I’m blown away. Something that *should* be, actually *is*.
Say for instance you have a gmail address with a “.” (dot) in it, say for example sixteen.punches@gmail.com. If someone sends mail to that address — or the same address but does not include the dot the mail will find you at the right address.
Sixteenpunches@gmail.com sends mail to my account at sixteen.punches@gmail.com
I’ve tried this with several different address and it has worked every time. I can only log into the account that I created and if I try to create the other one I’m told it is unavailable.
This is how the Internet is supposed to be: it’s just supposed to work. It shouldn’t depend on people knowing what they’re doing, or doing everything exactly right — it should allow for a bit of understanding and empathy. 🙂 The contact is trying to find you. There’s nothing wrong with a little help.
You can use an alternative service called http://urlsmash.com which is a direct competitor to tinyurl with better features. You can choose among many domains as well as your own aliases too.
It’s also the case that ‘gmail’ and ‘googlemail’ are interchangeable. anyone sending to sixteen.punches@googlemail.com (with or without the dot, with or without the ‘oogle’, will always manage to find you. I agree that this is massively impressive and that Google deserve a massive pat on the back!