Archive for the 'Joyent' Category

Filtering with Gmail

Published
by
John Stansbury
on February 20, 2008

Note to the indiscriminate PayPal spammer

Today, my filtering technique has let me down. Not that my idea is unsound, or has be breeched, it’s just that it stopped working. Thus, I had to deal with these obvious problems:

1. One would surmise that when PayPal sends a notice that it has shut the account of the user down, it would be helpful to know which account was shut down

2. The correct trademarked spelling of your company is ‘PayPal’ not ‘PayPall’

3. Nothing says ‘legitimate email’ like “Paypal Update Team, N.A. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender”

Depressingly, I’ve seen an increase of email from spammers showing up in my inbox. It isn’t because I’ve changed anything in my setup, it’s just that the filtering isn’t working. That’s to say, the filter, were it working correctly, would keep me from ever seeing this stuff.

Email graffle

How to filter like a champion?

  1. Forward your email to a Gmail account
  2. Have the Gmail automagically forward that back
  3. Only get the mail from your safe account
  4. Profit

The key to this is that you are feeding all your email through Gmail’s filters. The reason you want to send all is because you want as many ‘eyes’ on it as possible. Whatever makes it past your hosting’s filters gets weeded out. Then, on the round trip, it gets another looksee from your hosting.

Security

The idea that Google is getting its paws all over your email is a genuine concern. You get the same effect using Google Apps for your domain. That’s why I have a third, changing address that I use for unique email that I want to keep more secure.

Also, I’m forwarding the email using the *.*+*@*.tld convention, so each of the forwarded addresses go to name+whatever@me.com for each of the email aliases. That way I can track what went where.

Categorized:
Internet, Joyent and Rant

I just turned off Twitterrific

Published
by
John Stansbury
on February 10, 2008

Twitterrific iconI just turned off Twitterrific. I didn’t turn the Twitter tool off because it wasn’t working, or because it was causing problems with my computer. The reason I turned it off was because it was working as it was designed. It connected me to Twitter, something I find less and less interesting.

Mind you, while I love me some short–form outbursts of insight, and I love a good sarcastic subtitle, the chatter tends to get old, fast. It gets that way the quickest when people use it more as a public internet messaging session than status messages. When they added the @username convention, things got really bad.

It moved from being something followed to an incestuous popularity contest. I could see the reasoning for the @username, a way to cite other tweets — but it became a way to yammer on like that lady yelling to the person on the other side of the cellphone. If I wanted to listen to half of a conversation, I’d use Verizon. The best feature related to @username replies is in your settings: the ability to hide them.

A few days ago, Twitter moved off Joyent servers, and nothing really changed. It’s still not all that fast. In fact, until they switched hosts, I never cared one way or the other. But now its apparent that it wasn’t where they were that was the problem, it was what they were.

I’ve added quite a few people who either said interesting things, or were ‘internet fabulous.’ The people on the A–list, the ones with all the followers. I mean — come on, if they weren’t interesting, why’d they have so many followers? I’m still trying to figure that out. It was those A–lister types that got the masses to sign up, and that’s when whatever Twitter is proved to be incapable of handling the success.

Too popular, too large, and still too slow. And, paradoxically, it was never an issue with me until the big switch. Now it’s too convenient an excuse not to use.

What this is really about is that I’m not excited to wake up to a hot cup of other people’s status messages. While it was all…er…terrific tweeting, when the novelty wears off, it’s just a bulletin board of people I don’t really know. Maybe if I was a famous A–lister type I’d feel more compelled to continue the chatter — for the good of the people.

But I’m not. So I turned if off. Here’s to being quiet.

Categorized:
Joyent, Rant and Twitter

9 Things I’m Thinking Of Calling Myself

Published
by
John Stansbury
on November 2, 2006

9. Coca-Cola Zero’s number 1 fan!

8. The one guy who didn’t post anything about Reddit/Wired Google/JotSpot

7. Master of Technorati (I don’t think that’d fly, though)

6. The guy who single-handedly moved himself from the Z-list all the way to the M-list, just by the sheer power of his own powers…and abilities…and bones and organs…

5. Pixel Thief

4. Mixmaster MacStanizzlebizzle

3. Joyent shill

2. …anything but late for supper…

1. Prosumer Blogging Expert

Categorized:
9 Things, Joyent and Personal