Google’s Mail Fetcher allows you to receive and send mail from other POP-enabled accounts. It does this by checking that account once every hour. You can navigate to it by visiting your Gmail account > Settings > Accounts.

There is a maximum to this, however. Google will not check your 25 thousand email addresses every hour. This is too much of server strain. So they figure, let’s just give each person five!

Any web-crazed person knows this isn’t enough. I probably have more than 30 accounts from more than 20 providers, including Gmail to Hotmail to Mail.com. The point is, achieving Simple Inbox (all your email in one place and Inbox Zero together) isn’t possible anymore.

One of the choices are to fetch email to one account and have another account fetch that. The problem with this is that you don’t know where it is from.

So you quickly fill up your five available slots now. You’ve got it to label your email so you easily know what email address it is from.

And now you’ve got a 6th Gmail email (it only works for more Gmail emails; don’t know about others). Here’s how to do it.

Have that Gmail open. Navigate to Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP and get to the forwarding section. Type in the email address you want to forward to and then make Gmail archive “its copy”.

Now log out and log back into the email address you are forwarding to. Make a label saying all email from the previous account goes into the label.

And there you have it. A simple way to do something simple. Not a complex way to do something simple. And what simple thing am I talking about: going easy on yourself. You shouldn’t have to work to relax. Now you won’t have to switch from inbox to inbox!

Google has been keeping a little secret for quite a while, and they’ve been doing a good job of it. Sure, some blogs have linked to it, but Google has done an amazing job of keeping it quiet. There are no links anywhere on Google.com that lead to it. What-so-ever. (with the exception of search results; duh).

What am I talking about? Google Bookmarks, of course.

Navigate to Google Bookmarks, or www.google.com/bookmarks/ if you’d like. If you are logged into Google, then you will be able to see the screen.

The design is fairly simple, and doesn’t take too much getting used to. It’s a usable alternative to Del.icio.us, but I’ve got a better way to use it. (More on that later.)

With simple colors and small graphics, adding a bookmark is one click of a bookmarklet, plugin, or the “Add Bookmark” link on the sidebar.

So for my ultimate Super Bookmark Way that I have just learned from my computer crazed uncle, follow the steps below:

1. Get some Bookmarks: Go to Google Bookmarks and get a few bookmarks, ones you would use often. Do not, under any circumstances, import your entire collection of Del.icio.us bookmarks, for example.

2. Tag ‘em Nested: Tag them nested. For example, if you had Phosphor as your favorite game, you would tag it Games and then FPS, for example. The nested separator defaults to “>”. So, our previous example would be Games>FPS. You can even do Games>Action>Highly Rated>FPS>Online if you want…

3. Install the Plugin: (for Firefox only) Install the plugin here.

4. Add the Button: Right-click a blank spot on the menu bar. Click Customize…. Drag the “Gmarks Toolbar” button onto it, but don’t worry: it’s not a bookmark. Upon first use, it will turn into a little folder.

5. Try it Out: Click on it.

Let me know how you like the system, and thanks, Backbuffer, for the idea.

xSketch might be the game that will have you playing forever.

You guess what the things drawn are. That simple. Keep guessing until you, or someone else, gets it right. You can also, of course, become a sketcher.

The game is very easy to understand and is very addicting. Earn points to level up. Everytime you play, 4 points is deposited into the “pot” where the winner and the sketcher gets 50/50.

Try it out today: registration is very straight-forward and you don’t have to click the conformation email immediately to play.

I just saw this new service called IS.GD that shortens your URLS for you. I’ve taken a liking to this vs. ShortURL and TinyURL because of the length of the site name and the fact that so far, they’ve only reached 3 characters trailing the domain name.

But here’s the trick: they have an awesome API. And that makes it easy for me to make this quick little bookmarklet, which is after the jump. They only work for Firefox.

1. Javascript Bookmarklet

Make a new bookmark in your bookmark toolbar and make it to:

javascript:void(location.href=’http://is.gd/api.php?longurl=’+location.href)

Put that on your toolbar, and click when you arrive at a webpage. It will show a lone website link, which you can copy away.

2. Search Bookmarklet

Make a bookmark in a folder in your bookmarks; it can be anywhere. Make it to:

http://is.gd/api.php?longurl=%s

(no drag-and-drop, because you’re not supposed to put it on your toolbar)

Now set the keyword to something like ’shorten’. Save it.

Whenever you want to shorten a website, got to your address bar and type your keyword, a space, and then your website (eg. shorten google.com or something). It will open a blank page with a lonely link. That’s it!

This is all done with the API that is.gd made, by the way. Cool, huh?

This is going to be short. That is why you need to read these three super tips. These three tips, in use at time of writing, are the things you need to be super.

1. Super Folder is your My Documents

What is a super folder? Well, it’s something I made up, really. A lot of people keep all their stuff in a big folder. I, for example, have a big “Brad” folder where everything is stored: my literature, my writing, and everything.

Set it as your My Documents folder via Tweak UI or something like that. Now, hopefully you have organized it into folders. If you have, than enable the “My Documents” folder on your start menu.

Convenience galore!

2. Online Life

If you ever wanted to have a life free of the worries of your hard drive dying on you, here’s something to ponder: get Syncplicity. Syncplicity, something I have been using for the last few weeks and plan to write about on, allows you to sync your files to their servers.

My favorite feature, however, (aside from unlimited storage), is the fact that by typing in your Google Docs user / pass (they only keep a auth. token), you can write on Google Docs and have it available instantly on your computer, and vice versa. Cool, huh?

Note that Syncplicity is still in beta at time of writing.

3. Sheet of Identities

I’ve printed out a sheet of identities and pinned them on my wall. Going to a free identity generator website is not hart. Generate a few identities, and keep the name, address, phone, mother’s maiden, birth, and make up a pet name.

There is an amazing game that I just saw today, and it’s called Phosphor.

Our family was having a little party so I just decided to take a look at this after a relative pointed it out. All I can say is… wow.

Phosphor is a first-person-shooter. It’s not unlike Halo or anything of the sort, but there’s only the deathmatch mode, which is basically kill all. I know, kinda scary.

Continue reading for my in-depth review of this game.

From the moment you set eyes on this thing, it gives you a menu. Hit the begin button, and you’ll find yourself in a randomly-chosen area of the game map with a somewhat, but not, random gun. This is usually a machine, sniper, or pulse gun (which are the only guns I’ve discovered so far).

The objective is to play against bots, eliminating them all. It’s quite interesting, but it got my heart thumping after a few minutes, so I stopped playing after five minutes to rest.

Because I love lists, here’s a list of the pros and cons about Phosphor.

Pro - Graphics: This is virtually at least a Playstation 1 or maybe higher graphic quality, something you’d expect from Halo, and a little less. It’s amazing what the author managed to make with this game. Everything looks pretty detailed.

The entire game is online, with no downloads, except for maybe Adobe Shockwave, so the only comparable quality would be RuneScape, a mass-multiplayer game.

Pro - Multiplayer: You are allowed to set up multiplayer systems so you can play with your buddies. Biult-in chat is available (hit Enter and type) and you enter the IPs. A link on the bottom of the page explains everything. However…

CON - Confusing Multiplayer: …the multiplayer setup was confusing, using terms like “SERVER” and “CLIENT”. How about “hoster” and “player”, with a bit of biult-in explaining, instead of me going to a seperate page to read about it?

Multiplayer is easiest to set up when everyone is under the same IP address, as in a single home or single office. When IPs are different, you will have to create a server on the game, and things like that complicate the already complicated process.

CON - One Map: There is only one map in the game. It gets pretty old after you play it for a little bit of time, knowing everything. The single map, however, is…

Pro - Interesting One Map: …very interesting, featuring rock formations, a sniper point, and a whole network of underground tunnels, as well as lots more. Having one map is not that bad, considering you can always raise the hardness of the game. That, of course, brings me to my next point, which is…

CON - Default Extreme Mode: …the fact that the game defaults the level of difficulty to the highest difficulty. For newbies at games like me, it is difficult enought to grasp the concept without having to worry that 3 extremely strong and difficult bots are trying to kill me.

All in all, it is a pretty game. It’s a great idea when your friends are all over at your house, extremely bored. Here’s a note, however, the game only works on Windows XP (for you Mac people, maybe. Not tested.) The games site says it doesn’t work with Windows Vista, and I tried it with Windows 2000, and the Shockwave system crashed it.

Maybe not upgrading to Windows Vista did you some good! And if you already upgraded, then you still have other games that work!

CHAOTIC TECH Rating:

Phosphor BETA 2
(online computer game)

85 / 100: GREAT

I love Phosphor and the graphics engine and would have given it a 90 to 95 percent rating if there weren’t little kinks. However, this is a beta game, so you can’t expect everything from it.

Website Review: CushyCMS is a newly innovative online CMS. (CMS means content management system). I took a quick test-drive of this beta application and have a invite code for you all to try.

Go ahead and surf on over to CushyCMS.com. Click the big hinting “sign up for free” button. The invitation code is after the jump.

Type in “friend” as your invitation code, without the quotes. Come up with a name, which is like a username. Type in your email, check the “I agree”, and create your account.

There’s your interface.

CushyCMS is a CMS that allows the designer to create specific editable parts of the page that is editable. As you can see in the picture to the right, the designer adds class notations to the code that allow the client to edit only one part of it. The client edits in the comfortable interface (see far right) while being oblivious to the inner workings.

The designer needs to give CushyCMS the FTP username and password so that the client doesn’t have to fiddle with that either.

In the end, the client goes to CushyCMS.com and edits his own stuff via his own username and password. Neat.

WordPress 2.5 introduces a new color scheme to us, and they call it “Fresh.”

Fresh is supposed to be fresh, as in different from previous versions of WordPress. You are able to create new color schemes, according to a developer, through plugins.

Unfortunately for us who are on WordPress.com, we are forced to live with one of the colors: the Fresh one.

Or are we?

This may seem pretty obvious, but click on your username in the corner, and scroll down to where it says Admin Color Scheme.

You are presented with two colors. Upon selecting them, this is what you will see. (screen shots below)

( ^ ABOVE ^ ) The fresh design of the dashboard.

( ^ ABOVE ^ ) The classic design of the dashboard.

—-

To the darker blue among us, the second one doesn’t look that bad, does it?

So which one do you like better? I think (personally) that the second one reminds me too much of 2.3 and below. 2.5 is somewhat like a new beginning for WordPress.

What do you think? Rant in the comments as usual, and don’t forget to Digg or Del.icio.us this so other people can customize their dashboards, too.

WordPress 2.5 is finally out for WordPress.com users, or whatever version they’re using right now, considering they’re on the MU install of it.

A few minutes ago, there were a few bugs, but now, after the WordPress.com Blog has said everything, it seems to have disappeared. Some of those bugs I encountered were 1) extremely slow loading, 2) visual mode in page / post writing not working, and 3) automatic refreshes without any regard to what I was writing.

Either they fixed the bugs, or it was my fault. I shall never take the blame.

I was trying to get this post out before the official WordPress.com blog got it out, but the slow loading caused me to give up.

In the meantime, here are some fun things to try out: WordPress.com’s blog subdirectory is under /blog/, right? (Check any post.) Well, just type in wordpress.com/blog and see what happens.

If someone steals your cellphone, the very least you can do is stop the cell-phone user from using it. The logical answer to do that is to call your cell phone company (with a landline or something).

This option presents an obvious flaw. What happens if they change the SIM card? The answer is quite simple.

Dial *#06# on your cellphone. (That was star, pound, zero, six, pound). Without hitting the call button, wait for a few seconds and your phone will display a fifteen-digit number on your screen.

That number is your unique cell phone number. That number is just like snowflakes; it is one of a kind.

Call your cell phone company the next time somebody steals your cell phone and tell them your unique number. They should be able to disable your cell phone so that no matter what SIM is inserted, it will not work.

I haven’t tried the tip myself (I never let my phone out of sight), but it is supposed to work. Give it a shot and write it down. Who knows?