Email Delivery

Email platforms are plentiful, but a few stand out from the crowd.

Exchange

Businesses use Exchange and by some accounts need to. However, instead of wasting time and resources on managing an Exchange server, small businesses should move towards a more simpler approach through Google Apps or Office 365. There is simply no need for an Exchange environment in an office size of under 10 users. With today’s full featured cloud options, Exchange can easily be replaced in a small office environment.

If your company uses proprietary software that relies on Exchange, then find a more flexible alternative. You’ll find that your business becomes less reliant on specialized software and it sends a message to the software company that they need to produce more flexible options or join the dinosaurs.

Gmail/Google Apps

Gmail is easily the most robust web based email solution available, but these same principles apply to other top email providers.

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• Use filters! For the love of all holy email, if you want to get out from under that pile of email, then use filters. Start NOW!
• Gmail has a convenient priority label to manage urgent and important messages you expect to receive. However, with a quick filter setup, priority labels can be used with other services as well.
• Star messages with the dozen or so star options to organize your priorities. After some time you’ll become accustomed to using them and even organize them around your workflow.
• For gmail specifically, users can even create a ‘Snooze‘ function to delay messages from reaching their inbox. You can set your own up by following this tutorial.

Outlook

While I’m not a fan of Outlook, it is the predominant email program. It too has filtering capabilities and if you don’t bother to use them or take time to understand how they work, then you deserve all the spam and missed emails you get.

Learn what you’re doing and continue to revise to suit your needs. Stop complaining that it’s not working the way you “want” it to. You need to teach Outlook how to handle your messages. Remember, Outlook is software not a mind-reading artificial intelligence.

Messages

Spam

For the last time – spam cannot be blocked 100% by any software or service, period. Can you manage it? Yes, but results will never be foolproof and will take time to be fully applied.

Also keep in mind that sending rapid, repeated emails to recipients can cause your own outgoing email to be flagged as potential spam on the recipient’s end. By definition, flooding someone’s inbox with emails (whether you consider them legitimate or not) is considered spamming them.

Overstuffed Inboxes

This has to be the most egregious of all email offenses and elicits some of the biggest complaints. I’ve personally seen inboxes with more than 3,000 emails and recently read a story where a user had 40,000 emails in their inbox. 40,000! That is absurd. Not because of the amount, but because those users let them get that way. There’s no excuse for that much inbox email and the blame falls squarely on the user’s shoulders.

If you’re currently in such a situation, then here’s what you do:

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• Delete all email in your inbox to start from scratch. [info]Note: If you have that many emails, there is zero chance you will actually read through all of them. Just delete them and if any of it was crucial or important, you’ll hear about it again.[/info]
• Create folders for email from senders you expect and want.
• Monitor your email closely for the next week. Create filters for everything you want to save and label junk you don’t.
• Continue that process until you no longer receive dozens of messages in your inbox. Remember, even the unwanted email should be filtered. You can mark the unwanted as junk or modify a filter later, after the inbox is cleaned up.

Tools

Addins & Plugins

These items can be incredibly handy or outrageously limiting. If a plugin requires specific integration or lacks open versatility between apps or email services, then get rid of it. That might be easier to say than do, but if you’re chained to one of those types of plugins, then you’re limiting your email freedom and hindering mobile productivity.

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The post Master Your Email Or Stop Complaining first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.

Twitter is a place for sharing and discovering new things from all types of people and sources.  However, there are times when the sharing is less than quality and at times inane.  Here’s my personal list of twitter updates that drive me insane.

5. Repeating Others Tweets Verbatim And Claiming It As Your Own

There are a lot of Twitter users who for lack of a better term, copy and paste other user’s tweets, then tweet it as their own. I’m not talking about re-tweeting, that is fine. In fact, I encourage others to re-tweet, it’s a productive use of the feature and spreads relevant or interesting content out to as many individuals as possible. I’m talking about the users who copy word for word the exact same tweet content as the original tweeter.

It makes me insane for a couple of reasons. First, it’s pointless. It’s hard to believe those users have nothing better to do or contribute than to copy and paste tweets from other users. Second, it clutters up the timeline/feed. I don’t need to see the same tweet 20 times within an hour period from 20 different users. Third, the users guilty of this offense are adding white noise to Twitter, meaning people stop reading and paying attention to tweets. Eventually that kind of thing hurts the overall product. If you want to share a story or tweet, then re-tweet it.

4. Any And All Foursquare Updates

This one is like nails scratching on a chalkboard. I could care less who ousted who as Mayor of somestupidplaceville. The words ousted and Mayor were gradually gravitating to my list of hated words when I started to wonder why. Then it hit me, the constant, unending, ridiculous Foursquare updates. Who is this update for? Do other Foursquare users even care? I can’t believe anyone wants to hear those updates or even cares about them and frankly if you do, then you’re part of the problem. Enough with the Foursquare updates, please!

As a side note, the EmpireAvenue updates are grating my nerves as well.

3. The Shove It Down Your Throat Post Method

Most of us have seen it. There are some users who crave attention so bad, that they need to flood the feed with posts so that they are the only ones noticed for a split second or two. They send out multiple tweets all at the same time so you’re left with a feed full of only their tweets. Other than this being annoying, I have a bit of news for users who do this — you’re probably being ignored. Everytime I see this come across my feed, I just scroll by it as though it’s spam. Now certainly I could un-follow the users in question and many times I have, but the responsibility falls on the Twitter user to control their tweets.

2. Private Conversations

Twitter has been around long enough for users to know it’s not private. Anything and everything is seen publicly unless it’s sent in a direct message. Yet, there are still those that converse back and forth as though they are the only ones reading it and treat Twitter as their own personal SMS service.

Listen up those of you guilty of this. Other people are reading your tweets and ALL of your tweets are public. If you ever wonder why someone replied to you or how they found you on Twitter, then you aren’t getting it. If you live in east-ja-bip, I and everyone else can see your tweets and we can and may reply to them. Try to come to grips with that.

1. The My Agenda Or No Agenda Tweets

This one really bothers me. Twitter is what it is and each user will define their roll in it on their own and within their own guidelines. The last thing anyone needs on Twitter is someone on a soapbox proclaiming Twitter should be used like this or like that. The audacity to tell or encourage others to un-follow if a user hasn’t tweeted in a couple days or to tweet only on specific topics or whatever other agenda they’re pushing.

What if someone has surgery and can’t tweet for a couple days? Maybe you follow an astronaut, I’ll bet at times they are too busy to tweet for a couple of days. They deserve to be un-followed? If you’re following someone, then you must have thought they had something useful to offer. If not, un-follow them, but not for some asinine time limit.

Final Thoughts

While I may hate those five types of tweets, I’ll never call anyone out and tell them to stop posting them. You can use Twitter however you like, this is just my Rant about my distaste for specific tweets.

Your Thoughts

What are your most hated tweets?  Do you agree or disagree with any of my choices?  Let your opinion be known in the comments!

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The post Top 5 Twitter Updates That Drive Me Insane [Rant] first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.

One repair issue that has repeatedly made me cringe and at times wish I hadn’t checked email or answered the call is when the issue is a problem with Outlook. To be clear, I’m talking about Outlook which comes bundled with MSOffice not ‘Outlook Express’ which was Windows’ default, free email client in previous versions. Clients describe Outlook problems that can only be classified as unique to their situation. The problems are often obscure and unreasonably complicated to resolve. What might seem like a simple one time error to users is actually not so simple to repair because many of the errors are not standard or generic email problems, but rather software related problems. Clients and users don’t always understand or comprehend the complexity involved with regards to diagnosing Outlook errors. Users just want it to work and understandably so, but the real issue usually resides in something the user has done or added to the system which makes correcting the issue or error problematic.

I think what’s most irksome about Outlook is that so many people continue to use it despite the ineffectiveness, constant problems and lack of resolution for those problems. I have to question why that is. Is it because it’s free when they buy MS Office for Word and Excel? Is it because they have no idea that other email programs exist? Is it because they don’t understand that all email can be checked through a web browser without an email program? Those are all valid questions and I’m going to address each one.

Free Outlook with MS Office

This is perhaps the simplest one to address. Outlook like any other program on your computer has an alternative. Let’s face it, you probably purchased MS Office for Word not Outlook, but if you did buy Office just for the sake of having Outlook then you wasted your money. Outlook is way too heavy a program for the average user. It is completely unnecessary in a home environment and most users have no idea how to utilize the full potential of Outlook even if they’ve been using it for years. If Outlook were just email and supplied extras associated with cataloging, organizing and manipulating email then it would likely be a much better program. As it stands, it is an email, calendar and scheduling program which is why so many obscure and odd errors propagate when something goes wrong.

Email Alternatives

Yes there are alternatives to Outlook and there have been for quite some time. To be clear, I’m not talking about business environments where companies depend entirely on Outlook for their company email structure. Although, they should consider alternatives such as Groupwise, but that’s a debate for another time. For the average everyday user, free programs such as Thunderbird and Windows Live Mail are available. If you insist on something made by Microsoft then use Windows Live Mail. It’s relatively simple and functions with address book, folders and everything else you expect to come with an email client. If you want to use the best alternative, look at Mozilla Thunderbird. Thunderbird is lightning quick and can accomplish everything an average user needs in an email client.

Check Email Through Web Browser

Quite simply, this option requires absolutely no knowledge of email clients, programs, software, configuration or setup of any kind. You know your email address, simply go to the host for your email account and login to check it. For example, <username>@yahoo.com. Navigate to yahoo.com and login with your email address and password. It doesn’t get much simpler. To be fair, ISPs who provide free email accounts have probably the worst interface for checking email and in some cases require specific browsers or toolbar junk, but we’re talking about the average user here and he or she likely has a free account from Yahoo!, hotmail or gmail. The best part of having these cloud based email accounts is that you don’t have to worry about storing the messages on your computer. If your PC fails, the emails won’t be lost because they are saved in the cloud.

Wrap-up

In short I can see no legitimate reason for home users to use Outlook as their email client. It’s antiquated, slow, glitchy and an absolute nightmare to diagnose. Microsoft is of little or no help with troubleshooting this program and those little errors grow to immense problems for home users who have no idea how to diagnose them.

The point of this rant is to frankly state that users, home in particular, stop using Outlook and switch to a more simple, reliable, stable option. If you want to save yourself downtime and most importantly tech support costs, you will follow my advice.

The post Outlook Rant first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.

Texting

First off, Texting. If you are texting while driving, STOP IT! You are not that good a driver and no one on earth needs your text that badly. Plainly put, your words, or rather what are considered words, are not that important. Not to mention if you keep it up you’ll likely do damage that you can’t undo. So get over yourself.

Head and Shoulders

Next, we all know cellphones are smaller than ever and definitely smaller than any old landline phone we used to use. Point being that holding a tiny, thin piece of plastic that weighs only a few ounces between your shoulder and ear while driving is complete idiocy. Turn your head 90 degrees to the side while standing up and try walking straight. Its not exactly second nature and that’s just walking. For those that do that while driving, let me tell you a little secret that the rest of us are thinking when we see you doing that. What a moron! We think that way because you are probably swerving in the lanes, forgot to use a blinker, cut someone out (because you can’t move your head to see traffic), ran a light or stop sign, or some other display of absolute stupidity all while behind the wheel. It’s ridiculous to think that holding the cellphone like that while driving is somehow sensible. Knock it off!

Cool Hand Luke

For those who take the one hand on the wheel and one hand on the phone approach, I must commend you for being less of an imbecile. Disclaimer: I put myself in this category to an extent. This method is better, but is still effective at impairing the ability to drive. You cannot pay attention when you are on the phone like that. Walking and chewing gum at the same time is one thing, but driving a multi-ton vehicle and holding a cellphone to your ear while maintaining a conversation is another. Again, you are not that good a driver! Back to the disclaimer, I ‘one hand it’ from time to time but its only to receive a call I can’t miss and I keep it short. For those of you who think 30 minutes is short, let me correct you, 1-2 minutes is short. I get the information I need and call them back if necessary. That’s just me and I know that not everyone can keep calls so short. Mostly though, I try to take calls without handling the phone at all.

Bluetooth Solution

Which brings us to the reason for this article. A little invention called ‘Bluetooth’. You see, they make these fancy little earpieces which fit snugly onto your ear and simultaneously connect to your cellphone so that you can have a conversation without the need to hold the cellphone, a la ‘hands free’. For those of you who have never heard of bluetooth earpieces, please forgive my sarcasm. For those who have, but are not using them while driving — get a clue because the rest of us are sick of adaptive driving and avoiding accidents because of you.

Bluetooth earpieces are relatively inexpensive, unobtrusive, small and the audio is quite clear. I don’t know of a modern cellphone that can’t pair (sync or connect to) bluetooth earpieces but if anyone knows of one then please enlighten me. There isn’t much more to say about the device itself, your cellphone and earpiece should both come with instructions for pairing the devices. Once they are paired, just turn them on and the bluetooth earpiece is ready to go.

Finding a retailer or merchant that sells bluetooth earpieces is relatively simple as they exist practically everywhere now.  I’ve included some links below for easy reference and comparison. If none of the ones listed appeal to you, I encourage you to locate your nearest electronics store or even Target store and find one that suits your taste.

Retail Links:

Newegg – Newegg.com carries just about everything related to computers and tech devices, including many bluetooth earpieces.  Prices are reasonable.

Amazon – Amazon.com is a well known online retail company and have a valued reputation. They carry many bluetooth earpieces.

I’m Talking to You!

Finally, I’ll remind you all again, you are not that good a driver. For clarification purposes as to who I am directing this article towards, I’m talking to you ‘Minivan Mom’, and to you ‘Mr. Truck too big to be street legal’, and to you ‘Mr. Independent contractor’, and to you ‘Miss Thing’, and to you ‘Mr. Top down convertible reliving his youth’, and to you ‘Mr. Fancy Sports Car’, and to you ‘Mrs. I have more insurance than you’, and to you ‘Miss My parents can buy you’, and to you ‘Mr. Eco-friendly Prius driver’, and to you ‘Mr. Play the music so loud other cars shake’, and to you ‘Miss I can also do makeup while driving and talking’, and to all the others out there who insist on acting like they are the second coming of Danica Patrick or Dale Earnhardt but with more skill because you use a phone.

Buy a bluetooth earpiece and use it for Pete’s sake!

Conclusion

That’s the end of my rant on this topic. I hope in the end, those of you who read this will realize the point — which is safety on the road. Sarcasm and jokes aside, it really would be a lot more pleasant and safer for drivers if we didn’t have to deal with so many people not paying attention because they are on the phone.

We’re interested to hear what others have to say about driving while on the cellphone.  Let us know your gripes, annoyances or even if you disagree with this rant.

The post Bluetooth Rant! first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.