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Archive for the 'Travel tips' Category

Gmail is the answer

A little more than a week ago I post about an email problem. The solution I thought was to have some kind of email proxy. Well, it turned out that the answer apparently is to simply use Gmail!

To recap, the problem goes something like this.

  • Travel to a new place/country and stay in a hotel.
  • Internet connnection (wireless) provided. Great!
  • Retrieved mail from server using POP3, fine.
  • Sending email to SMTP server using own email address. BLOCKED!
  • Email has to go through ISP SMTP, password required but hotel not willing to divulge password.

It is understandable that the ISP is doing that to stop spammer masquerading as another email. But what can a legitimate person do?

The answer, I found out just a few days ago was to use Gmail.

Here’s how.

  1. If you do not have a Gmail account, signup for one. (Get someone to invite you)
  2. Login
  3. Got to Settings.(top right corner)
  4. Click on Accounts tab
  5. Click Add another email address. This is the email address that you want to send from.
  6. Gmail will sen a verification email to the email address.
    Once verified, email sent can appear to be from that account.

This is not nearly a full solution, but it works.

Why is it not a full solution you asked?

How I wish it work

I wish Gmail has ability to retrive mail from POP3 account. This way I could get my mails from the POP3 server from within Gmail.

Yahoo has this feature. But in Yahoo, sending email as another address is a paid service. So be thankful that Gmail has it free.

The work-around at the moment is to forward email into your Gmail account. Provided you have the ability to set that of course.

Perhaps email should all be web-based… but that’s thought for another article.

Well, we cannot have the best of both world.

Email proxy, any solution?

Update: See Gmail is the answer.

I am travelling to Hong Kong. Nice thing is that even the small hotel (guest house) has wireless internet access.

But I have a problem and no solution in sight. Maybe someone can help.

The problem is that the ISP for the internet access has blocked outgoing SMTP connection (port 25). In order to send an email on a domain outside the ISP network, authentication is required. This is ok for personal use, but the owner of the guest house is not going to give username and password to all the guest.

There should be a way out of this problem. Certainly I’m not the first to encounter it.

One solution I have in mind is an email proxy.
I’m not sure it exist. A quick search did not reveal anything. It should just work if one can connect to a proxy on another port which then forward the stmp to the destination server.

If anyone know of any solution, let me know. Many others would love to know it as well I’m sure.