When I had to re-install everything on my computer, I opted not to install a few programs including the one I used to manage spam. It wasn’t bad, but I felt it wasn’t as effective as it could be. I rarely hear about a 100 percent effective spam solution, but I had enough of the tool.

I’ve been using Thunderbird for email and am happy with it. I also use Outlook for one of my clients and it drives me insane. It has its good and bad points. Anyway, Thunderbird’s spam and scam manager doesn’t work worth spit. I was spending too much time going through my inbox to weed the junk.

Went to Thunderbird’s forums to see if anyone found a solution. Came across open source POPFile. Figured I’d look into it. Where has this baby been??? Being an organized freak, it’s a great fit.

Buckets o’ mail

It took me a little time to figure out this buckets business. But now I rarely have anything coming to my Inbox. Everything goes into a bucket or “folder” as most of us call ‘em. Before using this app, I had all newsletters and general emails go to a folder, junk going into another folder and everything else (if the email did its job, it’d be personal emails) in the inbox.

Now, I have four folders: personal, occasional, newsletters, and junk. The only emails that land in the inbox are unclassified emails. I get about one every few days.

You can set up POPFile to modify the subject header or leave it alone. Some of you probably get junk email that gets [spam] added into the header. It’s trouble rather than helpful. Sometimes, without thinking, I hit “reply” and the recipient person would see [spam] in the header. That’s why I have such suspected emails going into a junk folder. Why clutter the inbox with [spam]?

Control Center

Any time I see an email appear in the wrong folder, I go into POPFile’s browser-based (which looks great in Firefox, by the way) Control Center and reclassify the bucket.

View larger image in a pop-up window.

The control center also shows a dashboard. You can see how much you email you get for each bucket. The data also shows the number of false positives and false negatives. Currently, the application has a 92% accuracy (it was 76% on March 30). The accuracy continues to climb. You can reset the data anytime to get fresh numbers. According to the help docs, it takes about 1000 emails to get the accuracy rate up to the 90s.

View larger image in a pop-up window.

Magnets, Configuration, Security, and Advanced Features

Magnets resemble message filters except you use them in POPFile instead of your email client. You can have POPFile look at the To, From, CC, or Subject for a value that you enter. If the value matches, then it goes into the selected bucket.

View larger image in a pop-up window.

In Configuration, change skins, language, History page view, and POP3 preferences.

View larger image in a pop-up window.

Security contains options for server operation, remote servers, automatic update checking, and reporting statistics to POPFile. Here you can set up an interface password.

View larger image in a pop-up window.

Advanced tab lists words that POPFile ignores. You can add and remove words from the list. You can also adjust the parameters here. For ultra-geeks, this app has command-line options.

View larger image in a pop-up window.

Requirements:

* The latest POPFile release.

* An e-mail account that uses the POP3 protocol (most accounts do, although you can’t use POPFile with web-based services like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail without extra software)

* Around 10 MB free disk space

Final Notes

After using it for two weeks, I’m happy with the app. Email also downloads faster than it did with the previous app (both used the local host). POPFile is a Sourceforge project, therefore it’s free. Its Web site is available in the following languages: Norsk, Deutsch, Portugues do Brasil, Francais, Dansk, Espanol, Arabic, Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese, and Korean.

It comes in two versions: “an easy-to-install Windows version, and a cross-platform version for technically-minded users.”

With all the price comparison sites available, I’m posting them all in one post because it’s just tough to keep up and remember them all. The first three places I go whenever I shop are Froogle, Pricegrabber, and ISBN.nu.

I don’t just buy from the place offering the best price. It also depends on the business’ reputation. If no ratings are available for the business, then I search elsewhere like the Better Business Bureau and BizRate. Offertrax lets you store, compare and receive price alerts.

Pronto is a Firefox shopping comparison plugin.

Another thing to consider is the best time of the year to shop for certain items. MSN Money lists the best times of the year for the following. Also, some of these have special notes.

• Air conditioners: winter
• Airline tickets: Varies
• Appliances: Ask stores about warehouses of returns and floor models in mint condition.
• Big appliances: September and October
• Bicycles and outdoor gear: January
• Boats: January, February and March
• Cars: September
• Cell phones: any time
• Computers: July and August
• Cookware: April and May; October and November
• Flooring: Wholesalers offer “buy direct” prices online to public for over 1,000 square feet.
• Furniture: January and July. Also find out if the store has an outlet or website that sells floor samples, discontinued styles or returned merchandise with deep discounts.
• Gas grills: winter
• Jewelry: Avoid the holidays, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day
• Linens and bedding: January
• Mattresses: year-round
• Real estate: spring
• Recreational vehicles: fall and winter
• Rugs: Department stores markup rugs big time so stick with wholesalers.
• Toys: October and November
• TVs and home theaters: winter holiday sales and January
• Vacuum cleaners: April and May
• Wedding: winter

Most Often Used

Froogle results look like typical search engine results. It also explores sites that often don’t appear in the comparison shopping site lists. I’ve found some great deals here.

Pricegrabber is the one I go to the most outside of Froogle. I think its comparison chart is the easiest to read and scan.

PriceScan is similar to Pricegrabber and easier to read than the ones listed further down.

ISBN.nu.

Books

AddAll does books, music, movie, and magazine.

Best Book Buys also compares book prices as well as music, videos, electronics, and bikes.

BooksPrice searches for lowest price on new and used books, CDs and DVDs. Also includes a feature for finding the best price when buying more than one book since shipping costs could be lower due to the combined order.

FetchBook

ISBN.nu does only price comparisons for books. While I find better deals through Amazon Marketplace or elsewhere, this is a great starting point.

Local Stores

8coupons: Coupons in your zip code.

SalesHound.com

ShopLocal

General Price Comparison Sites

The following sites are similar in how they produce their results and they don’t have a neat chart like Pricegrabber or MySimon. Their results are similar to Froogle, but I think Froogle provides better results. I recommend using a few sites when looking for a specific item as every site links to different stores.

CostHelper reports what people are paying.

DealTime

MySimon is one of the first price comparison sites I’ve used. Its site doesn’t look good in Firefox.

PriceComparison

SearchAllDeals searches all deals and coupon sites in one shot.

Shopzilla

SortPrice

Yahoo! Shopping

Coupons and Discounts

Most of these sites are junky or have a ton of popups, but I’ve found coupons here.

BigSavings

CoolSavings requires free registration.

CouponHaven

CouponSaver

CouponSurfer

CouponTweet: Coupon codes from twitter.

Current Codes

eCoupons

eDealFinder

FatWallet

Free Shipping

KeyCode Coupons

NaughtyCodes

Rather-Be-Shopping.com

RetailMeNot

ShipGooder: Compare shipping rates.

SmartSource – grocery coupons

Online Deals

These sites list bargains and big sale items. The best place is Woot, but it only shows one item per day. Once in a while, it’ll post a new item as soon as one sells out for a certain amount of time (usually 24-hours).

Alice: This is a little different. What you do is enter the products you normally buy. “For each product you add, you’ll get automatic coupons, reminders when you’re running low, and easy re-ordering tools so you never run out again.”

DealHunting

Deal of Day

Dealsea: Short-term deep discounts.

Hot Deals Club

ShopStyle: Enter your favorite brands and the site emails you when there’s a sale.

SlickDeals.net

ugenie provides discounts on bundled items.

Discounted Shopping Stores

American Science & Surplus – science bargains

Cheap Tickets – travel

Dawdle: Buy and sell new and used games

Deep Discount DVD for DVDs.

Expedia Travel – travel

Farecompare – travel

Farecast – travel

Free CD Software

Kayak – travel

Lowestfare.com – Travel

Overstock

Priceline – travel

SmartBargains

Updated: September 26, 2010

Having been in process management in a software organization for over ten years, I’ve seen too many articles and books on the topic that worked better than Valium for putting me to sleep especially since they have no side effects. Joel Spolsky is known as one of the best (if not the best) writers on the topic of software. However, in this book he stands aside and lets others demonstrate that he isn’t the only one who can write about software in English and captivate you.

Joel on Software (his Web site slash blog) fans won’t be disappointed in the selection of authors as they deal with the concepts he writes about on his site. Some readers may be expecting a book solely on software development. Even Joel goes beyond this. Some folks might be disappointed that most of the articles, blog entries, speeches, and essays are available somewhere on the Web. I only recognize a few of the authors and their articles, so I would’ve never known about the others had I not found this book.

The essays cover a gamut of development-related topics. They include coding style, outsourcing programmers, dealing with Excel as a database, using social software (Friendster, LinkedIn, Tribe, and all that) and the things that are right and wrong withthese shared spaces, emerging digital rights, and defining the two-phase commit process a la Starbucks. Even a couple of them are nothing but comics. The one on Windows search knocks its readers out of their chairs laughing, at least it did for me.

The book also contains business-related essays that address a few problems affecting many companies — namely team compensation and forced overtime which often spills over the weekend. Joel introduces every essay and includes notes clarifying abbreviations, names, or terms that aren’t widely known. After all, the world of software is vast and it’s impossible to know everything about it.

The manager benefits from the book because she gains insight into the developer’s perspective which could help her become a better leader. The developer benefits because many of the issues covered can impact him no matter what language he uses for development. If you belong to neither management nor development, the best way to decide if the book is for you or not is to review the table of contents and reviews. If you find only one or two interesting possibilities, search for them online instead.

I’m one of those who belong to neither group. My software organization background has been along the lines of an analyst and process manager. Even I find that most of the essays are enjoyable or educational. Only one or two lost me.

While most of the content is available on the Internet for free, the book is worth the bucks. It’s nice having a collection of high-quality writing related to software and the business in one place instead of schlepping the Web for it. Furthermore, you get an opportunity to read about business offline — I find that I read most of the book while traveling on an airplane. The flight flew by thanks to the book. I appreciated and absorbed the essays better by reading them in the book than I would have had I read them online.

Title: Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky
Author: Edited by Joel Spolsky
Publisher: Apress
ISBN: 1590595009
Date: June 2005
Format: Paperback
Pages: 328
Cover Price: USD: $24.99 Amazon: $16.49

Zork. Remember it? I think I hear a mixture of, “What the hey?” and “Oh, yeah! Wow, that brings back memories.” For the former group, Zork was a text-based adventure game from INFOCOM — one of the the first interactive computer games. It resembles the Choose Your Own Adventure books only instead of flipping pages, you enter the command and the story continues.

Play interactive fiction again (or try it out) with the series from Malinche Entertainment. After a glitch — five times over — I got the game working. It was the luck of the draw as I had a bad CD and then instructions that could be read several ways. No one’s fault except for CD problem. The First Mile is available in several versions: PC ($19.95 by download) and iPod ($9.95).

In the PC version, you enter the commands and tell the game what you want to do in the story while the iPod / cell phone version provides you with a few choices and you select what you want to do.

Want to see what it’s like to get involved with the story? Malinche offers a training academy — beware the side effect of training the academy… addiction.

The First Mile is horror fiction, perhaps something torn out of Stephen King’s notebook. As soon as the game begins, my heart thumps harder with each move I make as I encounter a body, hear a hellhound growling, and see many empty buildings and homes. Am I the only person in Dead Rock? Could this be Twilight Zone?

I try to calm my nerves by playing music while living the game, which is possible to do on the iPod and PC. Not even music or a baseball field brings comfort. I shall stop here as it’s all I can take for the time being. At least, I did this much — me who has never read Stephen King nor have I watched horror films at the slumber parties I attended as a teen.

If you can’t get your teen to read a book and she constantly plays video games, sneak this into her computer, iPod, or Smartphone and she’ll convert and read without hesitance. Good news. When she finishes the game, there are more available from Malinche Entertainment. Heck, this works on spouses, friends, and family, too.

Tips:

* The First Mile is a large story. To start back at the beginning, hold down [Menu] and the center click button at the same time — keep holding till you see the screen blink to the Apple logo, then you can let go. It takes at least six seconds for the logo to appear.

* There isn’t any way to quit and pick up where you left off due to the limitations of the current iPod software. Watch this Web site for updates. Malinche Entertainment has asked Apple to consider adding a “Bookmark” feature.

Amen to Stop! An IT Spending Manifesto! When my daughter was getting into AOL instant messaging (AIM) and using all the cool add-ons, I looked for more as it’s a great way to learn about extending applications. While doing research, I learned that if you wanted to use AIM themes, you don’t want to upgrade to AIM 5.9. A post at MyThemes suggests sticking with or downgrading to 5.5. MyTheme shows what steps to take, should you prefer to stick with 5.9. The post also shows where to download 5.5 and how to downgrade back to it. Furthermore, 5.9 was bloated. Think it took a while for AIM to completely load in 5.5? 5.9 is worse.

Many people, Paul included, didn’t upgrade WinAmp past version 2.8 because he didn’t like version 3.0′s playlist and it kept crashing. Then, he got a pop up that an upgrade was available. He figured he’d try it as it couldn’t hurt and he still had 2.81′s install. He liked the new interface and themes on version 5.0, so he stuck with it. That’s three versions later.

When I got my new computer, I stayed with Microsoft Office 2002 / OfficeXP. The new features weren’t worth it and I’m happy with this version. As long as I have my word count, tracking, and comments — the other stuff doesn’t matter as much. New software products tend to have more bloat than usefulness. This does not apply to ALL new software, just a general statement that it’s often the case.

I usually skip a version or two before considering an upgrade unless I see a feature that I think would prove valuable. When it comes to operating systems, I wait till the new one has been out for a long time before considering it.

When I finally got around to buying accounting software in 2003, I researched to see what would best meet my needs. Many users pointed to the older versions of QuickBooks. I currently use QuickBooks Pro 2000. Although, I miss some of the more modern features and functionality, it has all I need. In a quick search, I couldn’t find the sites that talk about the versions and their advantages / disadvantages. I had to buy my copy from eBay.

If you find an upgrade awful and uninstalled the old version that you want back, just hop to OldVersion.com — can’t forget a name like that. But if it doesn’t have your software, use Google and enter the software title along with the version number. It always works for me.

As a writer and tech writer, I find SnagIt is one of the more valuable resources. Before I bought it, I was skeptical about it because I had no problems using PrintScreen and then modifying the shot in Photoshop. Then I started using the software at work and saw how much time it saved me. I bought it for my use and Ctrl+Shift+P to take a snapshot almost daily.

One creative person discovered a inventive way to use SnagIt… as a
teleprompter. Kewl, eh? (I’m on a “kewl” instead of “cool” kick.) Not longer after I became a SnagIt’er, TechSmith released v7.0, a great improvement. The interface is easy on the eyes and friendly. It also has more editing tools for modifying the snapshot.

SnagIt helped me create a gift for my youngest child’s teacher. She treats him as one of her own and her place is a second home to him. I consider her a friend, too. Those who know me are aware of my lack of talent for design or creating things. Odd considering I’m a lefty, but I s’pose the creativity all went into writing.

Since using software is a breeze, I used SnagIt and Photoshop to make the gift. I flipped through digital pictures and when I saw a possibility, I snagged it with SnagIt and saved it. Once done, I used Photoshop to review the selected photos and placed them around the page leaving space in the middle for a poem I wrote. After printing the page on a photo printer, I put it in an 8×10 picture frame. She loved it.

Tip: If you prefer to save your file to the “last saved” folder, the following steps make it possible:

1. Right-click on the SnagIt icon and select Output, then Properties.
2. Under Output folder, make it blank.
3. Click OK.

Update: I should’ve waited a day! Carla Wardin, editor behind the SnagIt newsletter, interviewed me asking about my experience with the app. The interview is here.

Update #2: Techsmith has lots of great tips and tools in its community center. OK, I’ll be quiet now.

I’ve been looking for a spell checker to use with all of my programs, but have yet to find one I like. IE Spell is great, but it only works with IE and I don’t use it much. Mitch wrote about a spell check for Firefox (it also has a Mozilla version). Spell Bound works nicely and applies only to where you’re entering text (forms and emails). It doesn’t check for spelling on a general page. Not a big deal unless you’re checking for errors on your Web site or your enemy’s

I also tried Free Spell. This one checks spelling in all applications, not just a browser. It drives me nuts for several reasons:

* It doesn’t go into system tray yet and I don’t like having another item in my task bar.

* It opens a DOS-like window, which is clunky.

* It requires selecting the text to have it spellchecked.

As-U-Type (this is refers to v2.2) sits in the system tray and checks everything you enter. It works in Mozilla e-mail and Web site forms. It’s transparent as it makes corrections while you work.

Once I forgot As-U-Type was on and was trying to type “gid” (a file extension) in Google and I kept seeing it changed to “did.” When I realized it was As-U-Type, I clicked once on its logo in the system tray to turn it off and proceed with the search. I wish there was a faster and more simple way (by right-clicking rather than a keyboard shortcut) to tell it to add it to its dictionary and leave it alone rather than having to temporarily turn it off and back on.

I type a lot of non-dictionary words, abbreviations, and acronyms. It’s annoying to have things corrected all the time. It’s a good program, but I rarely use it.

I like how IE Spell works and if it worked with most applications, I think it’s my ideal solution.

Sometimes I just want to shoot darts at MS Word. It crashes often mostly due to the normal.dot file becoming corrupted. This file has the default settings for Word including the font type, font size, and the toolbars that appear on the page. I loved using WordToys, but I had to delete it because it kept crashing normal.dot. This may not be an issue for everyone, but it was for me. Sadly, I removed it.

Microsoft’s Tech Support came in handy once as I learned about a Word Troubleshooting Utility. When Word started crashing again, I realized I had not installed the utility back on my computer after having to reformat it a few months ago. It’s a valuable utility that fixes the problems to keep Word from crashing again, at least for a while.

Download the Utility. The aforementioned link has the file and instructions for installing it. It also has instructions for using the utility. 9 times out of 10, the problem is resolved with Normal.Dot Global Template. Load the utility by clicking Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office Tools > Word 2002 Support Template. The template should appear in Word with buttons for Troubleshoot Utility, Registry Options, and Autocorrect Backup.

If Word asks about macros, enable them. If nothing happens when you click on a button, you need to lower your macro security settings as they’re too strict. To do this, click on Tools > Options > Security tab > Macro Security > Select anything except High. Close Word and open the template again.

Now let’s try the most common repair. Click Troubleshoot Utility > select Normal.dot Global Template from the drop-down list > Rename > Yes. This should take care of it. Restart Word and see how it goes. If not, try the other options one by one. Try one, close and re-open Word, and see if it worked. If not, try the next option. Check Word after each change rather than implementing a bunch of changes at once.

Here’s another guide for troubleshooting problems in Word.

The name is exactly what WordToys is, toys for MS Word. As soon as I start playing with it, I am hooked. The program puts colorful and high quality icons around Word for easy identification and accessing. It also enhances some of the existing Word features and you know which ones because the icons have been replaced with a colorful one.

The numbering and bullets icons are two examples of enhanced features. Before WordToys, when clicking on these icons, a window pops up and you modify them to your liking. After a WordToys makeover, clicking on the icon brings a fly-out menu and you can select what you want from there. This means fewer clicks or keyboard shortcuts because there are no windows to open and close. As soon as you select what you want, Word puts it there and the menu closes.

Symbols and special characters are awkward to add. Many don’t use these often enough to remember the shortcuts, but when it comes time to use it, it is wieldy. WordToys has an icon for each. For symbols, a handful of common symbols appears in the menu. If you use a couple of others often, configure the menu to add those symbols. After that, you can click the symbols icon and then your symbol.

The special characters icon is a time saver. When you type words like resumé or cliché, you need the accented é. Lots of work for one letter. Click on the characters icon, select ‘e’, and then select the accented é. All the other e’s are available in the same menu.

For some of the icons, you can add your favorites for quicker accessing. For instance, the default font icon has arial, courier, and Times New Roman. I add verdana and georgia to the list. It’s nice not having to deal with the long list of fonts even though I use the shortcuts to get there. The WordToys font icon is easier to use than shortcuts.

The icons on the left are color-coded and sorted by groups. The first set of icons are blue. These are related to document and file management. Red is formatting (font sizes, type, copy / paste, bullets). Orange is content like thesaurus, bookmarks, and special characters. Green is environment where you can zoom in and out, arrange the windows, and other things beyond the Word application.

No catch. The personal edition is free and has no sneaky things built-in it to make you mad. Romke (the developer) hopes you will like it so much that you’d upgrade to the paid professional edition to get more features. View a comparison of features between personal and professional editions.

The best part about new toys is playing with them and discovering what they can do. So I’ll leave it to you to find its other cool features. Have fun with WordToys.

Free. v1.0.3. 1.6M download.
Works with Word XP and 2003. Word 2000 edition available now (download). WordScripting must be enabled. If you haven’t messed with WordScripting, then you should be fine.

If you copy something from a Web site or elsewhere… or you reuse a document and the formatting is making you crazy with its weirdness, then stop the insanity. The first option to make the document behave loses some of the formatting. You can always undo the changes if you don’t like it by pressing CTRL+Z. To dump some of the formatting, press CTRL+A to select all and then select “Normal” from the style drop-down box in the left corner next to the AA as shown in the picture. This changes some of the formatting. If it’s too much, remember CTRL+Z is there. If it’s not enough, try option two.

If the document has HTML formatting or has serious formatting problems, you can get rid of all of the formatting including bullets, paragraphs, bolds, and font sizes. Press CTRL+A to select all and then select “Clear Formatting” instead of “Normal.” This converts the content to plain text using the default text font and size.

In some cases, it’s the paragraphs causing the commotion. Option three is to once again CTLR+A, select Format > Paragraph and under Spacing > Before change the number. 0 means no spacing. The higher the number, the bigger the space before the paragraph. You can see how it will look in the preview. Auto automatically inserts a 14 point space. Or you can put both Before and After at 0 and select one of the options under Line Spacing.

When specific formatting items are misbehaving, then do the following. Let’s say you don’t want tables. Select the table and select Table > Convert > Text to Table. Don’t like italics? Select all, then click on the ‘i’ twice (it will turn everything on and then off). These are simple examples.

When a sentence, paragraph, or block of text isn’t behaving, just select those items rather than selecting all.

Are there any common problems you run into? Email me at merylk at gmail dot net and I’ll address them.