You may be tired of reading about Google Earth, Gmail, Google Calendar, Gmail Call and all other “G” related apps from me.  However, when they offer something unique, useful or just plain fun, I feel like I owe it to you to let you know about them.

This week I stumbled on one I had never heard about.  It may have been out for a while and I was just uninformed; nevertheless, it is new to me and may be new and quite useful for you.  “Gmail Alias Address”.  Yes, I know it is another “G” feature, but this is good and useful.

Pretend you have some communications going with a local company or person.  You would like all of the emails from that entity to go to a particular folder/label in Gmail.  You could always create a filter in Gmail for any email coming from that person to go into the correct folder.  But think ahead a bit.  What if that person hands your email address to another person to send you more information about the project?  That email will then go to your overcrowded inbox and you may miss it.

OK, how about this?  Instead of a filter for the person create a filter for the Subject Line.  That way, if anyone sends you an email with “Super Project” in the subject line the email will go to a particular folder in Gmail.  But wait (again).  What if someone misspells the subject line or changes it?  You may have another missed email.

Here is the way Alias Address works in Gmail.  You have the ability to create a “new” email address or “alias”.  Just place a “+” between your actual Gmail Username and your created alias then add “@gmail.com”.  Give the concerned parties that address only.

To try it out I created a Gmail address for us to play with “dblclx@gmail.com”.  Do not write me there since I may delete it in a couple of months.  However, for the next couple of weeks write me at dblclx+DNR@gmail.com.  Capitalization does not matter in the address.

I created a filter in that account for the DNR alias to move emails addressed to that alias into a particular folder.  That is all you do.  Just add the plus symbol between your username and whatever you want to call it.  It is not a new account and any email sent there will still be delivered to your email address.  If one day you don’t want to deal with those emails any longer, you can create a filter to delete them instead of placing it in the specific folder.  Think of the possibilities.  You could set up different aliases for people, websites, news, a group of people, etc.  The possibilities are endless…as long as you can keep up with them all.

Tags: +, alias, email alias, Gmail, google

Do you have a million important bookmarks in your favorite browser? How about a hundred or more you have collected over the past few months/years that you “need” to read when you get the time?

If you are like me you do and you never have found that extra hour to read them. Those vital “reads” are forgotten and just take up another spot in your bookmarks. Well, I cannot do much about the time you have but I do have a free site that may at least help you clean up your bookmarks. It will definitely give you the ability to organize and clean up your bookmarks.

Speaking of important bookmarks – have you ever saved a good bookmark knowing you can go back later and check it out? When you go back to visit the site from your bookmarks the site has disappeared. Oops.

If any of this pertains to you I want to introduce you to, “iCyte” which is an efficient free online program. If you use Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 7 or higher, Google Chrome or Safari, iCyte can work in your favor. You can still get to your saved sites on iCyte from any other browser but you will not get all the benefits of the program.

Once you install iCyte on your browser and surf the net, just click the “Create Cyte” button  in your browser. iCyte will present you with a window for tagging the site, putting it in a project or adding any notes to the site.

A Project is just a category name that you set up allowing you to keep all of your related information together. Whenever you need to go back to the site, click the “View Cytes” button and you will see all of the sites you have saved, by Project.

If the original site disappears that isn’t an issue since iCyte saves those sites on the iCyte server. This means that the sites are there for you to read with clickable links from the original site page, whether the original site is “live” or not.

You can also highlight text in a site with your mouse by right clicking the text and choosing, “Create Cyte”. That green highlighted text will easily attract your attention in iCyte when you view it. That way you can quickly find the pertinent information you need later.

If you are working on a team research project you can make an iCyte project “Public” so that the team can see it and add to it if needed. Public projects allow RSS feeds and they enable you to share with social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and many others. This little application offers many other features. If it sounds useful to you, try it out.

I have used many other similarly featured apps like Instapaper, Delicious, etc. This is currently the best by far in my opinion.

Now, someone is welcome to tell me how to get more time to do the reading.

Here are the sites we discussed today, hopefully in order of mention, if I took proper “notes”.  Take a look and let me know how you like them, or others we may want to mention next month.

Soupy Sales

How Secure Is My Password?
Find out how long it would take as standard desktop PC to crack your password.

Free Birthday Gifts
What can you get free for your birthday? Find local businesses and restaurants offering birthday freebies or birthday discounts to adults, kids & pets!

Search Crime Reports
Put in an address and find all reported crimes in your area or any area.

Dead Pixel Tester
mall application to check for stuck/dead pixels on most monitors. Also has a small utility to exercise pixels in the hopes of bringing them back to life!

If you are a Gmail user you will have noticed something new in the last couple of weeks. If you did not notice it you must have popup ads blocked on your browser. Google was pretty persistent in letting you know about it. I am not sure of the exact name of the feature since it appears to be part Gmail and part Google Voice. However, since the link to details about it is gmail.com/call, I guess we can call it Gmail Call.

It is a contender for the almost monopolistic hold Skype (skype.com) had on the internet calling/phone business.

They both allow you to call a phone or computer via their website using their designated add-ons. Yes, both are free (in the US) and both require you to install software. Do not be too concerned. The software install is pretty painless for both. Since you already have a Gmail account it is a bit easier and quicker to use the Google version.

Gmail Call is very easy to set up. When you are in your Gmail account look down the left side  of the window for a link titled, “Call Phone”. It will be located under your “Chat” section. All you have to do now is click on the link.

If you have not used it previously you will be asked to install the calling software. It took somewhat less than a minute to install it on my system.

The next time you want to try it out simply click the same, “Call Phone” link again. This time you will be presented with a dial pad that looks like it came from a different sort of phone. For instructions and pictures of what to expect go to, “gmail.com/call” where you can install the dialer and get more information.

The first day it rolled out I saw it right away since I am on my Gmail account most every day. Of course, I immediately installed it and it worked flawlessly. I naturally called my own cell phone first, just to see how it sounded. Keep in mind I was using my Acer Aspire One netbook’s little speaker to talk to my phone. It sounded very clear. I next left myself a voice mail; also good. Finally I called my wife and once she figured out it was me (coming from a Google phone number) she could hear me, and vice-versa, just fine.

I thought it was a good experience and though I only use my cell phone for calling people, with the video addition to Gmail Call I could be using it more. Google created a funny little cartoon you may want to take a look at about the new feature at, “bit.ly/Gmail-Call”.

Tags: Gmail, google, IP, phone, telephony, voice