Computer and Web Articles

Using great anti-spam software isn’t the only way to fight spam. You can actually prevent a great deal of spam from getting sent to you in the first place if you can remember to never, ever, ever use your main e-mail address to sign up for anything on the web.

Whether you’re signing up for a user account at a great new online store or you’re signing up to receive a business eNewsletter from a reputable organization, using an alternative e-mail address will help keep wicked spammers from finding and exploiting your main e-mail address. Many sites make a good deal of money by selling e-mail addresses they collect to spammers. Other sites have weak security and therefore they - and your e-mail address - may be prone to hackers. Other sites (such as forums) often post e-mail addresses right onto their pages, practically handing your e-mail address over to e-mail harvesters.

If you have your own domain, create a “throwaway” address, such as signup@yoursitename.com, that you use for nothing other than signing up for services and logging in to online accounts. If you don’t have your own domain, simply set up a free e-mail account at Hotmail or Gmail instead.

This simple step packs a mighty punch and keeps new spammers from finding your main email address. Unfortunately, however, if you’re already on all the spammers’ e-mail lists, you might not notice a big change.

One day a fellow by the name of Michael Scrivo got fed up with having to go through a series of windows to access his Outlook Calendar. Being that people use their calendars to organize their daily lives, he didn’t appreciate the unnecessary number of clicks it took just to access the Outlook calendar.

To address this nuisance, Michael developed a program called “Outlook on the Desktop,” which he now allows people to download and use for free. The program places Microsoft Outlook’s calendaring system right smack dab onto your monitor’s desktop. Your calendar is pinned there (so that no windows can show up behind it) and it stays there “all the time in plain sight so you can always see what’s upcoming.”

The Outlook calendar keeps all its functionality - such as direct editing, drag and drop file capabilities, and switching between calendar, inbox, contacts, and tasks views - and suddenly the task of staying organized takes far less effort.

Michael’s program runs on Windows XP and Vista with Microsoft Outlook 2000 SP3 or higher. Learn more at www.outlookonthedesktop.com.

So you’ve had your Gmail account for a couple years now and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to locate specific e-mails when you need them. No worries; let’s review a few useful search tips that will help.

Let’s say you’re only interested in browsing through e-mails sent to you by Mary. In your Gmail search box, you’ll want to type in from:Mary.

If you’re looking for an e-mail in which you used a specific phrase (say, something like …. “and she was totally eating lots of glass grasshoppers”), then you’ll want to type “and she was totally eating lots of glass grasshoppers” into the search box — quotes included.

If you’re ever interested only in viewing e-mails that had attachments, type the following into your Gmail search box: has:attachment. And if you’re looking for an e-mail from Robert that came with an attachment, type in from:Robert has:attachment.

Perhaps you’d like to only look through e-mails sent to you after the first of September. In your search box, you’ll want to type in after:2008/09/01. And let’s take this tip one step further; if you were looking only for e-mails sent to you after the first of September and in which snowboarding was mentioned, you’d want to type in: snowboarding before:2008/09/01.

I have a hunch that at some point or another, most Gmail users have logged into their accounts only to discover important e-mails incorrectly marked as spam. Boooo!

Thankfully, Gmail acknowledged this issue and the related growing frustration of Gmail users by recently releasing a new feature within Gmail. Perhaps you’ve noticed it?

If not, no worries. Next time you log into Gmail, create a filter that matches the e-mail address(es) you want to keep from being marked as spam (an example would be from:timeforcake.com) and make sure the little box next to “Never send it to Spam” is checked.

Hit “Create Filter” and you’ll never need to worry about e-mails from that domain getting caught in your Gmail spam filter again.

Hello there all you Thunderbird users!

Put these hotkeys to use and you’re sure to become a quicker, more efficient e-mailer:

• Shift + J = Mark a message as “Not Junk”
• J = Mark a message as Junk
• M = Toggle between marking a message as Read/Unread
• Ctrl + O = Open a received message
• Ctrl + R = Reply to a message
• F = Go to the next message
• N = Go to the next unread message
• P = Go to the previous unread message

Although you may be tempted to take big, pretty flyers or your professionally-designed advertisements and plop them into your company’s e-mail newsletters, I’d like to strongly suggest that you refrain from the temptation.

Why? Three main reasons.

1. First, your recipients may move on to other e-mails before your image fully loads - meaning that they never see your message.
2. Second, servers are far more likely to reject e-mails containing large images.
3. Third, many e-mail programs (such as Outlook) block images by default; this means that a portion of your recipients would see nothing more than a big broken image (a box with a little red “x” in it Ðjust like what we talked about in the Q and A section this week.)

This is a tough one.  Some people feel peeved when their e-mails aren’t responded to with confirmations, thank-yous, or other forms of acknowledgment. On the other hand, plenty of folks feel equally annoyed when they *do* receive e-mails saying nothing more than “Got it.” Or “Thanks.” Or “Will do.” Or “Great link.” Or “I agree.”

As these one and two-word e-mail replies can be viewed either as polite responses or as petty time-wasters, the task of training e-mail recipients how to reply to *your* communications remains entirely up to … you.

If you don’t mind these types of short e-mail responses, you need not do anything - you’re all set.

If you do mind these types of short e-mail responses, start ending your e-mails with a short sentence along the lines of “This is just FYI, so no need to reply.” This simple technique will substantially reduce the number of ‘pointless’ replies you receive in your inbox.

• www.jimdenevan.com — Absolutely lovely art. No paint involved.
• http://www.iwantsandy.com — Free automated virtual assistant that’ll send you reminders, keep track of to-do lists, and keep you organized.
• http://tinyurl.com/j4vd4 — Flowers. Leaves. Grass. Fruit. Colors. Trees. Snow. A rainbow of nature screensavers for you to choose from.
• http://www.boxcloud.com — Very affordable, super simple online file-sharing. No more e-mailing huge files or dealing with ftp logins and passwords.
• http://tinyurl.com/2p7duo — Two GMail features that few people know of that’ll help you make your inbox spamproof.

You use it every day, so why not learn a few shortcuts that’ll be sure to save you time when using Outlook? Here are some Outlook shortcuts I picked up from various articles on the web this week:

• Ctrl + Q — It doesn’t matter what folder you’re in — Inbox or otherwise — hitting this key combination will mark your highlighted message as either read or unread.
• Ctrl + Shift + C — The quick and easy way to add a new contact to your address book.
• Ctrl + F — A very much underutilized shortcut, Ctrl +F will forward whatever message you have highlighted.
• Ctrl + Shift + B — The mouseless way to display your Address Book.
• Ctrl + Enter — Be veeeeeery careful with this one!! Some people love it, others hate it so much they disable it completely. I’ll let you choose how you feel about; this is the shortcut that instantly sends out the message you’re typing. (So if you’ve ever been writing an e-mail and it suddenly seemed to “send itself,” now you know what may have happened …)
• Ctrl + N — If you take away anything at all today, try to remember this fundamental shortcut, which simply opens up a fresh new e-mail for you.