Thoughts on Email

Personally, I hope that email will live on!!

Data and infographic by AWeber Email Marketing

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Send SMS Text Messages using Email

AwayFind is a powerful web application that lets you route urgent email messages - from specific people or topics - to SMS, IM, or Voice.

I am looking forward to using AwayFind with my students this year. Generally speaking, they are tied at the hip to their mobile phones and love sending and receiving text messages!! The same cannot be said for using their email accounts, which they may or may not check periodically.

Now, with AwayFind I can send an email message to my students (as a whole group or individually) and have it sent on to their mobile phones. The message is only forwarded if the email account is not open when the message is received. The actual message also remains in the inbox.

And what is even better is that AwayFind is free (for the moment anyway) and is part of the Google Apps Marketplace integrating perfectly with a Google Apps account.

The SMS message can be activated by the content of the email subject line, so once you have an agreed 'trigger' then you can pass this keyword on to any other teachers or administrators that may need to contact the students as well.

This means that students can be contacted on their mobile phones, by their class teachers, without having to pass on their phone details. And teachers don't have to worry about using their mobile phones to contact students. That's got to be a Win-Win situation!

I think this system will work really well with short messages or notices. Messages over a length of 50 characters will be split over several SMS messages. This could become a bit annoying if a lot of long messages were being sent! However, you could use the initial short message as a prompt for students to check their email for a second more detailed communication.

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Gmail Backup Utility

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Just completed a backup of our exams email account using Gmail Backup. Very easy to use and a great way of downloading copies of all the emails and, more importantly, the attachments!!

As this account is used to 'collect' exam work from our students, Gmail Backup provides a nice way to obtain a local copy of the files without having to download each one individually.

The work is, initially, uploaded to the email account using the Backup to Email software reviewed in a previous post.

It can be a little tedious identifying the individual emails, especially if you have lots, but each email is labelled with a code and the original date. A text file indexing the codes is also provided. Overall, Gmail Backup is a handy little utility.

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Technorati Tags: gmail, gmail backup

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Store Files Online with Hotmail

Windows Live SkyDrive, which comes with a hotmail/windows live account gives you 25GB of free online storage. Very handy for storing smaller files as uploading is restricted to 50MB per file.

In addition, with SkyDrive you can download entire folders as Zip files and it also provides an online slide show for your photos. The uploaded files may be kept private or shared with other users.

Looks and works just like an extra hard drive except your files are stored in the 'cloud' :-)

In terms of file storage, SkyDrive seems a better deal than Google. Only 7MB capacity with gmail and a restriction on the file formats that can be uploaded.

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Technorati Tags: cloud computing, gmail, hotmail, skydrive

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Twitter Alerts via Email

TweetBeep is like Google Alerts but for Twitter. You don't even have to have a Twitter account in order to keep up with conversations that inlcude your chosen search term! 

Simply enter "a keyword or website, and get emails when others tweet it!"



Just came across Twilert, which is another site that does exaxtly the same thing letting you "tap into the conversation and get a snapshot for what is being said in an easy and convenient way".

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Technorati Tags: twitter, tweetbeep, twilert

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Creating Blogs with Email!

Posterous is a super fast way to create and maintain a blog using email.  Came across this thanks to Horst Sievert.

The subject line of your email becomes the blog post title with the message text becoming the post text. But, it doesn't stop there as Posterous lets your attach files (photos, MP3's, documents, video), which are also placed in the body of your post.

If you attach more than one photo in the same message, Posterous automatically creates a very nice looking image gallery.

You can also insert URLs into your email message and these are added to your post as links, with a video link being converted to an embedded player. An RSS feed is included as standard. The only down side is that there doesn't seem to be any way to tag posts.

It really couldn't be easier. As I use email quite a bit I decided to set up a college blog with Posterous to use for posting notices for my classes during the year. The idea being that the students will add the RSS feed to their college personalised start page and can keep track of notices whenever they sign in.

Being a blog, it will also allow students to post comments about a notice if they have any queries or questions!

Be warned, it will probably be BLOCKED on your network - it is on ours!!! Apparently, Posterus is a no go area :-(

But, all is not lost because Posterus also lets you autopost, via email, to some of your other services - blogs, twitter and flickr. So, you could set up a new edublogs blog, not blocked, which will receive all the 'email' posts.

While this will work for text, urls and some 'non blocked' video links it is not the complete solution as the other content hosted on Posterus (images, audio) is still blocked and will not show up on the student network!

A much better solution is to see if your 'education network manager' will unblock your individual posterous blog. I recently asked for three of my blocked blogs to be unblocked and they all were :-)

Thanks NCTE.

Previously, I would have sent notices directly to the students' email addresses but I am interested in seeing if the whole RSS setup and commenting feature will work better.

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Technorati Tags: edublog, posterous, rss

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Access your Gmail Space as a Drive

With 6GB of space provided with your Gmail account it seems a waste just to use this storage space for emails and attachments. Though, I am told this space is really for your Google Docs files and not just the emails!

Nevertheless, I have been testing two tools that allow you to access the space like a drive - so you can carry out all your normal file management functions using this space.

 

For all those still using Internet Explorer, GMail Drive is a third party addon which creates a virtual drive that appears on your computer and acts as any other installed hard-drive. You can copy files to and from the GMail Drive simply by using drag'n'drop like you do in Explorer.

When you create a new file using GMail Drive, it sends an e-mail to your account, which appears in your normal Inbox folder, and the file is attached as an e-mail attachment. It is a good idea to create a filter in Gmail to automatically move the files (prefixed with the GMAILFS letters in the subject) to an archived mail folder - so that the Inbox does not become cluttered up.

The latest version 1.0.12 is supposed to work with Google Apps accounts but I have not had any success in that area. Has anyone else???



For those using Firefox, there is GSpace, a Firefox extension, which turns your Gmail account into free online storage. With GSpace, you can store all types of files. Its simple, user friendly interface allows for all file management tasks to be carried out. GSpace is easily accessed from the 'Tools' menu within Firefox.

Both of the tools work perfectly - except with our hosted domain on Google Apps :-( which is where I really wanted to use them, since my students all have college email addresses.

Mind you, I've just had a thought, next year the students could create their own individual gmail accounts and then use one of these very useful tools :-)

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Technorati Tags: email, gmail, gmail drive, google apps, gspace,

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Use your Email for File Storage

The Backup to Email software enables you to send any file to your email account. Once the Backup to Email software is installed, ensure that you change the “outgoing server” option to either the smtp of your ISP or the gmail smtp (smtp.gmail.com). If you are using the gmail smtp then you may also have to enable secure authentication.

To backup a file, simply right click on the file and then choose 'Backup to Email'. When backing up a folder, the software automatically zips the folder and sends it to the email account. A copy of the zipped folder is also left on the computer. There is no limit to the size of file transferred although files bigger than 10MB will be split into 10MB slices.

Backup to Email also allows for management of multiple email accounts and a very useful user guide is provided on the website. This is a very handy way for students to submit class assignments or exams as it really is just a two click process!!

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Technorati Tags: backup to email, email, software, zip

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