Daniel Pallett

My post last month moaning at Yahoo! for not doing what they said they would - regarding the taglines added to emails sent from Yahoo! Mail - appears to have done the trick.

Some time over this weekend they must have flipped a switch, as the first email I sent Monday morning didn’t have a tagline. Wahoo! Only three and a half months late, but hey, better late than never huh.

People have written plenty about Google Chrome over the last couple of days, so I won’t waffle, but rather I’ll write about a couple of things I’ve noticed after using it for a day. As you will probably tell from my comparisons throughout the post - I am a Firefox user.

A small niggle is the option of being able to delete a single history item. Chrome limits your deletion options to the entire history, or the history for a certain time period, e.g. last day, last week, etc. I often do this in Firefox if I have mistyped a search and want to remove it, so it doesn’t pollute the auto-complete options next time I start to type in the query properly.

The most noticeable difference in the UI from Firefox and IE is no separate search bar. Rather, searching has been incorporated into the address bar (or omnibox as Google called it in their comic). Much like Firefox 3 changed the standard address bar into what they called the Awesome Bar, which allows you to search your bookmarks and history from the address bar. Google have taken this a step further by putting searching there too.

I won’t explain how the address bar works (read Google’s help pages for that). The browser picks up search engines as you browse, adding them to your list. It makes use of OpenSearch (which allows sites to enable browsers to detect their search engine), which Firefox also uses. Chrome even picks up sites that don’t use this though. You can see the list of search engines by clicking Tools, Options, Basics tab, Manager.

Give it a go by trying the following. Go to Amazon if you haven’t browsed to it yet in Chrome (if you have, then choose another similar site), and do a search. Now have a look at you search engine list again and you will see Amazon. It has detected the part of the URL which is the search term and replaced it with the ‘%s’ place-holder.

Chrome automatically discovered the Amazon search URL: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_/203-6504238-0627909?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=%s&x=0&y=0

Interestingly though, it is slightly different to the one which Firefox will generate (at its simplest): http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?index=blended&field-keywords=%s

So after hopping around a few sites to build up my list of searchable sites to match the list I have in Firefox, I noticed I couldn’t get it to auto-detect Google Maps. The reason being that the search doesn’t take you away to a different page with a URL containing your search term (it uses AJAX instead). So I went back to Firefox, chose Google Maps in my search bar and entered my search. I then took the URL and plugged it in to Chrome as a new search engine.

The Google Maps search URL: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=%s

I can’t help thinking Google Maps isn’t the only site where the search URL isn’t obvious. It made me think of the Mycroft project, which lets you find search engines to add to your list in Firefox.  So I gave it a go in Chrome… and MyCroft can does actually work with Chrome (kinda)! It pops you up a little dialogue to add the search engine - the names and keyword are wrong (it picked up the Mycroft name from the OpenSearch link), but the URL is correct. This may prove pretty useful for other sites where Chrome doesn’t auto-detect their search URL.

On the whole I like Google Chrome, and considering it’s a beta I’m sure it will improve. It certainly seems a little quicker than other browsers, especially on Web 2.0 sites with heavy use of Javascript. Yahoo! Mail seems to be snappier. I also especially like ability to move tabs between windows - been wanting that for ages in Firefox.

The Yahoo! Mail blog back on May 16 wrote a post in which they stated that they were removing the taglines (the little adverts they place as a footer) in all sent emails. (Users who pay for the Yahoo! Mail Plus version didn’t have these added).  However, as a user myself, three months after that post they are still being added to all emails I send.  Now I’m not complaining that they are added, I’ve been using Yahoo! Mail for years as a very happy user, and with the (not so now) new AJAX version it just keeps getting better.

However, I do find it frustrating that they advertise this development but I then fail to see its realisation. It would be a most welcomed change, as can be seen from the comments on the post. In fact, it appears there are some who even pay for Yahoo! Mail Plus for this sole reason.

I’m aware that the way Yahoo! roll an update out across the server farms means not everybody receives the update at the same time (Yahoo! themselves wrote a couple of posts on this topic back when the beta was being rolled out, see: [1], [2]), but I figure three months has given them a fair chance before I start moaning . I’m on farm uk.mg2 (or uk.f654 if I use the old ‘classic’ version, although the tagline is added in either case.) Anyway, let’s just hope they haven’t forgotten to roll this out fully!

If, like me, you have many email addresses, it is convenient to be able to use a single mail client to receive all your mail, and also reply from that same one. Google Mail (Gmail), Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail all offer this. I’ll briefly outline how to do it with each, and then give a table at the end comparing their capabilities.

In Gmail you do it by clicking ‘Settings’ (top right of the page) and then click on the ‘Accounts’ tab. Then click ‘Add another email address’ and follow their instructions.

In the new Windows Live Hotmail, on the right hand side click ‘Options’, then choose ‘More Options…’ at the bottom (or just ‘Options’ in the classic version). Then under the ‘Manage Your Account’ heading click ‘Send and receive mail from other e-mail accounts’, then ‘Add an address to send mail from’.

In Yahoo! Mail click ‘Options’ then ‘Mail Options’. Then choose ‘Accounts’ from the menu on the left, then click ‘Add or edit an account’. (In the old classic version click ‘Options’ on the top right, then choose ‘Mail Addresses’). Now just choose ‘Add’ and follow the steps. When you get to the stage asking for POP mailbox details and you don’t want to give them you have the option ’skip this step’.

Gmail and Yahoo! Mail also allow you to retrieve emails from other POP mailboxes. Gmail and Yahoo! Mail Plus (that’s the version they charge for) also allow you to retrieve your emails via POP. Gmail also allow you to access your emails via IMAP.

I personally love the new Yahoo! Mail version!

	Gmail	Hotmail	Yahoo! Mail
Forward email	Yes	Only to a MSN or Hotmail address	Only in Yahoo! Mail Plus
Send emails from another address	Yes	Yes	Yes
Check other POP mail boxes	Yes	No	Yes
Access mail via POP	Yes	No	Only in Yahoo! Mail Plus
Access mail via IMAP	Yes	No	No

I stumbled across this trivial little fact today. It appears the techies at EarthLink have a sense of humour, as their two nameservers are named after The Simpsons show-within-a-show characters Itchy and Scratchy - take a look.

Personally I like the human touch better than a numerical or alphabetical system, it gives them character. It also reminded me that all my University department’s servers were named after Greek mythological figures (there’s a big enough list for them to choose from!). If you know of any other interesting/comical server naming conventions please post a comment.

After reading this article by the email and web security specialist company IronPort, it made me think. As spammers’ techniques get ever more sophisticated, is targeting or attacking the spamvertised sites (websites advertised through spam) still a valid tactic? According to that report, the turn around of links in spam is now on average less than 4 hours!:

In June 2005, the average length that a domain was advertised in a “spam” URL was 48 hours - allowing enough time for static URL “blacklists” to identify and block messages that contain these bogus Web links. Just one year later, the average duration of a spam URL has dropped to less than 4 hours. This means that by the time traditional block lists have identified and listed a bad URL, the spam message has already reached its targets and the spammer has moved on to sending spam using a new domain.

It also makes an interesting point on how this is made possible by the method they use to register domain names:

Spammers are also exploiting the domain name registration system by registering domains for a short period of time and then letting them expire before ever paying for them. In April there were over 35 million domains registered, 32 million of which were never paid for and expired after five days.

Therefore I wonder whether efforts to target those sites - such as Knujon, and the infamous former Blue Frog application - are going to be effective? I fear not. Which is rather discouraging, because using these methods gives the user an avenue to fight back and a sense of empowerment. That said - I am an advocate of those tools and have used them myself.

It’s a rather unsatisfactory conclusion I admit - and so in a future post I may take a look at some of the various email authentication standards which aim to target the problem of spam even reaching your inbox.

BitMeter 2 is an excellent little bandwidth monitoring program written by a guy who goes under the name of Codebox Software.

I run it all the time on my PC and have it start up automatically with Windows. It places an icon in the system tray which keeps you informed of the current upload/download speeds and can also display a compact box with a graph of recent usage. The great thing about this box is that it can be transparent (the percentage is fully adjustable) and has a feature called click-through which means it doesn’t register any clicks, but passes them on to what’s below. The colour schemes and most of the program’s many features are fully customisable.

I thoroughly recommend you head over to the website and have a better look, or click here for the direct download (1MB).

You often have many contacts on an instant messaging network, whether it be MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, Google Talk, Skype or whatever. Well it’s a basic fact that us humans tend to have certain friends who we’d rather talk to than others. There is a hierarchy if you like. Your closest family and friends - who you’d always talk to. Then people who you are happy to talk to most of the time. Then other people who you rarely talk to, etc.

I’ve found it is often the case that you block a fair number of contacts or change your presence to away, busy or even invisible. And all this to avoid the chance that someone who’s online, that you really can’t be bothered to talk to, IMs you. Quite possibly doing this whilst chatting as normal to other contacts.

It struck me that it’s quite a bit of hassle blocking/unblocking and changing your status. So I had a thought. Have levels of visibility. You assign a contact a certain level number. Then you set your current level. You will be visible to people at or above the set level, but contacts below that level will not see you online. For example, level 1 is the highest level. If your level is set to 2 then contacts in levels 1 and 2 will see you online, but contacts in lower levels will not see you.

You may not feel it would be more convenient or user-friendly, but it is a different angle of looking at the online presence model. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

Freenigma is a really neat little extension for Firefox which allows the average Joe to encrypt their emails (and of course, the recipient to decrypt it!). Well cryptography has been around for a while and the technology is nothing new, however, Freenigma is clear and simple, taking care of all the public and private keys, which the user never sees. Therefore it is a great tool that allows everyone who wishes, to use cryptography.

It works with the major web-based email systems, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, however it currently doesn’t work with the newer betas such as Yahoo! Mail Beta and Windows Live Mail. If you’re concerned about privacy or you’re just curious I recommend you check it out.

I have just signed up to the free web-based word-processor Writely, which was bought by Google in March earlier this year. It does what you’d expect and works very nicely. One feature which I’m trying out for this post is the function to post to your blog. I’m not sure that I’ll use it over MS Word yet, but do I see myself using it if I need to collaborate on a document with someone else.
Edit - Writely didn’t put a title on my post.