CC'ing yourself dates back to the days when email first became popular. Before that was the typewriter and you always kept a printed copy of the letters you sent. Then when emailing came into popular use, people still wanted a copy of that important communication so they started CC'ing themselves.
Nowadays, it's bad form to CC yourself. Why? Because it mimics a spammer tactic. It's possible to raise red flags with your email provider's spam filter by CC'ing yourself. The spam filter looks at the CC and tries to determine if the account has been taken over by a spammer.Some spam filters are smarter than others and some will put you on a permanent iggy if you CC yourself because it will see your emails as UCE (unsolicited commercial emails). Once you've been blacklisted, it takes work, time and sometimes money to get off.
CC stands for Courtesy Copy and the need to CC yourself has passed out of existence. Every time you send an email you have a copy in your sent mail folder. So if you CC yourself, you will have two copies of the email, thus increasing the size of your email box.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Using Personal Email for Business is Risky Behavior
- What if your email gets deleted/lost? What recourse do you have? Will a free email provider restore it? The answer to all those is: you are in hot water! You can't hold a free email provider legally responsible for losing your email because you agreed to the risk when you signed up for the free email.
- What is your email account gets hacked? Sometimes free emails have the ability to recover a hacked account from an alternate email address, but not always! And you have to specify that alternate account or you are in hot water again! If your email gets hacked and bad things are done with your email, you don't have an emergency number to call to get your account discontinued right away.
- What if your email provider discontinues service? It's so bad for your business if this happens. The major emails have been around for awhile, but you never know what the future holds. A business merger could mean the end of your free email.
- What support do you have with free email? None. Ok this point alone should be the end of your using free email for business.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
On a Shoestring Budget and Need Software?
If you need it free (and legal, of course), then general public license (GPL) software is for you. No budget for software? GPL software is for you. It's free and open source so it can be added to and shared.
- Probably the most famous GPL program is Open Office. Intended to be a substitute for Microsoft Office, Open Office is a completely free suite of applications Open Office isn't a total replacement, but many people find all the features they need in Open Office. You can download it from http://download.openoffice.org/.
- GIMP Photo Editor is a pretty powerful image-editing tool. It has more palettes of tools than most users ever want to learn. Download it from http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
- If the version of Microsoft Office that you have doesn't have Outlook bundled with it, then give Thunderbird a try. I use it for one of my email accounts and am happy with it. It's quite a bit different than Outlook, but the learning curve is short. Download it from http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/
- If you don't want to register a media player, then VLC is for you. Because of the multi-lingual thing I have going on I need to be able to open practically anything from any country. So far
I haven't found anything it won't open. Download VLC from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ - I have to be honest, I have zero use for a desktop publisher, but I've installed Scribus before and it looks like a half-way decent replacement for Publisher. Download Scribus from http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus
Thursday, April 28, 2011
To Pop or Not to Pop: That's the Question!
If you're asking me for my advice, I'd advise not to.We're talking email. POP3 vs. IMAP. At the company I work for, we've got two choices for configuring an email client (such as Outlook or Thunderbird): POP3 or IMAP.
POP3 email retrieves email from the email server. It then erases it from the server while storing it on the local computer. You can choose to keep a copy of the email on the server, but you have to manually go in and clean up your email on the server after you've already cleaned it out of your email client. If your local computer crashes, probably you will lose your email (unless you've backed it up to another location). Once it pops, there it stays! It's stored in a PST (personal storage) folder until you delete it.
IMAP email is stored on an internet server. If the local computer is lost, crashed or stolen, the email is still retrievable. If you want to have your email sent to your smartphone, but still need to access your email on a computer, you'll want to choose IMAP email. With IMAP email configured on your smartphone, you can delete your email once on your phone and it's gone from the server... eliminating the need to delete the email twice. You'll have two PST's on your computer if you configure IMAP email. One PST is for personal storage of anything that you don't want to keep in the IMAP folder and the other PST tells the email client how to get to the IMAP folder on the Internet. It's kind of like an appendix; you can delete it without too many negative consequences.
If you have more than one person accessing a mailbox, you need to decide how you will use that mailbox. If you want each person to see every email in that box, then forward the email popping it down to each person that needs to see it. If you want the person who deals with the email to erase it and eliminate the need for a second/third person to read the email, then you'll want to configure IMAP email.
Some of you may have heard about an email system called Exchange. Many organizations have moved away from Exchange because of the costs and the amount of administration that is required to maintain it. Usually an organization will need a full-time person just to deal with an Exchange server. It's cheaper to pay a third-party to host email. Personally, I wouldn't recommend it unless the organization had more than 10,000 employees. It's a powerful email system, but overkill for most companies. Email is stored in an OST file in Exchange on a company-owned or rented computer. An OST and PST file are not interchangeable. If you have to go from one to another, a conversion has to be done.
POP3 email retrieves email from the email server. It then erases it from the server while storing it on the local computer. You can choose to keep a copy of the email on the server, but you have to manually go in and clean up your email on the server after you've already cleaned it out of your email client. If your local computer crashes, probably you will lose your email (unless you've backed it up to another location). Once it pops, there it stays! It's stored in a PST (personal storage) folder until you delete it.
IMAP email is stored on an internet server. If the local computer is lost, crashed or stolen, the email is still retrievable. If you want to have your email sent to your smartphone, but still need to access your email on a computer, you'll want to choose IMAP email. With IMAP email configured on your smartphone, you can delete your email once on your phone and it's gone from the server... eliminating the need to delete the email twice. You'll have two PST's on your computer if you configure IMAP email. One PST is for personal storage of anything that you don't want to keep in the IMAP folder and the other PST tells the email client how to get to the IMAP folder on the Internet. It's kind of like an appendix; you can delete it without too many negative consequences.
If you have more than one person accessing a mailbox, you need to decide how you will use that mailbox. If you want each person to see every email in that box, then forward the email popping it down to each person that needs to see it. If you want the person who deals with the email to erase it and eliminate the need for a second/third person to read the email, then you'll want to configure IMAP email.
Some of you may have heard about an email system called Exchange. Many organizations have moved away from Exchange because of the costs and the amount of administration that is required to maintain it. Usually an organization will need a full-time person just to deal with an Exchange server. It's cheaper to pay a third-party to host email. Personally, I wouldn't recommend it unless the organization had more than 10,000 employees. It's a powerful email system, but overkill for most companies. Email is stored in an OST file in Exchange on a company-owned or rented computer. An OST and PST file are not interchangeable. If you have to go from one to another, a conversion has to be done.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Patch Tuesday Blues
Ok, I know it's Monday, but tomorrow is Patch Tuesday and I'm not caught up from last Patch Tuesday yet. For those of you who don't know what Patch Tuesday is, it is Microsoft's day to release updates to their operating system. The reason it gives me the blues is because I try my hardest to keep everything up to date and then in one fell swoop, I'm behind again. Last week Microsoft was especially evil (or good-I'm not sure) and they released a record-breaking 17 updates fixing 64 security flaws. OMG, a woman's work is never going to get done at that rate.
If automatic updates is enabled on your computer, you can save yourself a lot of hassle. Especially if you have the computer powered on AND logged on when the update is supposed to take place. Most of you are dreaming about days at the beach when this takes place. The default time is 3 am. Laptops provide more of a challenge since they are powered off at 3 am, but you can set them to automatically run still. Just choose a time when the computer will be on with the option to ask before applying.
For those of you with Microsoft Security Essentials, updates to that roll out with automatic updates. So, good choice!
The difference between a service pack and a patch is the size and the scope. Usually a service pack is huge and is almost a reinstall of the program. You are notified that a service pack is available through automatic updates, but it doesn't install automatically. That is because Microsoft recommends that you back up your data before applying a service pack.
Don't forget your patches maties, argggggggggggggggg!
If automatic updates is enabled on your computer, you can save yourself a lot of hassle. Especially if you have the computer powered on AND logged on when the update is supposed to take place. Most of you are dreaming about days at the beach when this takes place. The default time is 3 am. Laptops provide more of a challenge since they are powered off at 3 am, but you can set them to automatically run still. Just choose a time when the computer will be on with the option to ask before applying.
For those of you with Microsoft Security Essentials, updates to that roll out with automatic updates. So, good choice!
The difference between a service pack and a patch is the size and the scope. Usually a service pack is huge and is almost a reinstall of the program. You are notified that a service pack is available through automatic updates, but it doesn't install automatically. That is because Microsoft recommends that you back up your data before applying a service pack.
Don't forget your patches maties, argggggggggggggggg!
Friday, April 8, 2011
Backing Up Email Contacts for a Rainy Day
OK, it's rainy, yucky weather; what are you going to do????? Why not back up your email contacts? Hooray, sounds like a plan.
In Outlook:
In Outlook:
- go to File,
- Import and Export,
- Export to a File and Next,
- choose Comma Separated Values (dos or windows) and Next,
- Browse to Contacts and Next,
- Type in "my contacts", then Next and Finish.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Is is Adware or Not?
Many computer users download extra items from the net and then experience negative side effects from that software. One of the most common complaints is system sluggishness. Another is inability to connect to any internet site other than the one where you have to spend money to get hijacked. Let me help clear up some confusion about what is and isn't adware.
Adware is unwanted advertisements that are delivered to your desktop. Here's what adware does:
Let's take Smiley Central as our example to look at. If we go to the smileycentral.com home page we see that they are offering a free product (smileys). We won't talk about how annoying these smileys are to our customers, but what they do your system. If you run Hijack This program, you will see all the "hooks" that this program puts into your computer. Even on a new computer, you can notice some sluggishness after installing it. If you are very familiar with Windows processes, you can pull up task manager and examine the amount of memory the process eats up.
Tech recommendations are also a good way to find out if a software is harmful to your computer or not. Tech websites and antivirus software websites are a good way to check out a program. General user sites and recommendations are not good places to check for recommendations. Reading that it's ok in a friend's blog isn't ok. Wikipedia isn't an OK source.
Stay safe.
Adware is unwanted advertisements that are delivered to your desktop. Here's what adware does:
- unwanted pop ups
- system performance decrease
- browser hijacks
- embeds itself deep into the registry (inner kernal of the operating system) so that total removal is complicated
- sends private information to other computers for malicious use
Let's take Smiley Central as our example to look at. If we go to the smileycentral.com home page we see that they are offering a free product (smileys). We won't talk about how annoying these smileys are to our customers, but what they do your system. If you run Hijack This program, you will see all the "hooks" that this program puts into your computer. Even on a new computer, you can notice some sluggishness after installing it. If you are very familiar with Windows processes, you can pull up task manager and examine the amount of memory the process eats up.
Tech recommendations are also a good way to find out if a software is harmful to your computer or not. Tech websites and antivirus software websites are a good way to check out a program. General user sites and recommendations are not good places to check for recommendations. Reading that it's ok in a friend's blog isn't ok. Wikipedia isn't an OK source.
Stay safe.
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