Cool Tools for You and the School, Volume II

Recommended Downloads, February 2006

By: Eric Durrand

New software tools are being released every day, all around the world. Some of them cater to a very specific audience, like gardeners, while others can help all of us work and play more efficiently. In this article we have collected a number of FREE useful tools we think you should know about:

Plaxo –Have you ever called an acquaintance in your address book only to find that he had moves, or the number changed? Plaxo, an Outlook and Thunderbird plug-in, is here to make sure that it will never happen again. Plaxo sorts out duplicates in your address book, and automatically updates the details when another Plaxo user moves or changes jobs. Easy to use, and great to have! Link –

www.plaxo.com

 

Net Snippets – If you do at least some of your research online, you’ll love Net Snippets. The tool allows you to cut and save clips and “snippets” of websites. It automatically saves the website information, date and time, and allows you to organize snippets into folders in an intuitive tree structure. You can also add your comments, use colored markers on the snippets, or capture entire web pages as they are. Link – www.netsnippets.com


1-Click Answers – The Internet is one of the greatest resources of information, why not utilize it for our own continuing enlightenment? 1-Click Answers allows you to do just that. After you install this little tool, it will run quietly in the background. When you click Alt + Mouse Click on any specific word, phrase, or name, a window will open with information about it, from a Dictionary, an Encyclopedia, and various other references. Link – www.answers.com

Google Earth – This new amazing educational tool brings internet users for the first time a 3D satellite look at Earth, with amazing details! Navigate through buildings, streets, and continents, and see not only Central Park – but individual trees in the park, as well as individual cars on the street. You can use the arrows to move around, zoom in and out, or just type in an address and zoon right in to see it. Great for geography lessons, history lessons, and just for the plain wonder of it all! Link – http://earth.google.com

Skype 2.0 – The new version of the revolutionary Phone-over-IP tool can now do so much more: Instant messaging, international phone calls, and even video-chat! The basic service is free, but you have to pay to call regular phones, to enjoy the voice mail service, or to get your own unique phone number with Skype. The quality of conversation is excellent, and the tool is fun and easy to use. Link – www.skype.com


RoboForm – Tired of filling in the same details again and again into online forms? Finding it hard to remember all your usernames and passwords, but don’t want to write them down on paper? RoboForm can help! This tool will remember all your passwords for you, as well as any personal details that are likely to appear on online forms. Once you feed it these details, it will automatically fill in web forms, saving you time. Passwords and credit card details are themselves password-protected, so that nobody but you can use RoboForm to discover personal information. Link – www.roboform.com

Your computer is only as useful as the software applications it carries. Keeping yourself updated with new tools will make using it more productive, more educational, and more fun!

Posted on February 23, 2006 at 01:57 PM in Cool Tools | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What to Do About Spam?

Surviving the Rising Tide in Junk Mail

By: Eric Durrand

You are approved! C-h-e-a-p Medicine! M@ke her h@ppy! Those are some of the common headlines we see in our inbox every day. Spam, or junk e-mail, has reached monstrous proportions: In the first half of 2005, an average of 68.6% of all E-Mail messages were identified as junk mail, or spam, according to MessageLabs data. In frequently targeted industries like healthcare, 8 out of 10 messages are spam. And the tide seems to continue to rise from a few years ago, when spam was responsible for less than 50% of E-mail communications.

While most service providers offer spam filtering and protection, no server level solution had proved perfect so far, and responsibility for sorting out the junk still falls on end users. But how can users withstand this onslaught of irrelevant information flooding their inbox? By using smart filtering desktop tools, and exercising caution when giving away your main address. We have gathered these tips to help you in dealing with Spam:

The most common E-mail clients today are Microsoft’s Outlook and Outlook Express. Both these applications offer a basic spam fighting capability. In Outlook Express, a specific sender can be blocked by clicking on a message, then Message -> Block Sender. This is useful in protecting against repeating offenders, but not against the professional spammers, who as a rule constantly change their e-mail addresses. Outlook 2003, included in the latest version of Microsoft Office, is much more sophisticated. It sorts incoming e-mails according to some 100,000 variables, identifying spam messages with up to 95% accuracy (when switched to the High spam protection level). Messages identified as spam will be automatically transferred to the Junk Mail folder in Outlook, where the user can go over him in his spare time, to make sure no messages were wrongfully blocked. To switch the spam protection level to High in Outlook 2003, go to Actions -> Junk E-Mail -> Junk E-Mail Options, and select High. Then click OK.

Users who have an older version of Outlook can enjoy the basic functions of blocking senders, and some very basic spam filtering options. These users can install special anti-spam plug-ins (described below), or try a completely different E-Mail client. Thunderbird, a mail client by Mozilla (the same group that brought us the Firefox browser), is a free, smart E-Mail client with advanced anti-spam features.

Beyond an Outlook replacement, many Outlook plug-ins are available that help curb the flood of spam. Qurb ($29.95), is one such tool – claiming to block 100% of spam messages. Qurb learns your preferences, your contacts, and your correspondence, and blocks any address that does not appear in them. You can then go over blocked messages at any time, and make sure no legitimate messages were blocked.

Other plug-ins are free, such as SpamFighter and SpamPal, which help separating and blocking spam messages in several possible E-Mail clients. Another interesting free tool for the more vindictive spam victim is Blue Frog, which does not block spam – but automatically posts complaints on the sites advertised by the spam you receive, once you identify it as spam.

Despite the many tools described above, the most effective way to avoid spam remains smart usage of your e-mail address. Keeping more than one address is recommended: users should keep a primary one for friends or co-workers, and not for online registration or services. Maintaining a strict confidence when it comes to your primary E-Mail address will help ensure that it will remain spam-free longer.

Posted on February 8, 2006 at 11:44 PM in Information Security | Permalink | Comments (0)