The Leopard is in the House

But I don't have it yet. I will soon and I will post my observations asap.

In the meantime, I highly recommend the take control books:

* "Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard," by Joe Kissell, shows
readers the best ways to install, clean up after installation,
troubleshoot problems, and even downgrade if necessary. 125 pages, $10


* "Take Control of Customizing Leopard," by Matt Neuburg, provides a
tour of new and revamped features in Leopard, including Time Machine,
Spaces, Quick Look, Cover Flow, and the Path Bar. 138 pages, $10


* "Take Control of Users & Accounts in Leopard," by Kirk McElhearn,
describes all the different types of accounts in Leopard, how to
share files between accounts, and what can be limited with the new
options in Leopard's parental controls. 88 pages, $10


* "Take Control of Sharing Files in Leopard," by Glenn Fleishman,
makes file sharing easy between two Macs, among a mixed-platform
office workgroup, or between far-flung computers on the Internet. 89
pages, $10


* "Take Control of Fonts in Leopard," by Sharon Zardetto, explains
everything Mac users need to know about fonts in Mac OS X and what
has changed with Leopard, with a focus on Leopard's new and updated
fonts, font activation capabilities, font previewing, and font sample
printing. 217 pages, $15

Evil Email

Who among us can function in the modern world without our email? On the other hand, who among us would not be delighted never again to see an ad for fake Rolexes, fake ED cures and offers of millions of dollars from fake sons of dead captains of imaginary Nigerian industry? The name for this junk email, spam, may have originated from the song in Monty Python’s comedy sketch about spam-loving vikings that goes: "Spam spam spam spam, [ad nauseum]..." The vikings, sitting in a restaurant whose menu only included dishes made with spam, sang this refrain over and over, increasing the volume until it was impossible for the others in the sketch to be heard.

However it originated, we all just want it to stop. While experts generally agree that, like flies and mosquitoes, there is no way to permanently rid ourselves of their annoying buzz, there are ways to control the flood of spam that inundates us.

The first step is to recognize the evil email though this is getting harder. Obviously an email whose subject line offers you a million dollars is spam but spammers are getting sneakier. Because of how spam filters work, using “innocent” phrases like, “DUI Drama for General Hospital Star” or “Good luck, dear friend” can fool us and our spam filter, tempting us to open the email. If you don’t recognize the sender, don’t do it. Spam filters are also fooled by junk words in the subject and by messages that appear as graphics in the body.

Never respond to spam. Don’t click its links, don’t try to unsubscribe, don’t reply to tell them you are a woman and therefore not interested in enlarging body parts you don’t possess. All of your indignation will accomplish one thing only: it sends up a flag that marks you and your email address as “a live one,” thereby increasing the amount of junk mail in your inbox. If you are not certain whether an email is real, like one from your bank, call your bank to verify.

If you must do something about particularly egregious or offensive spam, reporting the abuse to the appropriate organizations is satisfying and useful but time-consuming. Very good instructions for doing so can be found here: http://www.emailabuse.org/report.asp

You can hide your “real” email by creating throwaway emails specifically for registering on websites, listserves, newsgroups. You can do this through Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, and others. Yahoo and Gmail are pretty good about filtering the junk, but Hotmail’s filters are less robust. Even if your disposable address does start letting junk through, you can just open a new account and discard the old address, and then those annoying marketing messages go away. Earthlink now offers a “ProtectionPack” to its customers that features anonymous email addresses. Make sure when you order something from an online company that you review the privacy check boxes – there might be a box checked that authorizes that company to send you marketing email.

Don’t post your actual email address on your website. Use tricks like “Karelle at BestMacSolutions dot com” or make the @ symbol a graphic so it’s unrecognizable to the spider bots that crawl the web harvesting email addresses. Most webhosts also provide a formmail script that you can use for readers to contact you, but that spiders can’t hijack.

Lastly, to cope with the spam you are already getting, check into spam filters. There are three main categories: those that work on the server, over which you have no control and that don’t allow you to check for false positives - email that fits the filter’s definition of spam but which is email that you want to actually receive. The second option includes those programs that reside on your computer, giving you some control, that filter your email, letting “good” messages through to your email program and storing junk in a junk folder. There are lots of good PC spam filter reviews on the web, including: http://www.download.com/Spam-Filters/3150-2382_4-0.html and http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,115885-page,1/article.html . The email client built in to Mac OS X, Mail.app, contains a very efficient spam filter but there are other even better Mac options, like SpamSieve (http://c-command.com/spamsieve/), Em@ilCRX - 1.6.5 (http://www.emailcrx.com/Welcome.html), or Spamfire http://www.matterform.com/mac_software/spam_email_filter/index.html . The third option is to use a third-party system that utilizes the challenge system. Basically, whenever anybody emails you they have to go to a special website and confirm they know you. This is great way to stop spammers. You can often preset it to allow everyone from your address book to email you. On the other hand it can be a nuisance to legitimate emailers who are not in your address book. If you use email for business, annoying your customers can have undesired consequences.

If you are looking for more suggestions about keeping your inbox free of spam check out these websites:
http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/internet/page4782.cfm
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000477.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/email/spam.mspx