Regular readers know how much I like Firefox and that I’ve reviewed what I consider to be essential addons. Add Wisestamp to the essential addon list. This free utility creates an e-mail signature for your webmail applications (you can copy and paste it into Outlook too).

The simple interface allows you to add a graphic (your logo or photo), insert a hyperlink, change font  style and colour, with fields for every social marketing account you have.

They even have pre-defined signatures that you can customize and that will save you a lot of time.

Just cut and paste the code into the edit window, then personalize and you’re ready to go.

Here’s what my finished signature. I choose between two signatures, or no signature at the time I create the message.

Now there`s no excuse for having a boring signature on your e-mails.

I use GMail accounts for my personal e-mail. I don’t even remember the last time a piece of unsolicited spam got through their filtering system. I’m not a big fan of their interface though. Yes, it probably is more efficient to read e-mail in conversations, but I’ve been using Outlook for too long to have to rethink how I read e-mail.

As a small business owner, with multiple productivity tools, I can’t avoid Outlook. It’s the duct tape that holds my business universe together. Okay, that’s a scary thought .. but true.

One of the weaknesses of Outlook 2003 is it doesn’t support IMAP very well.  It slows down at the drop of a hat. I could spend my time debugging Outlook, or I can run my business .. not much of a decision there. I live with Outlook’s issues because my newsletter and teleconferencing software use Outlook contacts and calendaring, my CRM tool connects seamlessly and I finally found a reliable synchronization tool for Google Calendars. End result .. I’m stuck with Outlook for business.

I’ve moved my personal e-mail accounts from Outlook to Yahoo! Zimbra desktop. It’s free, has a nice clean interface and requires no training time; I was able to add e-mail accounts quickly and easily. It’s fast. It easily handles my junk Gmail account which has few thousand e-mail messages (I need to clean it out one day). I also monitor the e-mail account from my Internet provider and my Yahoo! account from the dark ages.

Setting up e-mail accounts was a snap. There’s a button for Zimbra, GMail, Yahoo!, AOL and Other accounts. You key in a description (so you know which account is which) your name, e-mail address and  password and you’re done. There’s no support for GMail POP3 accounts, but that makes sense since POP3 is being replaced by IMAP anyway. It even has support for Exchange accounts.

The accounts stack nicely on the left side of the screen, you just click on the double arrow to show the details. It has support for GMail tags; they appear as clickable folders.

Zimbra has a clean, easy-to-use interface for mail and it’s fast. You add contacts with a right mouse button click and you’re able to create a signature file with embedded links. You can easily create filters to move mail from your inbox to a folder, or delete or forward it and it’s easy to tag messages for later retrieval.

The help needs a lot of help. I tried to look up the Documents feature and finally gave up. The search didn’t and the index isn’t. Although this was annoying, luckily you’ll probably never need to use the help files. There’s not really any new functionality in Zimbra. It’s an e-mail client that works well and is easy to use. That says a lot.

I guess they ran out of time/manpower when it came to integrating the calendar. Why not synchronize this calendar with Google Calendar? You can import icalendar files, but since the very nature of a calendar is that it changes constantly, import just doesn’t cut it. If you’re content to use Zimbra as a true desktop, then the calendar interface is clean and easy to use just like the rest of the application. Not very practical.

There’s a Yahoo! search function built in. I know they’re gaining ground and some folks think Yahoo! is a better search engine .. Google is Google and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be any competition in that area for a while. (Cuil wasn’t, despite the millions of $$ thrown at it .. )

Now you can move all your relatives to a GMail account for the spam filtering and they will have access to an interface they’re used to. Yes, I know you can access GMail accounts with Outlook Express .. this is so much better.

Bottom line, I’ll probably stay with Yahoo! Zimbra for my personal e-mail until someone comes up with a better solution. It handles e-mail quickly, there’s nothing much to learn and the interface is pleasant. I won’t be using the extra features and my business e-mail will stay in Outlook so I can use the plugins to other applications.

What e-mail clients do you use?

They usually look something like this: http://tinyurl.com/5qxhly . This one was created using the TinyURL service. It’s the most commonly used of these services and their main function is to shorten long and sometimes confusing URLs. You know the ones I mean, they’re often twenty-five or thirty characters long and often contain special characters.

If these long URL’s are embedded in an e-mail message, the address may be spread over two lines and different e-mail clients interpret them differently.

Twitter only allows you 140 characters and you have a limited amount of space for your “Update Status” entry in Facebook, so you don’t want to be using up valuable space with a very long URL.

The down side of short url’s is you have no idea where that link will take you. Sometimes the longer URL gives you a clue to the destination. That isn’t always the case … as we all know, creepy pornographer’s web site addresses aren’t always www.creepypornographer.com.

You have some degree of trust that www.microsoft.com will take you to the Microsoft corporate site, and can make a decision whether or not you’re going to click on that link. If there’s any doubt the link may be suspicious, I do a Google search, then click on the link from the Google search. If it’s a shortened URL, I don’t have that option available to me.

You have to trust the person who’s using the TinyURL service. Firefox3 has protection build into the Smart Address Bar when you land on a suspect page, it displays a notice if you arrive at a page it’s able to establish as a phishing site.

The  best advice is Don’t open attachments/links from suspicious people.

You have the same degree of risk clicking on a short URL that you have clicking on a graphic that contains a link.

and http://tinyurl.com/5qxhly lead you to the place, but people think nothing of clicking on the graphic.

You can try TinyURL here – just copy and paste a long URL to create a unique, shortened URL.

You can configure GMail easier to read mail from your old account.

This doesn’t work for Yahoo! or Hotmail. They’re web-based and moving from them is messy. In the words of the marketing genius from Nike . "Just do it". As improved as these two e-mail services are, there is still the perception that someone with a Hotmail or Yahoo! e-mail account isn’t very tech savvy.

First, add a signature file to your messages that tells your friends that as of a certain date, you won’t be monitoring e-mail from that account.

You can add a signature file to POP3 or IMAP accounts too, but you have more options available. How do you know if you have a POP3 or IMAP e-mail account? The simple answer is: Can you read messages using a desktop client like Outlook or Thunderbird?

I suggest you also change the Reply To entry to the new address. In Outlook, it looks like this:

When your friends reply to a message, it will be directed to the new e-mail address, not the old address.

Why not just start using the new e-mail address? Messages could get caught by your friend’s spam filter and end up in their junk folder.

I suggest you give your friends two to three weeks notice that you’re moving to a new address, and I’d monitor the old address for a couple of months.

I don’t like Outlook Express, and don’t have it on my system, so I’m not sure where the Reply To configuration section is. Ditch it .. If your Office CD didn’t come with Outlook, use Thunderbird. The main reason to use Outlook is a lot of other applications connect to it. This is especially true of Outlook 2007.

In Thunderbird, it looks like this:

Thunderbird is from Mozilla, the same organization that brought you Firefox. It’s a good basic e-mail client and better than some that have more bells and whistles. They’re do for a new release soon.

GMail allows you to read e-mail from another account. This is especially useful as a SPAM filter for your website e-mail accounts.

You can ask your web developer to turn on all the SPAM filters on your website e-mail server. Depending on your hosting company, these services range from very basic (and free) to sophisticated systems (usually an additional charge).

As a solo entrepreneur on a budget, you can use GMail as your spam filter.

Sign onto your GMail account on the web and select the Settings tab, then Accounts. There it is: Add another address. Follow the instructions to add the address:

There is good documentation to help you to use this feature.

The reason you use GMail, is to use their SPAM fillter. Right now, there isn’t another free utility that removes SPAM with the same success as GMail.

This scheme allows you to use your business e-mail account, not a GMail address.

What cost-effective things are you doing to remove spam from your e-mail? Will you implement any of the suggestions I’ve made? Why won’t you give up your Yahoo! or Hotmail account?

Now, I go to my Sent Items and add a Follow up item to the e-mail with a date and time reminder. That takes time and sometimes I forget if I get busy doing something else. I have a CRM tool that’s amazing, and I link e-mails and phone calls there too, but that’s time consuming and sometimes the e-mail is a simple request so no point in linking it to Rave.

When you create the e-mail message you embed a code such as *wf* in the body of the e-mail and the message copies the message to a "Waiting For" folder in Outlook.

I’m going to embed the code in one of my e-mail signatures, so I won’t even have to remember to key in the code (do you see a trend here? .. me forgetting?)

I’ve already added the rule to my Outlook and have created a second signature. What are you waiting for?

Go off and create the rule before you forget.

Then come back and tell me YOUR brilliant Outlook rule that saves time.