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Keep it simple, stupid

Posted on 16 May 2005 at 10:58

Davey Winder looks at cutting the spam reaching his BlackBerry, while thinking about laptop legs and compromising situations

At the time of writing, there are three routes to 7100 series BlackBerry ownership: Vodafone's 7100v; the gorgeous 7100x in gloss black from O2; and T-Mobile's 7100t. One has to look beneath the skin to see beauty in the positively ugly 7100t, but it is there, in T-Mobile's BlackBerry email plan that provides an inclusive 50MB of GPRS data transfer per month for £10 (inc VAT) on top of whatever phone price plan you opted for. Compared to Vodafone and O2 - the latter offering a stingy 5MB of inclusive data before you start to pay extra - this is extremely generous. Even a high-volume email user like myself will be hard-pressed to go over that limit, when you take into account that BlackBerry's web client pushes out only the header and a few lines of the message when you opt to open one (scroll down for more of the message and another chunk is instantly transferred). This chunk-by-chunk approach ensures you will not run your data reservoir dry by receiving messages that you do not want to read. Add attachments (which are handled nicely by the 7100t) into the equation, though, and you could eat into 50MB fairly quickly.

Putting all this aside, I still do not want my BlackBerry clogged up with spam, so what can I do? KISS the problem goodbye. Back in the early days of spam, it was easy enough to bypass those 'MAKE MONEY FAST' and '$$$' messages by simply setting up a filter for those strings and a few other choice keywords, which would deal with at least 75 per cent of the junk that arrived in your mailbox. Then spammers became more sophisticated and started to use filter-evading techniques such as 'word salad', where the message contains so many random words that filters become terminally confused. Being a rather sad, IT-consultant-type of person, I spend far too much time actually analysing the content of my spam archives (currently running at more than 50,000 messages) and in so doing noticed an obvious, but hitherto overlooked, fact: at least 95 per cent of the spam I receive is not actually addressed to me. By which I mean that davey@happygeek.com is not present in either the Sent To or CC fields of the header. Instead, the preferred bulk-sending method employs the BCC approach, in a forlorn attempt to personalise the thing.

So, I quickly set up a filter in the BlackBerry web client that sends anything not properly addressed to me to the trashcan. I'm not concerned about false positives in this case, because it is only a copy of my mail that's coming to my mobile device, and the originals stay on the server for me to collect when I'm back in the office, which will be processed as usual for spams and other nasties. It surprised me just how effective this method was: spam on my BlackBerry is now very rare. There are lots of PDA devices out there that can handle email, and lots of smartphones that can do the GPRS push thing by way of a third-party software purchase. There are certainly better-looking mobiles and more feature-packed organisers than the 7100t (even allowing for its Intellisync software for Outlook synchronisation), but nothing comes as near to being the perfect mobile communications solution as a 7100 series BlackBerry.

Legs for laptops

Talking of perfect mobile solutions, regular readers will know of my long-term love affair with a lump of grey plastic called the laptop desk (www.laptopdesk.net). This hinged piece of super-strong, yet very light, plastic has rubber, grooves and hinges in all the right places to reduce the heat build-up in any laptop placed upon it. More to the point, it reduces heat build-up on the lap beneath the laptop too. When the same company asked if I would like to take a look at its new product, I was even more sceptical than when I first encountered 'the slab'. After all, Legs for Laptops (or Mac Feet if you have a taste for the forbidden fruit) are hardly the most obvious upgrade for the busy executive. Having checked that it wasn't 1 April (it wasn't), I agreed to take delivery of a set and before I knew it there I was in the midst of yet another KISS moment. Stick a couple of these folding 1in legs, which add no more than a quarter ounce to the laptop's weight, and you have got yet another double whammy: heat reduction and better typing position when unfolded on any stable surface. These guys know how to make really simple solutions to everyday problems, although it is something of a trade-off between the no weight, no additional bulk of the legs, against the stability and therefore almost ironic flexibility of the desk.