Product Recommendations; Email Tips

One of the hidden, unwritten rules of being a geek is giving product, and services reviews. It is great telling other people what they should buy, and why. I wish I got payed for it. Its also great when you are at a point where you can recommend products and services at work. More times than not I have had first hand experience, but I also make it a point of read multiple reviews. Giving this advice is more or less a ancillary effect to being a geek.

A ripe example of this, stemming from a current consulting job, has to do with email.

General Email Tips

Use a bayesian filter for your email. SpamSieve is the easiest to use on OS X, POPFile works on all platforms (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux(s) etc.). Outlook 2003 has built in bayesian filtering, and it works great! Unfortunately Apple's Panther Mail's junk mail filtering is sub par. You would do better getting SpamSieve and turning off the junk mail filter.

Turn of image viewing, or turn off HTML rendering all together. In Apple Mail you can turn off image viewing in the Viewing portion of the Preferences. You can turn of HTML preview in Outlook 2003, and you can hack 2002 to turn it off.

The last thing I would do is turn off message preview. I like how Outlook 2002 and 2003 handles this, as it will display the first 3 lines of text from and email. That is just enough to tell if it is SPAM or not. You do not want to view SPAM, and by clicking on it and seeing it (even if you are clicking to delete it) you are "viewing" it. There is no 3 line preview in OS X Mail, but you can turn off the preview pane. Double click the resize handle in between the list pane and the preview pane.

Some people might not want to go as far as disabling the preview pane, but to each his own. BTW, to re-enable the preview pane in OS X Mail, double click the resize handle that is now at the very bottom of the window.

Continued on the next page Page 1 — Page 2

Article tags

Spread the word
Bookmark and Share
Profile image for ken-edwards

Article Author: Ken Edwards

Ken Edwards is the Gaming Editor at Blogcritics, and calls Breaking Windows home. Ken works part time for Student Publications at BGSU as the Webmaster and System Administrator. He is also a freelance web developer.

Visit Ken Edwards's author pageKen Edwards's Blog

Read comments on this article, and add some feedback of your own
  • No image found

Article comments

Add your comment, speak your mind

Personal attacks are NOT allowed.
Please read our comment policy.
Please preview your comment.

blogcritics lists for May 29, 2012

fresh articles Most recent articles site-wide

fresh comments Most recent comments site-wide

most comments Most comments in 24hrs

top writers Most prolific Blogcritics for April

top commenters Most prolific Commenters in 24 hrs