Friday, October 16, 2009

The Easy Way To Migrate From Yahoo Mail To Gmail

Having had my Gmail account for quite a while now, not to mention having given quite a few invitations out as well I have seen the question "How do I move my mail from Yahoo to Gmail?" asked quite a few times. In fact a quick Google search brings up plenty of examples in various groups and forums. Well I've done it, and more to the point perhaps, my old Yahoo mail is still arriving in my new Gmail account, the joys of GetMail!

In order to do this you will need 2 seperate programs:-
GetMail
YPOPS

Believe it or not it's then quite easy to follow,

for YPPOPS:-
1. Open up YPOPS configuration
2. Email Preferences > Receiving Email > Check download from Inbox and Bulk Mail
folders
3. Email Preferences > Receiving Email > Set a maximum number of e-mails to
download at a time (I use 25)
4. Email Preferences > Receiving Email > Select download all emails
5. Advanced Preferences > Security > Select "Secure transmission using MD5"
6. Advanced Preferences > Network > Use IP address 127.0.0.1 and Port 110
7. Miscellaneous > Play with these as you like, personally I hide everything and
start with Windows

And then for GetMail:-
1. Mail Settings > Enter your Hotmail Account Details, if you don't have a
Hotmail account enter any old rubbish - but you must enter something
2. Mail Settings > Check "Run At Startup", uncheck "Filter Spam" and "Ask To
Poll", set a polling interval (I use 5 mins)
3. Mail Settings > Extra Account Setup > Enter your Yahoo e-mail address,
password and "Account Type" of "Other POP", Check "Full Address" - Click
"Save" and close window
4. Mail Settings > Extra Account Setup > Select your Yahoo account, enter
"Forward To:" as your Gmail account, enter 127.0.0.1 and 110 as your POP
server and port
5. Mail Settings > Extra Account Setup > Enter valid SMTP details, you should be
able to get these from your ISP
6. Mail Settings > Extra Account Setup > Check the "Delete" option to remove the
original emails from Yahoo (Optional)
7. Mail Settings > Extra Account Setup > Click "Save" and close all GetMail
configuration windows

So thats it really, leave GetMail and YPOPS running and 25 e-mails will be forwarded every 5 minutes from Yahoo Mail to GMail (This could take a little time depending on how much mail you have in your account). Once all your old mail has been moved you may wish to change the option in point 4 to "download only unread mail". The best bit is from now on any mail received in your old account will be forwarded on to your GMail account meaning that you should never have to manually check your old account again. Enjoy!

How to Transfer Mails from one Email Account to another for Free

There can be several reasons why you may want to switch email service providers.

Reason #1. Your existing email address gets too much spam so you plan to dump the old account and switch to a new email address (a form of email bankruptcy).

Reason #2. You are leaving your existing job for higher studies and need to transfer all personal emails from the Microsoft Exchange server to your new university email account.

Reason #3. Your ISP’s email service isn’t reliable and you therefore plan to move to a free web based email service like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, etc.

Reason #4. You think the new email service from XYZ Inc. offers more features than your existing mail provider and hence want to make the move.


Moving Emails from One Account to Another


This illustration will help you visualize how to transfer email messages across the three most popular web email services. The transfer will happen online and you just need to specify the credentials (user name & password) of your old email account (from where you want to move message out) and your new email address (where you want to move messages in).

Moving to Windows Live Hotmail

Windows Live Hotmail is integrated with TrueSwitch so you can easily transfer emails from Yahoo Mail, AOL, Gmail, Live.com, .Mac, etc. to your shiny new Hotmail address. The same service may also be used for copying old email from an existing Hotmail account to a new Hotmail address.

Moving to Yahoo Mail

Like Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail too provides integration with TrueSwitch so you can easy copy mails from Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, Juno, Rocket Mail, etc. into your Yahoo! account. With TrueSwitch, you can also copy mails from one Yahoo! inbox to another without upgrading to Yahoo! Mail Plus.

Moving to Gmail / Google Apps

Gmail (or Google Apps for Email) has a built-in Mail Fetcher feature that lets you download email messages from 5 different email accounts that support POP access. You may therefore use this feature to move your old Hotmail or AOL messages into Gmail as both these service provide free POP3 access.

The migration from Yahoo! Mail to Gmail is slightly tricky but possible. Keep reading.

Trick: Move emails from Yahoo Mail to Gmail or Outlook without POP

The free account of Yahoo Mail doesn’t provide IMAP or POP3 access so you can’t move these emails into Gmail or a desktop client like Microsoft Outlook.

The Yahoo! Mail Plus upgrade will add POP3 access to you account at $20 per year but if you want to save some money, here’s an alternate but simple trick:

1. Create a new account at Windows Live Hotmail and fetch all your Yahoo! mails into this account using the free TrueSwitch Service.

2. Now that your mails are inside Hotmail, you can setup POP3 configuration to fetch those Yahoo messages into Gmail via Hotmail.

Migrating Emails Away from your ISP Account

TrueSwitch mentioned above supports all popular ISPs including Comcast, Verizon, CableVision, AT&T, etc. but if your ISP is not in the list and you don’t have the time to configure your email client for POP3 or IMAP access, check out Yippie Move.

It’s a online email transfer service similar to TrueSwitch but supports an even larger number of email service providers including the .edu addresses of certain colleges and universities in US. With YippieMove, you can choose folders (or labels in Gmail) that you want to copy to the new location without having to move the entire mailbox. The service is quick and easy but costs around $15 per email account.

Copying emails from Microsoft Exchange / Outlook

Every organization has a different policy with respect to corporate email so check with the administration if your Exchange service offers POP3 or IMAP access – if yes, you can easily transfer messages into any of the free web mail accounts directly as listed above. Also see these guides:

* Export Outlook email to your Gmail Account
* Copy Outlook Mail to Google Apps
* Transfer Mail to Hotmail via Outlook Connector

Email Transfer Complete? The Next Step

Now that all your message have moved to your new email address, you can set up a vacation responder in your old email account to auto-inform contacts about your new email address. Also check this guide on how to manage multiple email addresses.

Friday, October 9, 2009

5 Foods That Sabotage Your Sleep

1 of 5

Preserved and smoked meats

5095659CA91896053B9EE88735DA8If you're having trouble sleeping, what about a midnight snack? Think twice—here are five foods that can prevent you from getting a good night's rest:

Slap your hand away when it reaches to make a ham sandwich as an evening snack. Ham, bacon, sausages, and smoked meats contain high levels of the amino acid tyramine, which triggers the brain to release norepinephrine, a brain stimulant that makes us feel alert and wired.

 

 

2 of 5

Chocolate

42E6A6CB1856E150A0466C26416864Love an evening cup of cocoa? That sundae in front of the TV? Be careful of chocolate in all its disguises. Many people are increasingly sensitive to caffeine as they get older, and even the little chocolate chunks in chocolate chip ice cream could zap you just enough to prevent ZZZZs. Chocolate also contains tyrosine, a stimulating amino acid.

 

 

 

3 of 5

Energy drinks

6A69FC20C3A25081EC7CDD1E399826Red Bull and other energy drinks are high in caffeine as well as the amino acid taurine, which boosts alertness and adrenaline. Recent studies have shown that even if you drink energy drinks early in the day, the combined high dosage of taurine and caffeine can make it hard to sleep, or to sleep well, later on.

 

 

 

4 of 5

8FDC71AE8B18C11D1364D286815B1Tomato sauce, chili, pizza, and spicy foods

Digestive disturbances are a common source of sleep problems, but many people fail to make the connection. Acidic and spicy foods can cause reflux, heartburn, and other symptoms that interrupt sleep.

 

 

 

5 of 5

The nightcap

AC1EEF3D516D79480A376F17504FA drink or two may make you feel more relaxed after dinner, but it comes back to haunt you—literally—a few hours later, by preventing you from achieving deep sleep. And because alcohol both dehydrates you and makes you have to pee, it wakes you up, too. Wine is high in the stimulant tyrosine as well.

Ubuntu vs Vista vs Windows 7

In depth: A lot of people have been chattering about the improvements Windows 7 brings for Windows users, but how does it compare to Ubuntu in real-world tests? We put Ubuntu 8.10, Windows Vista and Windows 7 through their paces in both 32-bit and 64-bit tests to see just how well Ubuntu faces the new contender. And, just for luck, we threw in a few tests using Jaunty Jackalope with ext4.

When Windows users say that Windows 7 is easier to install than ever, what do they really mean? When they say it's faster, is it just in their heads, or is Microsoft really making big strides forward? And, perhaps most importantly, when Linux benchmarkers show us how screamingly fast ext4 is compared to ext3, how well do those figures actually transfer to end users?

These are the questions we wanted to answer, so we asked Dell to provide us with a high-spec machine to give all the operating systems room to perform to their max. Our test machine packed an Intel Core i7 920, which in layman's terms has four cores running at 2.67GHz with hyperthreading and 8MB of L3 cache. It also had 6GB of RAM, plus two 500GB of hard drives with 16MB of cache.

The tests we wanted to perform for each operating system were:

  • How long does each operating system take to install?
  • How much disk space was used in the standard install?
  • How long does boot up and shutdown take?
  • How long does it take to copy files from USB to HD, and from HD to HD?
  • How fast can it execute the Richards benchmark?

We also, just for the heck of it, kept track of how many mouse clicks it took to install each OS.

Before we jump into the results, there are a few things we should make clear:

  • To ensure absolute fairness, install time was measured from the moment the computer was turned on until we reached a working desktop.
  • The same computer hardware was used for all tests, and all operating systems were installed fresh for this article.
  • We used the Ultimate versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7, simply because Windows 7 was provided only in this flavour.
  • We used the Windows Vista SP1 disk to accurately reflect what users are likely to experience todaay.
  • Our Windows 7 version is the open beta that Microsoft issued recently. It is probable Windows 7 will be at least this fast in the final build, if not faster.
  • For Ubuntu 9.04 we used the daily build from January 22nd.
  • All operating systems were installed using standard options; nothing was changed.
  • After checking how much space was used during the initial install, each operating system was updated with all available patches before any other tests were performed.
  • Our journalistic friends have informed us that Windows Vista (and, presumably, Windows 7 too) has technology to increase the speed of the system over time as it learns to cache programs intelligently. It also allows users to use flash drives to act as temporary storage to boost speed further. None of our tests are likely to show this technology in action, so please take that into account when reading the results.
  • The filesystem, boot, shutdown and Richards benchmarks were performed three times each then averaged.

And, of course, there's the most important proviso of all: it is very, very likely that a few tweaks to any of these operating systems could have made a big difference to these results, but we're not too interested in that - these results reflect what you get you install a plain vanilla OS, like most users do.

Install time

Amount of time taken to install, from machine being turned on to working desktop. Measured in seconds; less is better.

At first glance, you might think that Ubuntu clearly installs far faster than either version of Windows, and while that's true there is one important mitigation: both Windows Vista and Windows 7 run system benchmarks part-way through the installation to determine the computer's capabilities.

A bit of a flippant one - just how many mouse clicks does it take to install an OS with the default options?

Surprisingly, Ubuntu 8.10 gets it done with half the clicks of Windows 7. NB: hopefully it's clear this doesn't make Ubuntu 8.04 twice as easy to install. Measured in, er, mouse clicks; fewer is better.

Disk space used immediately after a fresh install. Measured in gigabytes; less is better.

While some people might complain that we used the Ultimate editions of both Vista and Windows 7, they probably forget that the standard Ubuntu includes software such as an office suite as standard. NB: Vista failed to detect the network card during install, leaving us without an internet connection until a driver was downloaded on another computer.

Bootup and shutdown

Boot up time was also measured from the moment the machine was turned on, and the timer was stopped as soon as the desktop was reached. The Dell box does take about 20 seconds to get past POST, but to avoid questions about when to start the timer we just started it as soon as the power button was pressed.

Amount of time taken to boot, from machine being turned on to working desktop. Measured in seconds; less is better.

The 32-bit version of Windows 7 is the only one to beat the one-minute mark, but that advantage is quickly lost in the switch to 64-bit. Linux has always been rather slow to boot, but as we understand it reducing boot time is one of the goals of the Ubuntu 9.04 release.

Amount of time taken to shutdown, from button being clicked to machine powering off. Measured in seconds; less is better.

Windows lags a little behind the Linuxes, with 64-bit again proving a sticking point - this time for Windows Vista.

IO testing

To test filesystem performance, we ran four tests: copying large files from USB to HD, copying large files from HD to HD, copying small files from USB to HD, and copying small files from HD to HD. The HD to HD tests copied data from one part of the disk to another as opposed to copying to a different disk. For reference, the large file test comprised 39 files in 1 folder, making 399MB in total; the small file test comprised 2,154 files in 127 folders, making 603MB in total. Each of these tests were done with write caching disabled to ensure the full write had taken place.

Amount of time taken to copy the small files from a USB flash drive to hard disk. Measured in seconds; less is better.

Amount of time taken to copy the small files from one place to another on a single hard disk. Measured in seconds; less is better.

Let us take this opportunity to remind readers that Windows 7 is still at least nine months from release.

Amount of time taken to copy the large files from a USB flash drive to hard disk. Measured in seconds; less is better.

Amount of time taken to copy the large files from one place to another on a single hard disk. Measured in seconds; less is better.

With the exception of Windows 7 while copying larges files around a hard drive, Windows generally suffered compared to Linux in all of these tests. Obviously Windows does have to worry about some things that Linux doesn't, namely DRM checks, but these figures show a drastic performance difference between the two.

Notes: Vista and Windows 7 really seemed to struggle with copying lots of small files, but clearly it's something more than a dodgy driver because some of the large-file speeds are incredible in Windows 7.

Both Vista and Windows 7 seemed to introduce random delays when deleting files. For example, about one in three times when deleting the files from our filesystem benchmark, this screen below would appear and do nothing for 25-30 seconds before suddenly springing into action and deleting the files. However, this wasn't part of our benchmark, so isn't included in the numbers above.

This was very annoying.

Richards benchmark

Notes: This was done using the cross-platform Python port of Richards. For reference, Ubuntu 8.10 uses Python 2.5.2, Ubuntu 9.04 uses Python 2.5.4, and we used Python 2.5.4 on the Windows tests. Even though the 64-bit results for Linux and Windows don't look that far apart, we have to admit to being very impressed with the Windows tests - the deviation between tests was just 3ms on Vista, and 5ms on Windows 7, compared to 20ms on Linux.

Amount of time taken to execute the Python Richards benchmark. Measured in milliseconds; less is better.

It's clear from that graph that having a 64-bit OS can make a real difference in compute-intensive tasks, but it's not too pleasing to see Windows pip Linux to the post in nearly all results.

Switching to ext4

All the Linux benchmarks above were done using ext3, so what happens when we switch to ext4? Well, not a lot:

Boot, shutdown and filesystem tests for Ubuntu 9.04/x86-64 using ext3 (blue) and ext4 (red). Measured in seconds; less is better.

Although there's no difference in shutdown speed, the boot time using ext4 dropped by 8 seconds, which is a fair improvement. We can probably discount the the USB to HD tests simply out of error margin, which leaves the HD to HD tests, and there we find a very healthy boost: 3.7 seconds were shaved off the small files test, making ext4 about 25% faster. Our tests also showed an improvement in the large file test, but it's not as marked.

Conclusions

Benchmarks are always plagued with questions, uncertainties, error margins and other complexities, which is why we're not going to try to look too deeply into these figures. Obviously we're Linux users ourselves, but our tests have shown that there are some places where Windows 7 really is making some improvement and that's good for competition in the long term. However, Linux isn't sitting still: with ext4 now stable we expect it to be adopted into distros fairly quickly. Sadly it looks like Ubuntu 9.04 won't be among the first distros to make the switch, so users looking to get the best performance from their Linux boxes will either have to fiddle with the default options, have patience, or jump ship to Fedora - which will be switching to ext4 in the next release..

 

Read More HERE!!

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Ten Simple Ways Apple Can Improve the iPhone

While the tech world waits in thrall for news of the fabled Apple tablet to appear, we should also hope that Cupertino continues to refine its current best seller, the iPhone.

Yes, the device is already a pleasure to use, with copious grace notes sprinkled throughout the operating system -- songs fade out when you receive a call, for instance, and then there's the gorgeous simplicity of visual voicemail. But let's be honest. The interface and built-in apps do have their annoyances. Let me get this straight, Apple: I can cut video on my iPhone 3GS, but I can't edit a playlist?

As a daily iPhone user, I've compiled a list of simple and significant ways Apple can improve its own suite of apps and the iPhone OS itself. Here's my top 10:

1. A more useful "slide to unlock" screen. Show my unread email count, the weather, or upcoming appointments.

2. Fewer taps to move between mail inboxes. Right now, checking my two inboxes requires seven taps: Mail >> Gmail >> Inbox << Gmail << Accounts >> Newsweek >> Inbox. There has to be a better way to navigate.

3. Facebook and Twitter integration with Contacts. Once I've logged into the Facebook app, why can't it populate my contacts list with photos, birthdays, and other information?

4. The weather icon should show the current weather. Just like the calendar icon displays the current date.

5. A new app that shows your minute and text message balances. Yes, you can get this information by dialing *646# and *3282#, respectively; and yes, AT&T offers its own app. But both methods are annoying. (The AT&T app requires a password every time you use it.)

6. A battery app. This could show the battery's overall health (as degraded from its factory state), its expected replacement date, plus stats like average use between charges.

7. A character counter when composing text messages. I'm always wondering if I've gone over 160 characters.

8. A way to delete built-in apps. Some aren't so great. I never use Stocks, and there are better calculator apps than the one Apple offers. Why can't I hide these?

9. Improve how appointments are added to the calendar. The current method requires too many finger taps, and there's no way to add default settings, like always having a 15-minute alert.

10. "Alarms" built into Maps. If you're using the Maps application while driving (I know, I know, bad idea), it would be super useful for the phone to sound an alert when GPS detects that you're at a given distance from your next turn -- say, one mile before your highway exit, or one block before your left turn.

What iPhone tweaks would you like Apple to address officially? Leave your wish list items in the comments.