Managing Your Email Remotely: Advice on Maintaining Your Email Relationship
By Cindy L. Chick
Orignally Published June 1, 2004, Searcher Magazine
On a beautiful Saturday morning in Feburary I had a long to-do list. But a friend stopped by with a rescue puppy looking for a home, just for a quick visit. I don't know about you, but there's no way I'm turning down a chance to play with a puppy. Our neighbor, who happened to be in the market for a new dog, was of the same mind. We watched the pup romp around the yard, take a quick, though unintentional dip in the pool, and darn if he didn't even chase a butterfly. He pulled out all the stops to charm and delight us.
But I'm a practical person. I know that some of that energy and curiosity may lead him to dig up the rose garden. And he may very well move from chewing garden gloves to chewing leather shoes. He will no doubt need training and guidance to evolve into an upstanding member of society. It may take time, effort and patience before he can be trusted alone with the cat. After all, relationships require work. And so does email.
Taking time off from your email responsibilities can result in big problems down the road. Vacations, business travel, or just a trip across town can make it difficult to monitor your email inbox. Spam piles up and messages from Mom or the boss languish unanswered. Low-volume email lists seem to explode in activity the minute you leave town. You eventually return to an inbox where urgent messages are camouflaged by the latest spam hawking prescription drugs. You might as well settle in for the duration because now you have to pay the piper. Going through your email is going to take some serious time.
Checking email on a regular basis when I'm away from my home computer is a necessity, or things will get out of hand very quickly. But how can you be two places at once? When it comes to email, it can be done!
Web-Based Email
Web email has been around for a relatively long time in Internet years and has several advantages. Because it is web-based, you can use it from any web-connected computer. During registration, you choose an email address specific to the email site, i.e., cindy@yahoo.com and then access the web interface to pick up your email. You can also use your web-based email account to pick up email from your regular POP or IMAP email account. For example, I can configure my Yahoo! email account to pick up my Earthlink email. And many of these web-based email accounts are free, with the option of increased features and storage for a fee.
Hotmail was one of the first, perhaps THE first to offer web-based email. It quickly became known as a haven for spammers who quickly set up temporary email accounts, sent out spam, and then abandoned the account just as quickly. Most reputable web email web services have addressed the spammer issue as best they could by placing limitations on the volume of email being sent. Hotmail is still a popular choice for webmail, and was rated 4 out of 5 stars in recent PC Magazine. (Can E-Mail Survive, Feb. 17, 2004 .)
PC Magazine's editor's choice for web email went to Mailblocks Extended Service. PC World also liked Mailblocks so much they awarded it a “Best Buy”. After all these rave reviews, I decided to try Mailblocks out for myself.
Mailblocks can collect email from POP email accounts, Yahoo!, Hotmail and even AOL, and uses an email challenge/response technology, as well as disposable email addresses (DEAs) to filter out spam
The Mailblocks DEAs are called trackers. All messages sent to tracker addresses arrive in your inbox just like any other email. But should you start receiving spam addressed to a tracker, you can delete the address, stopping the spam in its tracks without affecting any of your other email addresses.
But Mailblocks offers much more in their "challenge/response" system which works as follows:
- An email arrives addressed to you.
- If the sender was previously approved by you, or appears in your address book, the email is delivered to your inbox.
- If the sender is new to you, it goes to a pending folder.
- A "challenge" email is sent to the sender, asking the sender to type a confirmation number into a box.
- Upon completion of the confirmation by the sender, the email is moved from your pending folder to your inbox.
By the way, mail addressed to trackers is not subject to the challenge-response system, which is important for automated mail. After all, there's no one on the other end to respond to the challenge!
After starting my Mailblocks account, I changed all of my mailing list subscriptions to deliver to a Mailblocks tracker address set up just for this purpose. I have had no problems posting to my email lists. I simply choose the correct tracker address from the drop-down box in the compose window so the “from” address is the appropriate one for that list. I've set up another tracker to use for web site registration, another one for work-related purposes, and one for shopping. My hope is that this will result in a well-trained inbox that I can review in a snap; so far, so good.
But there are more reasons to like Mailblocks other than just its superior spam-fighting capabilities.
The interface is clean and efficient so it chugs along at a fair rate of speed in comparison to other web-based email. You can opt to pick up your email with Outlook, Outlook Express or Eudora software programs if you subscribe to the basic or premium service. For example, a couple of times a week, I pick up everything in my Mailblocks inbox via Outlook so long-term email storage can take place on my computer. A free, ad-based service is also available. The only downside is the lack of virus checking for attached files, something that Yahoo Mail has offered for some time now, and can be critically important.
Speaking of which, I've used Yahoo! Mail for many years, both the free and pay versions. It includes a fairly decent spam filter, and is very easy to use. An address book, calendar and notepad is also included. For a little extra money you can get extra storage and email forwarding. You can even subscribe to Yahoo! By Phone, and listen to your email over the phone if you like that kind of thing.
Mail2web differs from most web-based email in that it doesn't offer an email account; it simply allows you to quickly and easily pick up email from OTHER email accounts. You don't even have to register, just type in your email address and password and you'll be able to access mail on your regular POP email account.
Your Internet service provider may also offer web mail but I'll warn you, in my experience, these email services are short on features, and can be painfully slow.
So if web mail is so great, why not just give up on Outlook and collect all your email on the web? For one thing, email is inevitably slower on the web. When using Outlook, your messages are downloaded to your computer so browsing and storing your messages is very quick. On the web, the pages have to refresh whenever you take an action, which inevitably slows things down. And as good as some of the web services are, they don't have all the bells and whistles provided by a full-featured email program. You can't use the spam-blocking software, filters, folders, etc. that you may have configured on your home computer and there are storage limitations as well, though you can typically increase storage for a fee. Search functionality is also noticeably absent on most web mail services.
But I've found the biggest drawback to web email is managing email in two different locations. Is that important message I sent last week on Yahoo, or is it on my hard drive?
Remote Control via the Web
If you find these drawbacks to web-based email discouraging, don't worry. After all, I promised that you could be in two places at once, and you can. Instead of web-based email you can opt to connect directly to your computer when away by using remote control software. Keep in mind that these services will require you to leave your computer turned on and connected to the Internet so a cable or DSL “always on” connection is a requirement.
The leader in the field of remote control software is unequivocally Gotomypc.com. For a monthly subscription cost of $19.95 per month or $179.40 per year you can connect to your computer's desktop from just about any web browser. Here's how it works. First you install the Gotomypc plug-in on the PC you want to be able to reach, in my case, that's my home computer. (You'll definitely need a high-speed Internet connection in order for this to be a satisfying experience. A java-enabled browser is required.) When I'm away from home and want to use my home PC for email, or any other purpose such as checking to see if I've paid last month's electric bill, I open my web browser and type www.gotomypc.com, click connect, fill in my user name and password, then ANOTHER password (security is important, after all), and voila, I'm able to see and control my home computer.
I can pick up my email using Outlook, run Quicken to check my bank balance, etc. All my sent email will, of course, be saved in my sent file. My spam filters will work just as they do from home because, after all, I AM at home. I've even used gotomypc to test a web site that was behaving badly at work to see how it would run in a more generic environment. You can also transfer files from your remote computer to your host computer. The last time we had a thunder storm I used Gotomypc to turn off my home computer while I was at the office.
I've sometimes wondered if my house cleaners were ever startled to see my computer apparently operating all by itself. And this does bring up a privacy concern. You have no way of knowing if someone is watching what you're doing on the computer you're connecting to, since you're not physically in the room, so keep that in mind. Keeping your monitor turned off when you're away will help, but isn't failsafe.
You can also use Gotomypc to share your desktop with someone else in a remote location by right-clicking on the gotomypc icon in your system tray and selecting “Invite Guest to PC.”
GotoMyPC PocketView has been introduced for use with PDAs, but as noted by one reviewer ( GoToMyPC Gets Pocketed, by Harry McCracken, PC World, September 2003 ) , “..maneuvering my system's 1152-by-864 desktop from a 240-by-320 screen was unwieldy in the extreme.” Everything has its limitations.
Certainly in large organizations your IT department may have security concerns about using a tool like this at work. So tread carefully, and don't run Gotomypc to connect to your work computer without discussing it with your technology people. By the way, Gotomypc also offers a corporate edition that employs RSA's SecurID technology for heavy-duty authentication. You'll likely see more of Gotomypc in enterprise situations as it was recently bought by the king of remote enterprise computing, Citrix.
Gotomypc may be the market leader for remote control, but it's not the only fish in the sea. LapLink Everywhere is a similar product with some significant differences.
LapLink Everywhere is designed to allow you to perform basic functions on your home PC via the web; predominately Outlook tasks, though you can also transfer files. After establishing an account, downloading the required software and logging on, you will see a web-based view of your Outlook inbox, contacts, notes, calendar and tasks. It doesn't look like Outlook mind you, but it functions in a similar way. You can even view your archives, though you can't sort them, which caused me some difficulties finding recent emails in my sent folder. By the way, in my testing, Laplink Everywhere didn't solve my “sent email” dilemma. The one email I sent via LE did not end up back in my Outlook sent folder. Oh well.
If you want complete access to your computer ala Gotomypc, you can opt for the LapLink Secure VNC. I didn't test this portion of the service, but reports indicate that it can be a bit of a slug.
If you don't have high-speed access to the computer you want to reach, LapLink Everywhere may work better for you than Gotomypc. LapLink Everywhere also reportedly works better via a PDA. Another consideration is cost. LapLink Everywhere is only $9.95 per month, compared to $19.95 per month for Gotomypc, though keep in mind that if you want LapLink Secure VNC you will be charged an additional $4.95 per month.
Wireless - The Ultimate Commitment
If you truly can't be away from your email for more than a few minutes, it may mean you're ready for the ultimate in email commitment, a wireless palm or pocket PC, or perhaps an Internet enabled cell phone. For information on available cell phone services see “Beyond the Dial Tone”, PC World, April 2004.)
The latest trend is a combined PDA/telephone such as the Treo or the BlackBerry 5810. It's a phone, no it's a PDA, no, it's two, two, two devices in one!
Selected airlines are making plans to cater to the Internet-addicted. Boeing has announced its Connexion high-speed Internet service that will allow you to pick up your email from your wireless laptop or PDA while cruising at 30,000 feet.
The options are limitless.
New Developments
Google upped the ante when it comes to web mail. On April 1 st they announced their own web-based email solution, Gmail. What makes Gmail revolutionary is their search-based approach; after all, it is Google we're talking about! They will be offering 1 gigabyte of memory, many times what the other web mail services offer. Why so much? The idea is that you'll never have to delete another email again. Every email can be saved, and later retrieved using the Google search technology.
Of course, there's no free lunch, and while Gmail will be no-cost option, your email message will be scanned for keywords, and text ads will be displayed that relate to the email you're reading. Only the Google computers will know your secrets, or at least that's the theory. But if the idea of seeing ads for antacids when viewing an email from a friend about his/her recent stomach problems gives you the creeps, Gmail may not be your cup of tea. Are there more serious privacy concerns? It's hard to know at this point, but at the very least you'll have to determine your own comfort level about your entire email history residing on a computer that is not your own.
Practice Safe Remote Computing
One last word concerning privacy concerns. Don't forget to practice safe computing. If you're picking up email on a public machine such as the kind you'd find in Internet cafés and hotel business centers, be sure to clear the browser cache, history and temporary Internet files. And make sure NOT to inadvertently save your password on that computer!! After all, there are limits. You may want remote access to your email, but you certainly don't want to provide it to others!
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