Hewie's Views and Reviews
By Hewie Poplock

Welcome to this issue of Hewie's Views & Reviews. Be sure to visit Hewie's Favorites at http://www.hewie.net/ .

++++ Less Junk, Less Mail
++++ New additions to Hewie's Favorites

++++ Less Junk, Less Mail

I have been getting less junk mail. Don't get me wrong. I still get 51% junk, but that is down from 89% a year ago. Of the 100 emails a day that I get, 40-49 are messages that I want. What I am discovering is that I am not getting some messages that I want. Fewer of my subscribed newsletters are getting through. My brother and some other friends have mentioned to me casually that messages to me have bounced.

I think this is serious, but we have to realize that it goes with the times. There are so many filters in place that many good messages never reach their destination.

Let's take a message that my brother sends to me. He is on AOL. He writes the message and presses send. It goes to the AOL email server, which filters it. AOL then sends it to my email server which is located at one of the many worldwide servers owned by Verio, the hosting company for my website. Verio filters the content and also checks the sending IP address (location of the sending server). The filter checks for words, phrases, and other items that may be contained in junk mail. The filter also checks to see if the IP address that is sending the message has not sent out junk mail previously.

Since many of the websites, especially email servers are on shared servers, if that server has ever been used by one of the bad guys intentionally or have used a wormed machine, that message may get flagged and dumped. If it gets through Verio, it then goes to RoadRunner and their filters, which may have different criteria. It probably will go through a couple of RoadRunner servers and filters until it gets to my computer. Then I run it through MailWasher http://www.firetrust.com/firetrustpro.html and then to Outlook. Both MailWasher and Outlook also have filters.

Sending messages from my address may never get through either. Since my address SMTP is located at Verio and I am sending through my Internet connection, which is RoadRunner, Roadrunner, Verio, or the intended recipient's host may reject the message. Sometimes I get a message that it bounced, but not always. I have sent messages to several people, received a bounced message and tried to resend. This happened recently when I tried to send a message to many of my contacts that my phone number had changed. I received a note that none of the messages were sent. I resent it 2 more times using different settings. I received bounced messages each time. However, many of my friends e-mailed me that they received my message 3 times. I have no idea who received the change and who didn't.

It is frustrating that the bad guys have taken a medium that can be fun, certainly useful and for business and personal use, necessary and made it somewhat unreliable. Is there a fix? Certainly many companies are looking to produce the perfect solution.

I recently had to send emails to over 300 companies. I sent them manually and addressed them to specific people or mailboxes. Some bounced. The company was gone or the person no longer works for them. Many companies have given up and no longer publish email addresses at their site. I have done this with one of the websites that I maintain. I use a form that sends a message to the organization and a person routes it to the appropriate person. This was the only way that we could defeat the hundreds of junk mail per day.

Other companies that I sent messages to had verifying software installed that I had to respond to or had to manually enter a code that I was given to filter out automatic messages. Many companies have just given up and don't allow emails from outside the company to get to their servers.

Many of my subscribers do not receive this newsletter because of filters. That is why I post it on my website as well. http://www.hewie.net/views/current.html I hope that you enjoy my articles and links. I certainly enjoy the many e-mails that I receive from my readers.

++++ New additions to Hewie's Favorites

Orlando Traffic Report Traffic.com
http://www.traffic.com/Orlando-Traffic/Orlando-Traffic-Reports.html
Orlando traffic reports provide real-time updates on traffic road conditions for the Orlando FL area

Traffic.com
http://www.traffic.com/index.html
Traffic reports - alerts - conditions

Email etiquette
http://www.emailreplies.com/
Rules for effective email replies

Living Internet
http://www.livinginternet.com/
Unique perspective on the history, evolution and current state of the Internet

Investment Fraud Help Articles
http://www.gardsmileybishop.com/investortoolbox.html
Helpful articles from firm that provides lawyers specializing in investment fraud

STATS
http://www.stats.org/
STATS monitors the media to expose the abuse of science and statistics before people are misled and public policy is distorted

CoffeeGeek
http://coffeegeek.com/
News - Reviews - Opinion and Community for Coffee and Espresso

Cute Overload
http://cuteoverload.com/
Overwhelming amount of cuteness to fill your daily visual allowance

WXPnews
http://www.wxpnews.com/
Weekly B2C-zine focused on the many millions of Microsoft Windows XP users

Troubleshooting Windows XP
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm
Tweaks and Fixes for Windows XP

Engadget
http://www.engadget.com/
Interesting Blog about the lastest technologies for phones, cameras, laptops and more

Central Florida's Most Wanted
http://cfcrimelinewarrants.com/
Online search engine for active warrants in Central Florida. This is an up to date system that allows the user to help law enforcement identify persons that have a warrant out for their arrest

StopBadware.org
http://www.stopbadware.org/
StopBadware.org is a Neighborhood Watch campaign aimed at fighting badware.