September 2003 Archives

    I used to love getting a lot of email. It made me feel important. It made me feel wanted. These days, however, 99% of the email (in terms of volume) is junk, spam, crapola - call it what you want. It is is simply unwanted - and it has started to make me loath even looking at my inbox. When I moved my hosting operations from my own house to pair.com, I was finally able to take advantage of a wonderful little spam tool called SpamAssassin. There are many tools to get rid of or block spam, but this is by far the best I have found. SpamAssassin (also known as SA) filtering is built into Pair's email servers. (I had wanted to build this functionality into my own qmail servers, but I lacked the motivation and time to do so.) The way you activate it is by simply marked a checkbox in your email account properties and whamo... most of the junk email you receive will be premarked with a **JUNK** prefix in the subject line. So, all I had to do after activating spam filtering via SA was set up a rule in my email client to move all email marked with **JUNK** to the trash bin. The amount of false positives (i.e. the number of emails marked as **JUNK** that are legitimate) is about 1 in 1,500 emails (for me). The number of false negatives is about 2 in 100 emails. Those are pretty damn good odds, if you ask me. Pair has an added goodie that will move all your junk mail [automatically] to a text file in your home directory root (on your webserver) - which eliminates the need for the rule that moves said emails to the trash bin. Because of the low number of false positives I get, I feel confident in rarely looking through my junk mail to make sure something legitimate has not been marked. I have a few scripts that I run to check through the junk mail, but beyond that, my work is done.
    There are a number of reasons for this issue having become so important to me. I like to roam wirelessly about the countryside using my cell phone and laptop. While it is great that I am currently able to [ab]use SprintPCS's unlimited data policy, I don't like the idea that junk email is taking up my precious time and Sprint's precious network resources. So, it behooves me to find some way of keeping it from getting from the server to my client - and Pair's combination of SA and moving junk messages to a text file that I can later search is a great idea. Who knows whether the buffet style wireless internet service is here to stay. I know, though, that I don't want to contribute to its demise by the 300 plus junk email messages I had to download - just to see if I received any legitimate mail. The biggest problem still remains: how do we stop junk mail in the first place. I know there a lot of good ideas out there (the least of which is related to new laws*), but unfortunately, anyone who understands the way email is transmitted and received, knows that this will be a very time consuming and money consuming venture - i.e. to change the way email is transmitted around the world.
    At least us users can do our part in limiting the amount of time and bandwidth waste by using products like SA. For those of you not on Pair's network (or don't have a service which provides similar functionality), here are some clients that might help you on your own desktop:
- Windows: SAproxy
- OS X (raw - not for most users): Ben Trott, StupidFool.org - Installing Spam Assassin
- OS X does have a SA type of filtering agent built into its own Mail client
- Another non SA alternative for OS X: SpamSieve
If you are a Linux/*nix user, then the normal SA installation as outlined for different distros is the way to go. I won't get into detail here, as that wasn't the purpose of this commentary.
    So, this morning, when I went to open my email, I sighed a sigh of relief. 2 messages in my inbox. 2 legitimate messages from the Wall Street Journal... and that was it. Bliss...

First, my initial thoughts on the UX50 (skip this paragraph if all you are interested in is my tip section).
Every 1 1/2 to 2 years, I come across a device that drastically improves my ability to deal with task lists, data manipulation, etc. When I saw the UX50 in a review, I knew it was it - it was the next thing for me. I don't think that the device is for too many people in the PDA market. Firstly, it is expensive - too much for someone using it as a electronic notepad and address book. Secondly, it has a lot of features on it that make deciphering all of the options complicated (i.e. can you figure out all of the different memory stick formats?). But, for me it hit the spot. It blows my Treo 300 out of the water and makes me think that the combination cell phone/pda is destined not to be for most people (the screen is typically too small, and when you finally increase it to a decent size, the device is too big to be a phone). I like the integrated bluetooth and wifi - that's what makes the device ueber usable for me. I found, though, that there are some quirks related to syncing with OS X/Macs and thought people would be interested in what I found (more so than my above commentary).

Tips for OS X:
You should have the following programs installed (you don't need everything on this list per se, but I would highly recommend it, because it seems to have been the best combination I could come up with in my testing):
· Palm Desktop 4.1 for OS X (download the latest version here: Palm Support - Palm Desktop software for Mac - I know from experience that Sony does not [like] supporting Syncing with Macs, so the best solutions are almost always 3rd party).
· iSync for OS X (check out: Apple iSync
· iSync Palm Conduit (iSync Palm Conduit Download --> look very closely at the bottom of the screen, above the nav and search bar for Download - I can't believe they make it so difficult to see...)
· The Missing Sync from MarkSpace.com
· If you already have the Missing Sync installed, install the update! Without the update, you can Sync via bluetooth, but via USB did not work for me under any circumstances w/ the original Missing Sync 3.0.

(If you already have iSync and the iSync Palm Conduit installed, no worries, you shouldn't need to reinstall anything. The same goes for Palm Desktop, BUT I wanted to be sure, so I installed the latest package. I was moving from the Handspring Treo 300, so I was using a version of Palm Desktop apparently modified for the Treo. I found that by reinstalling over the old version, I had better luck with limiting lurking quirks - say that ten times fast.)

Configure the Conduits so that iSync is enabled. Here is a screenshot of what I have checked:

Open up Palm Desktop, go to the HotSync menu and select Setup. Click on the Connection Settings tab and make sure that bluetooth-pda-sync-port is checked.

Click on settings for that option and set the connection to Serial and "As fast as possible." (This is all assuming you have a bluetooth module installed on your Mac and that it is active and set to Discoverable.) Close the windows you are working with and you should be back in Palm Desktop.

If you have never gone through this procedure before, I can maybe, at some later time, walk through that process (I am short on time now)... After finishing pairing the devices:

Common Problems: "Cannot sync because connection is in use." If you get that error message, you probably do not have Connection Setup correctly set to "Connection to Mac." It has happened to me numerous times, so double check.

NOW, before you start, there is a caveat. If you have the Backup conduit turned on (under Palm Desktop -> HotSync menu -> Conduit Settings), beware of troubles I had. With the Backup conduit turned on, you may find that every time you Sync, it reinstalls the software on your Palm (that had been backed up from a previous sync session) and the related databases. This turns a 1 min. sync session into a 10 min. ordeal. I backup to the Memory Stick anyway, so I turned this off, as it caused me nothing but problems. It may be due to the fact that I have used 3 different Palm devices with this computer, but I cannot be sure.* I figure Bluetooth to be convenient if I can sync quickly without cables... The long sync produced by a buggy Backup conduit was a severe problem imho. After completely disabling the conduit after yet-another-fresh-install of the aforementioned software sans iSync, I had no more problems. I am successfully syncing with my PowerBook from a few rooms away - and happy doing it.

I know there are steps missing in this "howto," but I am doing it from memory, so please forgive the gaps. I hope other posters may fill in where I have left off.

HTH

*Unfortunately, when you delete software on the Mac - similar to Windows - some of the preferences are left floating around the system. Even if you do your best to get rid of them (much easier than hacking the registry in Windows), there are likely to be leftovers that remain even after a new install. I know this by the mere fact that some of my personal layout preferences (that differ greatly from the default) remain even after I thought I had a completely fresh installation of the software.