email

Yahoo Account Password Change

Posted by Rick on in Hacking, rant 1 Comment

Yahoo Account Password Change

So Yahoo!, are you saying that you let my account get hacked yet again? This despite my increasingly complex passwords that I now have to write down because I can’t remember them?

Yahoo Account Password Change

This is the fourth time this year I’ve seen this message. If this is part of some policy to force a password change every 90 days, then say so. Saying there was “unusual” account activity simply leads me to believe that you allowed someone to hack my account. Or worse yet, you’re somehow mistaking my own usage as “unusual.”

On the other hand it’s not like I really care too much anymore. As a user of your service since 1997 I have seen repeated changes for the worse, mostly removal of popular and useful services. Yahoo Groups? Useless and full of spammers. Yahoo Personals? Closed years ago. Yahoo Mail? Changed so many times it’s effectively useless.

Let’s take Yahoo Mail. When going into Yahoo Mail I now get a message stating that I need to upgrade my browsers. But they’re all upgraded to the latest already! You don’t need to tell me this every single time I login. Then there is the fact that clicking on messages in my inbox to open them may or may not work. Half the time nothing happens, a quarter of the time there is a time out error message, the rest of the time it works. If you delete an email it is a 50/50 chance that it takes you back to the inbox view or the next unread message. SPAM Emails get through on a constant basis, and then you’ve added an advertisers link to the top of my inbox that looks like an unread email. Yes it gets eyeballs and clicks – by accident. Yes I know you’re providing a free service, but this is beyond silly.

Then lets add in Yahoo’s penchant for Rollover ads, these are ads that go from itty bitty icons to huge “take over your screen” ads without any warning. Usually while you’re in the middle of reading something. Oh, and they’re also right on Yahoo News’ front page. A resource I used to use daily. Guess when the last time I looked at Yahoo! News was? I’ll give you a hint, it now numbers times per a year for about five minutes instead of daily for a couple of hours.

This problem is rampant across the entire Yahoo! platform. Look at what they did to Flickr. At first glance it LOOKS nice, even though they are blatantly copying other successful sites. But try using it for about 30 seconds and it becomes an exercise in frustration. The only good news is that the traffic has died down so much that the discussion groups are quiet.

Oh wait, that isn’t good news! I spent nearly five minutes trying to find my local photography group to find out when and where the next Meet-up and photoshoot was. The last post in a formerly busy group was the July 2013 Meetup notice. And nothing since then. A spot check of a variety of other formerly busy groups shows the exact same problem. So where is the improvement to service if people are having a hard time using it?

For an idea of other services that Yahoo has screwed up, er, I mean “closed due to a lack of popularity,” see the Yahoo! Wikipedia Article. Many of these were incredibly useful and popular services that Yahoo! closed in their infinite wisdom. Were they loosing money on any of these services? Doesn’t it make sense that even if it was only breaking even that they keep these services alive to bring people into the Yahoo.com “platform.” What’s really weird is how they purchased so many companies, and then ended up killing the companies within a couple of years.

Yahoo!, here is a wakeup call. I’m going to move totally away from your email service. I’m going to delete my flickr account and all my photos, and stop using your services. I know that this is only one set of eyeballs, and I probably don’t amount to much profit for you. But I’m also sure that I’m not the only one doing this.

Worst recruiting email of the week

Posted by Rick on in Analysis, Observances 1 Comment

Worst recruiting email of the week

from: sandra.washburn@insphereis.com (I’m assuming this is a mail serve address for sending emails and collecting replies)

——-
Good Afernoon,

We are seeking sales associates for our growing office. Successful candidates must be highly motivated, have proven

leadership abilities, customer service attitude and integrity. A desire for professional development, a willingness to learn and

exceptional people skills are essential to this position. We offer strong potential for growth and advancement.

Our culture can be described as highly energetic and fast-paced.

This requires each individual on our core team to be self-motivated and self-directed. We are solution-oriented and always

focused on results. Promotions are from within and based on performance, not seniority!

Qualifications:

. Ability to work in an independent environment.

. Driven by achievement and financial rewards.

. Financially stable.

. Proven success driving business results.

Regards,

Andrea Bailly
Office Assistant

InsphereISSM

(503) 246-5260
andrea.bailly@insphreis.com

——

Areas of failure
1.) No information about who the company is.
2.) Email address in signature is spelled wrong.
3.) “Office Assistant”?
4.) Their website has an annoying autoplay video that stutters badly. Even after letting it cache.
5.) Trying to recruit sales people from the IT crowd, a group of people who tend to have a lot of money and time already invested in their careers.

Over all, not quite as bad as American Income Life but much worse then the other 15 emails I’ve gotten from Insurance Companies looking to hire sales reps.

Thunderbird RSS Feed Fix

Posted by Rick on in Technology How To's 1 Comment

Thunderbird RSS Feed Fix

I love Thunderbird for reading emails, and keeping track of my RSS feeds.

But for some reason RSS tends to become corrupted. I don’t believe it’s necessarily Thunderbird’s fault, although it seems a bit pickier about feeds that are correctly crafted then other RSS readers.

A clue that there is a problem is RSS feeds simply stop receiving any new messages. When looking at the feed it appears that it is no longer subscribed. Deleting the feed and resubscribing fails with a message stating that the feed is already subscribed.

In cases like this the only fix seems to be to manually delete the feed.

In Windows do this by going to: C:Documents and SettingsUserNameApplication DataThunderbirdProfileswsfdfsgb.defaultMailFeeds

The part after profiles, in this case wsgjbxgb.default, will be different on each machine. In some cases there might even be two files that both have .default in them. If so, the newest one is usually correct.

On Macintosh, these files are located in /Users/username/Library/Thunderbird/profiles/wsfdfsgb.default/Mail/News & Blogs/

Once in the correct folder, simply delete all files with the name of the site that you’re pulling feeds from. Note that this will also delete any saved articles you might have kept, so be sure to back those up within Thunderbird.

After deleting the files, restart Thunderbird and re-add the feeds. Everything should be working now!

 

How To: Change Default Mail Client on OSX

Posted by Rick on in Apple, Leopard, OSX, Technology How To's 0 Comment

How To: Change Default Mail Client on OSX 

When I moved away from Entourage to Thunderbird I had a huge issue with mailto: html links still attempting to open Entourage to send emails. OS X itself simply does not provide a simple way to change this default behavior.

So, the trick is to open OS X’s Mail Client and use that. Simply create a dummy account, it doesn’t matter what info you put in as you won’t be using it. Once Mail is opened, go to Preferences then click on the General Tab. There will be a “Default Mail Reader” drop down menu. Choose your default client (even Firefox or Safari if you have something like Zimbra or another web mail) and exit the client.

The other, and possibly better trick if you’re going to make this change across multiple computers such as an entire Enterprise setup is to edit one of the plist files.

In ~/Library/Preferences/ look for com.apple.LaunchServices.plist

Add

    LSHandlerRoleAll
    com.mail.client
    LSHandlerURLScheme
    mailto

Just under
LSHandlers


Options for mail client would be com.mozilla.firefox or com.microsoft.entourage or the preferences name of any other mail client. These can easily be found in the same folder. Once this is done, mailto: links will then open in your preferential mail client!

How To: Create and Import vcf VCards

Posted by Rick on in Apple, Microsoft, Technology How To's 1 Comment

How To: Create and Import vcf VCards

VCards are simply virtual business cards used to exchange contact information. They are easily recognizable with the .vcf file extension. Vcards have rapidly become a universally excepted way of transferring contact information between devices. They can be sent to most phones such as Blackberries and iPhones, or to all the popular Email programs and multiple contact collection programs.

The first step in creating a VCard is actually the hardest. Below is an example of my own VCard:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
FN:Rick Hamell
N:Hamell;Rick;;;
TEL;PREF;CELL:971.555.5555
EMAIL;INTERNET:rick@hamell.net
URL:http://RickHamell.com
URL:http://www.1nova.com/blog
URL:http://www.1nova.com/photoblog
UID:efc38667f3b9ab04495f9c54d2587950
REV:2008-10-27T20:47:59Z
END:VCARD

As can be seen it shows all the important contact info that would be found in any contact program. In addition to Email addresses it includes my phone number and URL to my website.

Many programs such as Apple’s Address Book, or Microsoft Outlook will allow exporting a contact to a VCard file. They can also be edited with a text file as long as the conventions in structure are observed. The easiest method is to use an online generator. I prefer Wacomenance.co.uk but the one at Vicintl.com is more streamlined and compatible. Keep in mind that while MOST programs should read all the fields in a VCARD, some will drop fields such as second and third email addresses.

After creating a card the next step is to import it in to the preferred Contact Program.

Microsoft Outlook:

  • Click on File menu, then choose Import And Export.
  • Click to select the Import a vCard file (*.vcf) check box, and then click Next.
  • Select the vCard file, and then click Open.

Microsoft Entourage:

  • Open Entourage
  • Click on Address Button
  • Drag .VCF file to upper right hand window of Entourage

Apple Address Book:

  • Simply Double Click on the .VCF Card

Mozilla Thunderbird:

  • Attach VCard in Email to self
  • Click on VCard
  • Click OK in “New Card for” Dialog Box

Keep in mind that VCards only really work well with one contact at a time. This is not the way to export or import a fully populated address book. Also, it’s best to be careful where the file goes as it could be used for malicious purposes. Only send the file out to people known to you.