Choosing which email address to use for Google Groups

August 12, 2010 By

I’ve gotten a couple of variations on this question recently:

I’ve been invited to use a Google Group, but I want to use a different email address than the one used to invite me. Can I change my email address in my Google Group profile? Or add a different address?

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is that the way you accomplish this depends on the way your addresses are viewed by Google.

This post should help those of you with more than one email address. Especially since you probably have a darned good reason for having multiple email addresses (to filter specific types of email to specific accounts, for instance), and right now Google seems to be messing you up.

There are two scenarios that could give rise to this situation.

Scenario 1: You just want to add another email address to your existing Google account

You can add an alternate email address to your Google account (here are Google’s help pages for alternate email addresses), and then choose which of those emails to use for your Google Group stuff. Here are the steps to follow:

  1. When logged into any Google service (gmail, Groups, Blogger, Reader, Calendar, etc.) look in the top right corner of your screen. Click the link that says “My Account.” It might also be in a drop-down labeled “Settings.”
  2. Under Personal Settings (right column) of the Google Account page, you’ll see your email address. Click the small blue link below it that says “Edit.”
  3. On this page, you can enter an additional email address (it won’t replace your existing email address) to use with this Google Account. You could also change your address, but I’d recommend keeping the same main address and adding an alternate address as saner in the long run.
  4. Google will send a verification message to this alternate email address, containing a link you must click.
  5. After you’ve clicked the link, you should be able to log into any Google Group, click “Edit my membership,” and choose from a drop-down menu containing your verified email addresses to use for all notifications etc. for that group. Don’t forget to click “Save these settings.”

That should do it for most people.

Scenario 2: You have more than one Google account

You’ll know you fall into this category if you followed the Scenario 1 steps, but got stopped at Step 3 by Google telling you that you can’t use the additional email address because it’s already associated with a Google account.

This also happens if you try to use a gmail address as an alternate email address — because a gmail account is automatically a separate Google account. Gah!

Most people don’t need more than one Google account, but it’s quite easy to get there by accident. I’m actually one of those myself — I have an “old” Google account that I used to create blogs on Blogger long ago, and then somehow I ended up setting up a totally new one so I could use gmail. So if that’s what happened to you, rest assured, you’re not alone.

Google does not provide a way to merge two Google accounts. Here’s their official help page saying there’s no way to merge accounts.

So you can either choose to use the invited address for your Google Group (see Google’s help topic on using multiple Google accounts simultaneously), or you can join the group again with your preferred Google account (this might involve asking the Group administrator to re-invite or re-add you with a different address, if it’s an invitation-only Group).

Hope this helps!

Google is huge and mighty and sometimes quite confusing. Got more Google questions? Leave a comment here, and I’ll see if I can point you in the right direction!

Filed Under: From the Mailbag, General How-To's Tagged With: , , ,

Restaurant menu follies

January 6, 2010 By

The Professor and I recently got takeout Thai food from our favorite local restaurant, Sky Thai. And it turned into a case study in “what were they thinking?” that I just had to write about.

Takeaway #1: A good domain name gives you a lot of Google juice

I knew I had a paper menu somewhere (in fact I found it the next day, under a pile on my desk — clearly it is time for another Inspired Home Office Spa Day), but figured it would be faster to look up the restaurant on the web.

And it was. I typed in “Sky Thai” (with the quotes) and guess what came up as result #1? Yep, www.SkyThai.com. The next 9 results were for some place in Massachusetts that wasn’t named Sky Thai but had some kind of dish on their menu with that name in it. But I didn’t care about results #2 through #9 if #1 was the one I wanted. And I was kind of surprised, because this is a tiny little restaurant that’s not exactly in a thriving metro area. Just goes to show what the right domain name can do for you.

So far our takeout plans were going awesomely. Their menu was online and their phone number was in the header, so it was easy-peasy to call them up and place an order.

Takeaway #2: Don’t let your website be wrong

Except when we called them and tried to order the Fried Baby Shrimp appetizer, they told us they didn’t have it anymore. Not “we’re out of it,” but “oh, that’s not on the menu anymore.”

Except that it is. Right on the Appetizer page of their website.

Hmm. So they’re willing to print up new paper versions of the menu when it changes (we got a paper menu in our take-out bag, of course, and it was the updated version) but they can’t spend 10 minutes to update the website? Or pay their web person for extremely minor updates?

Sure, most of the online menu was still right…but all it takes is one wrong item (or price!) to get visitors skeptical.

Why throw away that Google juice so carelessly?

Takeaway #3: There is such a thing as good enough… and that’s all your site has to be

Not every website in the world needs to be a Web 2.0, social media-utilizing, user-generated-content repository of multimedia and ecommerce.

This restaurant is a perfect example. Sky Thai doesn’t need bells, whistles, or a flaming logo. Heck, they don’t even need a blog. Although I could certainly come up with creative ways they could use a blog to get more business, they don’t need one. They don’t need the ability to let people place an online order if they just give us the phone number.

On the face of it, there are plenty of terrible things about this site. The header is cheesy and fuzzy. The image of the owner, which shows up on every page, is broken. On every page. It’s not centered and the copyright date is 2004.

But none of this matters if all I want is the menu and a phone number. This website is just fine for that. It’s laid out clearly, in sections that make sense, with legible prices and descriptions. All you need for that is plain old boring text.

Except that it has items on it that they don’t serve anymore. So now I can’t trust it. (See Takeaway #2.)

Which is a shame, since they are #1 on Google for searchers who know the name of the restaurant and are ready to place an order.

Takeaway #4: Don’t let your website be the bastard stepchild, especially for an offline business

I looked over the paper menu, picked up a business card, and checked out the info stenciled on the door of the place when we went to pick up the takeout food. There was also a delivery SUV parked outside with Sky Thai and its phone number emblazoned on its side and rear window.

None of these places referred to the Sky Thai website. Nary a URL to be found.

Why?!?

OK, sure, maybe you don’t need it on the door of your restaurant because when people see that, they’re already there (though there doesn’t seem to be a downside to adding it anyway), but a business card? Or that menu that they stuff in every takeout bag, and probably leave in the mailboxes of hundreds of houses within a few blocks?

Why not just add the URL to all their printed material? It’s like they don’t want actual customers to know that the restaurant also has a website.

I can’t figure out why you would bother to build a website and then not link it up with your other, existing, marketing materials.

Takeaway #5: Remember the nudists

If you type www.skythai.com into your web browser, you’ll get the website I’ve been ranting about. But if you type skythai.com (with no www, which is known as a naked domain), you’ll get…a blank page.

As I explained in my blog post about naked domains, you should always make sure that both versions of your domain are usable. There are multiple simple tweaks to get it to work right. You don’t want people to type in the naked version, get a blank page or an error page, and assume you have no site or that your site is broken.

Because then they will go away and never give you money in exchange for Fried Baby Shrimp. Or anything else.

Now I’m hungry for some spicy, creamy, fragrant Tom Kha Gai. If only I didn’t have to dig out my paper menu to figure out if they still have it.

Filed Under: Real-Life Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Google Calendar

August 5, 2008 By


Following up last week’s foray into email filters, I searched for other productivity/simplification tools that have helped me keep my electronic life under control. And there’s one that was so basic, so obvious, that I didn’t even realize how important it has become to me: Google calendar.

An electronic calendar of some kind is crucial to keeping track of appointments, to-do’s, and self-reminders, just to mention a few things. A good one should be easy to use, have an intuitive interface (really those are just two ways of saying the same thing), and show me at a glance exactly what I need to know. Being able to set alarms and reminders is important, and so is inviting contacts (friends or folks in my address book) to meetings and events. And there are more features that should go without saying, but I’ll say a few anyway: Being able to add and copy events quickly. Being able to set up recurring events easily — and then change one particular occurrence without screwing up the whole list. And being able to search for events and dates simply and quickly.

Google calendar is all of this and more. As a Mac geek, I was an iCal user until a seemingly unfixable glitch forced me to abandon it. Now, I’m a raving Google Calendar addict.

The best thing about it is that creating calendars is so simple that I no longer have to try to keep track of everything on a single calendar (which used to mean laborious synchronization routines between my husband’s computer and mine, with wacky schedule mishaps cropping up regularly).

Now, I just use multiple calendars, such as “personal apppointments,” “business activities,” “family events,” and “self-reminders.” And my husband has his own Google Calendar, which he’s completely in charge of and simply shares with me over the web (he and I are the only ones allowed to view it, using our Google accounts).

And then there are the public calendars. It’s easy to create calendars and publish them on the web. Anyone can subscribe to these, and I’ve added a couple of useful public calendars (phases of the moon, US holidays, game schedule for our local baseball team, etc.) to my setup. So altogether I have eleven calendars that I can view in my browser, all merged onto a single calendar. They’re color-coded so I can tell which events belong to which calendars, and it’s simple to toggle each calendar on and off so I can, for example, temporarily turn off everything except for my husband’s schedule so I can clearly see his teaching schedule for the week.

Copying events from one calendar to another is a breeze, setting up alarms is simple, and I never have to synchronize with anyone because it’s all web-based. And of course, because we’re talking Google here, you can search your own calendars and/or public calendars, with one click or with advanced search options.

This Week’s Heart of the Matter: If you already have a web or computer calendar that works for you, I encourage you to keep using it (and even do a little exploring to see how it can help you, such as by reminding you of appointments or creating to-do lists). But if you don’t, or if you are even slightly dissatisfied with what you’re using, take a look at Google Calendar.

Filed Under: Heart-Centered Tech Tips Tagged With: , ,