Tag Archive for 'Email'

Windows Mobile Edition 6 - no RSS support?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 8/2/2007
in Microsoft, RSS and Telecoms
. 1 Comment

Endgadget are reporting that Microsoft has announced Windows Mobile Edition 6 - Microsoft’s operating system for mobile phones.

According to the article, the major new features of WME6 are

  • HTML support in email
  • Windows Live for Windows Mobile
  • File transfer capability in Windows Live Messenger
  • New versions of mobile Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with rich editing
  • Remote wipe capability for stolen and lost devices
  • Call history in contact cards
  • Tight Vista integration
  • “Calendar ribbon” for more easily viewing schedule by day or week
  • New versions of .NET Compact Framework and SQL Server built-in

Some nice features in there alright but how about support for RSS? It would be great to be able to have an RSS reader built-in to the phone. This would make it trivial allow people to subscribe to podcasts, for example from their phones and do away with the need to be carrying a phone and an iPod.

There’s a demo of WME6 on YouTube.

Spam Assassin on Direct Admin problem

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 28/1/2007
in Technology
. 8 Comments

As I mentioned previously, I have rolled out a new server for my blog (and a couple of sites I host) in the last few days. I am now being hammered by spam! Spam Assassin is installed on the server.

The hosting software on the server is called Direct Admin and in each hosted domain in Direct Admin I have set Spam Assassin to 5.0 (which I thought would be low enough to catch most spam).

I also configured it to allow all spam through but labelled as ***SPAM***.

I haven’t received a single email labelled as ***SPAM*** but I have received lots of spam. :-(

Spam Assassin setup

There’s obviously something simple missing in the config of SA on the server.

I know it is probably an impossible question to answer without more info but if anyone can think of something I might be missing, could you let me know?

UPDATE: A Direct Admin support staff member emailed me the fix - it is available at http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=36

Interesting business model proposed for TinyURL

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 4/12/2006
in Web 2.0
. 9 Comments

David Berlind over at ZDNet has a very interesting take on how TinyURL could monetise the use of its site.

TinyURL, in case you didn’t know, is a site where you can paste in long URLs and the site spits back out much shorter URLs which can then be used in emails, forums etc. without breaking or line wrapping.

The bones of his post is:

You visit some car manufacturer’s Web page to look at an SUV. You decide to shrink the URL so you can pass it around via email. TinyURL is all seeing and all knowing. Based on the first time someone shrinks that SUV-related URL, it “registers” the fact that there’s some long URL out there on the Web that has something to do with people looking for SUVs. Now, along comes David Berlind and he attempts to shrink the same URL. With what degree of certainty can you say David Berlind is interested in buying an SUV (or helping someone else to buy one). What self-respecting SUV-making car manufacturer wouldn’t want to have its advertisement right there?

The website owner, Minnesota-based Kevin “Gilby” Gilbertson doesn’t do anything like this with the site right now but it wouldn’t take much to roll this out and suddenly you are looking at a potentially very lucrative (and very desirable) site.

The full article is well worth a read.

Email sending problems

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 27/11/2006
in Email and Technology
. 25 Comments

Anyone else having problems sending emails via Blacknight Solutions today?

I had a desperate time trying to send mails this morning and I have three emails trying to get out now which can’t seem to send.

Normally they are reliable - ironically their support is via email so finding out what is causing this could be a problem!

Plaxo - good idea, poorly executed?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 10/11/2006
in Web 2.0
. 8 Comments

I have a Plaxo account. I set it up last year to try it out. It seemed like a good idea, an online address book where I could store all my contacts info and have those data available whereever I had an Internet connection.

The reality though is a little different.

When I set up my account I followed the instructions for importing my contact info from my Mac Address Book. The import failed. I tried again several months later. Same result. I didn’t try any more after that.

A contacts db with no contact data is useless and I wasn’t about to invest time in manually entering the hundreds of contacts I have into Plaxo one by one.

I get the occasional email from Plaxo telling me that someone else has added my details to Plaxo and that I can now add their details to my account. I worry about the amount of emails Plaxo sends out - it must get annoying for some people to be constantly receiving update requests.

I received such an email this morning so I logged into Plaxo for the first time in months only to be amazed at how slow it now runs. It was like swimming through treacle!

It is a shame really - I like the idea but the execution, in this case is very poor.

External storage options

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 2/11/2006
in Technology
. 10 Comments

My main computer is my laptop - it is a desktop replacement. The biggest issue with this is that laptop hard drives are, by definition, small :-(

On my laptop I have all my music, all my photos and all my email going back to 1997! The laptop has a 120gb hard drive, but I am fast approaching that limit!

I have a La Cie 200gb external firewire which is fine for backups but what I really need is to be able to move my music and photos onto external drive(s), freeing up space on the laptop, and allowing me to grow my collection.

The drive(s) should be easy to add to, so that if I find I’m approaching the limit again, I can simply add another drive. I’d like to add drives in pairs so I can mirror them using RAID.

Has anyone any suggestions on a good way to set this up? And what is good kit to use (good = cheap and reliable).

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