All PC Tips

In a recent report published by ViziSense, Gmail has overtaken Yahoo in India. The total Gmail users in India is now 18,000,000 compared to Yahoo’s 16,800,000.

Yahoo has been the leader so far. However more and more Yahoo users have shifted to Gmail in the last two years. From August 2008, Yahoo users have been decreasing 8% each month where as Gmail users have been increasing 3% each month. In the first week of October Gmail has overtaken Yahoo.

Rediff mail is still 6,250,000 users and ranks third in India. 

However in the global statistics, it will take a few more months before Gmail can take over Yahoo. In the global scenario, Yahoo is still the first while Windows live comes second and Gmail is still the third. However, globally gmail users are growing and unless Live and Yahoo mails introduce any new attractive features, Gmail is set to goto number one.

In Google’s Gmail website there are many short cut keys. But it is difficult to remember all these short cut keys. To solve this issue a new keyboard is now commercially available. This keyboard costs 19.99 USD.

There are 19 keys in this keyboard and looks like a number keypad. Each key represents a shortcut key. For example to mark a message with a star (favourites), or to initiate a search, to go inside the message threads etc can be achieved by just a click of a button. This keyboard can be connected to your laptop or PC via USB ports. There is no drivers required for this keyboard. You can just connect and start using it. But before you start using it, you will have to goto your Gmail account and enable the ‘Short cut keys’ in your settings.

This keyboard was not designed by Google. A film producer, Charlie Mason created this keyboard. If you already use shortcut keys in Gmail this could be a thing to consider. If you have not started using Gmail shortcut keys then this is the right time to try.

We know that any computer file can be attached to an email and sent. Text files, Audio files, Video files or MS word documents, Excel sheets, PowerPoint files are some of the files that can be attached to an email as attachments.

These attachments use the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) format to send these attachments. MIME is used to send audio, video and image files. MIME protocol converts these binary format to text format and sends the file to the recipient. The email client software (such as outlook) of the recipient uses the MIME protocol to convert the text format back to the original format of the file.

To attach a file to an email

First find out the file name and the location of the file in your hard disk of the file that you want to attach to the file.

Open your mail editor. (For example outlook). Compose a new message. Now click the paper clip icon (button) or the link. Now a new dialog box will open. Now browse your computer hard disk and select the file you want to attach and click on ‘Attach’ or ‘Open’ button. In the mail editor a new field named ‘Attach’ will be now shown with the file name you just attached. If you want to add more files to the same email just repeat the same steps again.

Once you have attached your file, key in your recipient’s email address, type the subject and the body of the email and click the ‘Send’ button.

The email will be sent to the recipient together with the attached files.

To view attached files from your email

Let us assume that you have received an email with some attachments. When you open this email, you will see the contents of the email, but whether you will see the content of the attachments or not depends on the type of attached files and whether you have the appropriate applications installed in your computer to open them.

If your mail client can handle the attachments then the mail content will automatically show the content of the attachments. For example GIF, JPG, PNG files are usually handled by the mail client itself and hence these files will be automatically opened and shown within the email content.

If the attached file requires an external application to open the file then the ‘Attach’ section of your email will show the attached mail. Now double click on this file to open the file with the associated application. For example if a word document is attached, if you double click the file then the MS Word application will automatically opened and the attached file will be opened in it.

In some mail clients the attached files will have a few options such as ‘Open it’ or ‘Save it to disk’. Choose the options as you wish.

Important tips and problems while using email attachments

1. Many do not like to open attachments from emails. The reason being the fear of viruses in the attachments. Therefore as far as possible try avoiding sending attachments in your emails. If it is un avoidable then make sure that the attached file does not contain viruses.
2. If the size of the attached file is too big then the time taken to send these emails and the time taken to download this email by the recipient will be too long. So check that the attached file size is small.
3. Do not send images in BMP (MS Paint default) format at it is too big. Try to convert bmp to GIF, JPG or PNG formats and then attach.
4. If you have more than one file to attach then use a compression software such as WinZip or WinRar to compress to a zip or rar format and then send
5. Those files that your recipient dislikes or unexpected should not be attached
6. The text files are smaller in size compared to .doc file or .pdf file. So try using pure text files wherever possible.
7. If you have a very big file and you HAVE to send it by all means then use some software such as splitter to split the file into smaller files and send it.
8. Instead of sending too many files in a single email, you can send many files with few files in each mail.
9. When you reply to the files with attachments make sure that the replied email does not contain attachments.
10. When you send emails to news group or mailing lists avoid attaching files.
11. When you sending a special file with a different extension which is not commonly used, check with your recipient whether he has the required application to open that file. If not try to convert your file to a more commonly used format and send it.

Sometimes the email that we receive may contain text in other languages. In one of the emails that I received there were words that contained English alphabets but in an unknown language. Inside the mail there was also a boquaet of flowers. After looking at the sender’s email it was confirmed that the mail was a SPAM. Though the obvious thing to do next was to delete the email, out of curiosity I wanted to know the contents of the email. So I copied the contents (by Ctrl + C) and went to www.freetranslation.com and translated into English.

Only then did I find out that the email was actually a Birthday greeting from one of my foreign friends in Russia. Luckily I did not delete it and was able to translate the email. If you face similar issues in translating text in other languages you can also use this free translation website as mentioned above.

Some search engines such as google and altavista has a link named ‘Translate this’ in the search results to translate into english the contents of a foreign lanuguage website.

These are some of the websites that allow you to freely translate. (Free translation tools)

1. Google, Altavista, Dictionary, Free Translation, Tmail and Systran are some of the websites that allow translation from many languages to many other languages.
2. www.systranssoft.com is a website that translates online. Goto the language translation page and key in the text or the URL to translate. Select the source language and select the destination language from the list. Then click on the ‘Translate’ button to translate into your desired language of selection.
3. Tmail (www.tmail.com) is another language translation website that translates emails in other languages. For example if you want to translate an email in French to English, then key in your email address in the To: column and in the CC: coloumn type fren@tmail.com. Then copy the french email into the body of the email and send it. You are sending the email to yourself and the fren@tmail.com means(fr-> french to en->english). The translated email will be sent to your email shortly. If you want to convert korean to english then the CC: will be kren@tmail.com and so on.

Due to the wide use of computers and internet, the dangers that come with their usage is also increasing. Today emails are very useful in many ways. But the same emails bring us many problems and make us lose money. My friend once received an email from his bank. He was curious why his bank would send an email to him and opened that email.

In that email it was mentioned that he was selected and won a car worth $20,000. Therefore in order to register the car in his name and deliver to him they wanted some of his personal details. A link was provided in the email to update his particulars. There was also a warning message which said the particulars have to be updated ONLY using the link provided in that email.

My friend was very happy. Who will not be if he had won a car. He clicked on the link. His bank’s home page appeared on the screen. He checked whether it was the same page as his bank. Yes it was. It was the same page as his bank’s page. He was even happier now. His Name, Birth date, Father’s Name, Home Address, Account number, Password, Credit card number and many other details were asked in that page. He happily filled all the details. He was then shown a ‘Thank You’ page which said that the car’s key and the registration papers will be sent to him in a week.

After two or three days he went to the bank to withdraw some money. But the bank clerk said that ‘There was no balance’ in his account. He argued that he did not withdraw any money and asked him to check again. The bank clerk said, you did not withdraw money but you bought a lot of things ‘Online’ from internet. Then he started thinking how was it possible. It took a few hours to figure out that the email that he had received earlier was a hoax and he had been cheated.

This is called ‘Phishing’ in internet. The email will look like it is from a particular company or organization. A link will be provided in the email and it will ask you for your particulars and to update your password and other personal details. If you click the link the page will look very similar to the company’s original website but in reality it is not. Thus they will make you believe it is from a particular company and cheat you. This is called Phishing.

Tips to be safe from Phishing?

1. If any email asks for your bank’s login name, password, bank account no, credit card no etc, do not believe it. No bank will ask for these details through email. You can call your bank and check with them.
2. If you receive SPAM emails from unknown persons or unknown companies just ignore them and delete them.
3. When you visit websites in internet, do not fill in forms and subscribe to insecure websites. You can see whether a site is secure from the LOCK icon displayed in the status bar of the browser or in the address bar the address starts with ‘https’
4. Never click on links contained inside emails.
5. If you are a ‘online banking’ user then frequently check your bank balance and transactions. If there is any doubt just call your bank to verify.
6. Another thing to remember is ‘nothing comes free’ in this world. So if any email claims that you have won a lottery, or someone wants to transfer amount to your account etc, just ignore such SPAM emails.

In most places, many people use the same computer. Especially in a home, many family members use the same computer. In such a scenario, the emails sent to one person can be easily read by other persons using the same computer. In such cases, is it possible to create individual inboxes for each member and secure it with a password, so that each one can access only their email inbox.

Yes, it is possible. MS Outlook makes it possible for you. In MS Outlook you can create your own message folders, contacts for each one separately. You can create these for each individual users and make it secure by protecting these folders with password so that each person can see only their folder. Just follow these steps to protect your email inbox with password.

1. First of all you need to create a new Identity. Select ‘File->Identities->Add New Identity’ option. Here you create a new user with a ‘user name’. Also select the ‘Require a password’ option and key in the ‘password’. Remember this username and password for future use.
2. Now, it will prompt and ask whether you want to register this new user and log in, click on ‘Yes’ and enter all your personal details in the following screen. Now you have created yourself as the new user and you have protected your inbox with your password.
3. Likewise, you can create identities for each member of the family.
4. After creating many identities, each user can see their protected inbox by choosing ‘File->Switch identities’ and key in their username and password to see their inbox.

Similarly Netscape Mail version 7 has this multi user feature. But it is not protected using password.

If you use web mails such as yahoo, gmail or hotmail then you do not have to worry, since you can only view your emails by logging in each time.

Usually we don’t delete the emails that we receive. We just keep it thinking we may need it in the future. Even if we deleted the SPAM and unwanted emails, there are still so many emails that keeps accumulating. After a while, if you want to search for a particular mail, then it becomes very difficult to find the mail we want. When the same person sends many emails, to find the email we are looking for in that long list, takes a lot of time. But there is a way. You can sort these emails. If you use MS Outlook or Outlook express to download and read emails follow this tip.

Look at your inbox. On top of your list of emails you will see the headings in small lengthy buttons namely ‘From’, ‘Subject’, ‘Received’ etc.

Just click on any of the buttons to sort the emails accordingly. For example if you want to sort all the emails based on the ‘Sender’ which is the ‘From’ heading then click on the ‘From’ button and all your emails will be immediately sorted based on ascending order of the sender’s name. Click on the same ‘From’ button again to sort in descending order of the sernder’s name. You will see a small arrow either facing up or down on the button based on whether it is sorted ascending or descending order.

Likewise you can also click on the other heading to sort for instance, based on the ‘Received time’ etc.

Eudora email client users can also use this method to sort their emails.

When you write letters to other people you put your signature at the bottom. You can also add a signature to all your emails before sending.

Whether you use free webmails such as hotmail, yahoo, gmail etc or you use POP3 based emails such as the one provided by your internet service provider, you can add your signature to the email you send using these email services.

Generally as far as emails are concerned, a signature doesn’t refer to your personal signature that you put on your cheques. Instead an email signature refers to your name, address, phone numbers and other contact details that you want to add.

Here let us see the steps to add a signature to emails in MS Outlook or Outlook Express

To create a signature and to make changes to an already created signature outlook has options. You can configure outlook to add signatures below every email that you send using outlook or only for specific emails.

You can also create multiple signatures. For example one signature for office use, one signature for friends and another for family etc. For this, you should have many email accounts.

You can even put your signature in a text file or an HTML file and configure outlook to use this file as signature. A text file can only contain text information where as an HTML file can include images, your photo, your company’s logo or a scanned image of your original signature or a bigger font etc. So using HTML file is the best way to include signatures.

How to create signature?

1. Open Outlook Express or MS Outlook. Click on ‘Tools->Options’. Select the ‘Signatures’ tab and click on ‘New’ button.
2. In the ‘Edit Signature’ section the ‘Text’ option will be selected by default. In that box, you can key in your signature details.
3. If your signature in a text file or an HTML file then select the ‘File’ radio button and click on ‘Browse’ button’ to select the signature file.
4. Now select the ‘Add Signature to all outgoing message’ checkbox and click on ‘OK’.

To use different signature for different email accounts

1. First, create many signatures as mentioned in the above paragraph.
2. Open outlook and click ‘Tools->Options’ and select the ‘Signature’ tab.
3. select the first signature in the list and click on ‘Advanced’ button then select the email account that should use that signature and click on ‘OK’.
4. Follow the same step again to configure your other signatures for other accounts.

To add signature only to specific emails

1. Outlook will usually add the signature to all the outgoing emails without asking you. If you do not want to attach the signature to all emails then select ‘Tools->Options’ and select ‘Signature’ tab.
2. Now remove the check box in ‘Add Signatures to all outgoing message’ option and click ‘OK’.
3. From now on whenever you send emails the signatures will not be inserted automatically.
4. To insert signature to specific emails just click on ‘Insert->Signature’ menu option and select which signature you want to insert.

To add your REAL signature in emails

1. In a blank white paper put your real signature. Then use your scanner to scan the signature and save it as an image. For example you can save it as a sig.jpg file.
2. Let us assume that you have saved your signature image as ‘sig.jpg’ and saved under ‘c:\myfiles’ folder.
3. Now you have to create an HTML file for your signature. To create an HTML file for your signature open your Notepad application. And type the following.

   <html>
   <body>
   <img src=”file://c:/myfiles/sig.jpg”>
   </body>
   </html>

4. Now save the file by choosing ‘File->Save’ in notepad. Save the file as “mysign.htm”. Note that your filename should be between two double inverted commas. If you do not use the double inverted commas then notepad will save your file as misigh.htm.txt
5. Now open outlook and select ‘Tools->Options’ and click on ‘Signature’ tab.
6. Now select the ‘File’ radio button and click on ‘Browse’ button and select teh mysign.htm file.
7. Click ‘OK’ and then check the ‘Add signatures to all outgoing message’ and then click ‘OK’ again.
8. Now your real signature will be added to the bottom of each email you send.

Imagine that you are writing a letter in a post card for your friend. Since a post card is open, anybody can read what you have written. The post man can read it.

Just like the information in post card, email content is also open. Anybody can read it. The email you send goes through many computers and routers. It is possible that those computer and router users can read your email just for fun or even purposely.

Not only in Internet, even in your own network other people can read your emails. Anyone can use the notebook to connect to the network and sniff on the data packets in the network. He or she can use software such as ‘Protocol Analyzers’, ‘Network Monitors’, or ‘Sniffers’ to accomplish this task.

Your friend, colleague or even your spouse can use the ‘Cracker’ or ‘Spyware’ to install in your computer and steal your email password. Then they can use this password and download your emails to their computer.

‘Key logger’ software can be used to capture key strokes. Then they can capture the keys that you type and the keylogger will send this data to the cracker. They can get details such as credit card and passwords.

You may think that using keylogger one can just read the emails that you send to others. But its not true. The spyware is capable of taking screen shots of your desktop and send to the hacker. So when you are viewing your emails, the spyware can take picture of your screen and send back to the hacker.

How to make your emails safe?

If you do not want your email to be read by hackers while the email is on the way in the Internet then you can encrypt your email before sending. So your information will be converted to 0s and 1s in binary format and it will be encrypted using a 64 bit, 128 bit or 256 bit key. The recipient should decrypt it and read the email.

If the same key is used to encrypt and decrypt then it is called symmetric cryptography. You can also different keys for encrypting and decrypting which is called ‘Asymmetric cryptography’ or public private keys cryptography.

One can get a public and a private key from a CA (Certification Authority). The public key can be given to all while the private key has to be kept secretly. This is how the cryptography works.

If A wants to send an emails to B. Then A will use the public key of B and encrypt the email and send to B. Then B will use his private key to decrypt the email and read. Even if someone else gets hold of the email other than B, he or she cannot read it since they don’t have the private key of B to decrypt the email.

You can also use the free ‘Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)’ software. You can download the pretty good privacy software from www.pgp.com .

The use of emails has become very much essential in personal and business life. Email has become more important than the phone or address of a person. When two people meet for the first time it is very common to exchange their email addresses for communication next time.

Daily we receive many different types of emails. Advertisements about products, emails requesting help, emails from adult websites, emails claiming that you have won a lottery or a prize, Or even emails from some country that they want to deposit a huge amount of money to your bank account etc. etc.

These Junk mails, Unsolicited mails or Spam emails we receive daily. It becomes a difficult task to identify them and deleted them manually.

To identify and delete SPAM mails there are many Spam filters available. Just like the Antivirus which identifies viruses and deletes them, Spam filters are used to identify and delete spam mails in your inbox.

Users of web based emails such as ‘hotmail, yahoo or gmail’ do not have to worry too much about SPAM, because these email servers use Spam filters to filter these unwanted emails from your inbox. However some spam mails somehow find their way into your inbox.

So whether you are using web mails or POP3 or IMAP mails, in addition to the SPAM filters at the server you also need to have a spam filter in your desktop computer. Only then you can effectively fight against SPAM.

Which is the best SPAM filter software? Mail Washer is one of the most popular spam filter software. Mail Washer can be used in Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP. You can download Mail Washer at www.webwasher.com. Mail Washer is also available free. You can also buy Mail Washer. The paid Mai Washer has the following additional features.

• Support for IMAP servers.
• Supports Hotmail, MSN and AOL emails
• Enhanced, intelligent filtering is available
• Technical support is available.
• If you download the free software you can only use it for thirty days.

How does Mail Washer work?

Mail washer is used to filter SPAM mails and delete from your email inbox.

Just like your email client, Mail Washer also connects to the Mail server. It will identify the SPAM emails and list it. It can also delete the SPAM emails at the server itself without downloading it to your computer.

Mail Washer can also return the SPAM mails back to the sender. By doing this it creates an impression that your email address is wrong and thats why the mail has been returned. This will make the sender believe that your email is an invalid email and hence prevent further spam mails from the same sender.

Mail Washer also helps to create black lists and white lists. You can configure Mail Washer to delete black listed emails at the server and only download the white listed emails to your computer.

Which is better? Delete in the server? or Delete in the computer?

What will you do if you don’t have the Mail Washer? you will download all mails including SPAM to your computer. So you are wasting your internet time and bandwidth. You also waste time by opening these spam mails and deleting them manually. Some spam emails also have ‘web bugs’ that can spy on you and send your secrets to the web bugs creator.

Using Mail Washer you can identify SPAM mails at the server and delete it there itself. Web bugs will not function. Only good emails will be downloaded to your computer. So you save on your internet time, bandwidth and your time and money.