The most recent articles from Computeract!ve

You Perform

Jonathan Parkyn — 2005-08-11T00:00:00.000Z

Jonathan Parkyn, Computeract!ve, Thursday 11 August 2005 at 00:00:00

Add extra features to Outlook with these useful utilities

Microsoft's Outlook is one of the most popular personal information manager applications around, but even in the latest version there are gaping holes in its repertoire and that's where third-party add-ons come in handy.

You Perform isn't just a single expansion pack, though. It's a whole suite of 15 individual utilities designed to make Outlook better, faster and more efficient.

Each utility targets a specific area where Outlook's own options are weak, while You Perform provides a simple single interface for configuring and managing the various settings of individual plug-ins.

So, if you've ever replied to all only to find you've included yourself on the list, You Perform offers a tool to prevent that from happening again.

It also features a useful attachments manager, which can save any email attachments to a specific folder on your hard disk, to stop your inbox from getting clogged up.

And, if you've ever forgotten to attach a document or file to an outgoing mail, You Perform features a utility that offers a 'missing attachment?' reminder you before you send your message.

There are too many useful extras to list in much detail here - an automatic carbon copy (CC or BCC) function, a contacts-to-Vcard converter, duplicate message/contact eliminators, reminder forwarding, and a tool that instantly turns sent or received email addresses into contacts are just a few.

You Perform only works with the full version of Microsoft Outlook (versions 2000 and up) and not the cut-down Outlook Express that comes free with Windows. As such, it will appeal to business types than home users.

Nevertheless, the package is easy to use and adds a tremendous amount of useful extras to the original application's palette of tools, many of which become invaluable almost from the second you install the utility suite.

Sarcophagus MsgSave

Paul Rowlingson — 2005-06-21T00:00:00.000Z

Paul Rowlingson, Computeract!ve, Tuesday 21 June 2005 at 00:00:00

Back up your Outlook email messages

Despite the obvious importance of doing so, backing up emails is actually a rather tricky thing to do. Most programs keep emails hidden away in obscure folders and, even if you are able to locate these folders, it's notoriously difficult to retrieve individual messages.

MsgSave has the ability to save individual messages or groups of messages to the hard disk, allowing you to archive them to CD. Each message is saved as a .msg file that can be opened in Outlook, but not Outlook Express, with just a double-click.

After a quick and easy installation, a MsgSave icon is left in the Outlook toolbar. Each message's file name can be constructed from whatever information you want, including the sender and subject line.

However, if the subject line is too long the file name will be cut down because of the character limit set by Windows.

MsgSave also allows you to automate Outlook folders, so that for each new email added, a dialogue box will appear so that you can archive the messages.

If you use your email account for important correspondence that you want to keep on hand then this is an essential tool and well worth the cost. However, it can't be used with Outlook Express, which makes it useless to many home PC owners.

Norton AntiSpam 2004

Tim Smith — 2004-11-10T11:19:56.000Z

Tim Smith, Computeract!ve, Wednesday 10 November 2004 at 11:19:56

A useful tool for ridding your inbox of unwanted mail

Norton AntiSpam 2004 works with Outlook, Outlook Express or Eudora and sifts through your emails for anything offensive.

Once installed, a new folder for spam is created in your email program and an extra button appears in the toolbar. You use this to tell AntiSpam whether an email is spam or not, empty the spam folder and open the Options window.

A pop-up blocker and ad blocker are also included, both of which worked well. However, AntiSpam 2004 let through some spam with fairly obvious subject lines.

The greatest disadvantage with AntiSpam is that spam has to enter your inbox before it can be removed. Online services such as Bopspam capture spam before it gets that far, which is a bonus if you are on a dial-up connection or have a limit on what you can download.

Contact: Symantec 0207 616 5600

www.symantec.co.uk

Bopspam

Tim Smith — 2004-10-18T14:59:06.000Z

Tim Smith, Computeract!ve, Monday 18 October 2004 at 14:59:06

A pricey, but effective spam blocker

Bopspam protects your PC from spam using a variety of methods, such as checking lists of known and probable spam. It also uses a technique called 'Bayesian' filtering, which learns what is and isn't junk based on what you indicate each email to be.

Registration on the Bopspam website is quick and simple. You start with a 30-day trial and then pick a price scheme of either £30 or £50 per year. The latter allows up to 1Gb worth of emails to be sent annually.

There is no software to install as all the prevention work is done on Bopspam's computers. All you need to do is tell Bopspam up to 10 email addresses you'd like monitored and change your email software to use Bopspam.

It will check every email you receive before you see it so, if it is spam, you never have to download it, which will save dial-up users a lot of time.

Bopspam sends a daily email with a list of what was blocked so you can correct any mistakes. The system will learn from incorrect blocking and pass them through next time.

Contact: Bopspam, no UK number

www.bopspam.co.uk

Spam Shredder

Tim Smith — 2004-09-03T09:31:37.000Z

Tim Smith, Computeract!ve, Friday 3 September 2004 at 09:31:37

Another way to stop unsavoury material from cluttering your inbox.

From the letters that have appeared in Computeractive, we don't need to remind you that spam is a growing phenomena. There are plenty of junk-mail prevention programs, including Webroot Spam Shredder, which helps to protect you from the inconvenience and the unsavoury nature of spam.

Spam Shredder only works with POP3 email, which is the type of email account you get from your ISP. Web-based email services like Hotmail are not supported. As a result, Spam Shredder works best with Outlook, Outlook Express and Eudora and will automatically set itself up to work with these programs. You can use alternatives such as Incredimail, but you'll have to fiddle with some tricky settings if you do.

Either way, Spam Shredder will check every email before it reaches your inbox using the traditional tools of a whitelist and a blacklist. The former is a list of email addresses that you always want to receive mail from. You can add these individually or import them from an Outlook address book.

The blacklist is a list of email addresses you want blocked. Spam Shredder will check each mail for suggestions it could be junk, such as obscenities or buzzwords like 'viagra', and quarantine anything suspicious. It will also check its own database and quarantine material from known spammers.

Inevitably, a tiny proportion of legitimate mails will end up in the wrong place, but you can easily retrieve them. As for the rest, Spam Shredder will add every message deleted from the quarantine folder to its blacklist database.

In testing we found that Spam Shredder needed about a week to 'learn' to identify spam. However, with every junk email deleted, the service improved.

It will slow down email retreival, as it scans and checks all incoming mail, and it's not an immediate solution to spam. But persevere and Spam Shredder will reduce junk-mail drastically.

Contact: Softwide 0845 644 8268

www.webroot.com

Cloudmark SpamNet

Anthony Dhanendran — 2004-06-23T12:06:44.000Z

Anthony Dhanendran, Computeract!ve, Wednesday 23 June 2004 at 12:06:44

Get rid of your junk email.

SpamNet is a subscription-based service that promises to stem the flow of junk email. It's free to use for 30 days; thereafter, it's $4 (£2) per month. SpamNet works with Outlook and Outlook Express and once it's installed you will see a new toolbar and a 'Spam' folder in addition to your usual list.

SpamNet scans your messages as they come in and checks the results with its list of known junk emails. If spam does get through, you can click the 'block' button, which will tell SpamNet that it's junk, entering it in the central database so it will be blocked for all users.

It claims to filter 95 per cent of junk mail. In practice, it's less than that, and you do have to check the Spam folder in case it's blocked anything important. But, if the junk is overflowing your inbox, this is a good, cost-effective barrier.

Contact: Cloudmark

Info: www.cloudmark.com

Buy: www.cloudmark.com/products/spamnet

SpamStopUp

Scott Colvey — 2004-06-17T11:13:38.000Z

Scott Colvey, Computeract!ve, Thursday 17 June 2004 at 11:13:38

Stop unwanted emails clogging your inbox - at least, that's the theory.

Junk email, or spam, is an ever-worsening problem. Indeed, to the regular emailer it may seem like barely an hour passes without another batch of unwanted messages turning up in their inbox. SpamStopUp is the latest in a long line of software applications that attempt to eliminate the spam jam.

Our first impressions of SpamStopUp suggest that "attempt" is the operative word here. Within an hour of installation the program had managed to prevent precisely zero out of nearly 20 junk emails from reaching our Outlook inbox. A whole working day later and our inbox had become infested by a further 50 unwanted messages, with SpamStopUp's interceptions holding steady at a big fat nothing. Not a good start.

So what's the problem here? Well, SpamStopUp's apparent ineffectiveness isn't helped by the program's lack of clarity. While there are dozens of spam-fighting options available under the Methods tab, for most of them the software offers little or nothing by way of explanation. Wondering whether to place a tick in the 'Filter out mail sent by SOCKS 4/5 server' box? Don't expect SpamStopUp's help files to provide the answer.

This would not have been a grave concern if the program was successful from the off at identifying and erasing spam but it wasn't. With lots of effort and no small amount of trial and error, we did eventually manage to get the program functioning in a reasonably effective manner. However, we're still not entirely sure how we did it and that, by itself, should be sufficient to ward you off trying this inept product.

Contact: Neutron-IT 0870 3403313

www.spamstopup.com

Aladdin Systems SpamCatcher

Tim Smith — 2004-02-23T11:59:45.000Z

Tim Smith, Computeract!ve, Monday 23 February 2004 at 11:59:45

Delete spam before it even enters your inbox.

Spam is the curse of the internet but SpamCatcher claims to delete unwanted emails before they even appear in your inbox. SpamCatcher works best with Outlook and Outlook Express. If you use other email clients such as Eudora, it isn't as efficient.

Part of the secret behind SpamCatcher is that it talks to its developer, Aladdin Systems, to find out what's spam and what's not. This service is free for a year and can then be subscribed to.

When used in conjunction with Outlook Express, SpamCatcher managed to seize most spam. Some personal emails, such as mailing lists, were also caught but there is an option to add these to an 'allowed' directory of email addresses, which SpamCatcher will ignore next time round. The manual also has lots of helpful tips for reducing the risk of being spammed.

SpamCatcher isn't 100 per cent foolproof but it draws on the experience of millions of emails to make sure the amount of spam is greatly reduced.

Contact: Koch Media 0800 169 1347

www.aladdinsys.com

McAfee SpamKiller 4

Julian Prokaza — 2003-04-01T10:39:55.000Z

Julian Prokaza, Computeract!ve, Tuesday 1 April 2003 at 10:39:55

Why stop spam manually when you can get software to do it?

Given that SpamNet and MailWasher are already excellent and cost nothing, that must mean the £20 SpamKiller software is even better, right?

SpamKiller works on the established premise of checking your email on your ISP's server before your email application gets a chance to download it.

Using a variety of filters, it determines which emails are valid and which qualify as unsolicited or spam mails.

Valid emails are left alone while spam is 'killed' by downloading it to a mail folder within SpamKiller.

Installation and configuration is simple enough. SpamKiller imports settings from any existing email accounts and it runs discreetly in the System Tray, playing a sound and popping up a message when new mail is received.

The bad news is that the McAfee Control Centre is also installed and while the system security information it displays is useful if you use other McAfee products, it's a waste of resources if you don't, and it can't be uninstalled.

Equally infuriating are the pop-up messages in the System Tray that warn you about new viruses. These have nothing to do with SpamKiller and, again, can't be turned off.

Unfortunately, SpamKiller itself is just as frustrating. It regularly passed spam as valid emails and regularly misidentified valid emails as spam. New spam filters can be added and the existing ones modified.

As the user is left to decide which parts of an email to base the filter on, however, it can be confusing. The most foolproof way is to add a filter for each new spam message you receive but that is time consuming and tedious.

Worse still, although there is a 'rescue' feature to restore mail wrongly labelled as spam it refused to work on our system, which meant important emails remained imprisoned in SpamKiller's 'killed' mail folder.

Details

Price: £20

Contact: McAfee 020 7949 0107

www.mcafee.com

Also Consider

MailWasher

A free way to keep spam at bay

Guildsoft Email Voicelink+

Andy Gordon — 2001-07-24T23:00:00.000Z

Andy Gordon, Computeract!ve, Tuesday 24 July 2001 at 23:00:00

Turn emails into a multimedia experience by including sound and graphics.

The fact that someone thinks the world could use a program like this tells us something about modern day communication. There was a time when your mum would phone you to hear your voice but now, via email, she can enjoy voice, visual and literary contact too. Email Voicelink+, best described as one big software wizard, attempts to make this process easy.

Email Voicelink+ offers a step-by-step process that guides you through adding graphics, sound and words to your email. First there is Whiteboard, where you are encouraged to "compose your rich media message".

Then there is a modest selection of wallpaper, graphics and clipart from which to choose but most of it is poor quality. Some are not even relevant to the choices available in the 'occasions' section. And since the rest of the artwork and animated GIF files are of a similar standard, importing your own images is a good idea.

Sound can be added from a choice of equally disappointing synthesised shorts. Adding MP3 or WAV files is easy, so is recording a message using the included headset and microphone. Sadly, it lacks the advanced controls needed to ensure good audio quality.

Completed greetings can be sent as part of an email message or as an attachment for the recipient to detach and open. In the likely event the recipient does not have Voicelink installed, a small player program must also be sent so it can be viewed. If you intend sending say, holiday snaps accompanied by a running commentary, it'll add up to a sizeable file.

The program could do with a better-looking interface. Furthermore, the decorative graphic and sound files are limited and users will need a store of multimedia resources to create impressive emails.

The state in which it arrives out of the box hardly justifies the price tag and even a great deal of effort does not produce great looking emails.

Online email services offer more attractive greetings for free, which is a pity, as this is in essence a good idea.

Contact: Guildsoft

01752 895100

www.guildsoft.co.uk

ALSO CONSIDER: E-GREETINGS.COM

Offers a wide selection of multimedia virtual cards of manageable size for all Occasions - and it's free.