I Still Miss Notify.app

I’m a big fan of Inbox Zero and I wish I didn’t have to give e-mail so much of my attention, but since I’m in charge of support for my company it’s a priority for me. That may make me a bit of an “E-Mail Monkey“, but so be it. It’s a point of pride that I, and the rest of our team, respond so quickly to customer feedback.

That’s not to say that I’m not envious of people who can process their e-mail just twice a day. If support wasn’t one of my roles, I would jump at the opportunity to do the same. Since I’ve chosen not to, there are a few steps that I take to minimize the interruptions. One of the techniques I was a big fan of was to use an app called Notify.

Nofity.app would sit in your menu bar and would check my e-mail accounts and notify me when I had mail via Growl. Of course leaving my e-mail client open would obviously do the same thing, but I liked the fact that I could keep it closed. A simple notification would let me know if the e-mail was urgent, but I didn’t have the constant reminder of a badge notification that I had X number of unread messages.

If the message was urgent, then I could launch Mail.app and address it, but if it wasn’t then I could leave well enough alone until I was ready to process my mail. Again, it was a small thing, but I found it very handy to help me stay focused throughout my day.

Unfortunately, the developer abandoned the software on May 11, 2011 and it no longer functions since I upgraded to Mac OS Lion.

The other day I was lamenting the fact that I still miss not having this little utility. I did a few Google searches to see if I could find an alternative, but came up empty. That was certainly a disappointment, but I was happy to find that I wasn’t alone.

26 days ago • internet • Tags: applications, mac, utility

The Real Geeks of Silicon Valley

So true…

36 days ago • humor • Tags: geek, humor, parody, tv

Another Plug For OpenDNS

I did a post last week entitled “I Hope This Isn’t A Trend” and in it, I mentioned how one way to protect yourself from phishing attacks was to use OpenDNS on your computer, or router. The other day I found another reason to recommend the service — malware protection.

Mac Trojan Outbreak

Last week, news come out that approximately 1% of all Mac OS computers were infected with something called the “Flashback trojan”. If this is news to you, then I strongly urge you to go read this MacWorld article from Rich Mogull. It gives you all the information you need to know regarding the outbreak, how to test to see if your Mac is infected and how to prevent becoming infected.

Apple was a little slow to release a fix, which is what led to the outbreak, but OpenDNS was quick to respond in 3 days with news that if you were using their service, you are protected. Color me impressed!

But Isn’t DNS Super Nerdy?

Yes and no. If you dig into the subject, it’s of course pretty nerdy; however, OpenDNS has made it super easy and you don’t have to be a geek to use it. You simply change two fields in the network settings on your computer, or on your router. That’s it!

For home use, I highly recommend creating a free account and setting your router to use OpenDNS. If you’re mobile, then adding the same settings to your laptop is a good idea too.

To help walk you through the process, Katie Floyd, of the MacPowerUsers podcast, did a wonderful screencast on the subject, which I’ve posted below. If that’s too much detail for you, OpenDNS has excellent tutorials as well.

37 days ago • technology • Tags: dns, fakeflash, malware, opendns

A Great Read – “Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out”

I love great writing.

Paul Ford has written an article for NYMag that definitely qualifies as great writing (like just about everything he writes). In Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out, Paul eloquently clarifies how most Instagram users feel about the Facebook acquisition and provides a great deal of clarity in the process.

There are so many gems in the piece, but here’s a little sample.

So if you’re an Instagram user, you’ve been picking up on all of the cues about how important you are, how valuable you are to Instagram. Then along comes Facebook, the great alien presence that just hovers over our cities, year after year, as we wait and fear. You turn on the television and there it is, right above the Empire State Building, humming. And now a hole has opened up on its base and it has dumped a billion dollars into a public square — which turned out to not be public, but actually belongs to a few suddenly-very-rich dudes. You can’t blame users for becoming hooting primates when a giant spaceship dumps a billion dollars out of its money hole. It’s like the monolith in the movie 2001 appeared filled with candy and a sign on the front that said “NO CANDY FOR YOU.”

A great read. [via Ftrain]

Oh, and if you like this article, be sure to check out The Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which I’ve linked to in the past.

38 days ago • technology • Tags: buyout, facebook, instagram, paul ford, writing

Oh… Please Don’t Go In There

Skitched 20120407 161126

I’m in the process of Dumping Google and one of the steps I’ve taken is to replace Google Analytics with Mint from Shaun Inman. Brilliant analytics app from a brilliant guy. Anyway, while I was in the FTP client and looking at the file structure of the site, I couldn’t help but notice some cruft.

For example, there was a scripts directory that contained who knows what in there. Unfortunately I couldn’t leave well enough alone and did a quick search to see if there were any posts that referenced one of the scripts that I recognized. There were about 5 and as I edited each one it quickly became apparent I should have left well enough alone.

I started this blog back in 2002 and there’s been a ton of updates over the years. I’ve also moved hosts more times than I can count and moved from MovableType to WordPress. Looking back over a 10 year span there’s a ton of bits-and-pieces to this blog that no longer work as they were originally intended.

It’s fun to go back and read old posts, but for anyone that runs their own blog, I don’t recommend that you do any editing — it’s not pretty \shudder\.

42 days ago • site news • Tags: mint, shawn inman, updates, wordpress

I Hope This Isn’t A Trend

Yesterday, I received the following text message on my iPhone.

There’s a couple of things that give me pause here.

The sender assumes I have a phone with a web browser so either they’re taking a random guess, or they know I have an iPhone
The URL will probably confuse most people.

I don’t have any studies to back this up, but I think it’s fair to say that most people don’t know how URLs work, much less what the most important portion of a URL is.

The first thing you see in the above text message is the www.apple.com and that’s the least important part. However, the average user sees apple.com and assumes incorrectly that the message is from Apple. The most important part is the todayswinners.info — that is the ultimate destination that this spammer is wanting me to go to.

This text message is doing something called phishing and it’s goal is to trick you into giving them your information. I didn’t click the link, so I don’t know what specific information they’re trying to extract from me, but that’s their goal.

Unfortunately, it’s not going away anytime soon and now that I’ve received my first text spam message, I’m sure this is but the first of many I can hope to receive. I’ve already added my number to the Do Not Call List over a year ago, but that’s not going to stop this kind of activity.

How To Protect Yourself

The only way to protect yourself from a phishing scam is to know what to look for. I highly recommend taking the OpenDNS Phishing Quiz and see how you score. I just took the test and was surprised by some of the samples. It’s a good way to see just how clever phishers are getting these days.

If you want to take extra steps, you can also choose to use OpenDNS on your home network. One of OpenDNS’ features is that they block phishing sites among other things. It’s free for home use and it’s what I use on my home network. I’ve been using them for a couple of years now and have been very pleased.

There’s a simple guide to setting up OpenDNS on your computer, or router at use.opendns.com that gives you step-by-step instructions.

45 days ago • technology • Tags: phishing, scam, text messaging