h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Not only for googling and Google Scholar (which turned up more results on 'Kalevala' than I dare to think of )...

...but also for Google Documents, which has spared me the trouble (and cost) to install MS Office on my desktop at home...

...and most recently for making things so much easier about the new BBCiD sign-in system which requires one unique e-mail address for each researcher ID you want to upgrade (yes, I have several).

At first I was picturing creating several new e-mail addresses and the pain trying to a) remember them all and b) remember the passwords.

But it turns out I can use my already existing Gmail address by adding '.' into it, as mentioned in this thread:

<./>F19585?thread=7038690</.>

Let's say I have a Gmail adress named titania at gmail dot com (I don't, because it was already taken, but let's use it as an example).

Using 'Retrieve my details' I type in that address with added dots for each researcher.

Example:

Researcher 123456 e-mail address: t.itania
234567 e-mail: ti.tania
345678 e-mail: tit.ania

And so on. I can also add more than one dot, for example t.i.t.a.n.i.a

This will give me even more varities than I need!

And do you know what the best thing is? All e-mails sent to the 'dot added' addresses show up in my regular inbox! One Gmail login, one inbox.

You have been through Google Clone? ...

Sounds good, though. Guess I might be able to do something similar if I want as my domain collects all not-defined addresses in my admin mailbox...

I have to say that I am not overly fond of Google right now. A couple of weeks ago their Postini service went down for a extended period which killed all email inbound to my company for the better part of a day. Then this week they randomly decided to lock my google account without any reason given.

Google owns Postini? My local ISP uses it as a spam/virus filter. I've had absolutely no trouble with it except for the time it takes to go in and clear out all the garbage. There seems to be more spam than ever.

Anyway, I love Google doodles, like today's logo.

There was a very badly handled postini outage recently. One that was killing all email for a number of people. Postini/Google handed it very badly and did not have adequate communication of the situation. Coupling that with the fault that likely got my account compromised and closed without any warning whatsoever, Google is on my list right now.

On the subject of Gmail, I can't figure out how to sort my messages. Nor can I find a search function to use to separate them by sender so I can do a batch delete.

I've not tried Gmail or Google documents yet, but I do love Google for the general search, the Maps and the Scholar service.



When I was in charge of document delivery in the library, I don't think I could have done my job anywhere near as well if Google didn't exist. If you know how to use it properly (and boy, most students really don't know how to use it properly), it's blooming fantastic.

You might flag the messages using the labels. I used to do that but I don't really bother anymore.

If you add someone to your contact list, you can click a link in the contact info to see all the conversations with that person.

But that seems to just be a shortcut for a search term. Try typing "fromemail@address)" in the search box.

The postini thing affected a few people at Rutgers. We don't use it for the whole university, but some divisions do and they were complaining.

I use labels to separate and h2g2 Photographers' mails from the rest.

I've only had trouble with google/gmail once, and that was long ago and was settled pretty quickly.

I also like that I can use my gmail login at blogger dot com.