Wednesday, December 10, 2008

I'm Cleaning Out My Inbox

This is something that I should have done ages ago, something I should do on a regular basis, but I don't. Now I have to. I've been using an email address from AOL that let me pick my own domain. I hadn't really thought about it until now, but they actually registered the domain I chose and allowed me to use it for my email. Well, now they're releasing those domains. They've given me until the end of the month to transfer the domain if I want to continue using it. Otherwise all my email goes away. At least it looks that way. I can't find any way to just convert that email address to a regular AOL or aim.com address.

I really don't need to keep that domain because I've really only given that email out to a couple people. I can easily notify them that it's going to change. The problem I have is that one of those people is a big time email forwarder. Since he's practically the only person who emails me there, I have practically every email he's ever forwarded sitting there in my inbox. Do I just leave it there, let it go, and figure I'll get plenty of forwards in the future? Some people could probably do that, but not me. Luckily, I just found out about a new service called ForwardOn, and I'm forwarding all the emails in my inbox there. At least, as many as I can get to before the end of the month.

ForwardOn is a free and easy alternative to all those email forwards. When you get an email, instead of forwarding it to all your friends, you know you've been guilty of this, simply forward it to ForwardOn. You can send all kinds of attachments, photos, video, Powerpoint, etc. ForwardOn will host the email and send you a link. Then, if you just have to share with all your friends, simply send them the ForwardOn link - like this one. No more cluttered inboxes or email messages that take forever to download. Your friends who still have dial-up will thank you! No more worry about viruses in email attachments.

You earn points when people view your emails, and points can be redeemed for rewards or donated to charity. I haven't really checked into the points and rewards yet. I'm more interested in cleaning out my inbox, and maybe convincing my email forwarding friends to start using ForwardOn so I can keep it cleaned out.