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Gmail Tip: Add Special Contacts

I was trying to add my grandparent’s e-mail to my Gmail contact list, but gmail kept telling me "Please make sure the email address you entered is valid." I figured it probably wouldn’t import it because they were using something of a non-standard address.

eg. name&[email protected]

The culprit here happens to be the ampersand sign. I realized that gmail also has a contacts import option which allows you to import contacts from a CSV file. A CSV file is essentially just a text file with values separated by commas. It essentially allows you to put tabular data into a non-proprietary format.

Editors Note: There is not supposed to be a space after the ampersand, but for some reason my blog software keeps adding it.

I recently added some new features to the website that will hopefully make your experience more enjoyable. The main things I was looking to do were add a commenting system to the articles and make it easier to find interesting articles. The comment system was a simple add-on of a module to the site, but increasing the navigability of the site is a constant activity.

If you’ve been reading my blog within the past few months, you’ve probably noticed I’ve been on a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) kick. While a big part of this is to increase search engine ranking and traffic, the other part is to increase the quality of the site. If google likes your site, people probably will too. To some of you this may seem a little odd, but it’s true. I won’t go into the details in this article, but google has a lot of features in its algorithms that make sure your site is as search engine popular as it is socially popular.