Posts Tagged ‘Mail’

Remember back when people used to send cards?  They were attractive, personal and really conveyed an idea in a visual way.  Using the Stationary feature that’s built into Mail, you can still send thoughtful correspondence, eye catching invitations and fun photo collages without making a trip to the post office!

Open a New Message in Mail and take a look over on the right side of the tool bar at the top.  There should be two buttons there, Photo Browser and Show Stationary.  If you don’t see the buttons, it just means that your window isn’t opened wide enough to see them; look for the two little arrows pointing right and click on them.  Click on Show Stationary.

You’ll notice that a bar opens just above the message section of the screen that shows 5 images.  These are the choices we have for how we want our email to look.  Don’t get discouraged that there are only 5, if you look on the left side of that bar,  you’ll notice that we’re only looking at Birthday stationary right now.  Click on each of the topics to discover all the choices you’ve got.  When you’ve checked them all out, choose on Announcements, and then select Dinner.  By selecting one of the Stationary examples in the bar, the message field gets formatted to match.  Now all we have to do is fill in the placeholder items and we’ll have a beautiful looking email to send to our friends.  To practice, let’s make an invitation for an afternoon get-together for 3:00 on Saturday.

First, we need to replace the photo.  Sure these people are good-looking, but I don’t know them and would rather have some of my attractive friends there.  Use the Photo Browser to find the perfect photo in your iPhoto library and drag it right on top of the existing photo.  Mail does all the cropping and rotation for you so that it fits into the same space.

Next, “Thanks for dining with us.”  Well we haven’t dined yet, so we need to change this headline.  Just click on the sentence, highlight the text and then type in your message.  For a quick way to select all text at the same time, triple click on any of the words in the sentence, then just start typing.

Now we’ve got some jibberish that looks like Latin.  Its actually type setter’s placeholder text.  Again, just highlight that text (triple click!) and type in your own message.

Now all that’s left to be done is to address the email and give it a subject and its ready to send!

If you really like using Stationary in Mail, you might quickly realize that there only a limited number of designs to choose from.  Equinux makes a equinux Stationery Pack 2 to add on to Mail to give you hundreds of new options for customizing your email using Stationary.

iPhoto is an extraordinary tool for organizing your photos and sharing a several photos at a time is really easy with iDisk and Facebook.  Sharing a one or two individual photos can be just as easy by emailing them using the Photo Browser in Mail. 

The Photo Browser is an interface built into Mail that acts as a window to your iPhoto library, allowing look through your Events and Albums and find the photos you’re looking for. 

To start, open Mail and start a New Message by clicking the New Message button in the toolbar or using the shortcut COMMAND+N.  Click in the message section of this window to let the computer know that is where we’re going to put the photo.  (If you want the photo to be in the middle of your message, write the first part before inserting the photos.) Now look across the Toolbar, all the way on the right hand side and you should see the Photo Browser button.  Click it to open the Photo Browser.

(If you see two little arrows instead of this button, it means that you need to open that window wider to reveal it.)

Once the Photo Browser opens, you’ll notice that the organizational system in this window is almost EXACTLY the same as the sidebar in iPhoto and has links for both Event and Photos.  Scroll down that list and you’ll see all your Albums, Smart Albums, Mobile Me Galleries, Facebook Galleries etc…  Click on which ever event or album has the photo you want to email and you’ll see its contents on the bottom half of the Photo Browser window.  Find the photo you want, drag it in to the New Message window and drop it where you want the photo to appear.

When the photo first comes in, its probably going to be solid blue or grey.  Don’t panic. The solid color is just a highlight indicating that the photo is ‘selected,’  click somewhere else in the Message window and the highlight will go away.

Repeat this step for another photo or two if you want to send multiples, but keep in mind that some people have difficulty receiving multiple photos at one time and that most email providers have limits on the size of emails.

Once you’ve got your photos in, look at the bottom edge of the Message window, on the right hand side, and you’ll see “Image Size” with a drop down box next to it.  You can change the size of the photos you’re sending to help with speed and ease of download of the recipient here.  Sending three photos?  Let’s choose Small.  Just one photo for Grandma and we know she’s probably going to print it?  Choose Actual Size.

Try out various ways of attaching your photos to find your own style.  Do you like the photo at Actual Size at the top with your message underneath?  How about a message that has Small photos peppered throughout it?  Mail and the Photo Browser gives you the ability to be as creative with your email as you like, quickly and easily.

More and more, everyone and their monkey is asking for an email address; buying things online, listing on Craigslist, even attending the neighborhood get together isn’t safe anymore…everyone wants an email address and, inevitably, they are probably going to send you stuff you don’t want your email address attached to.

There two easy solutions for this dilemma.  The first one is to set up a Gmail account that you only use for mass-mailing type people.  This allows you to give all those people an email address without actually putting your personal email address out in cyberspace.  You just have to remember to check it after you’ve made purchases to get receipts and shipping notices etc.

The second option, and I think a great one, is to set up an Alias on your Mobile Me account and start giving that one out to non-close friends.  An Alias is an email address, different than your first one, that comes to the same mailbox.  You can both send and receive mail through it and it’s a great way to have a second email address without actually having to check another mailbox.  By using an alias, I can list things on Craigslist and respond to potential buyers without having to give them my personal email.  Here’s how to set one up.

First, log in to the Mobile Me web interface at www.me.com with your mobile me sign in and password.  Once the page loads, look for the button in the tool bar that has a little gear on it; click on it and select Preferences.

On the Mail Preferences screen that pops up, we want to look for the Aliases tab on the top of the screen.

Click the Add New Alias button and just fill in the boxes going from left to right.  What you put in the first box will become your email address (see the little ‘@me.com’ already written in for you?)  If you type ‘ilovecraigslist’ in that box, your email becomes ‘ilovecraigslist@me.com’.  If you’re creative, you can use the ‘@me’ part ot make your email address something funny like: ‘wink@me.com,’ ‘holler@me.com,’ or the ever popular ‘stoplooking@me.com.’

The second box, which is optional, is what will show in the FROM field when someone receives an email from you.  If you don’t want people to know your real name when you write to them using this email address, type in something like ‘Craigslist Seller,’ or ‘eBay Maniac.’  If you don’t want a name, just leave it blank and your alias will appear in that field instead.

The ‘Color’ column is asking if you want to code emails to this alias with a particular color to help you identify them quickly in your in box.  Pick a color if you like and click the Create button.

Now mail sent to this alias will show up in your MobileMe inbox.  To send messages from this alias, you need to go into the Preferences for Mail, choose the Accounts tab, select your Mobile Me account and add the alias name to the ‘email addresses’ field.  You should already have a couple of names there, one at ‘me.com’ and one at ‘mac.com’; just put a comma after the last one and add your new alias there.

Now you’re ready to buy online, sell on eBay, post on discussion boards and list on Craigslist with the comfort of knowing that your ‘real’ email address isn’t being fed out to all the spammers of the world!