The other day I was telling a colleague about how unprofessional hotmail, yahoo or even gmail addresses look on your resume, especially as a programmer. He simply called me a nerd and went back to his work.Personally I'm always looking for new ways to get ahead of the other programmers and to make my resume stand out from the rest of the nerds! I believe this is a good way it's inexpensive and very easy to setup your own domain ie contact@yourname.com there's many options available, godaddy is probably the best as you get a free email account with it and for around $7.49 US for a .com its probably one of the cheapest.
UPDATE: Instead of using Go Daddy which has a horrible interface create a google apps account its free for up to 10 users its what I used
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html
If you need some help here's how to do it: 1. After purchasing your domain and creating your Go Daddy account click "Free Products" on the left hand side. 2. Go "Email Account List" and in the yellow box click "Use Credit" 3. On the right hand side you'll see a list of domains that are in your account select the domain you would like to create the email account for and then click continue and your email account will be created you'll have to wait a few minutes for your account to be created. you should then see a box appear like the one shown below Click Setup account.
4. You'll then be taken to the email control center click the orange add button
5. Fill in the details about your new email account and congratulations your email address has been created!
Once you've purchased your domain your not limited to just email how about creating your own blog? As it happens the colleague asked me how to setup the email address and where I purchased the domain from which is why I created this post!