What To Do When Google Fails?

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I don’t know if this was a localized issue, but for most of the day yesterday I was unable to access my GMail account and my Google Reader accounts. I am very dependent on GMail: I use it as a master email account for my personal and business accounts. For lack of a better explanation, GMail is my electronic lifeline.

I also subscribe to a few hundred RSS feeds as my primary method of knowing what is going on in the world. To be without these two tools was more frustrating than I could imagine. Here’s what I did yesterday to ensure I wouldn’t be jammed up if Google had another bad day.

First, I set up a forwarder on GMail. To do this, you simply head over to your GMail account and click on Settings. Under Settings, you will see a tab called Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Here’s what that tab will look like:

In this capture, I am forwarding to another GMail account. You shouldn’t do this. Instead, forward to another free email provider. I recommend Yahoo simply because they have unlimited storage.

Once you do this, Gmail will automatically forward all of your email to the other account and keep the original in your inbox. This will not forward old mail, just the newly arriving mail. If you cannot access GMail, you will be able to log into your other (non-GMail) account and access all your mail.

Next, log into your Google Reader account and click on Settings. Under Settings, you will find the Import/Export tab.

From here, simply click Export your subscriptions… . You will be prompted to save an XML file with all your subscriptions. Place this on your desktop.

I recommend Bloglines as a good alternative RSS reader. Not quite as cutting edge as Google, but solid and reasonably dependable. Log in or sign up for an account and then, in the left hand window, scroll down to the bottom.

You will see this list of links at the bottom of the left pane. Click on “Import Subscriptions.” You will see something very similar to this:

Click “Browse…” and locate the XML file you downloaded from Google. Once you click “Import”, Bloglines will display all your feeds using the same categories you defined in Google Reader.