How to See Which of Your Contacts Are Online at a Glance
As email technology moves forward, contact lists change to become even more useful. In the past, a contact list was a list of people you emailed. You had no way of knowing when those people would be at their computers and checking their email. Today, several web-based email programs have contact lists that double as chat programs. With these email accounts, you can see with one look which of your contacts are online and which are not. You can choose to send emails or to chat with particular contacts without doing more than looking.
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Instructions
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Sign up for a free, web-based email program that has a built-in chat program. There are many email servers that do, but Yahoo Mail, MSN Mail, and Gmail are three of the most common. Before you choose a particular email server, read about their services at the homepage, to be sure they have inbox chat.
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Create your email program and read the instructions to see if you need to download a separate chat program to use within your email inbox. Yahoo, MSN, and Gmail all have separate chat programs, but you do not need to have those chat programs to chat inside your inbox.
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Add contacts to your contact list. Be advised that in order to see if your contacts are online, those contacts need to be using the same server. If you have a Gmail account, you'll be able to see when your contacts that use Gmail are online, but you won't be able to see when your contacts that use another email program are online.
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Select "Appear online" from the chat options menu in your inbox, if your particular program has a chat options menu.
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Drag your chat program into a location where it is automatically viewable, if you can change the placement. Gmail allows you to drag and drop your chat into the left hand side menu, so you can see it as soon as you log on.
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Log in to your email program. You will appear online and will be able to see which of your contacts are online, at a glance.
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Tips & Warnings
Some email programs, like Gmail, automatically create contacts whenever you send an email or receive an email. Therefore, you may see contacts in your Gmail chat list that you don't recognize. If you don't wish to see when those people are online, you can right click on them and choose "delete from contacts."
Each person can set their own chat parameters, and can choose to appear offline. If a contact has done this, they will look offline to you, even when they are online.
References
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