Cool Gmail Feature: Aliases

Last night, Shira told me about this cool feature in Gmail:

your.username+any.alias@gmail.com. For example, messages sent to jane.doe+notes@gmail.com are delivered to jane.doe@gmail.com.

You can set up filters to automatically direct these messages to Trash, apply a label or star, skip the inbox, or forward to another email account.

So, for example, I could have folks send me e-mail to:

• contact.ben.simon+suggestions@gmail.com
• contact.ben.simon+complaints@gmail.com
• contact.ben.simon+urgent@gmail.com

and take appropriate action (like sending complaints to the trash, having urgent be stared and labeling suggestions as such and moving them out of my inbox).

This also works for Google Apps and may be an easy way to do tracking of where someone found your e-mail address. For example, I could setup:

• questions+cl@ideas2executables.com to be used in a Craigs List ad
• questions+wp@ideas2executables.com to be used in a WordPress landing page
• questions+squidoo@ideas2executables.com to be used in our Squidoo lenses.
• questions+<ticket_number>@ideas2executables.com to be used in an application that tracks trouble tickets.

Google Apps provides cleaner ways to do this (such as creating new e-mail lists), but the ability to make arbitrary aliases up on the fly may still come in handy.