I have a Yahoo email account that I used to use a lot. Now I check it occasionally. Based on what shows up in my inbox there, I would definitely not use Yahoo for my primary email now.
The problem is spam. Of course, every web-based email provider has to deal with spam. They do this via spam filters. What is supposed to happen is that an email comes in to the Yahoo server, and the server checks it for certain key words or phrases. If a word such as "free" or a phrase such as "make money" is detected, the spam filter is supposed to divert that email into your Spam folder instead of putting it in your inbox.
In the case of Yahoo, here are a few emails I have received that got into my inbox with no problem:
Sender: Investment Education
Subject: How to Generate Staggering Profits
Sender: Ref WAL-1098
Subject: WAL-MART five hundred dollar gift card inside
Sender: Laptop report
Subject: We will purchase and ship you a laptop you choose
Sender: First Premier Special Offer
Subject: Apply for a credit card today
Sender: Cheaper House Payments
Subject: Think you have a low house payment? Think again
Now obviously, anyone can look at these sender names or subject lines and know without a doubt they are all spam and scams. But for some reason, the Yahoo spam filter thinks these are perfectly legitimate emails from real senders.
So I complained to Yahoo. I forwarded several of these, along with the full email headers (as Yahoo requires with any spam complaint). Here is the response I got:
"We understand your frustration in receiving unsolicited email. While we investigate all reported violations against the Yahoo! Terms of Service (TOS), in this particular case the message you received was not sent by a Yahoo! Mail user. Yahoo has no control over activities outside its services and therefore we cannot take any action."
This of course is ridiculous. Yahoo can only filter out spam if it was sent from a Yahoo account? I don't know what Yahoo is thinking, but I do know that the Gmail spam filters work very well. Use Gmail for your email account. You can have as many different accounts as you want and they are all free.
This week's video - here's a report about an announcement from the Department of Transportation, regarding improved communications between drivers:
Tired Of Traffic? A New DOT Report Urges Drivers: 'Honk'
Monday, July 30, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
Get a new phone number - free
If you have ever found yourself in a situation where you have to provide a phone number, but you don't want to give out your cell phone or your home phone, today's tip is for you.
PrivatePhone.com is a free service that provides you with your own personal phone number and voice mail. You can set up your own outgoing voice mail message so your callers hear your voice when they call in. And when you get a new voice mail, you can be notified by email, or even by an alert sent to your cell phone.
You listen to your voice mails, there are a couple of options. You can call in from any phone and enter your PIN, or you can use any computer to go to the website and listen to the messages from there.
For your phone number choices, there are lots of cities across the US from which to choose. If you are not in one of those cities, then your phone number won't be a local call. But with the increasing use of flat-rate long distance, and the fact that almost all cell phones include free calls anywhere in the US, that is not really a big factor.
This week's video shows a street performer with some pretty impressive skills in handling a soccer ball:
PrivatePhone.com is a free service that provides you with your own personal phone number and voice mail. You can set up your own outgoing voice mail message so your callers hear your voice when they call in. And when you get a new voice mail, you can be notified by email, or even by an alert sent to your cell phone.
You listen to your voice mails, there are a couple of options. You can call in from any phone and enter your PIN, or you can use any computer to go to the website and listen to the messages from there.
For your phone number choices, there are lots of cities across the US from which to choose. If you are not in one of those cities, then your phone number won't be a local call. But with the increasing use of flat-rate long distance, and the fact that almost all cell phones include free calls anywhere in the US, that is not really a big factor.
This week's video shows a street performer with some pretty impressive skills in handling a soccer ball:
Monday, July 16, 2007
Google Easter Eggs
Usually you think of Easter Eggs only in late March or April. Kids have all kinds of fun hunting around and seeing how many hidden eggs they can find.
In the computer world, "easter egg" means something different. You see, computer programmers like to have their own little geeky inside jokes. Many commercial programs have secret codes built in to display something that you would never see normally. People discover these things by chance, and it is like finding hidden treasure.
Here is how to find some Google-related Easter Eggs:
Google Loco
Go to www.Google.com and type this in the search box:
Google Loco
Then click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button
Google Gothic
Go to www.Google.com and type this in the search box:
Google Gothic
Then click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button
Google Pig Latin
Go to www.Google.com and type this in the search box:
xx-piglatin
Then click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button
Google Easter Egg game
Go to www.Google.com and type this in the search box:
google easter egg
Then click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button
My wife loves watching baseball - whenever the Red Sox are playing. Personally, I think it is pretty boring. This week's video shows why you shouldn't fall asleep at a baseball game - people might be watching.
In the computer world, "easter egg" means something different. You see, computer programmers like to have their own little geeky inside jokes. Many commercial programs have secret codes built in to display something that you would never see normally. People discover these things by chance, and it is like finding hidden treasure.
Here is how to find some Google-related Easter Eggs:
Google Loco
Go to www.Google.com and type this in the search box:
Google Loco
Then click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button
Google Gothic
Go to www.Google.com and type this in the search box:
Google Gothic
Then click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button
Google Pig Latin
Go to www.Google.com and type this in the search box:
xx-piglatin
Then click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button
Google Easter Egg game
Go to www.Google.com and type this in the search box:
google easter egg
Then click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button
My wife loves watching baseball - whenever the Red Sox are playing. Personally, I think it is pretty boring. This week's video shows why you shouldn't fall asleep at a baseball game - people might be watching.
Monday, July 9, 2007
What is that red X?
Here's a question that I get fairly often:
Someone sent me an email with some pictures, but instead of seeing the pictures in the email, all I see is a red "X". What is going wrong?
Actually there are a few potential fixes for this problem. Here are some things to try:
1. You might just be offline. In many cases, you can read your email without being connected to the internet (such as with Outlook or Outlook Express) but the images won't show up. Solution: check your internet connection and make sure you are online.
2. Outlook Express may be "protecting" you by blocking images from downloading. Solution: In Outlook Express, click on Tools - Options and then click the Security tab. UNcheck the box that says "Block images and other external content in HTML email". Click OK. Close Outlook Express and open it again.
3. The image that is not displaying may be hosted on a website that is down at the moment. Solution: not much you can do here except wait for the website to come back up.
4. "Show pictures" may be turned off in Internet Explorer. Solution: Click Start - Control Panel and double click on Internet Options. Choose the Advanced tab, then scroll down to the Multimedia section. Check the box that says "Show pictures".
5. Your firewall may be blocking the images. Solution: Turn off or disable the firewall and see if the pictures appear (the steps for disabling the firewall are different for different firewalls). Note: if you use a router for your network, that has a hardware firewall built in. You don't really need a software firewall such as ZoneAlarm or Norton.
6. The website where the image is hosted is up, but your internet security settings are set too high for that website to get through. Solution: Click Start - Control Panel and double click on Internet Options. Click on the Security tab, and click the button that says "Default level".
7. One more potential cause is that the sender is not sending the images correctly (the email has to be sent in HTML format, not plain text). Solution: tell the sender to change his or her email sending mode to HTML.
This week's video falls into one of my favorite categories - the prank. This guy named Scott (not me though) has a boss that is overweight. The boss keeps breaking one desk chair after another, and he thinks it is because he's fat. There's actually another reason...
Someone sent me an email with some pictures, but instead of seeing the pictures in the email, all I see is a red "X". What is going wrong?
Actually there are a few potential fixes for this problem. Here are some things to try:
1. You might just be offline. In many cases, you can read your email without being connected to the internet (such as with Outlook or Outlook Express) but the images won't show up. Solution: check your internet connection and make sure you are online.
2. Outlook Express may be "protecting" you by blocking images from downloading. Solution: In Outlook Express, click on Tools - Options and then click the Security tab. UNcheck the box that says "Block images and other external content in HTML email". Click OK. Close Outlook Express and open it again.
3. The image that is not displaying may be hosted on a website that is down at the moment. Solution: not much you can do here except wait for the website to come back up.
4. "Show pictures" may be turned off in Internet Explorer. Solution: Click Start - Control Panel and double click on Internet Options. Choose the Advanced tab, then scroll down to the Multimedia section. Check the box that says "Show pictures".
5. Your firewall may be blocking the images. Solution: Turn off or disable the firewall and see if the pictures appear (the steps for disabling the firewall are different for different firewalls). Note: if you use a router for your network, that has a hardware firewall built in. You don't really need a software firewall such as ZoneAlarm or Norton.
6. The website where the image is hosted is up, but your internet security settings are set too high for that website to get through. Solution: Click Start - Control Panel and double click on Internet Options. Click on the Security tab, and click the button that says "Default level".
7. One more potential cause is that the sender is not sending the images correctly (the email has to be sent in HTML format, not plain text). Solution: tell the sender to change his or her email sending mode to HTML.
This week's video falls into one of my favorite categories - the prank. This guy named Scott (not me though) has a boss that is overweight. The boss keeps breaking one desk chair after another, and he thinks it is because he's fat. There's actually another reason...
Monday, July 2, 2007
Put your email in vacation mode
Have you ever taken a vacation - and not checked your email the whole time you were gone? Personally, I would probably not enjoy that very much. I guess I am a bit obsessive about checking email and responding to it (if a response is necessary). I don't like people to think I am ignoring them.
But sometime you might be in a situation where you cannot check your email for a few days or a week, maybe even longer. If you use Gmail, you don't have to worry about it. Just use the Vacation Mode.
Log in to your account at www.gmail.com, and click on Settings. Under the "General" tab, you will see a section called Vacation Autoresponder. Just turn it on, and type in a few words such as "I am on vacation until xxxx - I will respond to your email when I return". Anytime someone sends you an email, they will automatically get that response back right away. So they know you are not just ignoring their email, and you can enjoy an email-free vacation.
Yahoo email offers the same thing - click on Options, then "Vacation Response". Other email services usually offer this as well - check your settings to see how to use it.
This week's video - what if you could design your own home, and you didn't have to consider at all how much it would cost. What would it be like? Well, one very wealthy person did just that - and this is the result:
But sometime you might be in a situation where you cannot check your email for a few days or a week, maybe even longer. If you use Gmail, you don't have to worry about it. Just use the Vacation Mode.
Log in to your account at www.gmail.com, and click on Settings. Under the "General" tab, you will see a section called Vacation Autoresponder. Just turn it on, and type in a few words such as "I am on vacation until xxxx - I will respond to your email when I return". Anytime someone sends you an email, they will automatically get that response back right away. So they know you are not just ignoring their email, and you can enjoy an email-free vacation.
Yahoo email offers the same thing - click on Options, then "Vacation Response". Other email services usually offer this as well - check your settings to see how to use it.
This week's video - what if you could design your own home, and you didn't have to consider at all how much it would cost. What would it be like? Well, one very wealthy person did just that - and this is the result:
