Massive faux-CNN spam blitz uses legit sites to deliver fake Flash

For general password management I personally use 1Password (website) but that might be a little overkill for the simplicity of just managing your website information. Enter DomainBrain. 

DomainBrain is a password management app built specifically for your website management, and best of all it’s free (for up to 4 domains). You can enter your FTP, email, database information, and much much more. I downloaded it earlier today and took it for a spin. One word: brilliant. If there was a way that we could automatically put this app on all of our customers Macs, I would jump for joy. 

In any case, I think this is a fantastic application that you should give a try. It’s a straightforward application, and one that would save you a lot of time digging through old emails trying to find your login information. 

I had grand thoughts Friday morning of heading down to the AT&T store in the county seat south of us. I wasn’t sure exactly where it was, but I knew the road it was on, and even knew a handy back way from the main pike. However, as I discovered at 10 minutes before 8, the store was just a few blocks from the pike, so I spent 10 minutes looping around town in vain. As I drove by, I could see at least 50 people in line, and knowing how small a town it was, figured stock would be low. “Oh well,” I thought, “I’ll head in to the office, and see about stopping by the bigger AT&T store near the office later.”

Around 9:30 I drove up to the big shopping district, and found a healthy line. I decided to give it a whirl, and parked in the only spot I could find. Walking down the line to the end, I hear my name called out. A friend I worked with years ago was at the end of the line, so we spent an hour and a half catching up, laughing at the people in line,  tossing out words of Mac wisdom amid the wild speculations of the crowd.

The Shirt from the store comes out (I later find out he’s an assistant manager from another store. No idea what he was doing there.) and announces that they are out of black 16GB iphones. A handful of people leave, and we inch forward. A woman ahead of us talks with her friend about how she has to get one today. The Shirt announces that they are out of 16GB white iphones. We inch forward. It gets hot.

Finally, around 11, The Shirt announces that they just have a few 8GB iphones left, but that we can place orders and they’ll be shipped within 5-10 business days. At this point, we’re within about 20 people of the door, so I decide to ride it out, and wait until they call it. The woman ahead of me gets more frantic, and runs out to her car to get some cash. She starts yelling out offers, first of $100, then $150, finally $200 to anyone who gets an iPhone and is willing to let her buy it - that’s $200 in addition to the cost of the phone! 

The Shirt announces that they have 2 phones left. Ms. Frantic starts berating a teenager, trying to get him to take the cash, but he “just has to have the iphone too.” His mom shows up, and it turns out that he’s not even paying for the phone - she is (commentary on the lack of value of a dollar in today’s youth to come later), and she just smiles and says, “Well, he really wants the iPhone… .” 

Ms. Frantic somehow gets into the store, and is yelling her offer. I’m expecting to see a couple of the guys bodily drag her from the store, but she gets a taker. The Shirt announces no more stock, but mentions that they’ve placed another order, and expect to receive more stock that evening, or at least by the next morning.

My wife and I were in the area that evening, doing some shopping, and we stopped by to see if anything has come in. The scene is much more mellow, like a normal day at AT&T. One of the reps says “We will have stock in the morning, but you’ll want to get here by 8:15 or 8:30. We’ll open at 9.”

So, Andrea and I talk about whether I want to stand in line again for it. After digging around online, reading reports of other stores and hearing about stock issues, I decide that, given our schedule for July, it’s probably going to be a month before I’m able to go shopping for phones again, so I’d better take advantage of a slow Saturday.

Andrea decides to go with me, taking a book and reserving the right to go somewhere to read. The line at 8:15 is about 15 feet shorter than it was at 9:30 the previous morning, so I’m feeling pretty good about my chances. Still, there’s no telling how many units they got in. A few minutes after I get there, the manager comes out to announce that they do, in fact, have some iPhones, and that they’ll be sending reps out to take some info so people can get prequalified - checking on if they are eligible for a subsidized upgrade. It’s already looking better than yesterday. Plus, no Ms. Frantic.

In all, I waited for 75 minutes in line on Saturday. No activation issues like they had Friday, slowing everything down. My number port took a little while, so I was in the store a total of 30 minutes. The reps were very pleasant, and it was generally a festive atmosphere - a far cry from the more feral, competitive feel of Friday - and I attribute that to the manager, who was giving people hi-fives on the way out the door.

As a phone, the voice quality is much better than my previous Treo 650 and 700p - I don’t know if that’s because of the network, or the phone. I’ve spent a ton of time playing around with the non-phone features. Maps with GPS is amazing, although it will suck your battery quickly. The integration of contacts, SMS, and third-party apps is very Mac-like. People call, asking our opinion of Treos vs. Blackberrys vs. iPhones, and I’d say that unless you have some reason not to move to AT&T, you’d be foolish to get anything other than an iPhone.

I’ll add iPhone tips occasionally as I find them. Happy 3G-ing!

The Article

It’s been a year since the iPhone hit the market, and now there’s a new iphone getting ready to be available. The iPhone 3G will make it quite a bit easier for everyone to get their hands on one of these fantastic mobile computers/phones. Given that Dogbark is a creative community, there are a bunch of you that are wondering how you can use the iPhone to improve your business. If you’re a photographer, then here is a great article for you from AppleMatters.

AppleMatters has come up with a list of 10 ways that professional photographers can use the iphone. The biggest and best, in my opinion, reason for getting the iphone as a photographer is the ability to take your photo albums with you wherever you go.  The 3.5″ screen is pretty amazing at showing off hi-res images. While I’m not a profession photographer, I love showing off pictures of my kids.

Read the full article HERE

HT: TUAW

Yes, somehow, somewhere, someone used my email address …

my first name @ my last name dot com … as a “sender” address. Unfortunately there’s no way around this. I could send out emails as “george.bush@thewhitehouse.gov” if I wanted … although I might earn a visit from the Feds.

So, what did I do? I tried to let Mail filter most into my Spam Folder … which is did with about a 70% success rate. The remaining was destined to my In Box. But, something was going wrong. Mail was hanging on some message and not retrieving the remaining 144 message from the server. Uh, oh!

I had to log into my Webmail account. There I checked each message with the noticeably spam-esque subject line and deleted them in mass. Any message that is bold in Webmail means that my Mail application has yet to download them. That helped in identifying the culprit(s).

Oh, I forget to mention that Mail also had to be Force Quit (three times) because of the malicious message(s) that was making my “Get Mail” process hang indefinitely. So, I restart Mail in hopes that the remaining message come in. No luck. Hung again. I ended up going into Webmail and creating a folder called “keep” and moved all my good email yet to be seen in to that folder. I then “toggle all” and which selected the remaining email and I deleted. Then I went to Mail and checked mail. No new mail. Perfect. So I then went to Webmail, moved my good mail from “keep” to “inbox”. Went back to Mail and got all my unread good mail. Ah, I’m back in business. From there I sorted by Subject to help me make small work of deleting the 100+ remaining messages. This all took about 10 minutes.

So, how did I become a target? Part of my vulnerability is that I’ve had my email address since early 1996. So, my email is out there in one way or another. But, it could be worse. I take many steps to avoid being a target.

1. I don’t reply to spam

2. I don’t click on anything in a spam message.

3. I don’t try to unsubscibe to spam messages.

4. I don’t put my email address on anything in the public eye … not even my website.

5. I don’t use my email address as the “deliver to” for email forms. I use an address that I can change as needed like “formaddress01@dreier.com”

So there you have it. My experience with spam this morning. I hope your morning is going better than mine so far.

- Kyle Dreier

Here is the SMTP server information you’ll need to get setup. Remember you MUST have a valid POP account setup with us to use this…
Server Information

• Server Name: smtp01.dogbark.com
• Authentication: OFF
• SSL - OFF
• Port (either 25 or 10025)

A few things you need to know, and these are very important so please keep reading. We authenticate users by verifying that you have CHECKED your POP account within 10 minutes. If you have done so you’ll be in the clear on this end to send mail, if you have not, you’ll get an error message saying “relay-access denied.” So if you are getting a relay access denied error that might be a good place to start troubleshooting. Most email clients that we are familiar with will allow you to check your mail automatically every “x” amount of time. So set that for 10 minutes or less and you’ll save yourself some trouble there.

If you have accidentally turned SSL turned ON, or have authentication set to PASSWORD you WILL NOT be able to send through our servers correctly. Please be 100% sure you have those two things turned OFF. Other providers require that, but Dogbark does not, so if you have simply renamed your outgoing mail server and saved it, chances are good those two things will need to be turned OFF.

Finally, though we are providing your outgoing mail server, your Internet Service Provider is still providing your connection to our servers. Sometimes your ISP will block port 25, 10025, or both at the same time to “prevent spammers from using their system.” So far we’ve not really seen any pattern of how, when, or which port will be blocked, but if you get a “cannot connect to server” or “server timed out” error message, chances are good that your port is being blocked.

If you think your port is being blocked, you may want to try switching ports. With Dogbark you can use either 25 or 10025 to send mail. So if you are blocked on 25, try swapping that to 10025 or vice versa. Even in the worst case scenario that switching them doesn’t work, most ISP’s will open up either or both of those ports simply by you giving them a phone call. If you are on a hotspot network and neither port is allowing you to send, generally you’ll have to go back to webmail, but I travel all over the country and have yet to hook up someplace that had both ports blocked. Most times they’ll forget about port 10025 and you can usually sneak messages out all day long that way.

We certainly hope this helps you troubleshoot through sending mail with Dogbark. As always you can call us at 877.864.7929 or email us at info@dogbark.com if you have any questions. Thanks so much and good luck.