• TinyURL: Arguably the most well-known of the services listed here, TinyURL was probably also one of the first. One of TinyURL’s most appealing features is that the short URLs it creates will never ever expire. It offers a browser bookmark button that’ll provide a TinyURL of your current page, and there’s a preview feature as well.

SnipURL is a link shortening service with a social twist.

(Credit: SnipURL)

• SnipURL: Also known as Snurl and Snipr, SnipURL is a URL shortening service with a social twist. You can sign up for an account which lets you edit URLs, subscribe to the RSS feeds of your latest Snips, password protect them, and snip multiple URLs at once. It also has an open API for developers. Twihrl, a multiaccount desktop client for Twitter, uses SnipURL for its long URLs, for example. Another bonus is that you can choose your own “nickname” for a link. For example, http://snipurl.com/cnetcrave will redirect to our Crave blog. Like TinyURL, the SnipURLs will never expire, plus there’s also a help forum for support.

• Shorl: For a simpler approach, Shorl is a decent alternative. It has a very clean interface without a lot of ads, plus you can sign up for an account to retrieve the statistics of the shortened links.

• Rurl: Rurl is a URL shortening service ideal for mobile use, since the page is very phone-friendly, and the URL itself is really short (about 19 characters long). The short URL is also good for Twitter, because of its character count limit. Like SnipURL, Rurl also has a developer API.

• Metamark: Metamark also prides itself on providing really short URLs (about 20 characters long), but like SnipURL, Metamark lets you add an optional nickname to a link. There’s also a “secret” option to add a secret word after the URL if you don’t want people to guess the link. You can sign up for an account if you wish to retrieve the statistics associated with your link. Unlike the above services though, the links from Metamark do expire after five years, so take note of that.

• Notlong: Notlong kicks it up a notch by not only shortening the links, but it also lets you pick a subdomain name. For example, I just created http://webware.notlong.com a second ago. Another great thing about Notlong is that the moment you create a Notlong URL, it presents you with a password with which to check the statistics of the URL, no registration required. However, you’ll have to be creative to pick a subdomain that hasn’t been chosen already.

Tweetl is a link shortening service built for Twitter.

(Credit: Tweetl)

• Tweetl: With the popularity of Twitter, a service like Tweetl was bound to come along. Its slogan is “Little Links Built for Twitter” and the links are indeed sublimely short (about 17 characters long), which is good for fitting within Twitter’s 140 character count limit. You can get stats of any Tweetl link without signing up just by entering the site ID after s.tweetl.com (Like s.tweetl.com/[id]). You can also add a tag to each Tweetl link by adding a question mark and whatever you want at the end of a Tweetl link, such as this: http://t-l.cc/[id]?insert-tag-here.

• URLTea: URLTea has a dead simple user interface–simply paste in your link into the field, hit enter, and the shortened link will immediately be copied to your clipboard. Similar to Tweetl, you can add tags after the URLTea link with a question mark, such as this: http://www.urltea.com/l?insert-tag. We also like the gingham background; it’s a nice touch.

• MooURL: MooURL is quite possibly the cutest link shortening site ever, with an adorable cow as its mascot. Like URLTea, a shortened link will be immediately copied to your clipboard. Sure it doesn’t have a lot of statistics-tracking like the others, but it’s just so cute.

• ICanHaz: Capitalizing on the Lolcat trend is the folks over at ICanHaz.com. Its slogan is “I can haz short urlz now? kthx”, which is typical of Lolcat speak. Like SnipURL and MetaMark, you can select a nickname to be added after the URL. For example, http://icanhaz.com/webware directs to Webware. The downside is that you have to enter in your e-mail address if you want to edit the URL in the future. Also, unlike SnipURL and MetaMark, the nickname isn’t optional–you have to enter a nickname regardless of whether you want to, and your chosen name might already be taken. However, the best thing about this service is arguably the Lolcat speak aspect of it, for those who are into the Lolcat meme.

Originally posted at http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9898698-2.html

If you are anything like me, you probably sign in to Gmail from multiple computers. I, for example, occasionally sign into my Gmail account from a friend’s house when I need to check an important email. Usually I remember to sign out, but every once in a while I wonder if I really did. Now I no longer have to wonder.

At the bottom of your inbox, you’ll see information about the time of the last activity on your account and whether it’s still open in another location:

Using the above example, a quick glance at the footer while I’m at work shows that my account is indeed open in one other location. But I recognize the IP address – it’s my computer at home. Turns out I left my Gmail account open when I left home in a hurry this morning.

Your IP address, or Internet Protocol address, is a number associated with your computer when you connect to the Internet. Some of you might want to know your IP address numbers (more info on finding out your IP address below) for an extra layer of control. For others who don’t want to think about IP information, you don’t need to.

Continuing with the above example, I can see more details about my recent activity by clicking on the Details link:

The top table, under “Concurrent session information,” indicates all open sessions, along with IP address and “access type” — which refers to how email was retrieved, for example, through iGoogle, POP3 or a mobile phone. The bottom table, under “Recent activity,” contains my most recent history along with times of access. I can also view my current IP address at the very bottom of this window, where it says “This computer is using IP address…”

With this information, I can quickly verify that all the Gmail activity was indeed mine. I remember using Gmail at the times and locations listed. Being extra cautious, I can also click on the “Sign out all other sessions” button to sign out of the account I left open at home.

Source: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/remote-sign-out-and-info-to-help-you.html

Now a days Internet has become a home to spam. Millions of spam bots crawl the web daily to find email addresses and then bombard them with spam emails thus destroying their efficiency and creating problems for users. The best solution to this is to get a temporary or disposable email inbox which automatically expires after a certain time period.

Benefits of Temporary/Disposable Mailbox

There are many advantages of having a temporary or disposable mailbox on the web. But here are some key benefits:

• Protect you from spam mails
• Protect your mailbox from exploits, spoofs and hoaxes
• Require no signup and/or registration
• Automatically expire after a certain time period

Top 20 Temporary Mailbox services

Collected below is a list of best temporary/disposable email services that provide you give you a temporary email inbox which is totally spam free and needs no registration or sign up:

1. Mailinator is one of the best and top rated disposable email services that gives you a temporary mailbox on the following address format e.g. something@mailinator.com
2. MyTrashMail is another good temporary mail service that gives you a mailbox in the address format e.g. something@trashymail.com and also gives you secure temporary mailbox if you signup
3. MailExpire stands out in the crowd by giving you the option to have a temporary inbox ranging from 12 hours expiry to as long as 3 months
4. TemporaryInbox is yet another simple and easy to use temporary email service that gives you an email address in different formats
5. MailEater gives you a free temporary email inbox in the format e.g. something@MailEater.com
6. Jetable not only allows you to set the life span of your temporary email inbox but also allows you to forward the mails in your temporary inbox to your real email address
7. SpamBox gives you a temporary email address in the format e.g. something@spambox.us and also allows you to set the lifespan of your inbox
8. GuerillaMail lets you generate a temporary email which expires in a time of 15 minutes and also tell you how to offer a temporary email service on your site.
9. SpamHole provides you a 2 hour long temporary email inbox at the address format e.g. something@spamhole.com
10. 10MinuteMail generates an easy 10 minute email inbox for your temporary email needs
11. DontReg is one bigger, better, faster and safer temporary email inbox solution
12. TempoMail is one new temporary email inbox services that give you spam-free mailbox
13. TempEmail aims to give you a fast, anonymous yet secure temporary email inbox
14. PookMail is a multi-language temporary email inbox service that gives an email address in the format e.g. something@pookmail.com
15. SpamFree24 is a new multi-domain temporary email inbox service which is growing rapidly
16. KasMail requires registration, allows up to 25 aliases, can set aliases to expire after a certain amount of time.
17. SpamMotel requires registration, provides mail forwarding, mail can be accessed through desktop e-mail clients, can reply to e-mail from your real e-mail address using SpamMotel e-mail.
18. GreenSloth requires no registration, receive-only, e-mail expires automatically after a week
19. AnonInbox requires no registration, simple, no frills.
20. Spam.la is a fast disposable email service which requires no registration, no frills. You can see all spam being sent to all Spam.la accounts, or just your own.

Article sourced from http://www.sizlopedia.com/2007/05/27/top-20-temporary-and-disposable-email-services/