Newsletter Archive

The Internet 800 Directory - http://www.inter800.com
The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter
This issue is for Friday, April 16, 2004
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Table of Contents
01. Spam Filter
02. E-mail Rules
03. Tip Of The Week
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*01 Spam Filter

This week we had a visit from long time customer (7 years) Paul Davis.
Paul down from Alaska stopped by our office, for our first face-to-face
meeting after all these years. We had a very nice conversion over lunch,
which eventually moved to the topic of spam.  It's not surprising to me
that any discussion of the Internet moves to spam.  The increasing
amount of junk mail threatens to swamp us and would have already done me
in, except for my Spam filter.

Many people I talk to (including Paul) still quickly review and delete
their Spam. Quickly scanning a few hundred e-mails only takes a few
minutes. However as the numbers grow so does the time you need to review
the mail, until, instead of a few minutes you are facing a couple of
hours of work. Spam filters do the job of quickly scanning your e-mail
for you and once trained, do a very good job of sorting. My filter does
sometimes block e-mail it shouldn't, but I no longer have a choice. The
shear volume of e-mail sent to my addresses now requires me to filter my
e-mail and trust it does the job correctly.

The Spam filter I'm using is called SpamBayes. SpamBayes is open-source
software and can be used for free. The software has to be trained. You
train the program by showing it both your spam and good e-mail. If the
program is unsure if it's Spam, it places it in a folder for you to
review. The longer you work with it the better it does.

http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/


Using this software saves me a couple of hours everyday, making it a
very useful tool. Maybe your problem is not that bad just yet, but if
you start using and training the program now you might save yourself a
lot of time.

Chuck Arning at chuck@inter800.com

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*02 E-mail Rules

-1. Never send attachments without first asking for permission. Instead,
make the to-be-attached item available on your web site and then send a
link to the item in the e-mail. It will make it easier for the
technically-impaired to access the item and it won't look like a virus.


-2. Don't send out email messages that show the entire mailing list. If
you send the same email message to multiple email addresses, be sure to
utilize Blind Carbon Copies (BCC). If you fail to do this simple step,
then every one of your recipient's e-mail addresses will have been sent
to everyone else in the mailing. These addresses can then be used for
sending out Spam or worse. Some programs require that an address be
placed in the "To:" field, if this is the case, use your own address in
this field.

-3. Keep your software updated and routinely scan your drives for
viruses. Don't open any attachment without scanning it for a virus.

-4. Don't send out your message in all CAPS. You may think it's more
effective and that all CAPS will help you get a point across. However,
many Internet users perceive the use of CAPS as shouting and thus take
offense. THIS IS NOT THE IMPRESSION YOU WANT TO MAKE WITH YOUR READER.
Sorry, hope I didn't hurt your ears.

-5. Don't send HTML coded e-mail unless you know that the person you are
sending it to can read it. If their e-mail program doesn't read HTML,
then your message is just garbage to them. When in doubt, send the email
as just plain text.


Chuck Arning - chuck@inter800.com
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Tip of the Week

Need a copy your current screen?

This is how you do it.

Press the "Print Screen" key on the keyboard.
Pressing this key sends the current screen to the Clipboard.

Open your favorite graphic program, if you don't have one you can use
"Paint".

To open "Paint" Click "Start"-Click "Programs"-Click "Accessories"-Click
"Paint"

When your graphic program is open, select "Edit" then "Paste".

Now you can edit and print or save the screen.

If you have any tips or shortcuts that you think the readers of this
Newsletter will find useful, send them to chuck@inter800.com

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