Interact with Websites via Easy to Remember Email Addresses

And since they’re so logical, it means other people will also be able to post photos to your Flickr account, videos to your YouTube account and documents to your Google Docs account!

Very interesting ! How do you get those inspirations ?

@Tony… logical doesn’t mean publicly known… you could setup your initial account to be something like a number which only you know, and then make aliases around it.

thats actually very logical. I’m sure people would have been using it but thanks for putting it in words.

@Vaibhav: Of course. There’s always a way around it but that means you’d then have to remember your new initial account address. And the article specifically says “your single Gmail account acts as a central hub” implying that you should do this using your main Gmail account.

Perhaps using a forwarderr like link (where secretcode is the same self-selected code for all your services) would have been a better suggestion.

actually you dont need to setup seperate email id. you can create filter for - Matches: from: ‘own email id’(xxx@gmail.com) subject:(’FLICKR:’) has:attachment (mark ‘has attachment’)
Do this: Forward to link , Delete it
and you can create many filters for youtube,…

you just need to use the same id with different subject line ‘FLICKR’ or ‘YOUTUBE’ for different forward id.

it works.

Tony - You don’t need an additional secret code - just make sure that the gmail address you use for forwarding is not public. So if my main id is xyz@gmail, I could setup abc@gmail for such forwards..

Yuva - I don’t think Gmail filters work on emails that you send to your own email address as this might go into an infinite loop.

@Amit: OK. That wasn’t clear in the article though (especially with the reference to “your single Gmail account”). But why bother creating another “secret” Gmail account when a “secret” code could achieve the same thing? You’d still have to remember another string. So if your email address is xyz@gmail.com and you were going to use abc@gmail.com as your new secret address, you may as well just use link instead.

actually i just tired it does.. [you might need to select 'choose action' - "Skip the Inbox (Archive it)" ]

thanks for your response.

@Tony… hmm.. let’s say my main account is link

my flickr would be link

xxxx is a pin (which is much easier to remember as compared to the original flickr email that you will have to remember).

Cheers.

Not sure if Gmail filters work on messages that are self-addressed.

Amit: I tried it before posting that comment and it worked just fine. (At least, it automatically added a tag without any problems; I didn’t try forwarding the mail…)

Isn’t it easier just to make those addresses contacts? When I want to send a task to Remember the Milk or a mail to Evernote, I just type “Rem” or “Eve” and the autocomplete does the rest.

Good tip, but for simplicity, I just set up a contact for these types of things. I have a “Flickr” contact, for example, that I use to upload my photos.

I find it useful to create filters based on alias email addresses using basic regular expressions.

So instead of to:”abnol+gdocs@gmail.com” I would use to:”abnol*+gdocs*gmail.com”

This way, you can create filters that can work together. For instance if you want to star a mail and forward it to gdocs, you could send the mail to the addresses link

My modified filter would still match this toAddress.

@Tony and others
You assume a lot if you think your webapps are going to be spammed by using this tip. Who in the world brute forces plus addresses? 95% of the net doesn’t even know what a plus address is. Yeah, if you’re paranoid, you could use a 2nd account… or you could add a secret code… or you could make your plus adresses different (i.e.- “+flick” or “+utube” etc.)

Persoanlly, I think it’s a great tip, and I’ll go you one further: I’m using Google Apps for my domain, and I’m going to set up specific addresses@mydomain for each forward! No plussing, needed.

Forget the secret codes. Set up an additional filter for youremail+theservice@gmail.com that discards any message sent to it that IS NOT from link (or any other email that you want to allow).

I wish there was a way to do the same with Picasa. Is there?

Thanks for the post Amit, I’ll stick to Gmail-filters!

Um, I just put the addresses in my Gmail address book. Since it auto-completes, all I have to type is “Goog” and I can hit Enter and the address stored under “Google Docs” will show up. Same thing for IWantSandy.com or RTM.

No memorizing or setting up filters. WAAAAY simpler.

Even easier is to rename the contact to the service name. For example Flickr for the secret Flickr address. Then when you start typing Flickr in the To field that contact will show up. No filtering is needed.

What a great idea. Kudos!

I had used this method for some time, in the past. Now a days I get time to post them and edit them. This tool is useful when you don’t have access or you don’t have time.

Excellent idea!

No doubt a great idea indeed.

It is a smart idea, and finally found a good use of google’s link thing.. I am doing fine with my address book: i renamed the email to something easier to remember, like flickr gallery… etc.