The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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I have not seen a more concerted attack by viruses in the past than in these past few weeks. Ensure that your virus checkers are up to date. I am fortunate to use my melbpc.org.au address as my primary address, so I use my individual SpamAssassin settings to filter my e-mail for spam. My settings are conservative, so it deletes about a third of what turns out to be spam. If I "tighten the noose" too much, I could lose genuine e-mail that resembles spam, so I am grateful for Outlook 2003's Junk E-mail folder, which is almost 100% accurate in catching spam and the occasional false positive.
As a member of the Internet admin team I sometimes see e-mail from subscribers who want a new e-mail address because they are getting "too much spam". Sorry, spam is a hazard of having an e-mail address, even if you have not given it out to anyone. How can that be so? Some spammers simply guess an address once they know a domain, eg. john@, johna@, johnb@, johnc@ and so on. Even if the majority of these addresses bounce, that does not concern the spammers. So please do not contact the office (or admin, which has nothing to do with accounts) to make such a request. Use SpamAssassin and you will find that you don't need some third-party spam management tool. Of course, if your e-mail address is not at our Internet service, you may need to use such software. So, there's another reason why we were voted the Best ISP in 2003.
ADSL Almost Here
If you have waited this long for Melb PC to offer ADSL, please hang in there. We are in the final stages of preparing the necessary forms, documents and support infrastructure that will enable us to offer another award-winning added value service.
I signed up with another provider over three years ago and changed provider once thereafter, but by keeping my primary address at Melb PC and never giving out the ISP address, I have uninterrupted e-mail service. In case you did not know, from your dial-up, cable or ADSL connection you can fetch and send e-mail from multiple ISPs without hanging up. Just configure additional accounts in your e-mail program.
Orkut
In March I mentioned the new networking site Orkut - http://www.orkut.com. I forgot to say that if you are interested in visiting it for a look (it is free), drop me a line with your full name and e-mail address and I'll send an invitation. You cannot join without an invitation.
Gmail and Privacy
When Google announced its forthcoming free Web-based e-mail service on 1 April (actually 31 March in the US) called Gmail, many people assumed that it was an April Fool joke. After all, how could Google offers everyone 1 GB mail quota? The press release was couched in a most uncorporate manner, so it took at least two more days before we realised that this was not a joke.
Usually Google releases new products after a long period of incubation at its Labs: http://labs.google.com but this announcement remains a curiosity. Some speculated that making an announcement around April 1 would let a company back out if the reaction was not favourable. After all, Google had announced two new services two days earlier: Personalised Web Search and Web Alerts.
Most of the subsequent commentary has focussed on the lack of privacy we can expect if we sign up for the service. Apparently, even if you delete a message, it will not be truly deleted. The other concern is that the Web-based interface will display ads that are tuned to keywords in the e-mail.
I am not concerned about either of these features. Who's to know if other free services aren't run by companies that want to track your interests and sell the data to others? If you are silly enough to use a free e-mail account to send or receive sensitive information, then you have to assume that it could fall into the wrong hands, perhaps by accident. As for contextual advertising, I'd rather see that than the irrelevant colourful ads we see on Hotmail and Yahoo. I am not looking for blind dates, another mortgage, class reunions etc.
A9
Amazon has rolled out a beta search interface at http://www.a9.com. It uses Google data, and it "remembers" your previous searches. If you aren't getting a good ranking for your site at Google, you could try this one.
Poor Google Ranking
Although my own sites are doing very well for two-word terms such as "lead management" or "crm consultant", many other site owners who rely on a city name in the term have reported getting mixed results. New sites are not showing after being online for 3-4 months. Their "money" terms are ranking poorly.
While those site owners have their own worries when they don't rank, what does this mean to the general population (that uses search engines)? My advice is not to get comfortable with a single search engine, but to keep a couple of others in your bookmarks. Yahoo.com is no longer powered by Google, so it offers a different set of results, thanks to its relationship to Inktomi. MSN is also powered by Inktomi, but offers another view of the same data.
Reprinted from the May 2004 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
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