4. What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose?
Filters are a great time saver if you are constantly receiving emails that contain a similar message thread, from a group of friends or work associates, or other pattern forming expressions. The function is very similar to a GREP search (global regular expression print), it just looks for regular patterns in text, in this case to sort emails into presorted folders. (I use GREP search in Adobe InDesign, a graphic design tool.)
Although the filters in email software are very limited in their search function they can still handle most of the sorting work before I have to intervene. My normal work flow is to set sub folders that I can manage through Thunderbird (yes it's a tacky name but its a good email package, they should have a Australian version named CockyChatter - I must register that name, it sounds cool) and use the "create filter from message" button to set up parameters. Depending on whom I'm communicating with, the sub folders are arranged by group titles such as organisations, events, special interest, things to do, and then there's one for all the rest - emails that are one-offs. To presort the emails into the folders I use searches that contain the sender's name, subject, info that might be contained in the body of the email and so on. Once the email threads are finished I can easily archive the folder.
Generally, the types of filters one may use greatly depends on one's imagination, so be creative and think about it. They are a fabulous time saver.
Also anything that falls outside the filters in my case are usually spam, so it's an efficient way to manage something that can get into an awful mess very quickly.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Email part 3, Opening the attachment 'big money to be made'
3. In what ways can you ensure that an attachment you send will be easily opened by the receiver?
Opening attachments can bite you on the computer bum, so be careful!
To ensure the recipient is always able to open attachments, you must first offer them something amazing.
I was toying with the idea to include the following in the subject line:
But getting back to it.
Format of attachments
To ensure the recipient can open any of my attachments I will usually only send pdf files. If I suspect the person has limited experience in using computers I will include the url to download the Adobe Acrobat Reader with a short explanation of how and why. http://www.adobe.com/au/
If I'm forced to use something other than Acrobat I will first determine which format they can accept before I send the email eg MicroSoft Word, Excel and so on.
Encoding
As suggested in Module Two notes "First: communicate about your computer systems. Sometimes, when you expect to send attachments, particularly to users whom you suspect may not be as knowledgeable as you about attachments, you need to seek information from them and to assist them in dealing with the attachment."
I would think it would be highly unlikely that many people know anything about encoding email messages or its purpose, so I would certainly not be contacting the recipient as my first action. I would either follow up the original email with a phone call or send another email without the attachment and ask if they received the first successfully. Bothering people about something that doesn't interest them is just likely to annoy them. (Hey, if I don't like someone I should change the encoding on my email.)
When the encoding fails
Below is a picture of my beautiful dog after a swim at the beach, the image of Lizzy was correctly encoded to show the jpg as intended.
Below is the email opened with a text editor that shows the picture as ASCII text.
"e-mail messages can contain only text information, and attachments aren't text" howstuffworks, http://communication.howstuffworks.com/email5.htm
Because the file I was emailing was not text, the email software is required to encode the image before sending, the encoding used was MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). If the receiving email software is using different encoding such as, uuencode, Base64 or BinHex the image will not render and you will need to do some heavy maths or some creative thinking to interpret the attachment. Below is a sample of the same image of Lizzy but opened in a text editor. The text editor is only a basic word processor and will not interpret code or render the image.
If that fails I could format the attachment in html and place it directly into the body of the email, or just use ASCII text in the body of the email, assuming there are no images.
Of course there is always fax, sail mail, carrier pigeon or I could get on my bike and start peddling. I just hope its not overseas because I may need a snorkel.
Opening attachments can bite you on the computer bum, so be careful!
To ensure the recipient is always able to open attachments, you must first offer them something amazing.
I was toying with the idea to include the following in the subject line:
- love from
- easy money from Nigeria
- increase the length of your nose
- free Viagra to help the dead stay stiff
- update your details from the banks of the world
- secure your place in the after world
But getting back to it.
Format of attachments
To ensure the recipient can open any of my attachments I will usually only send pdf files. If I suspect the person has limited experience in using computers I will include the url to download the Adobe Acrobat Reader with a short explanation of how and why. http://www.adobe.com/au/
If I'm forced to use something other than Acrobat I will first determine which format they can accept before I send the email eg MicroSoft Word, Excel and so on.
Encoding
As suggested in Module Two notes "First: communicate about your computer systems. Sometimes, when you expect to send attachments, particularly to users whom you suspect may not be as knowledgeable as you about attachments, you need to seek information from them and to assist them in dealing with the attachment."
I would think it would be highly unlikely that many people know anything about encoding email messages or its purpose, so I would certainly not be contacting the recipient as my first action. I would either follow up the original email with a phone call or send another email without the attachment and ask if they received the first successfully. Bothering people about something that doesn't interest them is just likely to annoy them. (Hey, if I don't like someone I should change the encoding on my email.)
When the encoding fails
Below is a picture of my beautiful dog after a swim at the beach, the image of Lizzy was correctly encoded to show the jpg as intended.
Below is the email opened with a text editor that shows the picture as ASCII text.
"e-mail messages can contain only text information, and attachments aren't text" howstuffworks, http://communication.howstuffworks.com/email5.htm
Because the file I was emailing was not text, the email software is required to encode the image before sending, the encoding used was MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). If the receiving email software is using different encoding such as, uuencode, Base64 or BinHex the image will not render and you will need to do some heavy maths or some creative thinking to interpret the attachment. Below is a sample of the same image of Lizzy but opened in a text editor. The text editor is only a basic word processor and will not interpret code or render the image.
If that fails I could format the attachment in html and place it directly into the body of the email, or just use ASCII text in the body of the email, assuming there are no images.
Of course there is always fax, sail mail, carrier pigeon or I could get on my bike and start peddling. I just hope its not overseas because I may need a snorkel.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Email-part 2, you can't say no to "cc" or "bcc" but you can "reply"
2. In what cases would you find it useful to use the 'cc', 'bcc' and 'reply all functions of email?
How useful is "cc"—carbon copy, "bcc"—blind carbon copy and the "reply" button.
In the past I have only used "cc" and "bcc" sparingly, mainly because I had no reason to and I never really understood the difference between using the multiple "to" functions and "cc" but from reading Module Two notes all was explained. You can quickly forget that there are such things as email ethics hiding behind the computer screen. I have taken points from this lesson and I trust will make me a better person. (If not, at least abuse the system more efficiently.)
In brief
The "to" function is to direct the communication at a particular person or persons.
The "cc" function is just to spread the love further and keep others informed—it may not necessarily require the receiver to action on receipt. It's usually for 'your information only'—FYI.
The "bcc" function is for ratting on your work mates to your boss without them knowing you have passed on the same information in one easy process. This is probably used in ASIO a lot. In my experience it's also used in "request for quotes" or "request for tenders", when the sender is required to keep details of who else is invited to quote, secret.
The "Reply" function is when I need to keep a copy of the previous email within the body, hence "quoting" or maintaining the thread of the conversation in the one document. or. When I'm just too lazy and I need to quickly respond to someone, even if the threads don't follow and the conversation wonders all over the place.
I have received emails from people that I suspect may have "bcc" in the original email and have often wondered if that information can be extracted. Please leave a comment if you can help me out.
How useful is "cc"—carbon copy, "bcc"—blind carbon copy and the "reply" button.
In the past I have only used "cc" and "bcc" sparingly, mainly because I had no reason to and I never really understood the difference between using the multiple "to" functions and "cc" but from reading Module Two notes all was explained. You can quickly forget that there are such things as email ethics hiding behind the computer screen. I have taken points from this lesson and I trust will make me a better person. (If not, at least abuse the system more efficiently.)
In brief
The "to" function is to direct the communication at a particular person or persons.
The "cc" function is just to spread the love further and keep others informed—it may not necessarily require the receiver to action on receipt. It's usually for 'your information only'—FYI.
The "bcc" function is for ratting on your work mates to your boss without them knowing you have passed on the same information in one easy process. This is probably used in ASIO a lot. In my experience it's also used in "request for quotes" or "request for tenders", when the sender is required to keep details of who else is invited to quote, secret.
The "Reply" function is when I need to keep a copy of the previous email within the body, hence "quoting" or maintaining the thread of the conversation in the one document. or. When I'm just too lazy and I need to quickly respond to someone, even if the threads don't follow and the conversation wonders all over the place.
I have received emails from people that I suspect may have "bcc" in the original email and have often wondered if that information can be extracted. Please leave a comment if you can help me out.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Email part 1
1. What information about a user's email, the origin of a message, and the path it took, can you glean from an email message?
Email task—death to all spammers. As you may have guessed from the title, my first sample is from your happy fiend to spammer. Yes I hate them. One day the web will takes its revenge!
Its obvious the email above is from deprived person only set out to cause trouble, just look at the garbage in the address block. I find the best way to quickly and easily identify who the email is from is to use filters that automatically presort any new mail. Any incoming email that bypasses this first stage of sorting is either a new contact or spam—this method is a great time saver.
The next screen shot is from an email that has been automatically forwarded from the beautiful people in NET11 through my uni email to my main email account.
So, which path? Follow the yellow brick road. Before I started this question I had a look at the Discussion Board which just confused me more.
I'm not to sure in which direction I should take this question. The two possible answers I can see are:
If it was only that easy to trace spammers the web would be a quieter place.
more soon.
Email task—death to all spammers. As you may have guessed from the title, my first sample is from your happy fiend to spammer. Yes I hate them. One day the web will takes its revenge!
Its obvious the email above is from deprived person only set out to cause trouble, just look at the garbage in the address block. I find the best way to quickly and easily identify who the email is from is to use filters that automatically presort any new mail. Any incoming email that bypasses this first stage of sorting is either a new contact or spam—this method is a great time saver.
The next screen shot is from an email that has been automatically forwarded from the beautiful people in NET11 through my uni email to my main email account.
So, which path? Follow the yellow brick road. Before I started this question I had a look at the Discussion Board which just confused me more.
I'm not to sure in which direction I should take this question. The two possible answers I can see are:
- Hit the road Jack and take the IP path—as talked about on the Blackboard which I had to think about how to extract the meta data out from the head of the email. I started as usual to search on Google but this proved fruitless and I got bored because most of the searches came up with PC suggestion—pointless for a Mac user. I then had a brilliant idea to just save an email to the desktop as an html file and open that in a text editor. Bingo, it worked. See the results below. ps I'm still trying to decode the info but I can see IP addresses and domain names so I trust this is correct.
- The path can be traced if the user has forwarded the mail to another participants. This is simple providing the user has invoked the "forward" function in the email software which just appends the new message to the old, just like chain mail. To find, just scroll down within the body of the email and look for "quoted" information in the email and bingo, info revealed.
It views very must like threads on the Discussion Board.
If it was only that easy to trace spammers the web would be a quieter place.
more soon.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Telnet part 2
This was just to prove I can—I climbed the mountain because it was there.
I just tried Telnet again through the browser as suggested on the Discussion Board and I got it to work, amazing. (very pleased I tried again even though I succeeded in the first version when I used MacTelnet 4.09b0213, see entry date March 8 )
The first time I tried this through a browser my Mac opened Terminal, something I haven't seen before and I was a bit concerned to mess with because it look to much like programing. Anyway after read the Discussion Board and building up my courage to toy with something that looked like could destroy my computer if I entered the wrong commands—I had a go and was rewarded with a computer that was still in one piece. phew! As I said before remote learning is more challenging without the support of direct contact with students and lecturers.
I just tried Telnet again through the browser as suggested on the Discussion Board and I got it to work, amazing. (very pleased I tried again even though I succeeded in the first version when I used MacTelnet 4.09b0213, see entry date March 8 )
The first time I tried this through a browser my Mac opened Terminal, something I haven't seen before and I was a bit concerned to mess with because it look to much like programing. Anyway after read the Discussion Board and building up my courage to toy with something that looked like could destroy my computer if I entered the wrong commands—I had a go and was rewarded with a computer that was still in one piece. phew! As I said before remote learning is more challenging without the support of direct contact with students and lecturers.
Spam on my blog
Being very green to blogging I was unaware that I could get spam posted as a comment. I now know differently. See March 5 entry on Plagiarism comments. The audacity of some people astound me!
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