Hasta La Gadget!

Hotmail’s spent the past few years playing catch up with the competition, but for the most part, it hasn’t done anything particularly groundbreaking with its services. Earth shattering might not be the appropriate descriptor for its latest addition, but Hotmail’s added a helpful new feature to distinguish plain old spam from the kind that comes form a trusted source. Now, when you get an email from a friend that smells of something sea dwelling — say a plea for some extra scratch from abroad — you can select “My friend’s been hacked!” from the “Mark as” menu, alerting the powers that be that your friend’s account has been hacked. When you mark a missive as junk, you can likewise click a box that reads: “I think this person was hacked!” Once that’s done, the spammers are kicked to the curb, and your friend is put through an “account recovery flow” the next time they attempt to log in. On the prevention front, Hotmail will soon roll out a new service that blocks users from selecting common passwords. It might not be enough to coax us over, but maybe this time the other guys could learn a few lessons.

Hotmail adds ‘My friend’s been hacked!’ feature to finger phishers originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Jul 2011 10:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This Monday marked the 15th anniversary of the birth of Hotmail. That July 4th launch date is no coincidence — the service’s founders intended its release to highlight the symbolism of its independence from more traditional e-mail models. The following year, the service would be snatched up by Microsoft and housed under the software giant’s MSN umbrella. The subsequent years haven’t always been easy for the brand, thanks in part to competition from Yahoo and Google-owned services. In 2007, the service fired back, revamping and rebranding itself as Windows Live Hotmail. It’s been a decade and a half of ups and downs, but the webmail service continues to be one of the most widely used in the world. Got any Hotmail-related memories? Please share them in the comments below.

Hotmail turns 15, checks spam folder for misfiled birthday wishes originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on May 01, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

Now that I’m up and running on my Mac I decided to give the Apple Mail program a shot. It’s the built-in email solution that is bundled with Mac OS X, and also lets you do things like leave notes to yourself or manage a todo list. One thing that I quickly noticed was that it doesn’t directly include support for HTML signatures.

It’s kind of always boggled my mind as to why these email applications don’t support HTML signatures out-of-the-box. I don’t think that they need to make it all fancy, but they could at least let users enter a snippet of HTML code to use as a signature. I guess I was spoiled by Outlook’s rich text signature editor, and can’t help but compare Apple Mail’s signature abilities to it. Heck, even Mozilla’s Thunderbird lets you specify an HTML file that can then be used as a signature.

Anyhow, there is a method available for those of you who want to get an HTML signature in Apple Mail. It takes a little bit of work, but once it’s done you should be happy with the results.

1. The first thing that you’ll want to do is create an HTML file that contains the code for your signature. You can do this using a fancy program like Dreamweaver, or something simple like Apple’s TextEdit. Preview your signature in a web browser to ensure it’s what you want, but you’ll be able to go back and make changes later if you want (it’s just not that easy to make changes).
2. When you create a text signature in Apple Mail it doesn’t store it as an HTML file. Instead it uses a file storage type specific to Safari called WebArchive. To get around this you can open your signature in Safari, and go to File -> Save As. You’ll now be able to save your signature in the necessary WebArchive format.
   
3. Open Apple Mail’s preferences, and switch over to the Signatures tab. Click the plus sign located near the bottom to create a new signature, give it any name you would like (you can easily change this at any time), and put something in the content box:
   
4. You’re almost there! Now what we have to do is replace our awesome HTML signature with the temporary place holder form the previous step. To do this copy the WebArchive file from Step 2, and paste it into the ~/Library/Mail/Signatures folder (note: the tilde represents your user folder). See that other WebArchive file with the obnoxiously long name consisting of letters, numbers, and hypens? Just rename your signature file to match that super long name and you’re all set:
   
5. If you already have Apple Mail running you’ll need to restart it before seeing the changes. Then when you go to compose a message the new signature should automatically be attached. If you need to make changes you’ll essentially need to start back over at Step 1.

I’ve been asked several times what the point of using an HTML signature is since so many email services block them. There is typically some confusion in that area because email services don’t block HTML… they just block images, and even still the viewer can normally enable them. That means without any trouble you are able to use well formatted hyperlinks, style the text, and much more without using images. However, spare us all from turning your signature into a mini MySpace page. And no, everyone doesn’t love a banner of animated smiley faces.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryGmail HTML Signature BookmarkletHelpful Tip: Backup Apple Mail or EntourageCyberNotes: How To Create A Great Email SignatureHow to Insert HTML Signatures in Gmail

Anonymous hit the Arizona police force hard tonight and released some scathing emails and images from deep within the FOP. More »

Okay, it’s not as titillating as the time Microsoft added conversation view to Hotmail, but the outfit did just freshen up its email service with a handful of helpful tweaks. Topping the list is an assortment of shortcuts, including the ability to right click a message to reply, reply all, or forward (you could already do this for other things, like marking something as unread). Hotmail also now responds to some additional Gmail- and Yahoo Mail-specific keyboard shortcuts, such as “#” for deleting messages — a Gmail trick. And the company is none too subtle about admitting it wants the service to be user-friendly for folks if — or when — they switch from Google or Yahoo. Rounding out the batch of improvements, you get an easy way to recover deleted emails, an improved back button, HTML5-fueled speed improvements, and the option of changing your default font signature — something we can’t believe Hotmail has been missing until now. Hit the source link for the full spill, and find a short demo video after the break.

Continue reading Microsoft updates Hotmail with more signature options, Gmail and Yahoo Mail keyboard shortcuts

Microsoft updates Hotmail with more signature options, Gmail and Yahoo Mail keyboard shortcuts originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jun 2011 11:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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