Rollin’ with the Pantech Matrix Pro for a bit. Dash 3G, TP2, & G1 sittin’ in the Windows Mobile-branded device bag (1 great piece of swag)

A few weeks ago I got this piece of Comment SPAM in my e-mail:

A new comment on the post #94 "Does Spam Work?" is waiting for your approval
http://jonwestfall.com/2007/04/does-spam-work/
Author : Make Money Online with Mr. X
E-mail : russianmobvictim85943@gmail.com
Comment:
HELP! I’m currently being held prisoner by the Russian mafia and being forced to post spam comments on blogs! If you don’t approve this they will kill me. They’re coming back now. Please send help!

Needless to say I didn’t approve it… which probably means I contributed to someone’s untimely demise…

Photo: sindesign

So got this today, and I really doubt that I’m going to approve it – despite it’s gracious tone! Holes in the wall is especially classy!

A new comment on the post #343 "Stupid People Alert: LOE: What do you mean I can get an STD from that???" is waiting for your approval
http://jonwestfall.com/2005/10/stupid-people-alert-loe-what-do-you-mean-i-can-get-an-std-from-that/
Author : STD Testing
E-mail : kiey@anylabtestnow.com
URL    : http://www.prweb.com/releases/std-testing-centers/dallas/prweb3224224.htm

Comment:
This article is good. People should be up front about thier sexuality (man or Woman). Either way both parties should use protection. Holes in the wall to have sex, to me that is just like picking a random person and having sex with them in the alley behind a store.I guess there isn’t anyone who is still in a serious realtioship anymore these days.

About a month ago I decided to try something. For over 4 years I’d had a Gmail account that did little more than filter SPAM before it passed up to my exchange server, yet I kept hearing about all the awesome things you could do with Gmail. Sites touted various features and gizmos, the ability to search easier and the quicker load times than my existing solution, Outlook. So I decided to take the plunge and go Google for a bit and see how I felt about it.

flickr user murilomernardes

On February 26 I disabled Gmail’s forwarding to my exchange server, and now after 1 month, I’m ready to share my impressions. First, I’ll share a bit about my motivations regarding the Google experiment. First, Outlook can be an awesome product if you exist solely in 1 email strata. If you’re using it for your corporate mail, on your corporate laptop, for your corporate buddies to send you corporate things, it’s awesome. Aside from slower than preferably load times, it provides everything you’d need to be productive. But my situation isn’t strictly corporate. In fact, my exchange server has 3 users on it. This left me wondering if a product geared toward consumers may be a bit more useful to me.

Another thing that intrigued me was the strange mystique GMail has. If someone tells you that their official public email is johnsmith@hotmail.com or @yahoo.com, you may wonder why they would use a service that doesn’t provide a professional domain name. After all, yahoo @ hotmail are the addresses favored by angst-ridden teenagers everywhere. But if someone publishes a @gmail.com address, they tend to be cast differently – a psychological oddity where one free e-mail service appears more “professional” than others. This made me a bit less leary when sending e-mails that stated in the from line as “on behalf of”.

The GMail switch went seemless on my desktop after I dumped my calendar & contacts in Google, but I had one problem: My beloved Pocket PC. Gone was easy Exchange activesync for e-mail, although it still existed for calendars and contacts. Moving off Exchange e-mail on my Pocket PC to clunky old imap was one of the hardest parts of the entire experiment (Even after I found this software, which I then patched – gotta love Open Source). So critical is e-mail to me, that imap simply was unacceptable as a solution (at least in Windows Mobile’s current imap implementation). Third party apps were too bulky, and so my experiment prompted what may be the first surprise revelation of this piece: I stopped using my Windows Mobile devices as my primary phone. Yes, you read that right – a Windows Mobile MVP who had used Windows Mobile for 6 years without missing a beat switched. And what did I switch to? A G1, after all, it fits in with the Google experiment, right?

So now that all of the exposition is done, how do I feel after 1 month? Well, here’s the points I have to make. You’re welcome to comment on any or all of them.

• Google’s suite of services is dang impressive for consumers, yet seems a bit unfinished. I told you that I had a GMail account, and this means I also could log into other Google services. I hardly ever did though, except for iGoogle which I used as my homepage. Switching to GMail for e-mail caused me to begin heavily using Google Reader to catch up on website, Google Calendar, Google Docs for quick document creation & sharing, and more. Given what was available in 2003 when I went to Exchange/Pocket PC/Office full time, I’m amazed by how much Google offers, and for the low price of free. However the ‘beta’ labels I saw throughout my Google experience, coupled with a few oddities made me wonder how acceptable Gmail is as a full time solution. What oddities? Oh, maybe this outage, or labs features being taken for granted (After all, beta means nothing in Google land right?). And of course, a pseudo-real offline client.
• It is unfeasible, when working and playing with others, to ditch Office. This may be a bit controversial, but to a person who has all Office using colleagues and friends, it is not practical to switch away from Outlook, Word, & Excel to Gmail, Docs, and Spreadsheets which arguably would be the next transition to go from Microsoft to Google. It also might not be all that safe.
• Android is not ready for prime time. One of the more interesting parts of the experiment has been using an android phone. While some parts are very nice, the only reason I have stayed on Android for the last 2 weeks (and I’ve been an Android user for 3 weeks now) is the seemless E-mail, Contacts, & Calendar sync. If Google offered e-mail through Activesync (Which is rumored to possibly come in the future), I’d switch back to Windows Mobile full time tomorrow. Android shows a lot of promise, but simply isn’t there yet. Examples? Well, how about the Marketplace application. The same apps stay at the top, the search options are terrible (especially for a Google product), and the reviews are hit and miss (here’s a piece with more ranting on it) . Another example? Well the homescreen isn’t too customizable unless you use a third party (Seriously Google, 2 widgets? Why have them at all?). And a last example that bugged the heck out of me? The built-in maps program is so bad that when navigating, it doesn’t even keep your location updated regularly (Which renders it useless for driving). One bright spot though – it would let me use T-Mobile’s 3G network for the first time, if I lived in a place with 3G coverage.

There are my 3 observations after 1 month. Google seems to work well for the individual, Microsoft works well for the corporation. I’m an individual academic, so where do I fit in – I’m neither kooky one-man hipster blogger type (If I was I’d be on a Mac right?) or corporate drone. In a sense, and I guess the principle finding of my Google Month is this: I could switch from Microsoft to Google, but it wouldn’t cause any fewer headaches.

So what do I plan to do in April? Well my bloodlust for Windows Mobile devices stilll runneth deep within my veins. Translation: I have a new device waiting at my local post office, and it ain’t an android phone. For now I’m back on Exchange, but I’m keeping Google sync’ed up with my Calendar/contacts/e-mail. Why? Well for one, I may use the G1 again when travelling to T-Mobile 3G coverage areas (Especially with this hack I found) and next month I’ll probably play with it when the next major Android release drops. And second – it’s always nice to have options (especially with a self-administered Exchange box running off a DSL connection).So there you have it. Google wasn’t my messiah – and while I may not be a cool hip blogger guy talking about his favorite GMail tweaks, I do have years of Windows Mobile and outlook experience to continue to share!

Jon Westfall is a decision making researcher, tech enthusiast, Windows Mobile MVP, and all around great guy. He writes for Pocket PC Thoughts, a member of the Thoughts Media Network.

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E-mail is a nasty little thing when you really think about it. It enables us to communicate information faster than any other media available today, is flexible enough to allow us to use it both professionally (e.g. sending documents for review) and privately (e.g. sending pictures of our kids and pets), and is reckless enough to give birth to the most heinous annoyance of the 21st century thus far: SPAM. E-mail, love it or hate it, is here to stay – which prompts me to question how we use it. Last summer we had an interesting discussion about E-mail organization strategies, which revealed that there seem to be two types of E-mailers, those with clean inboxes and those with multiple pieces of E-mail keeping the inbox nicely stocked. Today I’d like to address a different yet related question: How often do you check E-mail?

Checking E-mail used to be a quaint little thing back in the days of dial-up. You dialed in, hit “Send/Receive” and waited as E-mail goodness flowed in. Perhaps you did a bit of replying, archiving, or ignoring, hit “Send/Receive” one more time and logged off. Then broadband hit us, and many of us (I suspect) started keeping Outlook running, so that we could get email more or less as it came in (e.g. having it automatically send/receive every 5 minutes). Then Exchange Servers came around and we had Outlook in Connected mode, hearing a little ding every so often that called us over to it. Somewhere around this time, I think some of us became slaves to E-Mail: Hear the ding, check it out, go back to work until… DING… check E-mail, go back to work…. DING… etc…

About 2 years ago, I read an article by Henry Roediger, in which he suggested that academics try to avoid E-mail maddness by setting up various times throughout the day to check E-Mail, and leaving Outlook closed the rest of the time. I thought that was nuts: I’ve got a Windows Mobile device – why shouldn’t I continuously check my mail all day? After all, I can stay on top of things and keep my inbox nice and clean. I didn’t think much about his article until late last year when I thought “Gee, maybe I should try it”…

So I opened up Outlook and I de-selected any instant notification options for E-Mail. No Desktop alert, no ding, no change in the icon. Outlook could now run minimized and I had no idea how many E-Mails were flowing in. I also put my Pocket PC or Smartphone aside and refused to look at it (I even turned it over so I wouldn’t glance at it out of the corner of my eye). Guess what happened? I had some of the most productive afternoons on record. Flying through lecture notes, papers to grade, forums to check, students to meet with, papers to revise, etc… Sometime around the end of the day I’d bring up Outlook and find, usually, that nothing important had been missed. I’d do some quick replying, a bit of filing, and close up and go home. It seemed that I’d gotten to a happy place E-mail wise. I made the Outlook notification changes on my other PCs and prepared for a life of productivity.

But it wasn’t that simple. Some afternoons that I tried this, I did miss pretty important and urgent E-mails, which prompted people to call me, which was more of a distraction than E-mail had been in the first place. Other times I’d spend an afternoon working on a project that was delayed – a delay I didn’t hear about until after the work was done because the organizers had E-mailed me about the delay. Still other times I’d miss personal E-mails which I would have liked to reply to quickly. It seemed that turning off notifications to E-mail wasn’t a global godsend as much as a “works 50% of the time” measure. Now I could set up elaborate filters to let me know when certain E-mails come in while ignoring others, however that’s pretty time consuming given the fact that the vast majority of my contacts have no idea that you can set E-mails to higher or lower importance, and the fact that I work with E-mail from a variety of sources (e.g. academics, students, computer technicians, geeks, journalists, software vendors, friends, etc…). Thus far a perfect solution has eluded me.

Are you a continuously connected E-Mailer? Do you know the second an E-mail comes in? Or do you take an approach similar to Roediger’s, and have pre-set E-checking times? And what works best for you?

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“Trend Micro Incorporated has announced the latest version of its mobile device security solution. The release of Trend Micro Mobile Security (TMMS) 5.0, with data encryption and authentication, mitigates mobile security challenges such as security breaches and data leakage while allowing enterprise administrators to manage security for handheld devices from a single console. The company says mobile devices have become small, powerful computers with large data storage capacities and growing network bandwidth. A remote and mobile workforce utilizing mobile applications on their handhelds are at risk for losing confidential and sensitive information critical to their companies. Mobile applications such as push e-mail, customer relationship management, and field service automation boost convenience and productivity, but make data vulnerable. Enterprises need to ensure that both data and mobile devices are secure and protected. TMMS 5.0 features new data encryption and authentication capabilities that will protect the mobile device’s content in case it is lost or stolen. Data on devices that do not comply with policies can be wiped out by administrators. The anti-malware features block viruses, worms, Trojans and SMS text message spam. Built-in firewall and Intrusion Detection System (IDS) protects against hackers, intrusions and denial-of-service attacks.”

Microsoft has tools built into Windows Mobile 5/6 that allow greater administrative authority (especially remotely) than ever before. However many do not know of these features and in the eyes of some, they still have a long way to go. Now Trend Micro is stepping up and providing their own solution. Not being an IT administrator for a large number of devices, I’m not sure how attractive Trend Micro’s approach may be compared to Microsoft’s. Anyone see something they need to have now from Trend Micro’s offering?

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“We all know the problem: e-mail you don’t need or never want is still sent to you, and it ends up on the place where it takes the most effort to ignore or remove it: your mobile inbox. This could make mobile e-mail even counterproductive. It isn’t just SPAM, it can be anything. It comes from friends and colleagues too. It can be the invitation to yet another party, people fighting over something using e-mail as a medium (and you in the CC), invitations to eat cake to celebrate something, a complaint about workplace tidyness or someone reporting that a car has its lights on in the parkinglot. It is completely nonsense, especially since you will probably be out of the office anyway. But it will still trigger an alarm you will respond to. It is noise in your daily routine. It makes you less effective and it should go.”

Jaap Van Ekris over at Modern Nomads sent us a note about the new tutorial / wiki page they have up regarding server-side filtering. I have several filters setup in Outlook (and a few on my exchange server for the rest of my users) and have to say that they do make life a lot easier for all involved. Cut down on the amount of junk reaching your mobile device by creating some filters today!

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If you've ever tried setting up an exchange server at your home, small business, or on any server that doesn't have a 100% reliable 100% always-on connection, you've probably needed a tool like PopRoute. PopRoute lets you "pop" your external POP3 accounts and route the mail from them into an Exchange Inbox.  It's perfect for servers that aren't always connected (i.e. dial-up), have a rather shakey connection (making forwarding to the user's exchange email address unfeasible, or for otherwise fine exchange servers with user who stubbornly want their "other" email in their exchange account.

The problem with PopRoute is that, while the price is right, the configuration interface leaves lots to be desired.  Manually editing an INI file is a bit annoying, and since PopRoute requires that mailboxes be numbered sequentially in it's configuration, removing mailbox 2 requires on to manually rename atleast adjoining mailboxes.

With that in mind, I coded together PopGUI.  PopGUI lets you administer your poproute.dat file without needing to actually open the thing in notepad and play with it.  The nice thing about PopGUI + PopRoute is that, for an extremely low price, you get the same ease of administration that tools costing $100+ provide.

Getting Started

To start using PopRoute + PopGUI on your exchange server, follow these steps



1. Make sure that the Microsoft.NET Framework 2.0 is installed on your system, PopGUI uses it, and it's a free download available here

2. Download PopRoute here and extract the files to wherever you like (c:\program files\poproute is the default)

3. Download PopGUI and run the installer

4. Open PopGUI and configure your email accounts & General server settings (I recommend disabling the Archive Directory)

5. Create a scheduled task to run poproute.exe regularly (Whenever you want to download mail).  I've done 5 minutes and 2 minutes before without issue.



PopGUI is Free, however I do request that you register with me.  This way I can keep track of who is using the program (for my own ego's sake) and keep people aprised of any updates.  Rest assured that I have no need, want, or desire to spam you to death, I simply want to know how my program is doing, and have a way to contact users.

Download 1.0

To get a registration key, drop me an email with your name & company. I'll be happy to send you one ASAP!

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