Get True Push Gmail on Your iPhone or iOS Device

A few years ago, Google announced it was ending support for the Exchange ActiveSync Protocol (EAS) for most users. Now those of us who were grandfathered in have changed devices, and likely lost that grandfathered status. So how do you get Gmail pushed to your iOS device without having to download the Gmail app – or giving up the built-in mail client? It’s pretty simple – you resort to the only free email option that Apple provides push to – a secondary iCloud account. But what about that pesky “iCloud won’t let you send as another address” problem? Simple fix – use GMail’s SMTP server.

Goal:

Receiving mail sent to your Gmail address in iOS’s built-in mail client with push speed (no Fetching!) & Sending mail with your Gmail address (or custom alias).

Caveats:

This method will likely be somewhat annoying if you’re a heavy Gmail in the browser user, since most of your inbox will live in iCloud. This method works best if you use mail clients on your mobile devices and desktop, and rarely use webmail.
This method isn’t as nice if you have a Gmail account that you use to send out as another user (i.e. whatever@gmail.com but you usually send as whatever@customdomain.com). I explain this in more detail below, but it boils down to this: Your device won’t be able to tell Gmail what to send out as, so Gmail will assume you want to send as your primary address. If you’re a Google Apps Free user, then this method will work fine. I was actually wrong about this one – this works fine as long as you have your preferred FROM header selected as the default account in Gmail’s settings. So if you don’t already, log in and click the Make Default link next to your desired FROM account in the “Accounts & Import” tab in settings.

Here’s what you need…

A Gmail account that has IMAP enabled (Check your Gmail settings). You’ll need the username (your complete @gmail.com or @customdomain address) and the password (or an Application Password if you use Google’s 2-factor authentication.
A secondary iCloud account (See the steps below to create one)

On the iPhone / iPad / iOS Device

I’m using iOS 7 on an iPhone 5 for these screenshots. The steps should be more or less the same

If you don’t have one, set up a secondary iCloud account. I suppose you could use your primary one, but I prefer to keep the mail / inboxes separate

To do this, go to Settings on your iOS device and tap on Mail, Contacts, & Calendars. Then tap “Add Account”, then “iCloud”, then “Get a Free Apple ID”

Go through the enrollment process and note your new iCloud username and password. You’ll need the username later when you set up your Gmail address to forward to it.

Set up this secondary iCloud account to send through Gmail’s SMTP server (smtp.gmail.com, port 587, Use SSL set to On)

To do this, go back into Mail, Contacts, & Calendars, and tap on your secondary iCloud account. Then tap on the account name once more to go to the Account page. From there tap on “Mail” under the advanced settings. Then tap on SMTP.

Now that you’re in the SMTP screen, tap Add Server, and fill in your hostname (smtp.gmail.com) and your full Google Gmail username (whatever@gmail.com or whatever@domain.com) and password. If you’re using 2-factor authentication, you’ll need a dedicated application password. Once all the info is verified, you should see an entry under “Other SMTP Servers” for smtp.gmail.com.

You will need to go into both the iCloud & Gmail SMTP servers, setting iCloud to Off, and Gmail to On. In the end, your screen should look like the third picture below:

OK, now you’re done.

Basically we’ve told that iCloud account to send out through Gmail. Google’s servers force all outgoing mail on an account to be through either the default FROM address (your account’s address OR the address you selected as default on the Accounts & Import tab in Gmail’s settings)) or an alias, so in this case, while iCloud will want it to go out as whatever@icloud.com, it will be changed by Gmail to whatever@gmail.com. If you have an alias that isn’t your primary Gmail address, you’ll likely not be able to use this setup since iCloud won’t let you change the “from” address. However you can set up a regular IMAP account on your device with your Google credentials and change the “FROM” address.

The only issue is that replying to messages won’t be seamless – you’d have to manually select to send your reply through your IMAP Gmail account, not your secondary iCloud email account, which is messy. Therefore if you have a gmail account with a custom alias you want to use, these steps might not be any easier for you than just resorting to non-push email. As I said above, I was wrong on this one – just make sure you have the address you want your email to come from set as your default address on the Account & Import tab in Gmail’s Settings.

On Gmail’s Website

Now you need to get your Gmail pushed to your new secondary iCloud email. You can do this in Gmail’s settings by forwarding all of your mail to your new iCloud address. I then set Gmail to archive my mail, using a filter, so it’s out of my Gmail inbox (my iCloud inbox becomes my “working” inbox).

In the end, as a bonus, you also can get backups of your mail. Basically you’ll have a copy on both Google’s Gmail servers and Apple’s iCloud servers, so if one is down for any length of time, you can use the other (Although sending through iCloud.com will use your iCloud email address, not your Gmail address). In my setup, I have a similar configuration on my desktop using Apple Mail – but if you’re a heavy webmail user, it could be distracting to manage two inboxes.

In a few years if you max out your storage on iCloud, then simply create a new iCloud secondary account, and keep your first secondary account’s information if you need to use those older emails.

Hope this helps you – in the end I now have the solution I want: I send out as my custom email address, and receive at the same address in real-time. Sure I’m leveraging two clouds to do it, but who said life was easy 🙂

May 7, 2014

Essentials of Being A Geek

In addition to an academic, I also consider myself a “geek“. But am I really one? It seems according to BuzzFeed, I don’t make the cut. However I cite the following:

I have a love of learning in depth information on a variety of subjects.
I independently seek out new items to geek over, since I know if I took everyone’s suggestion, I’d probably be very unproductive (for example, I’ve been avoiding Doctor Who for a few years now since I have a feeling I’d probably fall hard for it)
I own more gadgets than everyone in my family combined.
I consider building VoIP phone systems, creating new software products, and configuring network services on my home network “leisure” activities.

Yet when I took the BuzzFeed quiz a few weeks go, it told me that I was barely geeky. Surely, the BuzzFeed article must be wrong! Upon closer inspection…

The first 40 items relate reading comic books
The second 40 refer to playing traditional ‘geek’ games, like D&D, Magic, etc…
Then a giant chunk on gaming, tabletop and video
Around question 140 we get to books (Oddly Star Wars books are mentioned, but not Star Trek)
For about 100 questions we cover Science Fiction franchises.
Around question 237 we hit computers, and cover them for only 30 questions.
The remainder hits academia (Because us academics are geeks now, thanks probably to The Big Bang Theory), and science.

It’s interesting to me that the BuzzFeed staff seems to have a bit of a skewed idea of what a “geek” does. Most the list (80%) focuses on consumption of content, versus creation of content. I suspect though that the ‘geekiest’ among us probably are more than passive absorbers of material. How do you fix the list? In my opinion, weigh the “create” items heavier than the “consume” items, but that is just my geeky opinion! What’s yours?

May 5, 2014

Magical Tech Support

Once every few weeks I get a personal request for computer help or troubleshooting. And about 50% of the time, the person starts to show me the issue only to have it not appear. They then exclaim “but it wasn’t working a few minutes ago!” or “Oh wait… that’s the problem!”. I literally don’t say a word, and the problem is fixed.

Afterward I usually make some comment about computers being scared of me, fearing my wrath and thus ‘shaping up’ when I’m called in. I also reassure the person that I don’t think they are crazy – I believe they had a problem. Some of the most vexing problems are the transient ones that pop up, annoy the user, and go away just as mysteriously as they came. And the magical force of Jon is not always permanent – sometimes problems do come back since they never really went away in the first place.

But in that golden time where the solution is immediately clear or the problem vanishes, I’ll gladly appear supremely awesome.

February 25, 2014

Automate a Telnet Session with One Command

The Telnet protocol might not be the newest thing on the block, however there is still some legacy network hardware that will only accept Telnet connections and not newer more secure SSH connections. Recently I bought an APC MasterSwitch unit, that allows me to remotely power on and power off my hardware, and I ran into a problem of automation. I wanted to be able to remotely reboot the server every night a little after 3 AM, but there was no schedule capability inside the software that shipped with the decade old unit. The MasterSwitch, however did come with a built-in telnet server that one can remotely access and power on and off each individual outlet.

The problem with automating Telnet, is that the prompts are not always uniform between different Telnet servers as they are with SSH servers. So one needs to know the exact keystrokes used in order to accomplish the task they need to do. However if you know all of the keystrokes you can create a command that will type them directly to the telnet client on an *nix computer. Here is my crontab command that navigates through the menus of the MasterSwitch unit and reboots the selected outlet at 3:16 in the morning:

16 3 * * * { echo "USERNAME"; echo "PASSWORD"; echo "1"; echo "2"; echo "1"; echo "6"; echo "YES"; sleep 1; } | telnet SERVERNAME

You’ll see that this command reads sequential to the actual keys that I put in when accessing the unit, first my username, then my password, then the menu commands which use numbers to drill down to the actual outlet, and then confirm that you would like to reboot it. The sleep 1 command at the end spaces them out so that they don’t overload the client.

There you have it, a quick and dirty way to automate a telnet session!

January 11, 2014

Oh, I was on a Podcast Before Christmas

Since we recorded it the day before I left Shreveport, I sorta forgot to mention (widely) that I teamed up with my friend Todd Ogasawara on an episode of his Mobile Views podcast entitled “Life after Windows Phone, Project Sienna, & Credit Card Security“. It was a great conversation, and perhaps the start of a few more. So if you’re bored, and want to hear me ramble on about things (along with Todd speaking much more eloquently), take a listen.

April 26, 2013

What Happens on The Internet Stays On The Internet

Earlier today I received the following email:

My name is XXXX. There was an article you posted on your website.

http://jonwestfall.com/XXXX/XXXX

Anyway, it is not very flattering. I have been out of the job for a couple of years and have had job interviews, but when this article comes up, it is usually fatal to any job prospect.

If not too much trouble, could you please remove the article. You don’t have to do it, and i understand if you don’t, but it would help me and my family so much if you could.

Several years ago I used to post “Stupid People Alerts”, links to news articles that were examples of people acting in less-than-responsible less-than-intelligent ways. Apparently one of those articles has followed someone around, bombing their job prospects. I decided that after so many years I was fine removing the article, but as he points out, I didn’t have to (And there are still copies of the original article that I posted to out there, so his work is not done). I wish him the best of luck in finding a job, as soon as Google takes my articles out of its cache!

April 24, 2013

Geek Squad Badges: Symbols Worth Faking!

One of the items I collect are badges. And while I like Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) badges*, I tend to steer toward badges that are meant to give a psychological sense of authority, rather than authority granted by law. It’s the psychologist part of me that finds these ‘symbols’ intriguing. And it’s the geek part of me that was drawn to Geek Squad Badges. Recently I was able to acquire a few on eBay for reasonable prices (after stalking them for some time), and found one that didn’t look like the rest. It was a Fake!

Continue reading “Geek Squad Badges: Symbols Worth Faking!”

February 26, 2012

This is Why You Save Everything Locally!

So earlier this week I was googling something related to SQLite databases, and came across a rather interesting topic on reading them locally using Javascript. At the bottom of the ‘answer’, I found a link to a blog with more information: http://blog.developeronhire.com/create-sqlite-table-insert-into-sqlite-table/

And what did I find when I went there? This:

An unhappy message saying that the owner of the blog had exceeded their bandwidth. A google Cache of the page seemed to be a good alternative, until you realize it doesn’t contain anything useful. So in other words, I have no idea if the content on that page would be useful or not in my quest!

This is why these days, when I do find content that’s useful, I immediately fire up Evernote. I’ve written before about how I use Evernote for scanning, and other neat things, and if you weren’t convinced then, just wait till you hit a 509 error in the future – then you might want to either start using Evernote or, at the least, the “Save page” feature of your browser to grab an HTML copy!

February 25, 2012

The Bookmarklet Combiner is Awesome – and So Are These Bookmarklets

A bookmarklet is a small piece of javascript code that is run by clicking on a bookmark on your browser’s toolbar. Lots of sites have them, and I use a bunch in my daily life. One thing that’s annoying is the requirement that each has it’s own bookmark on your toolbar – so after 3-4 bookmarks, you’re out of space! Thankfully there is a really cool tool named Bookmarklet Combiner which allows you to copy the javascript code from each of your bookmarklets into one “super” bookmarklet.

Here’s how it works. Load up the Bookmarklet Combiner and put in the Title and URL of each Bookmarklet you want to combine. You can get the Bookmarklet’s URL 1 of 2 ways.

Open up your browser’s bookmark manager, locate the bookmarklet, and copy the code. It probably starts with ‘javascript:’
I was able to drag the bookmarklet directly from the toolbar to the URL field in my browser (Chrome). It kept the “URL” text in the box, so you’ll want to remove that so that ‘javascript:’ is the first thing in the URL box.

Now add in all of your Bookmarklets and use the rest of the page to customize the combiner to your liking. Finally you’ll drag your new bookmarklet to the toolbar. Clicking on it should produce a full menu of bookmarklets you can then choose to run! Better yet, the Bookmarklet Combiner will give you a special link you can use to come back and edit your bookmark in the future!

So you say you’d love to combine some Bookmarklets but you don’t have many of them? Well here are the ones I use, they’re pretty awesome

Subscribe in Reader, and Note in Reader (Open up your Google Reader, go to Settings, and check out the Goodies tab)
bit.ly Sidebar
Add to Amazon Wishlist
Add to Evernote
Import to Mendeley
Markup.io (Draw on webpages, save and share with friends – great for the “It’s RIGHT THERE” email)
Reveal Passwords
Share in Tumblr
Read it Later Quick Add

There you go – a great collection to get you started!

October 29, 2009

Using Mail Merge With Custom FROM: Addresses in Word/Outlook 2007 or Word/Entourage 2008

The following was written for my lab group at work, however it strikes me as something everyone may benefit from. Mail Merge is an awesome tool, and this makes it much more useful when a group shares an incoming e-mail address that replies should be directed to (e.g., sales@ or info@ etc.. instead of the individual who sent the mail). I’ve had to sanitize some of the screenshots to remove private information, however it shouldn’t detract from the overall message!

You’ll need:

A copy of a mailing list, in either excel format or CSV.
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Outlook or Entourage
An SMTP username & Password to send out through SMTP Servers that require encryption.

First-Time Setup

You’ll do these steps once per computer you use this on. I’ve broken them down by Outlook 2007 or Entourage 2008, with screen shots. The basic process is…
Outlook 2007:

In Outlook, click on “Tools” then “Account Settings”
Click New to set up a new e-mail account
Choose “Microsoft Exchange, POP3, IMAP, or HTTP”, and click “Next”
Click “Manually configure server settings or additional server types”, and click “Next”
Choose “Internet E-mail” and click “Next”
Fill out the information in the box as is appropriate using your group e-mail and a valid username and password that can authenticate to the SMTP server. Then click “More Settings”
After hitting “More Settings”, choose the “Outgoing Server” tab and configure as follows (Assuming you need SMTP Auth):
Then click the “Advanced” tab and configure as follows if you need to specify SSL or TLS:
Click “OK”, click “Next”, then click “Finish”. On the accounts box, select the new POP3 account you just created and click “Set as Default” so that the box looks like this:
Hit “close”. You should now be set to use Mail Merge. Be sure to change your default back when done (See below for this step under “cleanup”)

Entourage 2008

In Entourage, click on Tools, then Accounts.
Click on New, then Mail
Click on “Configure Account Manually”
Choose “POP” then click “OK”
Configure your account like the setup below, putting in your SMTP username and password:
Click on the button under SMTP Server that reads “Click here for advanced sending options”
Configure as follows depending on your server, the following is for one that requires TLS encryption:
Click OK, and return to the Accounts window. Select your new account and choose “Make Default”. You’ll want to change this back later:
Close the Accounts window, you should now be ready to mail merge!

Running the Mail Merge (After Setup)

Word 2007/Outlook 2007

Open Word, Choose “Mailings” tab from the Ribbon, and click “Start Mail Merge”, Then choose “Email Messages”
Next choose “Select Recipients” and then “Use Existing List”. In the dialog that pops up, select the CSV file containing the mailing list:
Clicking on “Edit Recipient List” should show you something like this:
Click OK. Now you need to use “Match Fields” to make sure that title, firstname, lastname, and e-mail address are all matched up properly (The file in my example doesn’t have headings on the rows, so the first row values (my information) is what Word feels is the best identifier of each field):
With everything all matched up, you can now type your letter including Merge fields as you’d like. Here’s my example:
After you have everything written, click on “Preview Results” and you can see the “live version” that your readers will receive:
Once you’re satisfied, hit “Finish and Merge”, then “Send e-mail messages”
In the box that pops up, find the e-mail column in the the “to:” drop down. Enter a subject as well, and hit OK
Mail Merge will rev up and spit a bunch of files into your Outbox in Outlook, and these will eventually go out to the masses
Cleanup: Remember to go to tools -> Account Settings and change the default back to your usual email account instead of the account you created in the “First Time Setup” above!!

Word 2008 / Entourage 2008

Open Word 2008 and choose “Tools” then “Mail Merge Manager”
In the window that opens, choose “Form Letter” under “Select Document Type”, then under “Select Recipient List” choose “Open Data File”
Chose the CSV file that contains your mailing list.
Drag and drop placeholders where you’d like them in your mailing. Here’s my example:
Under “Preview Results” click “View Merged Data” to see the resulting e-mails
Click “Generate e-mail messages” on the “Compete Merge” tab. NOTE: If Entourage is not your default mail client, this button will be grayed out. To make Entourage your default mail client, go into Entourage preferences and click the button that says “Make Entourage my default mail client”.
Fill in the appropriate values in the Mail Recipient dialog, and click “Mail Merge to Outbox”:
Because the world is a scary place, Entourage pops up a warning message like this below. Go ahead and let it send your mail since you know what script sent it!
Cleanup: After the mail merge is done, you’ll want to go to Tools -> Accounts and set your e-mail default back to your original account so that you send as yourself and not as the group e-mail address you used for mail merge.

So there you have it, mail merge to any particular list you have, with a custom FROM header.