To be an emerging artist in New York is to operate within an industry that values appearances, within a city that values professionalism. Many are discovering Google Voice and setting up personal websites in hopes of providing their art with the veneer of legitimacy they deserve—and I am no different. Lately, friends have been asking me how exactly I’ve managed to add forwarding address aliases to my iPhone, or how I was able to produce my own digital business card (text “cFilm” to 50500). In the interest of preserving my precious breath, and at the expense of exposing my secrets, here are some tools I’ve found invaluable in preserving a professional image on the cheap.

1) Add aliases to your iPhone

So, you have already set up your Gmail account to send messages from your school’s alumni address and/or your personal domain name. However, these are merely forwarding services; without a standalone inbox (and the IMAP/POP capabilities that come along with it), you cannot add the account to your iPhone.

For the longest time, I was forced to log into Gmail through my iPhone’s web browser in order to respond from my various accounts. Fortunately, I had checked “respond from the same address the e-mail was sent to” on my Gmail account settings. But there was no way to initiate e-mails from my aliases, and penning responses on the go required excellent reception, a lot of thumb-typing, and the patience I so clearly lack. Here’s the long-awaited workaround!

1. On your iPhone, go to Settings –> Mail, Contacts, Calendars
2. Add account
3. Select “Other,” then “Add Mail Account”
4. There will be four fields:
   • Name: Your name as you want it to appear on your e-mails. On certain accounts, I choose to display only my first name. On others, first and last. Up to you.
   • Address: yourname@yourdomain.com
   • Password: Since you won’t be accessing a foreign inbox, just put anything here. You won’t even need to remember it.
   • Description: This will appear on your iPhone’s native mail app. So for example, you might want to put “Alumni E-mail,” or “MySite.com.” Not hugely important what you put here.
5. Click next.
6. On the next page, select POP.
7. The “Incoming Mail Server” fields are of no importance. Fill them with gibberish.
8. Under “Outgoing Mail Server,” add the following:
   • Host Name: smtp.gmail.com
   • User Name: The full Gmail address you get your mail forwarded to (e.g. “yourname@gmail.com”)
   • Password: Your Gmail password
9. Don’t worry about the purported “error” messages. Continue and save.
10. Ta-da! Compose an e-mail, and you’ll find your alias included among the list of possible authors.

Now, this method is far from ideal if you already have more than one e-mail account on your iPhone. As the iPhone tries to connect to the bogus servers, it will show error messages every time you open the mail app. How, then, to have your cake and eat it, too?

On the top-level menu, you’ll see all of your “inboxes” listed. Go down to “Acccounts,” and select your Gmail account. Then select “Inbox.” As long as you stay within this account, your iPhone won’t try to connect to the fake servers we’ve just created. But there’s more…

2) Don’t get found out by Exchange servers!

Hopefully this won’t come as a surprise to you, but if you’re sending e-mails from one of your forwarding addresses in hopes that it will lend you an air of authenticity, Microsoft Exchange servers—which run many (perhaps most) office e-mail systems—display your e-mail along these lines: “SexxxyMike86@gmail.com on behalf of Michael@official-alias.com”

Not cute. But easy to fix!

1. Go to Gmail –> Settings –> Accounts and Import
2. When you add/edit your alias, instead of choosing “Send through Gmail,” choose “SMTP Server.”
3. Enter the following:
   • SMTP Server: smtp.gmail.com
   • Username: yourname@gmail.com (the same account you’re already in)
   • Password: your Gmail password
   • Check the “Secure Connection (SSL)” option.
   • Use Port 465 from the drop-down menu.

You can also secure your iPhone in this way, as well. Go back into your account through the path “Settings –> Mail, Contacts, Calendars –> Account Name –> Outgoing Mail Server.” Change the server port to 465, turn SSL on, and make sure that server is “On.” This usually won’t work for your “Primary Server,” so you’ll have to turn that one off before activating this new one.

3) Create a digital business card

I can’t tell you how many times I have written my phone number on table napkins. When you’re trying to network with the right people, not having a business card is like getting to work and realizing you forgot to put on pants. Well, here are digital pants:

Contxts.com is a free service (with a premium option that allows multiple profiles) that was all the rage at this year’s SXSW. You create a username (mine is “cFilm”) and a digital “business card,” which people will receive when they text 50500 with your username. You can also text “send 3034759204” to 50500 (where that long number is your new friend’s cell number), and they will receive your business card all the same.

4) Cut down on spam

In the arts world especially, you might find yourself signing up for a lot of things you don’t care about. Or perhaps you cringe when run-of-the-mill websites ask for your e-mail address, fearing you might miss a truly important message among the clutter.

When faced with the difficult decision of whether or not to sign up for something, use the following formula for your Gmail account (yourname@gmail.com):

yourname+label@gmail.com

For example, when I’m being forced to sign up for something that I fear will spam me into oblivion, I use the e-mail address “myname+spam@gmail.com.” In my Gmail account, under “Filters,” I’ve created a filter that moves all e-mails sent to “myname+spam@gmail.com” to the trash. That way, if I’m expecting an instant verification e-mail, I can simply do a quick dumpster-dive into my trash, open the e-mail, verify that my account is legitimate, and rest well knowing I’m spam-free. Similarly, I use the e-mail “myname+coupon@gmail.com” to automatically archive many of the “daily special offer” websites that I sometimes look through for interesting (and cheap) restaurant and gift ideas.

5) Letter yourself later!

So you’re a socialite. That don’t impress me much. LetterMeLater.com will make people think you’re keeping in touch with them, when in fact you’ve already moved on. Sign up for a free (and 100% spam-free) account, and LetterMeLater will actually “intercept” your e-mails until you want them to be sent. You can write e-mails directly on the site, or you can write them from within Gmail:

1. Address the e-mail to “me@lettermelater.com” (do not substitute “me” with your name—it’s really just “me”)
2. In the first line of the body of the e-mail, write “to:” followed directly by the address (or addresses, delimited by semicolons) you want to send to.
   • Optional: You can “cc:” or “bcc:” people, too.
3. On the line below, write “when:” followed by the date (or dates, delimited by semicolons) you want to send the message. You can use formats like “9/30/10 at 1:22pm,” “next Wednesday at 10am,” “1 week” (which will send exactly one week from the moment you send the message), or even “two years.”
   1. Optional: You can also write “options: reminder” in order to receive a quick reminder three days before an e-mail is sent to its recipient. For example, say you want to remind your friend (let’s say her name is… “Nicole”) to pay you back the money she owes you. You send her an e-mail one month from now, but she pays you back in two weeks. Naturally, you will want to log into LetterMeLater.com and delete the no-longer-relevant message. Feel free to remove the passive-aggressive blog post referencing the fact that she owes you $10, as well.
4. Write the rest of your e-mail below. LetterMeLater will automatically remove everything above it and send a normal e-mail.

An example might go as follows, assuming the following is in the body of an e-mail addressed to “me@lettermelater.com”:

to: nicole@owesmemoney.com
bcc: myself@mydomain.com; randomfriend@hotmail.com
when: 9/30/10 at noon; 1 month
options: reminder

Nicole! I need that $10 to get my back waxed. Please and thank you.

-Miguel

You will receive a confirmation that your future e-mail was successful, or an explanation of why your formatting failed. Otherwise, it’s the George Foreman Grill of electronic mail. (Another idea: Send yourself text messages in the future, too!)

Other things for which I’ve recently used Lettermelater.com:

1. Gently reminding my grad school recommenders that a deadline is coming up.
2. Forwarding myself a coupon a week before the expiration date.
3. Letting people know it was “wonderful meeting with you” before ever meeting with them.
4. Sending birthday wishes.

If I’ve used any of these on you, remind me to send you my apologies a week from now. But otherwise, that’s all I have for the moment. Perhaps this will turn into a regular thing, once I put more touches on this site and find time to regularly update. Enjoy!