It turns out that, if, for instance, your Gmail address is comrade@gmail.com, e-mails addressed to com.rade@gmail.com or even to c.o.m.r.a.d.e@gmail.com will be delivered to the first address.

It’s cool but quite useless. There is another interesting feature. E-mails sent to the addresses below:

• comrade+fred@gmail.com
• comrade+john@gmail.com
• comrade+peter@gmail.com …
• comrade+a_somebodies_name@gmail.com

will be also delivered to comrade@gmail.com. Then it is possible to set some filtering rules in Gmail redirecting these e-mails to appropriate people depending on that extra bit in the “From:” address between + and @ symbols.

This may help organizing a free “pseudo” mail server with Gmail.