Choosing a password is often a traumatic experience for some people.  Maintaining security and remembering your password can be hard to do at the same time.  Here's a quick test:

Is "Managing E-mail" even possible?

Is anyone doing anything to defeat spam?  The war on spam is currently being fought on several fronts.  Internet service providers (ISPs) are fighting the battle and so are many web hosting service providers.  Your web mail and local email applications may be fighting the battle as well.

If all these battles are being fought then why do I still get so much spam?  The spammers are highly motivated - monetarily - to find every way they can to successfully send spam.  Most of us, as users, are not nearly as zealous about keeping spam out of our systems.  So, we still have spam and we will continue to have spam for a long while.  As long is it is economically rewarding, spammers will continue to send out spam.

We have the technology to stop them!  But, until all higher level internet providers accept and implement the technology worldwide nothing will change.  This technology is most often referred to by what it does - authentication.  It requires that each email have an authenticated sender.  That means that a trusted, third-party source must verify that the stated sender of the email is indeed the individual and/or organization that actually sent the email.  It is a simple concept, but implementation requires a large financial and logistical investment.  Until we users force this issue no one is going to change and spam will continue to flood the internet and our inboxes.

You can fight spam at two levels.  One is at the email server level.  Most people know little or nothing about their email server.  However, the email server often has associated anti-spam features that can be customized to help identify and limit spam.  Depending on your situation you should ask your email service provider, web hosting provider, or internal system administrator about opportunities to install or improve spam filtering at the email server level.

The second level is in your hands.  You (or your system administrator or technical support person) control the configuration of the email programs on your local computer.  Email programs (clients) such as Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird are continually being upgraded with more sophisticated anti-spam features.  Many third party vendor packages (e.g. Symantec/Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro, etc.) also offer anti-spam features that work in conjunction with your email client.

Here are some specific ideas for dealing with all the spam.  We can't stop it, but in some cases we can separate it from the real email.  This we can do with rules and filters in the email client.  Here is my personal strategy for spending less time dealing with spam.

Guess who's sending me email.  Most of us have a good idea of who will be sending us email.  We have a relatively finite list of people in our address book and maybe we know that we will be receiving specific emails from web site inquiries, news sites, list servers or other services.  These know entities often provide us with two 'constants' that we can use - known senders, and known subjects.  Email that we get from people on our address list are the know senders.  This may also be true of email that comes from a newsletter list, list server and web site inquiries.  Email that comes from a web site, news site and others may also have some of the same words always in the subject line (or you may be able to configure them so they do).

 First, let's deal with know senders.  Most email clients (Outlook, Thunderbird and often your web mail clients such as Yahoo!, Gmail, and others) provide you with a white list and black list that you can edit as needed.  A white list will contain a list of people (email addresses) that you trust.  A black list will contain a list of email addresses that you want to block.  A white list can be very useful, so use it where you can.  Just be sure you find out what happens to emails from people who are not in your white list.  Are they transparently blocked (you never know they tried to contact you) or does the system hold them and notify you for your approval?  A black list sounds like a good idea, but is often useless.  I say it is useless because the spammers are smart enough to keep changing the email address the email says it is coming from since they know there is nothing to authenticate it.  This is why you always see spam emails coming from random names.  Some of them make sense and some may even look legitimate.  Some may even be legitimate email addresses, but that address is most often not where the email actually came from.  So, because the spammers can change the emails at will a black list is often of little use.

 Now let's take advantage of things we know will be in the subject of certain emails.  If your email client supports rules and/or filters (e.g. Outlook and Thunderbird) you can set up a filter or rule that says: every time an email comes in with "a constant word or phrase" in the subject line, move that email to "a specified folder".  Your email always comes in to your inbox which is a folder.  You can create as many folder as you want and they can be arranged in a hierarchy as needed.  As an example you might create a folder called "Quotes".  You might set up your web site to put the phrase "Online request for quote" in the subject of every online quote that it creates.  When your email client receives this email the filter you create can recognize that phrase and automatically move this email message to your Quotes folder.  Chances are good that, assuming you pick the correct phrase, you will never get any spam in your Quotes folder.  This means that you will only see quotes in the Quotes folder.  It also means that what is left in your inbox is anything but quotes.  The more emails you are able to filter into separate folders the more your inbox is going to be left with only spam emails which will be more easily identified and deleted.  You can also create filters that will move any email that lists you in the To, Cc, or Bcc field to a specified folder.  Many spam emails are not actually addressed to you so those would be left in your inbox while those that are addressed specifically to you will be in another folder (e.g. you might have a folder called "Real Mail").  Unfortunately, some spam emails will be addressed specifically to you so this step helps, but it doesn't solve everything.

There is more you can do.  Many current email clients (e.g. Outlook and Thunderbird) and anti-spam programs used in conjunction with email clients (e.g. Norton, McAfee, and others) include junk mail filters and spam filters.  In order for these to be effective they automatically download and install updates sets of rules of their own.  So you need to make sure that whatever programs you are using are kept up-to-date through whatever process your software, system or system administrator allows.

 A special word on deleting spam emails.  Many emails today are sent as HTML emails rather than just plain text.  HTML email can include pictures, links to web sites, and even scripts that can run automatically through your email client.  Spammers try to hide things in the HTML emails.  One idea is they hide a very small picture (so small you can't see it) in the email.  When you open the email it needs to download that image from the designated server.  This tells the server that you opened the email.  That way the spammer knows that he got to you.  Some email clients now do not display images in emails to help combat this problem.  This is why you will often see the "Right click to view this image" sort of message in Outlook.  To further avoid this and similar mechanisms you want to delete the email without opening it.   Without going into excruciating detail this involves using key combinations such as Ctrl-A (select all), Shift-left mouse click (select a group), Ctrl-left mouse click(add or delete one item from the already selected item list).  These key / mouse click combinations can be used to select multiple emails without having to click on every single one, one at a time.  If the spammer doesn't get a confirmation that you opened their spam email, they may be less likely to keep you on their list.

This tech tip is not an exhaustive answer to managing your email and spam, but I hope it may at least provide you with a better understanding of where to look for answers to your specific situation.  And, contact us if you need more help.

Whether you have an existing website or are considering creating one you need to calculate a value for the website. 

Why do you need to know the value of your website? So you can

• justify the cost of your website and

• measure the success of your website.

Here are some ideas on how to find your answers.

This Joomla Tip is about inserting pictures into your web page items.  It is assumed that you are using Joomla.

When you create or edit an item in Joomla the editor allows you to place an image placeholder anywhere you want on the page using the "insert image" button that is below the edit window.  The actual image won't show up in the editor, just a tag that looks like this:  {__mosimage__} only without the underscores.

Images that you can place on your web pages have to be in the \images\stories directory on your web site or in any sub-directory one level below the \images\stories directory (e.g. \images\stories\mypix).  You cannot use second level sub-directories (e.g. \images\stories\mypix\my-subpix).  That won't work in the current Joomla.

If you are uploading pictures using Joomla's upload facility, make sure you put the pictures in either the \images\stories directory or one directory down from there.  Anything else won't work.

For details on how to place an image on your web page ...

Prices for desktop and laptop PCs are constantly changing.  Specifications from one manufacturer seem to be written in a different language from all the other manufactures making it difficult to compare one to another.  Often retail and online stores stock different models and brands again making comparisons almost impossible.

So what should I know when selecting a PC?

Fast Facts for Purchasing a Computer

Do you need high performance?  Most people don't need high performance.  Of course 'high performance' is a relative thing.  If you plan to use your computer for general office applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, surfing the web, and email then you don't need a high performance computer.  You may want one anyway, but you don't need one.  If you plan to run specialty applications such as graphics (AutoCAD, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) or virtual reality sorts of games (especially multi-user games) then you will definitely want to look for extra performance from your computer and graphics controller.

The primary way to boost the performance of your computer is to get as much RAM memory as you can and the fastest hard disk drive (highest RPM) that you can.  Then start comparing processor features such as speed, single versus multiple cores, cache memory size, etc.

First and foremost decide what applications and activities you need and will use.  Most business, office, home office and home applications such as creating letters and documents and spreadsheets, checking email and surfing the web do not require a lightning fast PC.  Yes, faster is better, but paying for performance you will not use is a waste of your money.  Blazing fast processors, dual core processors, 64 bit processors, an dbig disk drives will not increase you typing speed.

How can I get the least expensive computer?  Generally the least expensive computers are configured with a minimal amount of RAM, a slow hard disk, a slower and more basic processor and less (or at least less expensive versions of) software.  All these in combination can make for a very slow computer experience.  To get the least expensive computer that you will enjoy using, start with the least expensive computer you can find then configure it or go to the next higher model to get at least 512MB (1GB if possible) of RAM and a faster (7200 RPM minimum) hard drive.  These are not expensive upgrades, but they will vastly improve the performance of any least expensive computer.

What does count if I want a fast PC?  What makes the most difference (given a reasonably fast processor) in perceived PC application performance is the amount of RAM memory available and the speed of the hard drive.

Why does the amount of RAM make a difference?  Your operating system and all your applications are always running in RAM memory because it is very much faster than your hard disk.  The operating system requires a lot of RAM.  Some applications may use a lot of RAM.  When your system tries to run more programs than it has space for in RAM it offloads the least used application portions to the hard disk.  Then when you need to go back to that application something else has to go out so the system can pull back in and run the older application.  This is a HUGE performance hit.  The more RAM your system has the more applications you can be running simultaneously without seeing performance degradation.

When does the speed of the hard drive make a difference?  Any time you start your system, start a new application, stop an application, open a document, save a document, or surf the web the speed of that operation depends largely on the speed of the hard drive.  While there are numerous specifications and the one that is most often specified is the rotation speed of the drive.  Laptops typically come with a 4200 or 5400 RPM hard drive.  Higher end laptops might have a 7200 RPM drive.  Low end desktops might have 5400 RPM drives.  A standard desktop system should have a 7200 RPM drive.  High performance PCs will have 10,000 RPM or even 15,000 RPM drives.  The faster the disk drive spins, the faster the processor can retrieve information from the drive.  So the time it takes your system to boot up, start and stop applications and open and save documents depends in the speed of that hard disk drive.

Occasionally it is necessary to backup and restore your email.  Most often this need arises from the purchase of a new computer, but there are other reasons.  The following Microsoft Knowledgebase articles should address the steps necessary.

• Outlook Express 5.0 and 6.0 - Article 270670 How to back up and recover Outlook Express data
• Outlook 2002, 2003 - Article 287070 How to manage .pst files in Outlook 2002 and in Outlook 2003
• Outlook - Article 829919 How to copy your Personal Address Book to another computer