It's All Geek To Me - July 22nd 2004

I hesitate to use the word we all know in this issue - for fear I will immediately get filtered by many subscribers . It rhymes with Ham....all right - filters be damned - it's called S.P.A.M.

It is not a question of whether or not you hate it but just how much you hate it. How much of your time does it consume daily – certainly some.

I'd like to pause here – just briefly – and discuss perhaps the only positive impact of all this junk email.

Hormel is just loving it. As the makers of a relatively obscure canned meat they now have fan clubs, t-shirts, and gobs of geeks buying the canned meat to give to other geeks. They have golf balls, all sorts of weird and exciting gifts, if you are bored: http://www.spamgift.com (no I am not kidding, these guys even opened a museum in 2001, they sell spam socks for $8)

And now - back to our show. How do you make this less of a headache and problem in your world?

Are you waiting for Washington or regulation? D'oh! That isn't going to work. See it's called the world wide web – and a pretty tremendous percentage of little blue pill ads come from overseas. There are technology solutions that may work, but as most of them require fundamental changes to the way the whole email system works – not wise to wait. The Act that everyone knows about – CAN Spam – has had pretty much no impact in the real world. Are you getting less junk now than you were this time last year?

So you are left with the need to devise a plan for dealing with the junk – the same way you have a plan to backup your important files and to protect yourself from viruses.

Step one – turn off catch all forwarding and bounce it. For many years web geeks have recommended having catch all forwarding for people that can't spell – so anything@yourname.com would work. This is for people who would send mail to rsos@kiss instead of ross@ - today those people get a nice little bounce message – an email back telling them there is no such user. Humans read this and resend, bulk mail machines just ignore it. Sorry to the poor spellers and typo-tacular people but helping you just makes too much junk.

Next step is some free email accounts – go to yahoo, hotmail, or whatever and sign up for an email account. When you know you are doing something online that is going to generate junk use one of those freebie accounts. When the freebie gets useless just abandon it and make a new one. (sorry yahoo but hey we are all looking at the ads when we use your free stuff, I swear)

If you are a business person or you have had your email address for a while you are going to need a filtering/junk system. They are all over the place, lots of folks are offering them and it is getting a bit hard to tell what a good one is. Many ISP's and Corporations are adding these types of systems but remember the purpose of those is not to service you but to reduce the load ($ cost) on their servers. They also tend to do rather nasty things like give you no controls and just delete stuff without notifying anyone. (lost an email in the last 6 months or so, this is a probable culprit)

There are two types of junk filtering systems – local and remote.

Local systems are the pieces of software that run on your machine and are offered by a wide array of companies – Norton and the like. Many people have good experiences with these systems but it is important to remember they are just like any other piece of software on your machine, they can crash or brain fart and they take resources. I was using one of these (Eudora's built in) and while it was pretty effective it took over an hour to retrieve and process all of the mail – local filters get all the mail and they just put it into a junk box or something before you get to your email program so the load on you and your computer is exactly the same.

Remote systems are not on your computer – and your email goes to them for processing and filtering before it ever gets to you. For my 2¢ worth these are better, mostly because they generally are heuristic – they learn – by using the knowledge gained from processing mail for gobs and gobs of people. You may only get one copy but if the system sees thousands of copies of the same message going to everyone it knows, it is spam for sure and can be better at killing it. That is in addition to the fact that remote systems don't break and don't take resources on your machine.

In both categories there are systems that rock and systems that suck – here is what you should look for.

• Ease of use (some of these are more complex than others and individual needs vary)
  
  
• Ability to whitelist (for me everyone @kisscomputing.com always gets through no matter what)
  
  
• Ability to blacklist ( PersonBotheringMe@annoying.com or Subject=Mortgage always gets trashed)
  
  
• Ability to see every captured message (aka the trash or junk) and release messages or always allow sender.
  
  
• Ability to sort junked messages so you can review them easily (by subject or by sender)

SO if this is wasting your time and making you unhappy than give it a whirl – get a plan for yourself to get this under control.

Remember that the first week or so of using these systems does take some effort on your part – adding people to your whitelist as you find them and setting up your rules. It is worth the time as in just a few weeks good systems will know what you need and require very little effort.

(note: if you are a KISS client we are using systems powered by Mx Logic – which rock - just ask us about turning it on for you)

Tasty Tip

by Michael McGrath

One of my daughters celebrated her birthday this week, and as is my practice on such occasions, I made the cake. She has a favorite, and, in fact, it was requested by several of her fellow Police Officers at her department. It's simple to make, and very good to eat.

The Cake
6 eggs, separated
1 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
grated peel from two lemons

Add the sugar to the egg yolks and beat with a hand-held until light yellow and the consistency of frosting.

Beat the egg whites to a stiff peak. Fold into the egg/sugar mixture, and add the vanilla extract and grated lemon peel. Gradually, ½ cup at a time, add the flour and blend carefully and fully.

Use a 9” spring form pan that you have buttered and floured. Pour the mix into the pan and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 35 minutes, or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Allow to cool . . . the cake will separate from the sides of the pan . . . before cutting into three layers.

The Icing
2 sticks of unsalted butter
3 cups of 10X (powdered) sugar
2 teaspoons of almond extract
½ cup of heavy cream, beaten until stiff

Whip the butter and sugar with a hand-held until fully blended and smooth. Add the whipped heavy cream and almond extract and blend completely to a smooth texture.

Simple Syrup
1 cup of water
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon lemon extract

Add ingredients to a sauce pan and bring to boil for 5 minutes. Remove form heat and allow to cool.

Assembly
Whip some more cream to stiff, and slice some strawberries. Paint the first layer with some of the simple syrup. Spread some whipped cream over this first layer, cover with sliced strawberries and add the second layer. Repeat with the simple syrup, whipped cream and strawberries. Top with the final layer.

Ice the entire cake with the butter cream, top and sides. Press sliced almonds around the sides of the cake, and cover with a single strawberry in the middle.

Then, spend the next few minutes eating in its entirety what it took you all that time to make. Enjoy!

Next Issue: 10 Things to Do With Spam