Filtering using magnets or Bayesian learning or both
Interesting discussion in the POPFile forum about magnets and whether they help or hinder email categorization in the thread titled
Magnet vs learning strategy. "Magnets" are a key part of my reverse spam filtering strategy.
Magnet vs learning strategy. "Magnets" are a key part of my reverse spam filtering strategy.
POPFile v0.20.1 targeted for 31 October 2003
According to a message from
John Graham-Cumming in
this thread, he's targeting 31 October 2003 for the release of
POPFile v0.20.1. POPFile is a free, open-source, multi-platform program for automatically categorizing email.
John Graham-Cumming in
this thread, he's targeting 31 October 2003 for the release of
POPFile v0.20.1. POPFile is a free, open-source, multi-platform program for automatically categorizing email.
Sort Once is no longer offering new accounts
According to the Sort Once Signup page, "Sort Once is no longer offering new accounts. " Another mail service provider bites the dust...
Free Zope and Plone hosting at objectis.org
I'm still thinking about other wiki-blog tools and one that I'm interested in is Plone, which is based on Zope. According to the article
Free Zope and Plone hosting on objectis.org, non-commercial users can use Plone for free at objectis.org. I signed up and I already have . . .
Comments: Plone is too slow -- the problem may be my dial-up connection or the objectis.org server, but whatever is the cause, it is significantly slower than Blogger. Plone sites are too cluttered and noisy for my taste -- I want something simple (similar to what Deflexion.com looks like now).
Questions: Is there something like a BlogThis! bookmarklet for plone? Can I change the look and feel using an external CSS stylesheet, i.e., a stylesheet hosted on one of my servers?
20-Nov-2003 Update: This blog post has been translated into Russian here!
Free Zope and Plone hosting on objectis.org, non-commercial users can use Plone for free at objectis.org. I signed up and I already have . . .
Comments: Plone is too slow -- the problem may be my dial-up connection or the objectis.org server, but whatever is the cause, it is significantly slower than Blogger. Plone sites are too cluttered and noisy for my taste -- I want something simple (similar to what Deflexion.com looks like now).
Questions: Is there something like a BlogThis! bookmarklet for plone? Can I change the look and feel using an external CSS stylesheet, i.e., a stylesheet hosted on one of my servers?
20-Nov-2003 Update: This blog post has been translated into Russian here!
You Might Be An Anti-Spam Kook If...
I read a lot of discussion about spam-fighting tools & strategies and I know exactly what the author of You Might Be An Anti-Spam Kook If...
is talking about. I am constantly amazed at the techies who because they are smart and technical think that they can solve the spam problem without knowing much, if anything, about existing email tools or email-related RFCs. It's getting so bad that I'm afraid that soon I will have to stop participating in discussion groups about email in order to save my sanity.
is talking about. I am constantly amazed at the techies who because they are smart and technical think that they can solve the spam problem without knowing much, if anything, about existing email tools or email-related RFCs. It's getting so bad that I'm afraid that soon I will have to stop participating in discussion groups about email in order to save my sanity.
Blogger Archives and Permalinks
I hope that Phil Ringnalda's Blogger archive scripts will help me figure out how to create nicer looking Blogger permalinks.
Colors for Deflexion.com
I'm deciding on the colors for Deflexion.com and the MetaFilter discussion exploring color helped me collect this list of sites and tools:
I want colors that will go nicely with this image and I don't care whether they are "web safe" (because most people seem to think that the web has moved beyond the days of use-only-web-safe colors). I'm especially wondering what colors to use for links (unvisited, visited, active, hover).
- ColorMatch Remix
- Colorz- for color scheme management
- edit_styles bookmarklet
- Behr.com Explore Color
- EasyRGB.com
- Color Blender
- Color scheme
- Color Schemer - Online Color Scheme Generator
| #369 | ||
| #669 | |||
| #699 | |||
| #69c | |||
| #999 | |||
| #99c | |||
| #9cc | |||
| #ccc |
Whitelists do not necessarily imply challenge-response filtering
I often see people say something like "I don't like whitelisting" and then go on to rant about the problems with challenge-response filtering. Using a challenge-response system almost always implies the use of a whitelist but the converse is not true! For example, as I describe on the Reverse Spam Filtering page, I use a whitelist (*) but I do not use challenge-response filters.
(*) But I call it a greenlist.
(*) But I call it a greenlist.
24 October 2003 Mulberry v3.1b9 beta release for Mac/Win32/Linux/Solaris
According to Cyrusoft International, Inc., "The Mulberry v3.1b9 beta release for Mac/Win32/Linux/Solaris is now available for testing. This release includes new support for S/MIME cryptography and also a new PGP8 plugin (Mac/Win32 only) to support PGP Corp.'s PGPv8 release. Other major new features include support for up to 8 user defined labels on messages, a new mail indicator in mailbox tabs, and integrated Mac OS X address book support."
Mulberry is the premier standards-based GUI IMAP client. It costs about $40 and is well worth it if you are, or want to be, a power IMAP user.
Mulberry is the premier standards-based GUI IMAP client. It costs about $40 and is well worth it if you are, or want to be, a power IMAP user.
Google Tools
Since I link to a lot of NNTP newsgroup posts, the Google Groups Simplifier
bookmarklet seems like it will be very useful and I've now got it in my Moz toolbar next to my BlogThis! bookmarklet. I'm dreaming of the day when I can use something like BlogThis! from my NNTP and IMAP clients and easily point people to a message that is stored in a public NNTP or IMAP folder -- when that happens, we'll know the Semantic Web has arrived!
More Google tools are in the open-source
Google Tag Library at SourceForge.
bookmarklet seems like it will be very useful and I've now got it in my Moz toolbar next to my BlogThis! bookmarklet. I'm dreaming of the day when I can use something like BlogThis! from my NNTP and IMAP clients and easily point people to a message that is stored in a public NNTP or IMAP folder -- when that happens, we'll know the Semantic Web has arrived!
More Google tools are in the open-source
Google Tag Library at SourceForge.
Open-source or free web front ends to procmail
There are a number of web front ends to procmail, including
Does anyone have experience with these? Or know of others that I can list here? It would be nice if these were available on a public web site -- maybe I'll install some at email.deflexion.com (which I need to create!).
-
ProcBuilder : Open Source Software : University of Vermont - the one that is part of Webmin
Does anyone have experience with these? Or know of others that I can list here? It would be nice if these were available on a public web site -- maybe I'll install some at email.deflexion.com (which I need to create!).
22 October 2003 New release of SpamBouncer
As announced at SpamBouncer.org:
I don't personally use SpamBouncer but many people do and are quite happy with it.
This release contains several minor bug fixes (generated mostly by a few false positive reports), and also an unusually large number of new haven domains and small fry. I recommend updating, even if you just did a week ago -- I think you will like what it does to your spam load.
I don't personally use SpamBouncer but many people do and are quite happy with it.
Yahoo! Mail Plus now supports subaddressing
As discussed in many places around the Net, including
Yahoo! Mail Plus now supports subaddressing, which is also known as plus addressing, user-extension addressing, detailed addressing, and tagged addresses.
The benefits of subaddressing include being able to
Subaddressing
is one of the features that I recommend people look for in a mail hosting provider. It is especially useful when mail is delivered to an IMAP server because a user can then use any IMAP client to access the various subaddressed mailboxes.
Even though I do not recommend Yahoo! Mail, mainly because it does not support IMAP, I applaud them for offering subaddressing and I hope that it inspires other mail service providers to do the same.
- EmailDiscussions.com: Yahoo! AddressGuard thread started 22 October 2003
- news.yahoo.com: Yahoo Launches Anti-Spam E-Mail Decoys by Ben Berkowitz, 21 October 2003
- theregister.co.uk: Yahoo! sets decoy email traps for spammers
by Robert Jaques, 22 October 2003
Yahoo! Mail Plus now supports subaddressing, which is also known as plus addressing, user-extension addressing, detailed addressing, and tagged addresses.
The benefits of subaddressing include being able to
-
have mail automatically delivered to a specific mailbox, which is determined by the subaddress -
block or dispose of a subaddress that starts receiving spam
Subaddressing
is one of the features that I recommend people look for in a mail hosting provider. It is especially useful when mail is delivered to an IMAP server because a user can then use any IMAP client to access the various subaddressed mailboxes.
Even though I do not recommend Yahoo! Mail, mainly because it does not support IMAP, I applaud them for offering subaddressing and I hope that it inspires other mail service providers to do the same.
21 October 2003 Evan Williams on the philosophy of Blogger/Google
In the CNET.com article Blog on, Stefanie Olsen talks with one of the creators of Blogger, Evan Williams, who says:
... they [Google] were in line with us [Pyra Labs] as a company, philosophically--it just seemed like a great fit.
...
The whole "do not be evil" thing, and sort of a democratic approach to how information should be distributed and available for us. We're all about giving anyone a voice, and Google's all about finding out what's important on the Web by what people link to and what people say.
1 October 2003 No more challenge-response filters and no new sign-ups at BlueBottle.com
For details, see
the BlueBottle.com Important Notice and sign-up page. Also see the BlueBottle section of my IMAP providers page.
the BlueBottle.com Important Notice and sign-up page. Also see the BlueBottle section of my IMAP providers page.
29 September 2003 Apres Spam: The next email crisis by David Gelernter
In the article Apres Spam
at the Weekly Standard, David Gelernter
makes the following wise observation.
The rest of the article includes more wisdom.
at the Weekly Standard, David Gelernter
makes the following wise observation.
A main complaint of email users is that they have to waste time every day deleting spam messages from the servers on which they lease their little online garden plots--but such deleting is only necessary because the industry has its head screwed on backwards. In our universe (right here, right now), data storage is dirt cheap and getting cheaper. Disk storage per bit is in effect too cheap to meter, so no one should have to waste time deleting anything, unless he feels like it.
No one should ever have to do anything with a mail message except ignore it, read it, or read and respond. When I see people 'cleaning up' their mail files, faithfully stuffing each message into a folder or otherwise file-clerking for a machine, acting as their computer's loyal (albeit menial) employee, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. (Laugh is usually the right answer.) Software should be doing this for you. That's why software exists. And of course nothing should ever be put in a folder; what if it's the wrong folder? Since when have you been so crazy about filing things, anyway?
The rest of the article includes more wisdom.
Trying out Blogger
While I'm looking for the perfect wiki-blog tool, I'm trying out Blogger. It doesn't have some things I'd like, such as categories or syndication, but it's incredibly easy to set up & use, supports SFTP and the very useful BlogThis! bookmarklet, it's free (gratis), and there are lots of features in the pipeline.
I'm planning to use this as a personal wiki rather than as a conventional blog (which means that I won't hesitate to edit old posts!).
I'm planning to use this as a personal wiki rather than as a conventional blog (which means that I won't hesitate to edit old posts!).
Each item © Nancy McGough
Each comment © the author of the comment
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