iPod Shuffle Raffle

And the winners are...Juan, Jose & Tracy. Thanks to all who entered to win the Green iPod Shuffles at the Hampton Bays' St. Patrick's Day Parade.

For those of u running Windows

Many have been contacting us about a new worm out there called "Conficker" (also known as "Downadup" and "Kido") that has reportedly infected millions of Windows PCs. It has been detected by various antivirus companies and unfortunately it is suspected to become active April 1st, 2009. As always we are fortunate it doesn't affect our Macs. But since many of our users have Windows running on their Macs we need to be a little concerned. We think that if you are using your Windows partition on your Mac (in Boot Camp, Parallels and VMFusion) with the internet or email you need to have virus software installed for Windows. Please read this blog to get a better understanding. We are sending you to Intego's website because they have good information but they are not the only antivirus solution out there. If you have any questions we are happy to help.

All About Email

This month's newsletter is dedicated to Email. It's probably the thing we all use the most besides a web browser. Hopefully you'll find the tips helpful and you will learn a bit of netiquette (internet etiquette) along the way too. Always keep in mind that once you send an email you never know where it's going to end up.

The first thing we'd like to mention is that typing in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS is considered SHOUTING. Some people prefer to type all their emails in CAPS. Do as you like, of course, but be forewarned that others may consider this habit rude or simply misinterpret your email.

Forwarding emails is the next thing that people tend to do without an eye towards netiquette. We all receive emails that we think are worthy of passing along. These same emails might contain many other peoples' email addresses in body of the message. Often times we don't know any of the other people listed. We also get forwarded email that has several copies of the same joke or story. This is because it's been forwarded multiple times and not cleaned up. These are examples of the wrong way to forward email. You shouldn't send out emails with email addresess in the body of the message or repeats of the message in it. It's easy to remove this stuff you just need to edit the message before you send it out. But you can't edit an email until after you click the forward or reply button, so you'll need to do that first. So try this the next time you get a joke you can't resist forwarding to 30 of your closest friends. Open the email, click forward and then highlight (click, hold and drag across the text-it turns blue) anything in the email message that isn't the actual joke. Press delete on the keyboard. Now you have a cleaner email with just the info you want to share, nothing more. Your friends & family might thank you. Here's one thing that happens to email addresses in the body of the email message: people will 'harvest' the addresses in the message and add them to their address book. Then the next time they want to let their friends know about their gallery opening, chain email or latest cause to support your newly 'harvested' email address will be on the list. This helps to perpetuate spam. If we all do a little bit to clean up our emails the internet will be all the better for it. Your friends will appreciate the fact they don't have to scroll through a list of peoples' email addresses they don't know, the joke that's repeated 3 times in the mail and all the extra, useless clutter that you had to deal with.

Do you need to send an email to a group of people? Are the recipients people that know each other fairly well? If they all know each other then it's probably no big deal to put all the email addresses in the email's To: field. But often times we find ourselves emailing a message to friends that perhaps don't know each other. This is where the Bcc field comes into play. It's the blind copy field in an email that allows you to send a message to multiple people but hide all the addresses so nobody sees any address but yours. So you say you don't see the Bcc just the To and CC field when you start a new message? Perhaps we need to do one thing first to get you ready to use Bcc. In Apple's Mail program go to the File Menu and choose New Message. When the new, blank message appears on the screen go to the View Menu at the top of the screen. Click on View, move down to Bcc Address Field and click. Click on View one more time and you should see a checkmark to the left of the Bcc Address Field. You should also see a new field in your blank email: Bcc:. This new field will now be on each new email you create. Now here's how to use it. You have an email you want to sent to multiple, unacquainted people (or you just don't want everyone to see the others you sent the message to). Enter your email address in the To: field and then enter everyone else's email address into the Bcc field. Now when your message is received no one will see any email address except yours, which they would see anyway.

If you are not using Apple's Mail then enabling the Bcc will probably be in a different place. You can email us newsletter@geekhampton.com telling us what you are using for email and we'll shoot you off a reply with instructions.

Do you get emails with underlined web addresses in the message that you can just click on and the web page loads right up? Have you tried to do the same thing but all you get is the web address but it's not underlined or blue or clickable? The answer is actually simple. It just doesn't appear as a clickable link until it's sent out. Try this: type in the web address you want to be clickable in the body of the message, being sure to include the http:// in the name. It still won't be underlined or blue but send it to yourself and when you check your mail you'll see it actually is a clickable link now that it's been sent.

Happy & Responsible Emailing!

If your email program doesn't recognize this newsletter as a "friendly" email, it may either be blocked or be filtered into your junk or trash folders. To ensure receipt of our emails, please add "newsletter@geekhampton.com" to your address book. If you can't see the images, you may need to make sure your program is set to read "HTML" or click on the "Download Images" button.