Spam sucks. We all know that. The question is how to stop it. Those of us who use Google’s Gmail have very little spam problem. Google’s spam filtering is VERY good. When I was using Outlook as my mail client, I was using the paid Cloudmark plug-in to defeat spam. It beats the hell out of the built-in spam filtering on ANY mail client. But, since moving to Gmail, my spam problem has been even less than with Cloudmark. And I don’t have to spend a dime for it.

But, what if you don’t want to use a gmail.com email address? Perhaps you are using an address tied to your own domain name or from your ISP. You might not want to switch. Well, I have good news and no, it doesn’t have to do with my car insurance. But, I did save a boatload of money on my spam problem by switching to Gmail. And I didn’t have to change my email address. (more…)

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You can’t. Outlook (and several other email clients) enable you to include stationery or background images in your email message to dress up the look of your email messages. Currently, Gmail does not render these images as expected. Read on for some of my thoughts about stationery….

First off, I need to step up on my soapbox for a moment….

I really never understood the draw of background images or stationery in email messages. Other than allowing you to inject a bit of individuality into a message, what purpose does it really server? I personally find them typically distracting, not so much the images themselves, but the content chosen. Some are elegant and pleasing to look at, but some are just plain distracting. (more…)

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If you do not have a web hosting account yet and you wish to test various email-related scripts, such as contact forms, webmail, autoresponders and more, you can setup a free mail server on your home computer. This alternative will give you more freedom to understand the mechanism of email transport across the internet.

Mercury Mail Transport System is a mail processing tool which is available on many operating systems. It is also integrated in XAMPP, which represents an Apache distribution. In order to be able to test your scripts, first you must configure Mercury application and then an email client. (more…)

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