Tag: gmail

Dave Winer posted to ask if anyone had a suggestion on how to quickly create new email addresses that can be forwarded to his main address. I wrote him with a suggestion and at the same time realized I’ve never posted the techniques¹ here.

Gmail has a feature where you can add a + to the end of your email address and create a new address that goes to your original address. For example, jeff.milner+newaddress@gmail.com will appear to the service you are signing up for as a different address than jeffmilner@gmail.com but they both go to my inbox.

The only downside is that some services see the + as being not a valid email address.

The other feature I want to highlight is that gmail ignores periods. Mail sent to jeffmilner@gmail.com or jeff.milner@gmail.com will both arrive in my inbox. Same with j.e.f.f.m.i.l.n.e.r@gmail.com. Gmail doesn’t care about the periods but each iteration is a different email address to the service you are signing up for.

1. I first learned about these features in a Gmail Blog post from 2008.[↩]

Google’s Gmail has increased the number of invitations I can give away to 100. It’s not very often that I even gave away any of the 50 I had available before. Do you want a Gmail account? Comment here.

Have a blog? Want a Gmail invitation? I will send you one if you link your blog to me. Then just comment under this post with your name, the email address that you use now, and your blog address. I’ll be sending them out tomorrow.