HTM Blog

For some reason Firefox for Mac is sluggish while using Gmail and Yahoo Mail. I am now using Camino as my primary Mac browser while still using Firefox on my PC. Hopefully the folks at Mozilla will compile a separate version of Firefox that is faster on the Mac. Until then, I'll be using Camino.

This is a very interesting add on for Firefox that allows you to turn any web page into a white board. It also has a place mark feature that allows you to mark your place in web pages. This one only works on Firefox but is a great example at what the next generation of the web has in store for us.

I've been playing with a new web browser on my Mac this week called Camino. It was recommended to me by cmp101.  Camino is a very, very fast Mozilla-based browser for Mac only. I was a bit skeptical at first, but Camino is seriously growing on me. It doesn't have all the options and plugins that Firefox does, but it's very fast. If I can get a few kinks worked out, this one is the browser of choice for me.

For some reason Firefox is sluggish on my Mac, unlike my PC version. Camino is anything but sluggish and has a very fast rendering engine. I love it. Give it a try at the link below.

There's no easy answer. You have a web site with a contact us form, and someone out there uses it for spam. If you're using Formmail.pl or a similar script you should make sure that the recipient's email is not passed through http. In other words, hard code the recipient email in the script.

I was using the server's cgiemail script for some web sites I was managing and all of a sudden, several servers were spamming us big time. I tried blocking their IP addresses in the .htaccess file, but because cgiemail was in the server's cgi folder and not under my domain, the blocking didn't work. The solution for me is not full proof, but here's what I did to cut down the spam by about 99%.

First, I used very obscure names for my form fields. Name, email, subject, etc. are just too obvious. We'll use these obvious names for the bogus forms to confuse the bots, but use obscure names for the real form.

I created several bogus forms with hidden fields above and below my actual form. This confuses the bots and keeps my inbox spam free. Here's an example of a bogus form.

<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="/cgi-bin/cgiemail/bogus.txt">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="success" VALUE="http://www.yourdomain.com/sent.html">
<input type="text" name="realname" style="display: none;">
<input type="text" name="email" style="display: none;">
<input type="text" name="subject" style="display: none;">
</form>

What makes the form bogus? I give a path to bogus.txt but that file doesn't exist. The bots will not be able to send spam through this form. Also, by using obvious names like realname, email, and subject the bots will likely try to fill out this form and then not look ahead for the real form. Some bots can find more than one form so I put 5 of these before my real form, and 2 after. This confuses the bots and cuts down the spam big time.

By using the style="display: none;" tag, these forms appear invisible to the user but visible to the bots.

Give it a try! It's not full proof, but since implementing this plan I've received only 1 spam through the forms.

This is simply the coolest start page I've seen to date. These new web 2.0 applications are outstanding.

Here's an interesting start page that acts more like a desktop within your browser than a simple web page.

Here's an interesting site that introduces you to new videos you probably haven't seen. They have channels setup that you can choose from. You give them your preferences and they expose you to new videos. Pretty cool!

Stumble Upon Video

How do they do this?

Here are the email addresses for the 6 most popular cellular phone carriers:

T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net
Virgin Mobile: phonenumber@vmobl.com
Cingular: phonenumber@cingularme.com
Sprint: phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Verizon: phonenumber@vtext.com
Nextel: phonenumber@messaging.nextel.com

phonenumber = your 10 digit phone number

I can't stress this enough. NEVER USE THE CC FIELD IN EMAIL!!! So many people want to CC everyone but all that does is expose everyone to each other. A simple way to send mail to multiple people is to send it to yourself. Put your own email address in the TO field, and put everyone else in the BCC field. Everyone will get the email but you won't expose everyone to each other. Every time I create a new email address and give it to someone who CC's me, I start getting spam in about 2 days.