Want a quick and easy way to view all of your "Unread" messages? Here’s a neat tip submitted by Mark Worsham describing how…

Once again, the hard working Gmail Developers have implemented yet another much-requested feature: Import Contacts! Read on for more details…

For the best explanation of just how to Import Contacts, log into your Gmail account, click on Contacts, and click on the new “Import Contacts” link at the top of the Contacts screen.

But what can you import and how do you import? Gmail will let you import address books into Contacts from Yahoo!, Orkut, Outlook, and pretty much any other service by uploading CSV (Comma Separated Value) files to your Gmail account. You can even manually edit and create CVS files for importing using Microsoft Excel.

Just remember that currently, Gmail’s Contacts fields are limited to just “Name”, “Email Address”, and “Notes”. According to the Help screen, all other fields will be imported into the Notes field.

Gmail’s COntacts aren’t sophistocated, but now that you can Import, they certainly are more useful!

One small side note: On the Import Contacts Help page, it reads, “Because Gmail does not offer group or distribution list functionality at this time, this information won’t be transferred from other address books into your Gmail Contacts list.” The key words to me are “at this time”…not sure if this implies these functions will be incorporated or not, but we can dream…

After purchasing a new house, I needed to set up a network. An 802.11g wireless solution seemed to be the best choice, so after lots of research and planning, I purchased three Belkin F5D7230-4 routers and configured them to provide wireless routing, bridging, and access. Read on for what I did, how I did it, and how it has worked…

Multiple Belkin F5D7230-4 Router/Bridge/AP Setup HOWTO:

A Guide to Setting Up Multiple Belkin F5D7230-4 Router/Bridge/AP’s

By Jim Barr

Introduction

BACKGROUND:
My wife and I were fortunate enough to purchase a new-construction house. Unfortunatly, we purchased it just after all the walls were installed, so I was unable to have network cabling installed throughout the house. Bummer! The house certainly has ample attic and crawl space, but the notion of later installing whole-house wiring, though doable, was not too appealing. I tried installing an 802.11b network using some old Linksys equipment I had, but the throughput was simply too slow to stream ReplayTV shows, and for some reason, it wasn’t that stable. Also, thhough I’m in a relativly low traffic area, there are two other 802.11b accesspoints within range of the house, so I decided to go with an 802.11g network. The challenge was to determine how just what equipment I needed.

After pouring over countless posts on the AVS Forum, I decided to purchase three Belkin F5D7230-4 routers. There are many other router solutions on the market, and some offer higher speeds, but the one important feature of the Belkin F5D7230-4 router is that it can be configured as any combination of router, wireless access point, and wireless bridge. As of this writing, most comparable routers either don’t offer the same flexibility or they are priced much higher.

PURCHASING:
Initially, I decided to purchase three Belkin F5D7230-4 routers from CDW because my wife’s company gets an employee discount through them. I figured that $56.00 each was a fair price, so I ordered three. Their site, as well as an account manager, said that they were in stock and would be shipping in 1-2 business days. After about a week of my order status simply saying "Processing", I called them and they said that the Belkin F5D7230-4′s were backordered and would arrive in about a week or two. Needless to say, I wasn’t happy, so I canceled my order with them and placed an order with J&R Music and Computers (www.jr.com) The routers arrived just 4 days later, and they cost under $50 each (and I’ll even be getting a $20 rebate on one–very nice!) I have ordered several products from J&R, and I highly recommend them. They haven’t let me down yet. (CDW, however, is another story–at least they are consistent in their poor service.) OK, OK, this isn’t a "consumer report", so on to the good stuff…

BASIC SETUP:
Setup wasn’t as tough as I expected, but there are some idiosyncracies to work through, so patience is required. Within about an hour, I had everything in place and working wonderfully. Here is a simple block diagram of my setup:

[ISP] <-Coax Cable-> [Cable Modem] <-Patch Cable-> [Router 1] <-WiFi-> [Router 2] <-WiFi-> [Router 3]

DETAILS:

[Router 1]
-IP: Static 192.168.2.1
-DHCP Server: Enabled, range 192.168.2.101 – 192.168.2.120
-Configured as router and bridge
-Set up to bridge, accepting MAC address of [Router 2] only
-Set up WLAN as "56G-Only" and NOT allow Wireless Client access
-Set SSID to NOT broadcast -My wife’s Work VPN PC is connected via cable on a LAN port and gets its IP via DHCP from [router 1]

[Router 2]
-IP: Static 192.168.2.2
-DHCP Server: Disabled
-Set up as bridge only, accepting MAC addresses of [Router 1] and [Router 3] only
-Set up WLAN as "56G-Only" and NOT allow Wireless Client access
-Set SSID to NOT broadcast -My home office PC is connected via cable on a LAN port and gets its IP via DHCP from [router 1]
-My video editing PC is connected via cable on a LAN port and gets its IP via DHCP from [router 1]

[Router 3]
-IP: Static 192.168.2.3
-DHCP Server: Disabled
-Set up as bridge only, accepting MAC addresses of [Router 2] only
-Set up WLAN as "56G-Only" and allows Wireless Client access
-Set SSID to NOT broadcast -My ReplayTV 5040 is connected via cable to a LAN port and gets its IP via DHCP from [router 1]
-My 801.11g laptop connectes via WiFi and gets its IP via DHCP from [router 1]

All routers have the following in common:
-Version on box: 1444
-Firmware version: 4.x
-SSID is set to the same on all routers
-SSID Broadcast is turned OFF on all routers
-Channel was set to a channel not being used in my neighborhood
-I do not have WEP enabled yet, but I will in the near future.

THE SETUP PROCESS:
First off, I used my laptop to configure each F5D7230-4. I connected it with a cable through the F5D7230-4′s LAN port eliminating any need for wireless configuration on the laptop. This significantly simplified the setup. Because the F5D7230-4′s are so portable, if you don’t have a laptop, just use any PC and a network cable.

Setup of the first F5D7230-4 consisted of running the included setup disk on [router 1]. As mentioned above, I connected my Laptop through the LAN port, and the setup was a simple, 2-3 minute process. The end result was that I could connect my laptop to the Internet as well as connect to the Web-based configuration screen on [router 1]. I logged into the Web Configuration screen and set up the IP address, DHCP Server, and WLAN settings. (Note that when you change the IP address, you have to re-connect to the Web Configuration screen with the new IP address. I then enabled bridging and entered the MAC address of [router 2].

Next, I powered down my laptop and disconnected it from [router 1], connected it to [router 2] via cable to the LAN port, and powered on [router 2] and then my laptop. Note that [router 2] was NOT connected to anything else other than my laptop. Specifically, the WAN port was NOT connected. I then opened the Web Configuration screen on [router 2] and set the up the IP address, disabled the DHCP Server, and set the WLAN settings. I enabled bridging and entered the MAC addresses of [router 1] and [router 3] and I disabled wireless client access. I then rebooted [router 2] and the laptop. The end result was I was able to connect to the Internet through [router 2] and access the Web Configuration screens for both [router 1] and [router 2]. OK, I know it’s "just technology", but I have to admit that I found it very cool accessing the Internet connection and seeing no wires connecting the routers!

Setting up [router 3] was basically the same as setting up [router 2] with the exception of setting a unique IP address. Once set up, I rebooted everything for good measure, and was able to connect to the Internet through all three routers.

The only idiosyncracy to be aware of is that DHCP Server is enabled by default on the F5D7230-4, so there may be initial conflicts until you can disable the DHCP Server on all except one router (or wherever you want it set up, if at all.)

FULL SYSTEM RESTART:
At some point, I know I’ll have to do a complete "system" restart. This could be due to a power failure, a system glitch, or something entirely different. A full system restart would consist of: Power everything down. Power up in order, the cable modem, wait for it to sync. Completely power up [router 1]. I can then power up any device that directly connects to [router 1], specifically, my wife’s PC and [router 2]. Once [router 2] is completely powered up, I can then power up any device that directly connects to it, specifically, our home office PC and [router 3]. Once [router 3] is completely powered up, I can then power up any device that connects to [router 3], specifically, my video editing PC (and eventually, my ReplayTV.) If you think about it, the order really makes sense–you just have to look at things logically and understand the dependencies.

(Edit: I noticed after a month or so of use that powering on or off just about ANY device in ANY order "just works". The only exception is that [router 1] has to be on before anything else because it’s my DHCP server. Otherwise, it’s a very simple network to maintain.)

CONCLUSION:
So, what does this give me? Devices connected to LAN ports on each router can access any other device connected to any other LAN port on any other router including the Internet. 802.11g devices can connect via [router 3] and can access any other device on the network including the Internet. 802.11b devices can NOT connect to the network. I did this purposly to help reduce conflicts with neighboring 802.11b access points, to improve my network throughput, and to simplify the overall setup.

Note that I could set up wireless client access to go through [router 1] instead of [router 3] eliminating two hops, but due to the physical location of the routers, [router 3] gives me the best connectivity. Surprisingly, throughput, especially to the Internet, is excellent.

After working with this setup for about a month, I simply couldn’t be happier. Wireless access throughout my house with my laptop is very good, and throughput on all devices is excellent. Devices like my PC and the ReplayTV box simply "think" they are connected to a wired LAN (technically, they are) so there’s no special setups. Further, because I have my two PC’s connected to the same F5D7230-4, the F5D7230-4 is effectivly a 100MB switch which gives me high-speed throughput between the two PC’s.

The F5D7230-4 so far has proven to be an all-in-one workhorse that once configured, just works and works well. The design is excellent, and the configuration is pretty intuitive. Network novices may have some difficulty, but only because they may not be familiar with "routing" and "bridging" concepts. If you have any networking experience, it’s a snap. My only real recommendation is that you spend some time thinking through exactly what you are trying to accomplish before you start configuring. Overall, I highly recommend the F5D7230-4 and J & R Music and Computers as a source.

THANKS:
Thanks to those who assisted me with this setup. For once, a simple project in theory turned out to actually be a simple project in reality! That certainly is not typical! I want to thank "sfhub", "SpaceCadet", and "GooberedUp" on the ReplayTV Forum on the AVS Forum site in this thread for their excellent help.

One very important note to Gmail users: Gmail’s “Forward” function only forwards plain text. While this doesn’t affect most messages, this behavior can mangle HTML-formatted messages, dropping important formatting, images, and data. Read on for more information…

If you receive a message that has fancy formatting and/or includes inline graphics, when you click on Forward, Gmail strips out all the formatting and forwards only the plain text. This is very apparant with email originating from online services like AOL and with clients like Outlook. For example, I received an email from my parents’ AOL account that contained an inline graphic image. I could view it just fine in Gmail, but when I tried to forward it to my wife’s email account, it dropped the image and only forwarded the plain text. Yes, I could save the image and then attach it to the forward, but it’s a kludgy workaround and not very intuitive to “casual” users. (Note that if you receive an image as an attachment, Gmail DOES handle forwarding properly.)

Theoretically, Gmail could fix this by adding a “Forward as Attachment” option in addition to the standard Forward links. I have emailed Gmail Support about this issue.

Finally, note that while this behavior is not exclusive to Gmail, I feel it’s important enough to let people know. In my opinion, this is the one “feature” that prevents me from sending invitations to family and friends who are not computer savvy.

When you “send” a message, two things happen to it: 1. it gets copied into your “All Mail” view, and 2. it is visible in the “Sent Mail” view. Many email clients and Webmail services let you optionally delete all sent messages by default, but Gmail doesn’t offer this feature. Here’s why…

One of Gmail’s intentions is to get you out of the “trash everything” mindset. This is one of the reasons why they offer 1GB of storage. Providing this extra space gives you the ability to leverage features such as “Search”, “Labels”, and “Conversations”. Most email services limit us to a very small storage space, so we have to continually delete old messages to allow room for new ones. The problem is that though there are definitely many messages that should be permanently deleted, many are important enough to us that we may need or want to keep them for future reference. Gmail’s added space gives us that capability.

In keeping with this “future-thinking” mindset, by retaining the messages you send, Gmail easily and conveniently matches those messages to any corresponding replies onto “Conversations” making following threads of conversation easier. In any case, contrary to some false information being spread, you still retain full control of your messages. Any message, either sent or received, can be easily and permanently deleted as you desire; the same as any other email service.

I covered this partially in another tip, but I feel it is important to repeat it. One of Gmail’s excellent features is its “Conversations”. Conversations conveniently organize related messages, but this can be potentially dangerous if you don’t understand how to manage both conversations and individual messages. If you aren’t paying attention, you can inadvertently Trash an entire conversation instead of just a single message.

First off, you need to determine if the message is a single message or part of a conversation. While viewing a list of messages (for example, “Inbox”) look in the first column on the left of the message listing. A conversation is indicated by some number in parenthesis ie: “(3)” next to Sender’s name. The number represents the number of messages associated with this conversation. If you click the checkbox in front of the message and select an action, (ie: “Move to Trash”, “Mark as Read”, “Delete Forever”, “Report as Spam”, etc.) the action will affect ALL messages in that conversation. If it is not a conversation, then it will only affect the selected message.

If you want to affect only a single message within a conversation, you must first open the message to view it and then click on the “More Options” link while viewing the message. This allows you to take specific actions on the open message within the conversation.

Conversations are very convenient and powerful, but actually dealing with them can be confusing at times.

To leverage Gmail’s excellent Label and Search functions, I imported close to 1000 archived emails into my Gmail account. (To see how I did it, click here.) After working this large number of messages for a few days, I have found that managing them, while typically easy and intuitive, it can sometimes be a bit cumbersome. Here is a tip to help you better manage your messages…

One neat feature of Gmail that may not be obvious at first is that Gmail “remembers” what emails you have “checked”. This means, for example, that if you use Gmail’s Search function to search for a message, if you “check” the message in the Search results view, when you then select a Label view or any other view that includes that email in its listing, the mesasge will be “pre-checked” for you! This makes tasks like removing Labels, trashing, etc. very easy. Not only is it “checked” but it is also highlighted in a different color making spotting it in a long list very easy.

I have a large number (about 1000) of archived emails that I have saved over the years, and I am looking for a way to “import” them into Gmail so that I can leverage Gmail’s excellent Search and Label features. Over at the Gmail forum at Webmaster World is a posting on how to “import” emails into your Gmail account using Eudora. Well, I had some problems with Eudora, so I decided to use Outlook Express. Here’s the message that I posted…

Well, I spent some time last night “importing” all of my archived emails into Gmail, and it really wasn’t too bad. After several failed attempts with Eudora, I decided to go in a slightly different direction. The problems I was having with Eudora were two-fold:

1. Gmail kept giving me that “Relay” error”, so messages couldn’t be delivered. (I COULD re-direct manually, on message at-a-time, but for some reason, using the Filter gave me the “Relay” error. Go figure.)

2. I couldn’t figure out how to import .eml files into Eudora. If anyone has any suggestions to these, I would be most greatful…

That said, I decided to use Outlook Express instead. It really worked like a charm, with two major idiosyncracies:

1. OE uses whatever “Name” you set up in OE’s account properties as the “From” instead of the original email address. This is a HUGE advantage of Eudora–it retains the original address when you re-direct. This means that in Gmail, that name is what you see in the From column. More on this later.

2. OE uses the date you process as the email date, not the original email date, so that bit of data gets lost. I don’t know how Eudora handles this, but I think it’s the same as OE. To me, this was more of an annoyance than an issue.

End result? I now have almost 1100 emails in my Gmail account occupying 15MB (2%) of my space. The messages are now very easily searchable, labelable, and managable. Before I improted them into Gmail, there was simply no easy way to manage my old messages to find relevent information.

OK, so here’s how I did it using Outlook Express (OE):

First, I opened OE and created an email account that pointed to my primary POP3 provider. In the “Name” field, instead of using my full name as normal, I used “Archived”. This way, I can easily see that it’s an archived email. Gmail will display this in its “From” column. I also set the “Leave messages on server” function checked for safety–didn’t want to lose anything.

Next, I logged onto my Primary POP3 provider’s webmail account and moved all emails from various folders into my Inbox. This way, OE would simply retrieve all emails. Yes, I just lost the organization I had to all these messages, but I’ll take the time to use Gmail to quickly re-label them.

Next, I initiated a “Receive” in OE and retrieved all the emails from my POP3 provider. It retrieved about 650 emails.

I next went back to me Webmail account and moved all the messages into a “hold” folder clearing out my Inbox so that I wouldn’t re-retrieve them.

Next, I opened Windows Explorer and opened the folder that contained 310 old “.eml” files that I had previously archived offline. I highlighted them all and then simply drag-and-dropped them into OE’s Inbox. OE nicely imported them with all information (dates, original email addresses, etc.) intact. This simple task was something that I couldn’t get Eudora to do. If someone knows how, PLEASE let me know!.

I now 960 emails in my OE Inbox.

Side note: I found out that my particular POP3 provider won’t allow a “send” of more than 100 emails at-a-time, so I had to work with batches of 100 or less emails. So I created three folders in OE: “Hold”, “Temp”, and “Processed”. These would be my work folders. I then moved all the emails from the Inbox into the “Hold” folder.

Next, I created a “Message Rule” in OE that would look for all messages whose subject line DIDN’T contain a unique string forward those messages. I chose the string “{[!ThisWillNeverMatchAnything!]}” and I chose the email address of “jim.barr+import@gmail.com”.

I then moved batches of 100 emails from the Hold folder into the Temp folder, opened the message rule, and clicked “Apply Now”, browsed to the Temp folder and clicked “Go”. OE selected all the emails and began sending them. Once all were sent, I moved the emails in the Temp folder to the Processed folder. I then repeated this process for all emails. With 960 emails, this took some time.

OK, over to my Gmail account…. This resulted in 960 emails now in my Gmail Inbox view. All had a “From” address of “Archived”, and the email date was last night’s date. I next created a new Label called “Mail Archive” and did a Search on all emails that had a “From” of “Archived”. This way, I wouldn’t inadvertently select anything that might have come into my Inbox while I was “processing” all the “Archived” emails. I then proceeded to select “All”, then applied the label “Mail Archive”, and then selected “Archive” from Gmail’s “More Actions” dropdown. This really was tedious, because for some reason, despite setting Gmail to display 100 conversations at-a-time, Gmail only displays 20 conversations at-a-time in the Search results view. Yes, I know, I could have set up a Filter prior to doing this to auto-label and archive the messages, but I forgot…

Anyway, I now have a very clean and virtually empty Inbox and a new Label with 960 “archived” messages. Over time, I’ll simply apply additional Labels to the archived messages to better organize them. Yes, it’ll take time, but Gmail makes it so easy…

Now, if I just can figure out how to get past Eudora’s “Relay” issue as well as figuring out how to import “.eml” files, I wouldn’t hesitate trashing all the messages I imported last night and re-doing it letting Eudora apply the proper “From” name. But for now, I’m very satisfied with the results.