My university sent around a global email today telling us about why they need to upgrade the servers and spam filters etc. but one interesting factoid stood out at me. Apparently, 80% of all incoming email to the uni is spam. Now, if you ask me, email is definitely broken.

I once made the mistake of putting my email address up in text on my website (maryams.net) and now that particular email address is absolutely useless. So, I was quite interested to discover DEAs or disposable email addresses.

It’s a bit complicated to explain (I should draw a graph) but essentially instead of giving everyone just one email address geekynerd@foobar.com, you give out a unique email address each time you have to give out your email. All of these unique email addresses are actually just pointers (forwarders) to your actual real email address, so you’re not checking hundreds of inboxes, just the one.

Then, if you discover that your cell free phone ringtones verizon wireless | mobile phone ringtones virgin | nextel real music ringtones | cingular free music real ringtones | free polyphonic ringtones download | motorola v3 ringtones | cingular free go phone ringtones | free tracfone ringtones | cheap virgin mobile ringtones | free ringtones for nokia phone | kyocera ringtones | tv theme ringtones | cingular ringtones spainsh | metro pcs phone ringtones | samsung polyphonic ringtones | free ringtones verizon | ringtones verizon wireless | free ringtones for cricket phone | 24 tv show ringtones | nokia composer ringtones | mother-in-law has secretly been selling your beloved email address to a spam company, then you just turn off the tap: you deactivate the unique email address you gave to her, rather than change your real email address, which you never gave her, so she could never sell to the spam company.

Now, there are online disposable email address services (and some of them work in different ways), which I might post a review of later, but having assessed them all, I decided to set up my own DEA service with my own URL and hosted provider. I decided to call it “Bokmail” (family in-joke) and it’s really cool. So now, when I sign up to The New York Times, then I just quickly create a DEA (I’ve set up a button on my bookmark toolbar so it’s only a couple of clicks) like umm…. newyorktimes@bokmail.com, which forwards to my real email address (NOOOO I’m not putting that one on the web, but even if I did, it wouldn’t matter, since only I know it, and if I have to change it, it’s not going to affect anyone but me) and then give that to them. Then if I ever receive email to newyorktimes@bokmail.com that is spam, I’ll just delete the forwarder and bam, no more spam sent to that address.

If I really need to keep a relationship with a wicked person or company that sells on my email (or more likely, includes me in a long list of CCs in a joke or virus email that gets sent around the world to collect email addresses grrrrrr), I’ll give them a new DEA and tell them to be more careful with it next time.

I have ten invites to Think Free Premium. Whilst it’s free at the moment, I am not sure if it will stay that way.  Nevertheless, I have been trialling it and compared to Media Max, Box, Omnidrive, and Google Docs it has some superior qualities.

a) you can manually or auto-sync between online and offline versions of your documents
b) you can work online on your files, or offline and upload with your own software, or offline with their software (seems to be an adapted version of Open Office, although strangely doesn’t read .odt files, you have to convert them to .doc) - so lots of options there
c) saves in .doc format, and reads .doc files (same with .xls and .ppt I presume)
d) you can install their syncing software on multiple platforms, including Linux.  So, I am hoping I can run their Windows version on my work desktop, use the Linux one I am currently using on my laptop, and work online from any strange computer I happen to find myself at.
e) 1 GB online storage (but can only upload files smaller than 10Mb)
f) allows you to zip up and download your online files for backup purposes
g) seems pretty quick

Anyway, leave a comment if you want one of my ten invites to the beta Premium service.

I’ve created a Word file that has a calendar for 1428 hijri (592 KB) - approx 2007 of the common calendar - that you can mark off prayers, fasting and zakat.  This is especially useful if you have to make-up prayers.  When I get a chance I’ll try and do some previous years too.  If you have any comments/suggestions on how to make it better, please do leave a comment.  Jazakallahu khayran.

Readers like Adib will be ecstatic to know that I could only bear using Windoze for a few months and have gone back to beautiful Linux. 

This time I’m trialling Mandriva. (I can do this because I have migrated practically all my content onto online/USB backup so my laptop is basically just a portal to the web.  So, installing and trialling operating systems is fun, fun, fun.  I think I’ll stick with Mandriva though because it has some perks that Ubuntu and Freespire (my previous Linux distributions) doesn’t have.

For those who are interested, this is how I organise my online life:

I have my homepage setup as an iGoogle portal which has widgets for my oftused Bookmarks (links to all the online applications and sites I use regularly); my Gmail; my GoogleReader; my Google Calendar; my Delicious bookmarks; my Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and Qur’an Guidance of the Day.

My Bookmarks widget that appears on my iGoogle includes: CiteULike as an academic reference bibliography; links to the admin pages of Dervish and Islamosphere; Mindomo for mindmapping; my BlogLog; the Oxford English Dictionary; Qur’an Search; my Tracks for GTD time management; Yahoo! Mail to check that real mail hasn’t gone into my spam filter; and I’m now trialling Zoho for project management and ThinkFree for online document editing (which is kinda duplicating Tracks and GoogleDocs, my bad).

Even though I have edited my docs and spreadsheets using both GoogleDocs and ThinkFree, I am still not comfortable using them exclusively, so I have PortableApps on my USB drive, as well as my working copies of my documents (which I make backups to my work computer Desktop at least once a day).

So now, I just walk around with my USB and make sure I am near broadband.

For those considering Linux, have a look at this advert (hijab flutter to Baha’i Rants)

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I’m not a Mac user. I have two brothers who are Mac fans, but I’ve never owned one and apart from using them occasionally at Uni, they’re not intuitive to me like the Windoze environment with which I am so familiar. I like the look of Macs but then that’s purely because of the aesthetic. (It’s also the reason I like those new VeeDubs!)

So, the question now is whether or not to convert. I’m going to spend some of my scholarship money buying a laptop because I’ll need one for visiting far away places, and if I want to jump into the world of the Apple Mac, now’s the time to do it.

The problem being, Apple just (and I mean this month) released it’s brand new Intel Core Duo chip MacBook Pro. From all accounts this thing ‘corners like it’s on rails’ (in joke with Abu Yasmin) but here’s the catch. It’s the first release, so you know how there are always bugs to iron out with the first release of anything and a lot of Mac software (written for the G4 chip) has to be run through an emulator. The Powerbooks are being phased out with the introduction of the MacBook, but presumably not the lower-end iBooks.

Anyway, maybe I have some Mac readers out there, your thoughts? To buy or not to buy? Or should I just go with plain, old, familiar PC?