I have a few different Google accounts I use, including two for email, one for backup, and a Google for Domains account (pcutler at foresightlinux dot org).

I forward all my email to my primary account (silwenae at gmail dot com), and use that account to log in to all my Google services. Within that account, I have selected pcutler at foresightlinux dot org as my main account to send email from, when logged in as silwenae. Gmail makes this all pretty easy from it’s settings menu within Gmail.

One of the recent challenges I had, is that I’ve created a couple Google Groups for Foresight mailing lists. Since I was logged in to Google as silwenae, and my default email to send from is pcutler at foresight, I kept getting bounce messages when I’d try to email the group as I’d forget that I had to change my send email address in Gmail. So I then created another Google account for pcutler at foresight, subscribed to the group, but now I was subscribed as two different users. It fixed the problem, but wasn’t elegant.

Yesterday, the Google Operating System Blog posted about associating another email address with your Google account. Similar to how Gmail allows you to associate another email account (including receiving and sending emails), it allows you to use all of Google’s services, such as Calendar or Groups, with this account.

I had to delete the new Google account I set up using pcutler @ foresight, and then followed the steps above. Then, in Google Groups, I went to “Edit my Membership”, and it asks: What address do you want to use for this group? I selected pcutler @ foresight and voila, all fixed, with a much more elegant solution.

For those of you with @foresightlinux.org accounts, this trick may come in handy.