HOWTO: Fix GMail On The iPhone

I learned that GMail does not like to play friendly with the iPhone. Upon further investigation this is an issue with GMail’s POP3 settings affecting Blackberries, Thunderbird, Outlook, and other POP clients alike.

The Problem

GMail does not use folders to store its e-mails, therefore all e-mails are sitting in the inbox, but are tagged differently. Based on these tags you have your Sent mail, archived, trash etc. The annoying part about this occurs when you use a client whether it be a desktop e-mail application or your mobile device, to POP GMail you end up receiving all of your sent e-mails to your inbox. This is because the client can’t differentiate between GMail’s tags, therefore it thinks it is sitting in the Inbox, which it really is.

The Fix (for the iPhone but will work similarly on other devices/clients)

1. Create an e-mail address with AOL
2. Setup Mail Forwarding on your GMail account to the new AOL account
3. Add an “Other” account on the iPhone
4. Make sure the Incoming Server is imap.aol.com with your username and password
5. Make sure the Outgoing Server is smtp.gmail.com with your username and password

Voila, you can now receive e-mails without having to worry about your sent messages showing up in your inbox. Since you are using the GMail SMTP your sent messages are archived in GMail and are fully searchable.

* Some side effects to note – GMail will forward all of your mail, so if you have read it in GMail it will not be marked as read when it goes to AOL, so you may have to read the same message twice if you read it on the GMail web client and on your iPhone.

Drag and Drop Attachments in GMail

I’m a Google-holic. I use GMail and Google Calendar religiously. One thing that always bothered me about GMail was the fact I couldn’t drag and drop my attachments into the browser. Lucky for me I found this useful Firefox extension called dragdropupload that allows me to do so.

Secure Your Connection With Open Source

You never know who may be watching your connection. With constitution violators like AT&T and other service providers your data can be in the hands of big brother. Here are a few tips for securing your online experience, so you can enjoy the web in peace.

1. Encrypt E-Mail Messages

Assuming you use GMail, FireGPG is a great Firefox extension that encrypts your messages. It can only be decrypted with a GPG key that only trusted parties will have access to.

2. Encrypt Instant Messages

GAIM is the most popular instant messaging platform on the internet. Encrypting your messages is cake with the gaim-encryption plugin. Nobody likes an eavesdropper.

3. Encrypt Torrent Downloads

With bit-torrent activity coming under heavy fire from the RIAA and Hollywood, encrypting your torrents is important. Azureus allows you to enable Transport Encryption which will make it harder to track what you are downloading.

4. Block Suspicious Incoming/Outgoing Connections

Peer Gaurdian is a great tool that blocks incoming and outgoing connections based on IP blocklists. Government probes, RIAA bots, and and spyware won’t be able to enter or exit your computer.

5. Anonymize Internet Surfing

Who really needs to know exactly which sites you are visiting? Xerobank Browser (previously called Torpark) lets you browse the web anonymously so that your IP is not exposed. You can even get a portable version that runs off of your flash drive, in those times where you can’t browse the web from your own computer.

Security has its limitations. There are no patches for human stupidity, however there are open-source technologies that will suffice.

Post Scriptum:
For those of you interested in how the government and companies are sacrificing your privacy, be sure to check out the CNBC special Big Brother Big Business.

Search GMail From The Deskbar

I swear by the Deskbar applet. I swear by GMail. So lets put two and two together. Deskbar allows you to add “handlers” which are 3rd party extensions to this wonderful search utility. Here is a handler to allow Deskbar to search your GMail from within Ubuntu. Just save this script in your /home/.gnome2/deskbar-applet/handlers/ directory and it will automatically appear in your Deskbar Preferences. The script requires a little tweaking – you will need to hardcode your GMail username and password in order for it to work. At the top of the script there is a section:

GMAIL_USERNAME = ""
GMAIL_PASSWORD = ""

Which will require your attention. For a list of additional handlers click here. Another favorite Deskbar trick of mine is to integrate it with live Tracker search results. Deskbar is one of those utilities that make my daily computing, a little bit easier.