The Falcon   |   Volume 83, Issue 52

Published 5/22/13   |   Log In

Discover your email’s untapped abilities

Your SPU email can better serve your daily needs

By JOE SCHENCK, Features Writer

Published: May 16, 2012

A student’s “.edu” email address is a nifty tool for more than just intra-campus communication. Here are some tips to get the most out of your “.edu” address.

Personalizing your email address

By default, your SPU email is typically a combination of your last name and first initial (for example, John Doe’s email would be “doej@spu.edu”).

While this suits some just fine, it’s really easy to change your username to something shorter, or easier to use. John might want an even shorter email, such as “jd@spu.edu.”

The best part is that your original email will still work, so you won’t have to tell everybody that you have a new email — you have two for the same account.

All you have to do is go to the “Personal Menu” section of Banner, navigate to the “Computer Accounts Menu” and click “Change Your Username.”

Just remember that while you will now have two working addresses, signing into Blackboard and Banner will only work with your new username, as you may only have one username at a time.

Autocomplete addresses in Mail for OS X

The Microsoft Outlook web app is an adequate interface for basic email needs, but some may prefer streaming their email through a desktop client such as Outlook or Apple Mail. Among the advantages of these programs is a feature that taps into the SPU Directory to autocomplete recipients’ addresses as you type.

For example, if you’re trying to email John Doe, but you don’t know his email, typing “John” would provide a list of emails for all users in the SPU Directory with “John” in their name.

This is all thanks to a nifty server technology called Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. It should automatically configure itself in Outlook, but in the OS X Lion version of Mail, the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol isn’t always automatic.

To fix this, head over to “Preferences” and click “Configure LDAP” under the “Composing” section. Then add “ldap.spu.edu” and click “Done.”

Get perks and student discounts

Student discounts are a great way to save cash, and your “.edu” email can be helpful in doing so.

Amazon’s Amazon Student program provides students with exclusive offers and a discount on its popular Amazon Prime service, which includes free two-day shipping and a video-streaming service comparable to Netflix. Adobe’s website advertises discounts of “up to 80 percent with Adobe Student and Teacher editions.” If you’ve been eyeing Photoshop or other Adobe products, purchasing them with your student discount might be worth looking into.

A college freshman, Michael Mokrysz, developed Tappped.com (notice the triple “p”), a service designed to email weekly student-exclusive discounts to subscribers with a “.edu” address.

According to the Tappped Blog, the beta of the site is launching soon, so be sure to follow the Twitter account (@Tappped) or Facebook page (www.facebook.com/Tappped) for updates.

Lastly, popular file-storage service Dropbox offers users 250 megabytes of storage per referral but doubles that amount for students. You can earn up to 16 gigabytes of storage just from inviting friends to use Dropbox.

Always be on the lookout for student discounts because, let’s face it: you’re a college student — you’re allowed to work the system a little bit.

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