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/ .

In this issue:

++++ They Are Winning
++++ Bigger Free E-mail Accounts Available
++++ Small Computers Are Coming
++++ New additions to Hewie's Favorites

++++ They Are Winning

The Junk Mail deliverers are winning. I am not using the sp*m word so that we don't get filtered from your e-mail inbox. I check e-mail every 10 minutes when at my computer. Checking each of my main 23 accounts brings me junk mail each time. Some accounts get most of it. The accounts that I have posted on websites seem to attract the greatest amount. I receive at least 200 e-mails per day and average 72 percent that are junk.

The more that an e-mail address is public, the more that it gets harvested for junk mail. If you are member of a group that posts addresses, make sure you maintain a separate address for that purpose. Do not publish your main e-mail or one that you plan to keep.

Many ISP's are filtering your e-mail. This may prevent you from receiving good mail and newsletters, such as this one. The greater the filtering, the greater the chance of missing important e-mail. I have sent some messages to individuals and businesses that require me to send a reply to show that there is a person sending the message. Most of my ISP's have limited filtering, so I use FireTrust's MailWasher http://www.firetrust.com/products/pro/ to filter my mail and then Outlook 2003 does a final filter. MailWasher filters the messages that it knows are junk and allows me to view the rest of my messages on the server in text mode. I can see which are junk and delete them from the server, and even report them as junk. Then I download the rest to Outlook 2003 which completes the filtering, and catches those that arrived just as I was downloading.

I am seeing some interesting things the bulk e-mailers are doing to get through the filters. Some of the messages have unique names but "spoof" or show my address as the sender. I have been lucky filtering the viruses as well. I have seen some daemon mailer return messages that I never sent that included an attachment. If you (or I) open that attachment to see what I was accused of sending, bingo - infection! Another trick is to send a Zipped file with the compressed items a virus.

I have noticed that the e-mail accounts that I use for e-magazines and e-newsletters do not generate much junk mail, so most of those do honor their statements that they do not share addresses. I maintain another address for marginal sites that send out e-mails.

++++ Bigger Free E-mail Accounts Available

There has been a lot of buzz about G-Mail that Google is testing. For having access to the words in your mail for sending advertising, they will give you 1 gigabyte of storage for e-mail. G-Mail is still in beta and most of us do not yet have access to it. In anticipation of that, Yahoo! has upped their free email accounts to 100 megabytes with the ability to send and receive 10 megabyte attachments. This is available now. You might want to set up one or two for special purposes. Their filtering is pretty good, as well.

++++ Small Computers Are Coming

Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, has a startup company that will be releasing a new portable computer by the end of the year. When I say small, 5.6 inch screen, its size is 4.0 x 5.8 x 1.0 inch. You use your thumbs for the keyboard. It weighs in at 1 pound, has 256 MB of Ram and 1024x768 screen resolution. It runs WindowsXP Professional and MS Office can be installed. Go to http://www.flipstartpc.com/ and see it for yourself.


++++ New additions to Hewie's Favorites
BugMeNot.com
http://www.bugmenot.com/
Bypass Compulsory Web Registration

Advanced CSS Layouts
http://www.webreference.com/authoring/style/sheets/layout/advanced/
Learn how to use CSS to layout your pages without tables. Step by step tutorial

Style Sheets / Layout
http://www.webreference.com/authoring/style/sheets/layout/
Layout with CSS can now be substituted for tables in today's standards-aware browser environment

exploring XML
http://www.webreference.com/xml/
Bi-weekly column featuring tutorials, examples and training in XML, XSL style sheets, XHTML and more

Cliff Pickover's RealityCarnival
http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/realitycarnival.html
Headlines and links at the borderlands of science: from parallel universes to exotic sushi to religion, science, and psychedelics

eDiets
http://www.ediets.com/
Diet and healthy living site offering professional advice, information, products and services to consumers seeking to improve their nutrition and fitness, live healthier, and live longer. Many diet plans listed such as Atkins - Slim Fast - Low Carb Dieting and more

BestStuff
http://beststuff.com/
Network of nationally recognized reporters, authors, and industry experts, dedicated to covering the world of everything new

Volition®
http://www.volition.com/
Free Stuff and lots of interesting info

RogerSimmons.com
http://www.rogersimmons.com/
Orlando news, weather, sports, business, TV & radio talk