Email Services
With this article, I plan to give a brief
description of various email related services that exist and some
comparisons. I won't go too far into detail on any because they
change quicker than I care to update this page.
First there few types of email accounts, including email accounts you may have from your an ISP (Internet service provider), job, etc. I won't go into detail about these differences except to say that email accounts from your job are not really your accounts and therefore your employer is able to and is authorized to go through your email (even if you have your own password).
I will however focus on a few different eMail Providers and then describe some additional Email-Related Services.
Yahoo! Mail
One of my favorite email services is Yahoo! Mail (although throughout their existence they have done a few things that irritate me). Yahoo also has very good SPAM protection. Yahoo allows users to check other POP Mail accounts through their web interface. Additionally, Yahoo Mail is accessible from most Internet capable mobile phones. Having a Yahoo email address gives you access to their many other services, such as instant messaging, address book, alerts, calendars, bookmarks, briefcase, greeting cards, personal website, customizable news, finance, and weather sites, etc.
Yahoo offers two versions of their email accounts. The first is a free version. With it, you get 100 MB of storage space. This is usually enough for any user. When accessing these accounts, the user will have advertisements appear on the screen.
The second, obviously, is a paid version, which costs $19.99 per year. With the paid version, you get 2 GB of storage space, the ability to attach numerous files to outgoing mail, a 10 MB limit on messages both sent and received, no advertisements on the web interface page (except internal Yahoo plugs), POP Access, and disposable email addresses (AddressGuard).
AddressGuard
The disposable email addresses (AddressGuard) is my favorite Yahoo! Mail feature. You can create a base account, for example abc123-variable@yahoo.com. Yahoo will reserve any email address with that base account, regardless of the text you enter as variable for your use. You then give out these addresses to anyone or anywhere you think may result in SPAM. For example, if you sign up for an account with the New York Times, you can give them the address abc123-NewYorkTimes@yahoo.com. All mail sent to that account is forwarded to your main Yahoo account. Any replies you make to email from that account, via the web interface, is automatically sent from that account. Therefore, your real email address is never divulged to that individual or company. If you then discover you are receiving SPAM from that account, simply delete that account and nothing changes with your original email address.
POP Access
POP Access is another fantastic feature of the Yahoo Mail's premium service. POP Access allows you to access your mail via programs such as MS Outlook, MS Outlook Express, and Thunderbird (the Open Source client from Mozilla). POP Access used to be common with free email accounts, but is now reserved mostly for paid services.
GMail
Lately there has been a lot of talk about GMail, Google's new free email service. It is still in Beta testing and is therefore not yet open to the general public. I was fortunate to receive two invitations to GMail (one I gave to a friend who I don't think ever signed up for it...so only one was used) and have been able to try the service out. GMail offers 1 GB of storage. GMail also has a fantastic address auto-complete feature. Without needing to install any software, email addresses or names you begin to add to the TO, CC, or BCC boxes are automatically completed.
Group by Conversation
GMail also has another extraordinary feature. Emails are grouped according to conversation. MS Outlook can also do this, but in a very limited way. With MS Outlook, you can choose to group emails by conversation. This puts emails together based on their subject lines. However, emails that are not related are sometimes grouped together, just as emails that are related are sometimes kept apart. If you receive two unrelated emails with the subject 'hello,' these two email will be grouped together. However, if you send an email with the subject 'what time do you want to meet?,' and you get a response with the subject 'let's meet at 6,' MS Outlook will not group these two emails together.
GMail however will group these emails correctly. Furthermore, when opening emails, it will display only the new information in that email. Adjacent to that information is the list of emails in the same conversation. Clicking each of those emails will reveal the new information that each of them contained. Of course, you can also click expand all to view the email in its entirety.
Earthlink
Earthlink is an ISP (Ineternet Service Provider). It is by far the best ISP availible. I have been using Earthlink for 5 years and they have never installed software or spyware on my computer. They offer software packages with various features, which you can opt to install. As with most ISP's Earthlink offers email accounts (8 to be exact) each with POP Access. These accounts each have 10 MB of storage, though you cannot apply all 80 MB to one account.
Earthlink's email service has one disinguaishible feature. You can upload your contacts to thier address book and set the SPAM guard to flag any email that did not come from one of those addresses. This is great for general SPAM, but doesn't do anything to protect you against viruses (becuase they usually appear to come from someone you know). You may imagine that weeding out all email that doesn't come from a known email address will cause many emails to be missappropriately flagged as SPAM. That is true. Howver, Earthlink can automatically reply to each email suspected to be SPAM with a message that informs the sender his email was identified as SPAM. The user then must click on a link to request you add him to your address book. This is a fabulous feature for two reasons. First, SPAM senders cannot take the time to fill out that form for each recipient, therefore it's a surefire way to stop SPAM. Second, if a contact sends you email from a new address, this will alert you to the fact that he has changed his email address.
AOL
AOL is a horrible email service. AOL is notorious for problems receiving email from other email accounts. Years ago, emails with more than one attachment had their attachmetns mushed together to form one, difficult to open attachment. Later they didn't support HTML. After that, they didn't have SPAM guards. Additionally, of all the ISP's, AOL has the worst reputation for installing junk on your computer wihtout your knowledge. My advice, stay away from AOL!
MSN / Hotmail
MSN & Hotmail are similar to AOL in that their sites will install spyware. Although I suggest getting a Hotmail account so that you can use certain Micorsoft services (such as downloading Microsoft patches to fix software that Monopoly forces you to use). However, I recommend not using their email services.
Email-Related Services
Mailinator & Dodgeit
Mailinator and Dodgeit are two services that offer quick and convenient disposable email addresses. Both of these services require no account setup or passwords. I have written articles on both (see Mailinator & Dodgeit), describing each in more detail. The difference is that Mailinator provides you with an email address when you first open the web page. This is a little faster. Dodgeit, on the other hand, has you provide the email address in the form of anything@dodgeit.com. Also, Dodgeit provides a XML Feed so that you can quickly check multiple Dodgeit accounts from your XML Reader (for infromation on XML, see my XML News Feeds article), Mailinator does not offer XML Feeds.
Another similarity of both of these services is that they are only intended for junk mail. Since you do not have a password, anyone can access email on these accounts.
DropLoad
DropLoad is a service that allows you to email attachments up to 100 MB in size. These attachments are emailed to the DropLoad service and the recipient must visit the site to pick up the attacment. This is very useful becuase most email accounts only allow emails that are at most 10 MB in size. I have also written an article on DropLoad, but it doesn't say much more than what I have written here...it's a simple service that doesn't require much explaination.
JRSplit
JSplit is a small program that will split files so that you can send them in multiple emails. Use this if you are sending attachments that are too large for the recipient to receive and you do not want to use DropLoad. For more information on this and other Free and Open Source software, see my Open Source Programs article.
Paper Napkin
Paper Napkin is more of a gag than an email service. Paper Napkin is a service that sends a rejection email for you. This is especially useful for women. Here's the description from the Paper Napkin website:
First there few types of email accounts, including email accounts you may have from your an ISP (Internet service provider), job, etc. I won't go into detail about these differences except to say that email accounts from your job are not really your accounts and therefore your employer is able to and is authorized to go through your email (even if you have your own password).
I will however focus on a few different eMail Providers and then describe some additional Email-Related Services.
Yahoo! Mail
One of my favorite email services is Yahoo! Mail (although throughout their existence they have done a few things that irritate me). Yahoo also has very good SPAM protection. Yahoo allows users to check other POP Mail accounts through their web interface. Additionally, Yahoo Mail is accessible from most Internet capable mobile phones. Having a Yahoo email address gives you access to their many other services, such as instant messaging, address book, alerts, calendars, bookmarks, briefcase, greeting cards, personal website, customizable news, finance, and weather sites, etc.
Yahoo offers two versions of their email accounts. The first is a free version. With it, you get 100 MB of storage space. This is usually enough for any user. When accessing these accounts, the user will have advertisements appear on the screen.
The second, obviously, is a paid version, which costs $19.99 per year. With the paid version, you get 2 GB of storage space, the ability to attach numerous files to outgoing mail, a 10 MB limit on messages both sent and received, no advertisements on the web interface page (except internal Yahoo plugs), POP Access, and disposable email addresses (AddressGuard).
AddressGuard
The disposable email addresses (AddressGuard) is my favorite Yahoo! Mail feature. You can create a base account, for example abc123-variable@yahoo.com. Yahoo will reserve any email address with that base account, regardless of the text you enter as variable for your use. You then give out these addresses to anyone or anywhere you think may result in SPAM. For example, if you sign up for an account with the New York Times, you can give them the address abc123-NewYorkTimes@yahoo.com. All mail sent to that account is forwarded to your main Yahoo account. Any replies you make to email from that account, via the web interface, is automatically sent from that account. Therefore, your real email address is never divulged to that individual or company. If you then discover you are receiving SPAM from that account, simply delete that account and nothing changes with your original email address.
POP Access
POP Access is another fantastic feature of the Yahoo Mail's premium service. POP Access allows you to access your mail via programs such as MS Outlook, MS Outlook Express, and Thunderbird (the Open Source client from Mozilla). POP Access used to be common with free email accounts, but is now reserved mostly for paid services.
GMail
Lately there has been a lot of talk about GMail, Google's new free email service. It is still in Beta testing and is therefore not yet open to the general public. I was fortunate to receive two invitations to GMail (one I gave to a friend who I don't think ever signed up for it...so only one was used) and have been able to try the service out. GMail offers 1 GB of storage. GMail also has a fantastic address auto-complete feature. Without needing to install any software, email addresses or names you begin to add to the TO, CC, or BCC boxes are automatically completed.
Group by Conversation
GMail also has another extraordinary feature. Emails are grouped according to conversation. MS Outlook can also do this, but in a very limited way. With MS Outlook, you can choose to group emails by conversation. This puts emails together based on their subject lines. However, emails that are not related are sometimes grouped together, just as emails that are related are sometimes kept apart. If you receive two unrelated emails with the subject 'hello,' these two email will be grouped together. However, if you send an email with the subject 'what time do you want to meet?,' and you get a response with the subject 'let's meet at 6,' MS Outlook will not group these two emails together.
GMail however will group these emails correctly. Furthermore, when opening emails, it will display only the new information in that email. Adjacent to that information is the list of emails in the same conversation. Clicking each of those emails will reveal the new information that each of them contained. Of course, you can also click expand all to view the email in its entirety.
Earthlink
Earthlink is an ISP (Ineternet Service Provider). It is by far the best ISP availible. I have been using Earthlink for 5 years and they have never installed software or spyware on my computer. They offer software packages with various features, which you can opt to install. As with most ISP's Earthlink offers email accounts (8 to be exact) each with POP Access. These accounts each have 10 MB of storage, though you cannot apply all 80 MB to one account.
Earthlink's email service has one disinguaishible feature. You can upload your contacts to thier address book and set the SPAM guard to flag any email that did not come from one of those addresses. This is great for general SPAM, but doesn't do anything to protect you against viruses (becuase they usually appear to come from someone you know). You may imagine that weeding out all email that doesn't come from a known email address will cause many emails to be missappropriately flagged as SPAM. That is true. Howver, Earthlink can automatically reply to each email suspected to be SPAM with a message that informs the sender his email was identified as SPAM. The user then must click on a link to request you add him to your address book. This is a fabulous feature for two reasons. First, SPAM senders cannot take the time to fill out that form for each recipient, therefore it's a surefire way to stop SPAM. Second, if a contact sends you email from a new address, this will alert you to the fact that he has changed his email address.
AOL
AOL is a horrible email service. AOL is notorious for problems receiving email from other email accounts. Years ago, emails with more than one attachment had their attachmetns mushed together to form one, difficult to open attachment. Later they didn't support HTML. After that, they didn't have SPAM guards. Additionally, of all the ISP's, AOL has the worst reputation for installing junk on your computer wihtout your knowledge. My advice, stay away from AOL!
MSN / Hotmail
MSN & Hotmail are similar to AOL in that their sites will install spyware. Although I suggest getting a Hotmail account so that you can use certain Micorsoft services (such as downloading Microsoft patches to fix software that Monopoly forces you to use). However, I recommend not using their email services.
Email-Related Services
Mailinator & Dodgeit
Mailinator and Dodgeit are two services that offer quick and convenient disposable email addresses. Both of these services require no account setup or passwords. I have written articles on both (see Mailinator & Dodgeit), describing each in more detail. The difference is that Mailinator provides you with an email address when you first open the web page. This is a little faster. Dodgeit, on the other hand, has you provide the email address in the form of anything@dodgeit.com. Also, Dodgeit provides a XML Feed so that you can quickly check multiple Dodgeit accounts from your XML Reader (for infromation on XML, see my XML News Feeds article), Mailinator does not offer XML Feeds.
Another similarity of both of these services is that they are only intended for junk mail. Since you do not have a password, anyone can access email on these accounts.
DropLoad
DropLoad is a service that allows you to email attachments up to 100 MB in size. These attachments are emailed to the DropLoad service and the recipient must visit the site to pick up the attacment. This is very useful becuase most email accounts only allow emails that are at most 10 MB in size. I have also written an article on DropLoad, but it doesn't say much more than what I have written here...it's a simple service that doesn't require much explaination.
JRSplit
JSplit is a small program that will split files so that you can send them in multiple emails. Use this if you are sending attachments that are too large for the recipient to receive and you do not want to use DropLoad. For more information on this and other Free and Open Source software, see my Open Source Programs article.
Paper Napkin
Paper Napkin is more of a gag than an email service. Paper Napkin is a service that sends a rejection email for you. This is especially useful for women. Here's the description from the Paper Napkin website:
So here's the scenario: You're out at a bar, riding transit, or even just walking down the street, and some bozo who desperately wants into your pants starts up a conversation with you. Rather than make a scene or make them upset, you're polite and at least nod at the proper times. Then, of course, they ask you for your number. Except this is 2004, so maybe they ask for your email address instead.And no...I never received a Paper Napkin email address.
That's where Paper Napkin comes in. Give them anyname@papernapkin.net (or paamail.com, to be less suspicious), tell them it's your address, and when they write you, they'll automatically get a response telling them how badly they've been rejected. If they sound desperate enough, it may even get posted and ridiculed. Yes, it's cruel, so use it wisely.
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