All Over The Road
Slowly but surely I am creating my web presence. I imagine it will take a lot of discipline to keep any blog up to date. And it probably takes a big ego to think that you have a something interesting to say every day. Well, let's hope I can find enough to keep talking - although talking to oneself is talent worth developing.
Click on the player below to listen to my selection of tunes from International Artists Company website while you browse - and support independent artists!!


Station at KIAC and IACmusic.com

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

PocketMod


The PocketMod is a new way to keep yourself organized. Lets face it, PDAs are too expensive and cumbersome, and organizers are bulky and hard to carry around. Nothing beats a folded up piece of paper. That is until now. With the PocketMod, you can carry around the days notes, keep them organized in any way you wish, then easily transfer the notes to your PDA, spreadsheet, or planner.

The PocketMod is a small book with guides on each page. These guides or templates, combined with a unique folding style, enable a normal piece of paper to become the ultimate note card. It is hard to describe just how incredibly useful the PocketMod is. It's best that you just dive in and create one

What makes the PocketMod so special?

Many things make this little personal organizer special, here is a list.

  1. It fits easily in your back pocket or purse.
  2. It's as cheap as one piece of paper (Because that's all it is!)
  3. It opens like a book. Leading to easier to find, more organized notes.
  4. The first page has a pouch, big enough to carry a business card!
  5. Customizable with "Mods" tailored to your needs.
  6. It's free and fun!

An email box folder of spam messages.Image from Wikipedia


Lifehacker Book Contest Winner: How To Avoid Catch-All Domain Spam
How To Avoid Catch-All Domain Spam

If you own a domain name with an active catch-all email address, you know how spammers can pummel you with junk mail to every anyword@yourdomain.com email address they can automatically generate. When you have your own domain, you can to use site-specific addresses when you register for web services to track down spam sources (like amazon.com@yourdomain.com), but once you do that, you've got to keep your catch-all address open to junk mail as well. But Google Apps user Ray has a clever system that filters out catch-all junk but still lets him track exactly who's selling out his address. Here's how to set it up.

Editor's note: this method involves a few steps that take one or two
reads to get your head around, but it is pretty ingenious. Ray explains:


In Google Apps, set up a new user account. This is NOT
going to be your actual email address. Set the username to something
that will stand out among your other user-names (if any). In this case,
I'm using "spam-trap".

Go back to the Google Apps Dashboard, and click on E-mail under
Service Settings. Select "Forward The Email To... and enter your newly
created account in the Catch-All address field, as shown.



Go to your email login page, which is usually: https://www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com, and login to your newly created account.


Click Settings > Filters > Create New Filter. In the To:
Field, enter "." followed by a short sequence of numbers or letters.
Make it something short, and easy to remember. This will be your secret
email suffix, and is the key to this whole system working.





Click Next Step, and enter your real address in the "Forward It To"
field. You also might want to add a label to make checking how your
filter is working easier later. Click "Create Filter."



Now, whenever you need a trackable email address, give it in the
form of anything.SecretSuffix@mydomain.com. If you want to be able to
track spam, give a custom address to each site that requires an email
address. Using the name of the company or web site works great for
this. (Ed: Like amazon.com.SecretSuffix@yourdomain.com.)


The filter you've set up will forward any incoming mail in the
correct format to your real address, while stopping all of the garbage
emails that spammers send out in the hopes of finding domains with
active catch-all addresses.


This system works better than Gmail's plus addressing, because
sometimes poorly-designed web forms will not allow + characters, and
since you're using your own secret suffix, it's unlikely that a spammer
would take the time to reverse-engineer your naming system. If you do
start getting spam, you can block it easily via another filter, and if
you're using custom addresses, you'll also know who sold you out to the
bad guys.


Periodically you might need to login to your catch-all address, and
create special filters to let certain legitimate mail through. In
particular, check mailing lists you subscribe to, which often use a
special address in the To: field, and thus will get caught by your
filter.


This system can even be adapted to non-Gmail/Google Apps users who
use desktop clients. The key is a catch-all address, the secret suffix,
and a filter to block out everything else.



 
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AOR (All Over the Road) by dublinjames is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.