gmail

I recently learned that account verification is now generally available on Twitter... but when I went to verify my account, I got a notice that I needed to confirm my email address. I went into my account settings, and my account (which has existed since 2008, and has had a confirmed email address entered since the beginning!) showed my email was in working order.

So, knowing that sometimes you just need to give software a little percussive maintenance, I decided to try changing my email address (using another email alias for my normal iCloud account). Well, I got the confirmation email, clicked the link... and found a wonderful 500 error page:

I recently had to find a way to use SMTP for one of my email accounts which only allowed SMTP access through a port that was blocked by my ISP (AT&T), port 25. I decided to use my Gmail account, but realized my name/email would be changed to my gmail account (including the reply-to address). So I set up a new Gmail account for the sole purpose of acting as my SMTP server, and changed the default sending address using the following steps.

1. In your Gmail account, click on Settings.
2. Click on the "Accounts and Import" tab.
3. In the "Send mail as:" section, click "Send mail from a different address."
4. In the window that appears, put in your name and your original email address.
5. After you add your original email address, you need to make it your default by clicking the 'make default' button.

Now you can set up your email client to use the Gmail SMTP server instead of your non-functional one, using port 587 with SSL turned on. Your email client should use [email protected] (for your Gmail account) as the username (just FYI).