About Bayanda Mzoneli
Bayanda Mzoneli is a public servant. He writes in his personal capacity.
I have a handful of friends who carry around good phones while not taking advantage of some of the readily available features of those phones (no offence to my good friends, I know where my bread is buttered).
Contrary to what some believe I do not know too much about technology, I just try to be up to date and take advantage of useful technology features. May I also acknowledge that most of the information I will write here is already available, I am just packing it nicely here for my friends and my blog readers.
Today I wish to teach my friends (and interested persons), how to carry your email with you. If you don’t know why you should have your emails on your phone everywhere you go, stop reading this text now.
What do you need?
- A phone with internet capability. You should know your phone has internet because you read in the phone manual. Alternatively all phones that can connect to Mxit are internet capable. If you still don’t know, call you mobile networks call centre and ask them.
- Airtime. This is basically credit on your call account (or bundle account). I am not sure why it is called airtime. To be on the safe side it should be more than R2-00 (two rands).
- A Gmail account. This is a free web-based email account. For those who don’t have it, it is like your @webmail.co.za, @yahoo.com or the lousy @work.co.za/gov.za/etc that you use at work – but Gmail is a far much better version of that. If you don’t have it already you can register it for free by visiting www.gmail.com
- An internet connection. This means access to the internet. If you do not have access to the internet I wonder how are you reading this text (if you reading it on a paper, where did you print it from?). You can access the internet from work, internet cafe, at home (elite), library, school, friend’s home, etc.
These are simple requirements. Most, if not all, people with good mobile phones should have them. We are almost done.
Now that you have a gmail email account, we need to install gmail on your mobile phone.
Installing Gmail on a mobile phone
- Open your phone browser (internet). This is where you access internet on your phone. Find where you need to type an address and type- m.google.com/mail
- Once you are there follow the instructions to download. Your phone might ask you silly questions as if you don’t know what you are doing. Demonstrate your knowledge by answering your phone’s question(s) in a manner that results in the succesful installation of gmail.
Now we are done. To access your emails go to your Menu and look for Gmail somewhere in the submenus. Different phones choose for you where to install things. Open Gmail, enter your username and password (answer positively to one or two questions by your phone) and you are in.
You can now give your new Gmail address to your friends so they can start emailing you.
I know some of my friends love their @work.co.za emails because it shows where they work. You can still get your work emails on Gmail, even though it might be a bit complex and depends on whether your IT guys are kind enough.
Getting work email on you mobile phone using Gmail
- Login in to your Novell Groupwise, Microsoft Outlook or whatever you use where you work.
- Once your there go to settings/options/preferences or something like that. Once you are there look for something about ‘forwarding’
- On forwarding, choose ‘forward all incoming mail’ and type you Gmail address in the appropriate box provided.
- Save the changes / Click finish or something like that.
There you have it. Now you can recieve both Gmail and work email on your phone.
The guys at Tech Leader know about this, but I guess they were too busy to write about it or they just though you won’t understand it.
Obviously I don’t work for you, I was just sharing information with you out of generosity. Please don’t bother me about queries relating to this post. If you have problems following these simple instructions, just post a comment. One day I promise to write Part 2 of this series responding to those comments.
Make effecient use of that smart phone. Go show off.