Spam is an incredibly annoying problem for me on my Mac, and I get several hundred junk emails a day. For a while, Mail’s inbuilt spam filtering did a great job and caught the vast majority of my junk mail. However, recently it seems that more and more emails are getting through - to the extent I’ll find myself deleting around 10 junk mails per 1 valid one. I’d resorted to living with that for a while, unaware that another solution existed.

I stumbled across SpamSieve a few days ago, and haven’t looked back. It took about 15 minutes to set up and install - and I’ve tweaked a few settings etc since installing it - but on the whole it’s a very user friendly program. It integrates really well with Mail, and after filtering a good few thousand messages so far it’s only come back with 5 or 6 false positives. To be that accurate from the word go is very impressive.

I’m still using the trial version at the moment, but $30 will be a tiny price to pay for the time it will save me filtering through my inbox through all the junk and rubbish.

It also lead me to discover another Mac app called Growl. This is a system wide notification system, which basically means lots of applications use it to tell you when things are happening. SpamSieve notifies you of new emails, Transmit tells you when file downloads and uploads are complete, Skype notifies you of people logging on and off. I can’t believe I hadn’t come across this before, and it’s certainly being added to my list of incredibly useful Mac applications.

Growl in action

Michael Jackson seemed to be of the opinion that ‘It doesn’t matter‘. All well and good I say, but he wasn’t dealing with the heart wrenching dilemma about which colour MacBook to purchase…

Black
Black is sleek. It’s got a professional quality which is matched only by brushed aluminium. It’s unique, original and won’t lose it’s value as much as the standard white over time. On the flip side, it’s more expensive, scratches easier than white and Apple or not, still has the potential to be confused with a Dell. Shock horror!

White
Ah, white. It’s the timeless Apple masterpiece, with an elegant and classic feel. It doesn’t come at a price, and would match my white iPod perfectly. However, it’s potentially nickable as it makes your beautiful laptop stick out a mile in a crowd.

Why upgrade?
I’ll be thinking about this for a while, but as far as I see it there are a couple of damned good reasons to sell my faithful Mac Mini and upgrade to a MacBook:

• Portability
• Dual Monitors
• Intel Speed
• Runs Windows (purely for testing websites in IE. promise.)

I’ll keep you posted!

Blueyonder (Telewest) today upgraded our broadband connection to a full 4mb per second. I’m amazed at their execllent level of quality and service, they continue to impress me. We very very rarely have any problems with the Internet being unavailable, and they continue to offer a better service at no extra cost. Browsing web pages seems similar, but I guess FTP and downloading music/videos will be significantly quicker.

Excellent work Blueyonder!

Doesn’t seem like two minutes since I was mentioning the near 20,000 hits Design Shack had in it’s first couple of weeks online. It’s now a few months further on (around 4 to be precise), and the growth I’ve seen with the site has been really amazing. We passed the 500,000 views (not hits, people actually clicking and viewing a design) mark a few days ago, so this is more of a milestone post than anything!

I love winning things. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to work hard for something and acheive it! But to just have something given to you, it’s a really nice feeling. I entered a contest on iLounge recently to suggest a slogan for Vaja cases. I suggested this:

Vaja. Quality Redefined.

They clearly liked it, as I was one of the winners of a $100 gift certificate for their amazing lineup. So my iPod will be soothed, comforted and protected by a nice Vaja case in the very near future! It’s great, cause it’s something I’d never have bought outright - too expensive!

A while ago, when I had a copyright issue with Design Shack, I contacted GeoCities about a rip-off of the website. That was well over a month ago. I had expected a fairly prompt response, and immediate action to be taken against the blatantly offending site. I received this, today:

Hello,

Yahoo! respects the intellectual property of others, and we ask our
users to do the same. Yahoo! may, in appropriate circumstances and at
its discretion, disable and/or terminate the accounts of users who may
be infringing the intellectual property rights of others.

If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that constitutes
trademark infringement, or your intellectual property rights have been
otherwise violated, please provide Yahoo!’s Copyright Agent the
following information:

1. an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act
on behalf of the owner of the trademark or other intellectual property
interest;

2. a description of the trademarked work or other intellectual property
that you claim has been infringed;

and so on…

First of all, I can’t believe it took them so long to reply. One month is completely unacceptable when dealing with a problem such as this. Secondly, due to how blatant this is, I’m amazed they have not just dealt with suspending the account outright. I’m very, very disappointed with Yahoo/Geocities, and I am in awe with their incompetence in this matter!