Spam sucks. We all know that. The question is how to stop it. Those of us who use Google’s Gmail have very little spam problem. Google’s spam filtering is VERY good. When I was using Outlook as my mail client, I was using the paid Cloudmark plug-in to defeat spam. It beats the hell out of the built-in spam filtering on ANY mail client. But, since moving to Gmail, my spam problem has been even less than with Cloudmark. And I don’t have to spend a dime for it.

But, what if you don’t want to use a gmail.com email address? Perhaps you are using an address tied to your own domain name or from your ISP. You might not want to switch. Well, I have good news and no, it doesn’t have to do with my car insurance. But, I did save a boatload of money on my spam problem by switching to Gmail. And I didn’t have to change my email address. (more…)

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Although small businesses seem to be gravitating towards web based e-mail, such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail, good old Microsoft Outlook still has a faithful following among those who want offline access to their e-mail. This week I have a few tips for exploiting Outlook’s features for working more efficiently.

1. Use Outlook As A Document Repository
You can store documents in any Outlook folder. That’s right! And you don’t have to attach the document to the mail message; you can store it just as you would in a desktop folder. To store a document in Outlook, follow these steps: (more…)

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You can’t. Outlook (and several other email clients) enable you to include stationery or background images in your email message to dress up the look of your email messages. Currently, Gmail does not render these images as expected. Read on for some of my thoughts about stationery….

First off, I need to step up on my soapbox for a moment….

I really never understood the draw of background images or stationery in email messages. Other than allowing you to inject a bit of individuality into a message, what purpose does it really server? I personally find them typically distracting, not so much the images themselves, but the content chosen. Some are elegant and pleasing to look at, but some are just plain distracting. (more…)

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Firefox with its default configuration does not integrate well with kde . Now you will see how to setup firefox as default client in the following two cases

1 ) Clicking on a email link in a webpage should create a new email with kmail.

Start firefox and type the following in the url bar: about:config

A big table with configuration options will appear in the main browser window.
Look for the item network.protocol-handler.external.mailto and make sure its value is set to true. The value is the right most piece of text in the row for that item. Right-click on that line and select “toggle” in the pop-up menu to toggle if necessary. (more…)

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If you do not have a web hosting account yet and you wish to test various email-related scripts, such as contact forms, webmail, autoresponders and more, you can setup a free mail server on your home computer. This alternative will give you more freedom to understand the mechanism of email transport across the internet.

Mercury Mail Transport System is a mail processing tool which is available on many operating systems. It is also integrated in XAMPP, which represents an Apache distribution. In order to be able to test your scripts, first you must configure Mercury application and then an email client. (more…)

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The recently reported flaws discovered in Reader and Acrobat tools urged Adobe, the developer of the vulnerable solutions, to release patches in order to protect the customers of the company. If you haven’t read the advisories, you should know the holes affected Windows XP users with Internet Explorer 7 installed because the attackers tried to exploit them using malicious PDF files. According to Adobe which confirmed the existence of the flaws, the vulnerabilities affect Adobe Reader 8.1 and earlier, Adobe Reader 7.0.9 and earlier, Adobe Acrobat Professional, 3D and Standard 8.1 and earlier versions, Adobe Acrobat Professional, Standard, 3D and Elements 7.0.9 and earlier.

In order to avoid a successful exploitation of the flaw, you have to update your technologies to version 8.1.1 as Adobe implemented the patches in this latest release. (more…)

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