Google Apps Hacks

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Some symbols work better than others when displayed in smaller fonts. The telephone symbol, for instance,

may be hard to make out in rather small font sizes, and a character like a cross, bullet point, smiley, or arrow

is more exible in different contexts.



Once you have some good characters, log in to Gmail and click the Settings link on top. Copy and

paste your symbols, along with your normal signature data (like your blog/home page address or

your telephone number) into the signature box and press the Save Changes button. You will now nd

a result similar to the one shown in Figure 5-34 on outgoing emails.



Not satised creating one- or two-liner signatures? Well, you can combine multiple Unicode

characters to form a larger picture, as shown in Figure 5-35. The following Unicode set comes in

handy for this task:



URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_drawing_characters

Experiment with the kind of pseudographics effects you can achieve using these symbols. However,

note that you should not mix normal characters into the “Unicode art” you create—not even blanks, or

Unicode symbols from other sets—because that will render your pictures indiscernible in email clients

that use a proportional font to display messages. Furthermore, restrict your signature length to a

maximum o ...