hoping he will see an improvement like I have.  I'll post an update on this soon, once he's had Gmail working for a few weeks.

Transitioning Email Accounts

I've recently decided to transition all of my personal email from one service to another (Comcast to Gmail).  It's been a slow process to change all of my email newsletters, notices, etc. over to my Gmail account, but I'm slowly getting there.

I have the luxury of taking my time with it, since I'm still able to access my Comcast email and have not closed that account.  I've found that my Roboform password manager software was a good place to start with a list of accounts that used my old Comcast email.  I'm slowly converting those all to use my Gmail account instead.  

I'm also monitoring my Comcast email as it arrives, and either unsubscribing or changing each one over to Gmail.  I've found that certain providers will let me update my email address, but they don't seem to automatically remove the old email from their list, so I've gotten a few duplicates.  If I get a duplicate, I just unsubscribe on the one sent to my old Comcast email so that takes care of it.

As I finish this process, I'll post any other things that I discover.