Life Hacker
A Multiple-Flags Strategy for Your Email Accounts
Most folks are content using one email account, but I am not one of them.
From my informal polling of friends and personal contacts, Gmail is the email service that almost everyone uses and for every type of correspondence. From mail, chat, and now voice features, Google has a majority of our needs met with their service.
Since Gmail is easy to use and it’s free, what is so wrong with that using it?
Why Not Gmail
Though widely used, Google’s service has ran into a number of issues. Here are the top 2 concerns:
Privacy
Major University Dumps Gmail Over Security Concerns
Google to be reviewed following Buzz privacy concerns
Gmail Adverts Become Even More Targeted Using Your Priority Inbox
Support
Judge Shuts Down Innocent User’s Gmail Account Over a Bank’s Screw-up!
If you do not have privacy concerns, like your inbox being scanned to serve targeted advertisement, then Gmail is good enough. If you are not bothered with the prospect of waking up one morning and seeing that you’ve lost years of emails because access to your Gmail account has been revoked, then Gmail should be fine.
However, if you have plans to supplement your income using the web or if you want comfort in knowing that emails between you and your doctor are kept private, then continue reading for an approach that leverages jurisdictional limits for handling and protecting your correspondence.
Read MoreBurnout: Indicators and Resolution
Psychology Today has a timely article on Overcoming Burnout. It’s also a quick read.
Background
With the recent recession during the previous two years, my wife was releasedf from her position as a IT/Business Analyst along with a number of our friends who worked in different sectors of the Las Vegas economy. The general mood could be described as “troubled” as more of our friends faced unemployment while those who were able to retain their job faced increased workloads and uncertain working environments.
So how does this affect the rest of us who have jobs and are working harder than ever?
Read MoreHow To Access Your Physical Mail From Anywhere
A friend recently remind me that I have too many email address (at 500+ and growing) and he may have a point. But, that’s for another time and another post.
Today, I want to show you how to receive and access your physical (USPS, FedEx, USP, etc.) mail from anywhere in the U.S.. (You can extend this approach even if you live in Antarctica or other parts of the world.)
The Problem
I’ve been dealing with this issue for a few years and it has only increased with my travel schedule. Here is where I stand today:
- I am a resident of Las Vegas, Nevada and my primary residence is a nice 1,700 sq. ft. 3-bedroom home.
- I work in Minneapolis, Minnesota where I have a 900 sq. ft. condo for part-time residence
- For a current project, I lease a small apartment in Irvine, CA.
- My travel schedule also requires me to fly Cincinnati, Ohio where stay at a friendly hotel.
Depending on the week, I may need to be in any of the above 4 cities. My physical mail, however, can arrive in either Las Vegas, Minneapolis, or Irvine but it almost always never arrive where I happen to be.
For example, I may be working in Minneapolis for 3 weeks when mail related to my Nevada business arrives at my Las Vegas home. Or, I can be working from home in Las Vegas when an invoice from my Minnesota dentist arrives at my Minneapolis condo.
Online Bill-Pay solves a number of the issues related to having multiple residences, but there are times where you need to accept physical mail. Also, changing your address and communicating the update with all of your vendors on a weekly basis is problematic. It also causes stress, if you can image.
Read MoreLeaving Yahoo Mail Plus
Admission: I have a love/hate relationship with Yahoo Mail Plus.
I’ve been using Yahoo Mail since 1996 and I signed up for the premium service known as Yahoo Mail Plus in 2004. The feature that won me over was their disposable email addresses that allows you to organize incoming email and fight spam.
Having a set of disposable email addresses in my pocket was like wearing an invisibility cloak online and the geek in me fell love!
7 years and 25,000 emails later, I quit.
Read MoreSample use of Qoate plugin
This is a sample post with ‘hello’ between the code tags:
hello
The above section was created via http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/qoate-simple-code-snippets/ .
Many thanks Danny van Kooten for looking into this issue and for the great work!
Continue reading for the wonderful experience with this plugin and the amazing help from the developer!
How to: Magazeen for WordPress
The layout that I am currently using is the ‘Magazeen‘ theme by Smashing Magazine. I wanted a visually theme that is attractive (for my pictures), but clean. This one seems to fit the bill.
Like most WordPress themes, it was easy enough to install. After applying the theme, however, my pictures were not presented as beautifully as the demo. In fact, no pictures were displayed at all. My website looked broken and it was no where near as attractive. So I poked around the settings and figured how to properly post an article, using this gorgeous but fussy theme.
In order to get your version of the ‘Magazeen’ theme to look like the picture above, you need to follow these steps when posting a new article. If you have been amassed a number of articles, then I would suggest that you update the 9 most recent articles (with these below steps) to get the jQuery image showcase at the top of your blog to look like the one in the demo.
- Get the ‘File URL’. When writing a new post, click on the ‘Add an image’ icon and then “From Computer” or “Media Library”. If you uploaded multiple images or used one from your ‘Media Library’, click on the ‘Show’ button to get the ‘File URL’ from the image details.
- Once you have the ‘File URL’, paste it into the ‘Magazeen Post Options’ window (located the post window where you enter text).
That is all there is to it! If you would like to your home page to be extra pretty, then do what I do and paste the first sentence of your article into the ‘Excerpt’ window (located under the ‘Magazeen Post Options’ window). It helps in presenting a nice and clean first page to your readers (and not to mention the extra impression/view if they are interested in Continue Reading)
As a bonus tip and to help you to fully flesh out your home page, write a little something about your blog at the footer. The smart folks at Smashing Magazine have already prepared for that functionality in the ‘Magazeen Options’ button (located on the lower-left corner of the admin panel). Write something short and use the break tags if needed. That’s really it. 80% of the work with 20% of the effort.
Read MoreAbout Me
I am a landscape photographer based in Orange County, CA.