Fighting junk e-mail requires time, diligence

A recent report issued by Google claims that spam—junk e-mail—is on the decline. My inbox begs to differ.

I receive hundreds of junk messages every day. However, until recently, very few of them actually ended up in my e-mail program, Outlook Express.

That’s because I subscribed to SpamArrest (spamarrest.com), a filtering service that intercepts spam before it reaches my PC.

When the time came to renew, however, I balked at the $44.95 annual fee. After all, we live in the age of Gmail. Surely I could find a free alternative that would be just as effective at stopping spam.

For instance: Gmail. I already have an account I use for various purposes, like subscribing to newsletters and inviting column readers to contact me.

As it happens, Gmail provides fantastic spam filtering. When I retrieve my messages in Outlook Express, I rarely see any junk.

The problem lies with my personal domain (Broida.com), which I use as my primary mail account. Without SpamArrest standing guard, there’s nothing to stem the tide of Viagra come-ons and PayPal scams.

If only I could leverage Gmail’s spam filtering for my domain. Guess what: I can! Gmail can fetch mail from up to five other accounts, and it applies the same anti-spam expertise: Junk messages automatically land in the online Spam folder, where I can review them just in case a legitimate message gets caught in the net.

Meanwhile, I can retrieve mail in Outlook Express just like always, except now everything filters through my Gmail account. And therein lies a wrinkle: There’s no longer any way to distinguish between Gmail mail and Broida.com mail. Everything appears to have come by way of Gmail.

To be honest, I haven’t figured out a solution to this yet. (Any Gmail experts out there will undoubtedly suggest an IMAP setup, but I’ve tried that and it’s just not for me.) In the meantime, I’m investigating other spam-fighting options.

For a few weeks I tried shifting to Thunderbird (mozilla.com/thunderbird), an e-mail program from the makers of Firefox. It’s similar to Outlook Express but includes built-in spam filtering (and a killer mail-search feature).

Unfortunately, it’s a bit complicated for the average user, and after 10 days of letting it “learn” what I consider to be junk, it still managed to filter only about two-thirds of the spam. All the rest I had to delete manually.

I’ve also looked at anti-spam utilities like MailWasher (mailwasher.net) and SpamFighter Pro (spamfighter.com). The former works quite well, but it’s a standalone program that you have to run prior to loading your e-mail client. Not for me.

As for SpamFighter Pro, it integrates directly with Outlook Express and does an excellent job junking the junk mail. But it costs $29 per year, and I’m looking for free.

On second thought, maybe free just isn’t an option in the fight against spam. Maybe I should pony up the $29 or $45 and call it a day. After all, what’s a few bucks in exchange for a spam-free inbox? Very worthwhile, if you ask me.

What method(s) do you employ to keep junk mail at bay? Have you found a free solution that works? E-mail me at rick.broida@gmail.com and I promise you won’t end up in my spam folder.

As DVD format war draws to a close, another battle brews

What a couple weeks it’s been for the movie biz.

First, Warner Bros. announced plans to drop HD DVD and release titles exclusively on Blu-ray.

That means the high-def DVD format war could be over, though Toshiba (the largest maker of HD DVD players) fought back in the best possible way: lower prices.

You can now buy the entry-level Toshiba HD-A3 player for $149.99, the HD-A30 for $199.99, and the HD-A30 for $299.99.

But should you bother? If HD DVD is headed the way of Betamax, is this just throwing good money after bad?

Yes and no. A number of movie studios, including Paramount, Universal, and DreamWorks, still support the format (for the moment). That means you should be able to get new releases for a while longer and great closeout deals on older ones.

Furthermore, because the players can “upconvert” regular DVDs, they’re a big boon to your existing DVD library.

In fact, speaking of that, I was all set to write a review of the Oppo Digital DV-980H (http://tinyurl.com/2awxcr) upconverting DVD player.


I was going to explain the logic of buying such a player over choosing sides in the format war. The DV-980H performs feats of technical wizardry to make ordinary (i.e. non-high-def) DVDs look almost high-def on your HDTV.

I tested the player with my 46-inch LCD, and it worked quite well. Spider-Man 2, for instance, looked noticeably sharper than it did when viewed on a regular, non-upconverting player.

The DV-980H delivers a pretty impressive feature set, too, including an HDMI output, support for resolutions up to 1080p, and even a USB port for video, photo, and music playback from external devices.

Unfortunately, it’s not as good a deal this week as it was when HD DVD players started at $300: The DV-980H sells for $169.99, $20 more than Toshiba’s far more advanced HD-A3.

THE DOWNLOAD WAR BEGINS
Of course, DVDs are an endangered species as it is. At some point in the future, we’ll mostly get our movies from the Internet.

At this point in the present, there are two intriguing new ways to do exactly that. The first is Netflix, which now lets you stream unlimited movies and TV shows to your PC as part of any monthly subscription of $8.99 or higher.

Let me say that again: For as little as $8.99 monthly, you can watch any of 6,000-plus movies or TV shows on your PC. (Netflix stocks around 90,000 DVD titles, but the streaming library is, for the moment, much smaller. And the movie selection is mediocre at best.)

After installing a small player, all you do is click Play for the title you want to watch. Streaming begins almost immediately and looks just shy of high-def.

The downside is that you can’t actually download anything for mobile viewing on, say, your notebook or iPod.

Which brings us to Apple and the new iTunes movie-rental service. For $2.99-$3.99 you can download a movie for viewing on your PC, notebook, iPod/iPhone, or Apple TV (a nifty little box that connects to HDTVs).

Because it’s a rental, you have 30 days to start watching—and 24 hours to finish once you do. After that, the movie goes poof.

iTunes currently has about 1,000 titles in its rental library—and they’re all movies; no TV shows. If you want the latter, you can still purchase them outright.

Interestingly, if you want movie and TV downloads for a Creative Zen or other non-iPod player, you need to turn to Amazon Unbox. Wal-Mart, for its part, recently terminated its video-download business. (All together, now: “Wal-Mart had a video-download business?”)

Let’s recap. HD DVD: probably dead. Blu-ray: likely winner. Upconverting DVD players: great if you can get one cheap. Netflix: instant streaming rocks, movie selections don’t. iTunes: rentals great; 24-hour window, not great.

What do you think of all these high-def DVD and movie-download developments? My inbox awaits your insights.