Category: Tutorials

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4 Effective Email Spam Filter Tools

It is amazing how much spam ends up at my work email address. At least I’m assuming it’s spam—I can’t imagine that that many Eastern European women really want to marry me. The email spam filter at my work does a pretty good job, but it certainly doesn’t catch everything.

I never get spam in my personal Gmail account (thanks, Google!). And while I don’t spend a lot of time deleting spam from my work email, I do have to do it. – and it annoys me. It annoys me a lot. Especially the offensive, raunchy stuff. In the three minutes or so it has taken me to write this, three spam emails have appeared in my junk email folder. Sheesh.

Depending on the email service you use, there are ways to change your settings to strengthen or weaken your spam filter. Another way to help is to download spam filtering software onto your computer. There are lots of these filters out there; here are my suggestions for saving yourself some time and grief:

  • POPFile: Works for Windows and Mac
  • SPAMfighter: Windows only. The most recent version works with Outlook 2010 and Thunderbird 3.1
  • MailWasher PRO: Windows only. After 9 years, this software has gotten an update this year
  • SpamSieve: Mac only. It’s not the coolest looking interface, but it works

Do you have a spam problem? Do you have spam filtering software that you really like? Please share in the comments.

Quick Tip: The Benefits of a Ultraviolet Filter

Today we continue our series looking at different photographic filters. Having already covered Polarizing and ND filters, today we are looking at another one of the most important filters, the UV filter. UV filters reduce haziness created by ultraviolet lights, and can also act as a great protector for your expensive lens!

What Does a Ultraviolet Filter Do?

Put simply, UV filters reduce haziness created by ultraviolet lights.

Lets have a quick physics lesson. Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than x-rays, in the range 10 nm to 400 nm. If you own a film camera then you might know the reason you use a UV filter.

It all down to colour film having 3 sensitive layers, one to red, one to blue and one to green (RBG). The blue layer responses to UV light as well as blue light, if you take an image which lots of UV light the blue layer becomes overexposed and your image takes a blue colour.

You can buy different strength UV filters, stronger UV filters will stop more blue light and will leave the image with a slight yellow tone.

So Why Should I Get One for My Digital Camera?

So a UV filter is really useful to have on a film camera but why is it so important to have it on a digital camera? Because you are able to keep your UV filter on almost 99% of time you ever use your camera, the UV filter acts as perfect protection for the front of your lens.

Like most things in life there are advantages and disadvantages of using a UV filter to protect your lens.

Advantages:

  • Protects the glass on your lens from scratching
  • If sand/mud is blowing the filter will stop it from sticking to the glass
  • The filter can be removed and cleaned quickly and easily
  • The filter often helps weatherproof the lens (on the Canon L series for example)

Disadvantages:

  • Glare from the sun can spoil your images
  • Adding filters can cause a vignette to appear on your photos.
  • It might stop you from being able to use a lens hood

What Else Can You Get Hold Of?

You could just use a clear filter. They just screw on and do nothing apart from protect your lens. They also bring the same advantages and disadvantages of UV filters (apart from not blocking UV light, obviously).

I personally find it harder to get hold of good quality clear filters than UV filters, plus they also tend to cost more.

Brands I Would Recommend:

A UV filter is one of the rare screw-in filters I own. I normally only buy square filters, but because I wanted my UV on the lens almost all of the time, a square filter would not do the same job.

Please note the price of screw-in filter does depend on the thread size of the filter. The filter you want might be cheaper (or more expensive) than you think!

Cokin:

Tiffen:

Hoya:

B+W:

I would spend as much as you can on a UV filter, as quality does matter. If you place a $5 filter on a $1000+ lens the decrease in picture quality will be noticeable. Protect your lens without ruining quality by purchasing the best glass you can.

I Hope That Helps!

If you have any questions about any other types of filter please post them below and I will try to offer some assistance. We’ll be covering a few more in future Quick Tips as well, so stay tuned!

Quick Tip: Using the Mustache Template Library


Not long ago, I demonstrated how to use the Microsoft’s jQuery template plugin; in this quick tip, I’ll show you how to use a different template library, Mustache, which is just as easy to use.

View Screencast

Step 1: Download Mustache

You can get Mustache.js from its GitHub project page; if you’re going to use it in a project, you can download it or git clone it; I’ve just referenced the raw file on GitHub for this quick tip:

 <script src="http://github.com/janl/mustache.js/raw/master/mustache.js"></script>

Now you can use it to render data!

Step 2: Get Your Data

Most likely, you’ll be getting your data from the server in the form of JSON when you’re using Mustache in production. However, it’s just as easy to hard-code an object literal and use that, which is what we’ll do here.

var data = {
    name : "Some Tuts+ Sites",
    sites: ["Nettuts+", "Psdtuts+", "Mobiletuts+"],
    url : function () {
        return function (text, render) {
            text = render(text);
            var url = text.trim().toLowerCase().split('tuts+')[0] + '.tutsplus.com';
            return '<a href="' + url + '">' + text + '</a>';
        }
    }
};

Now we’re ready to define the template.

Step 3: Create your Template

Your template is simply string; you can either use a regular old JavaScript string, or you can put the template in a script tag and get it via something like jQuery’s html() method (or, of course, innerHTML). This is probably a better choice if you’re using a complicated template, because you can use line breaks. Just remember to give the script a type of something other than “text/javascript”; otherwise, browsers may try to interpret it, and that will cause errors.

Your template will be mainly HTML; when you want to use a value from your data, reference the key name of the value in the data. To use the name value in the data above, you’d reference it like this:

<h1> {{name}} </h1>

Blocks are an important piece of Mustache: you can use them to get inside arrays and objects, as well as for lambdas (functions). It’s pretty simple to do blocks: just use an opening and closing tag: the opening one starts with a pound (#) and the closing one with a slash(/).

<ul>
    {{#sites}}

        <li> {{.}} </li>

    {{/sites}}
</ul>

When iterating over arrays, the implicit operator ”.” will get you the value. If sites was an object, you’d use it’s keys inside the block.

Using functions is a little more tricky. For the data part, Mustache.js requires a function that returns the function to be used. That function gets passed the text to be rendered (all the text within the mustache function tags) and a function that will render the template tags inside the text. Then, whatever that function returns will be put within the tags. You can see this at work in the urls function in the data above.

Step 4: Render the HTML

It’s really simple to render the HTML:

html = Mustache.to_html(template, data);

Then, you can stick that HTML wherever you want.

The Complete Source

var data, template, html;

data = {
    name : "Some Tuts+ Sites",
    sites: ["Nettuts+", "Psdtuts+", "Mobiletuts+"],
    url : function () {
        return function (text, render) {
            text = render(text);
            var url = text.trim().toLowerCase().split('tuts+')[0] + '.tutsplus.com';
            return '' + text + '';
        }
    }
};

template = "

 {{name}} 


     {{#sites}}

  •  {{#url}} {{.}} {{/url}} 
    • 

 {{/sites}}  


";

html = Mustache.to_html(template, data);

document.write(html)

Conclusion

To learn more about Mustache, check out the website. Have fun with it!

How to Build Silverlight Video Players with Expression Encoder


The Silverlight category over at Activetuts+ has been steadily gaining momentum over the last couple of months. However, the world of RIA’s covers a broad range of subjects, so we thought it fitting that Nettuts+ readers enjoyed a slice of the pie too. Dig into this screencast and, if you’re interested, pay a visit to ActiveTuts+ for plenty more Silverlight content when you’re done!

What’s Covered?

This is a quick look at how to use MediaElement in Expression Blend to form the starting point of a custom video/audio player. We’ll also look at how Expression Encoder can take any video and generate a Silverlight video player from it with no code including;

  • different templates for your player
  • playlists
  • chapters
  • offline support
  • caption support
  • overlays

View Screencast

Don’t like ads? Download the screencast, or subscribe to Activetuts+ screencasts via iTunes!

Other Awesome Silverlight Tuts

Take a quick peek at some of the other Silverlight screencasts Activetuts+ has to offer:

  • An Introduction to Microsoft Silverlight 4 – Part 1

    An Introduction to Microsoft Silverlight 4 – Part 1

    This is the first of two screencasts demonstrating how to build a simple Silverlight 4 map application, using Visual Studio and the C# programming language. You’ll get a decent overview of the Silverlight workflow, and learn what advantages it has over …similar technologies.

    Read more…

  • An Introduction to Microsoft Silverlight 4 – Part 2

    An Introduction to Microsoft Silverlight 4 – Part 2

    Part two of our Silverlight Introduction tutorial. In this screencast, Mike shows you how to save your walking routes to disk, and how to improve your app’s design using Expression Blend.

    Read more…

  • Silverlight and XAML

    Silverlight and XAML

    XAML is a key part of Silverlight development – it allows you to declaratively define your user interface and it makes it easy for tools such as Visual Studio and Expression Blend to share that UI definition. In this video we take a look at some of the key features of XAML that you’ll encounter whilst working with Silverlight and also a little around how XAML ‘works’ in your Silverlight applications.

    Read more…

  • Styling Silverlight UI Elements

    Styling Silverlight UI Elements

    The ability to apply style to user interface elements is something that we’re familiar with from HTML/CSS. Silverlight has some similar mechanisms for applying groups of common properties to parts (or the whole) of your user interface. In this video, we’re going to dive into styling in Silverlight.

    Read more…

  • Databinding with Silverlight

    Databinding with Silverlight

    Databinding is key, key, key in Silverlight. Additionally, it’s key. No, really. The basic idea is that we don’t want to write code that transfers data between the objects representing data in your program and the UI controls presenting that data to the user. If you’re not using Databinding, keeping UI controls and the data separate in your Silverlight applications, then the chances are you’re doing it wrong.

    Read more…

Useful Links

Mike Taulty Microsoft (UK): http://mtaulty.com: [email protected]: twitter.com/mtaulty

Cash From In-App Mobile Advertising Networks

In app advertising can generate significant revenues for you. There are 2 scenarios of usage for your free app that can determine the in app ad revenues. Either your app can be mainstream or have a small niche user base. If you app is mainstream small amounts of usage can add up, and if you app has a small niche user base but is very “sticky”, then the revenues can also add up.

Here is a bunch of Ad Networks that you can consider, if you want to earn revenues through ads inside your apps –

http://www.admob.com – The 1000 pound gorilla in the space that was recently acquired by Google.

http://www.adwhirl.com – A multi-network advertising platform with a feature that allows you to switch between Admob, Mobclix, JumpTap, videoEgg, Millenial Media, Quattro Wireless and more.

http://www.google.com/ads/mobileapps – Google Adsense for mobile applications.

http://www.greystripe.com – Has a propritery method of displaying flash ads inside the iphone and recently uses highly immersive and interactive in-app ads.

http://www.medialets.com – Specializes in rich media advertising for mobile devices. They offer an analytics platform and has a framework for tracking user activity.

http://www.mobclix.com – Represents the largest mobile ad networks available for developers and publishers and supports over 20 different networks, and has analytics integration for developers.

http://www.quattrowireless.com – operates as a mobile adnetwork exchange as well as offering its own ads. Allows location based ad serving / targeting.

http://www.tapjoy.com – Operates as an ad network exchange and also has an iPhone SDK for selling virtual goods via Offerpal Media. Has a pay-per-install feature also.

http://www.ivdopia.com – Claims to be the first iPhone Video Ads platform.

http://www.videoegg.com – Another ad network exchange service. Has an interesting Ad Frame format which when tapped shows a full page ad.

Blind user explains why he loves the iPhone

Here’s a wild little story that made its way around the blogonets this past weekend — it was originally posted in June, but it got recirculated on Twitter, and we first heard it from Steve Troughton-Smith. Austin Seraphin is a blind person, and he says that getting an iPhone changed his life forever — he considers Apple’s iDevice to be “the greatest thing to happen to the blind for a very long time, possibly ever.” Really high praise, especially considering that we’ve heard both good and bad about the iPhone in terms of accessibility.

Seraphin’s story is a great read, so I just suggest you head over to his blog and check it out. But why does he appreciate the phone so much? Apple’s VoiceOver feature is a big plus — it allows people without sight to browse and control the iPhone’s touch screen using audio feedback, reading off messages and even checking things like stocks and weather all by translating it through the speaker.

Seraphin even describes using a color picking app to use the iPhone’s camera to “see” colors around him, with VoiceOver reading off descriptive names of the colors coming through the lens. That’s pretty incredible, and something only the iPhone, with its extremely mobile combination of technology and UI design, can easily make possible.

Seraphin still has an issue using iTunes, and not all apps are, of course, quite as accessible as Apple’s guidelines ask them to be. But it’s awesome to hear how Apple’s approach to technology, combined with all of the various apps out there, can make a significant change in this man’s life. In fact, last week he got himself an iMac.

TUAWBlind user explains why he loves the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Foursquare app gets a version bump

Being the geek that I am, I always have time to annoy my wife by checking into venues with Foursquare whenever we go somewhere. The free location-based social networking iPhone app gained even more awesomeness (their description, not mine) today with the release of version 2.0.

What’s new? A to-do list for organizing your explorations. You can search for a location, and then add it to your to-do list. This would be handy for reminding yourself about restaurants that friends have tipped you off to. To-dos can also be added via websites, if they embed the button on their page (think Instapaper for location-based to-dos).

Another new feature is that friends, tips, and to-do items can now be displayed on a map, nice for figuring out where you were planning on going, where your friends have gone off to, and what you were going to do when you got there. This feature ought to be popular with aging Americans like myself.

The venue pages have also been updated, with large, easily-found links for the current mayor’s profile, any tips that have been left, and a one-tap button for calling a venue.

The mini-gallery below features some screenshots from version 2 of Foursquare. Enjoy!

TUAWFoursquare app gets a version bump originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No Comment: The iPhone of night clubs

Um, yeah. That seems about right. San Francisco local blog SFist spotted this one outside of a nightclub over on Polk Street in that fair city, and we’ll go ahead and repost it here for your smirking amusement with no comment. Even if you’re fine with your iPhone’s reception, you have to admit that’s an excellent pun.

We will say kudos to Red Devil — it’s a rare company that can fess up to providing crappy service. A rare company indeed.

[via TDW]

TUAWNo Comment: The iPhone of night clubs originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Official Etch A Sketch case makes iPad even more attractive to your kids

We’ve seen just about every type of iDevice case ever made, but this one takes the prize for originality.

Based on the famous Ohio Art Etch A Sketch magic screen drawing slate, the Etch A Sketch iPad Case ($39) from Headcase is very realistic looking, down to the cheesy gold paint on the logo. The case should be realistic, as it is officially licensed by Ohio Art.

There are some differences between the case and the real Etch A Sketch: the white knobs won’t act as cursor control on your cursor-less iPad, the case has a couple of indentations for the ambient light detector and home button, and the battery life on the original Etch A Sketch is much better. Oh, and the original Etch A Sketch is $17.99, while an iPad costs considerably more.

Check out the gallery below for more shots of this clever iPad case.

TUAWOfficial Etch A Sketch case makes iPad even more attractive to your kids originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Docs editing coming to iPad

This is pretty fantastic. Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise, announced via the Google official blog today that mobile editing for Google Docs is coming to the iPad and Android. Up until now, the Webkit browsers used on the mobile devices have been missing a key capability for handling rich text editing.

While you can access Google Docs through iPad office suites such as Documents to Go and Quickoffice, native access through Google will eliminate the need to purchase a 3rd party app and may make an iPad sound more appealing to those who want to use it to edit documents. It may prompt Apple to finally add cloud storage access to iWork.

[hat tip to Electronista]

TUAWGoogle Docs editing coming to iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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FaceTime goes missing in Saudi Arabia, much of Middle East

Looking forward to that new iPhone 4 in Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Yemen? If the preview pages on the various international editions of Apple.com are any guide, you may be missing a key new feature. A Facebook thread from SaudiMac points out that the website graphics for all those countries, plus several others in the Middle East, have lost their FaceTime graphic. You can see the before & after versions of the Saudi site above.

This adjustment to the product sites — just ahead of the anticipated late September launch of the phone in these countries — may represent merely a cosmetic tweak, keeping the cultural sensitivities of these largely Islamic countries in mind. Or it might mean the feature itself is going to be blocked for iPhone users there; note that it’s not just the image that’s changed, the current versions of the iPhone pages omit the description of FaceTime as well. We don’t know yet, and although we have an email in to Apple’s media relations team for comment, chances are we won’t hear anything official.

If you’ve got a line to an Apple reseller or cellphone carrier in one of the FaceTime-redacted locales, please send us a quick heads-up.

Thanks Khaled

TUAWFaceTime goes missing in Saudi Arabia, much of Middle East originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hang with the 2010 Mac mini racks from Macessity

The new Mac minis are sleek and lovely, but there are times when you simply want to get them out of the way. For example, if you’re running a mini server farm, you’d like to get many minis into a small space. How do you do that? A rack mount. What if you’d like to mount a mini under a desk, but still want to have easy access to the ports on the back?

Macessity has announced the answer to these storage questions with a new line of products for the 2010 Mac minis. The MX4-V2 is a rack tray (above) that holds up to four Mac minis so you can “rack ’em and stack ’em” in any standard equipment rack. The $79.99 tray has special holes for cable management and comes with the necessary mounting screws (don’t laugh — you can never find mounting hardware when you need it).

For those who just want to hide a mini under a desk, there are two Macessity solutions: the $49.99 Mi360, which tucks your mini away in a protective compartment that rotates a full 360 degrees. It also has a theft deterrence locking tab so you can keep your mini from disappearing. If you want a four-port USB hub with your mini mount, you can get the $54.99 MiClassic (below) and add a $19.99 swivel bracket for convenience.

Macessity also makes racks and mounts for the original Mac minis as well, as well as desktop mounts for minis old and new that let you put your mini under a monitor.

TUAWHang with the 2010 Mac mini racks from Macessity originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple releases Security Update 2010-006

Yes, as you can see above (and in a Software Update near you), Apple has released Security Update 2010-006, the latest OS X issue-fixer of the year. It’s recommended for all users, so run your SU, let it download and install, and you’ll be good to go.

This one apparently fixes an issue where a remote attacker could have snuck into AFP shared folders without having a password. Apple releases OS Security Updates a few times a year, and given how simple it is to update and install them, you should go ahead and update as soon as possible.

TUAWApple releases Security Update 2010-006 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NimbleBit: Over half a million playing Pocket Frogs, "3-4%" buying in-app purchases

I’ve been playing NimbleBit’s freemium Pocket Frogs game since it was released last week, and apparently I’m not the only one — Ian Marsh tells TUAW that the game has been downloaded by half a million people so far. The company is also seeing 200K daily active users, and while Marsh couldn’t share exact stats on how many people have taken advantage of the game’s in-app purchases, he estimates that 3-4% of the active users have bought stamps or potions in the game.

Over on Twitter, he says that the 99 cent charges are the most common, making up half of the total purchases. But the $29.99 optional charges make up 8% of the purchases, and actually contribute to 49% of total revenue. In other words, just a few people are responsible for half of the game’s total revenue — the freemium model hard at work.

Marsh says that NimbleBit is working on updating the game, too. They don’t plan to increase the size of the in-game frog “catalog,” since the whole point of the game is to have the player make decisions about which frogs to keep and breed, but they are working on something tentatively called the “Frogodex,” which would passively track every frog ever collected by players in the game. They’re also considering integrating Game Center in terms of leaderboards and achievements in the future — they originally decided to go with Ngmoco’s Plus+ system because it “provides a number of services crucial to social game developers which Game Center does not,” including backing up game data and doing things like browsing your friends’ frog habitats.

And finally, Marsh says the company has been overwhelmed by all of the positive feedback, and the feature request list “is growing faster every day.” The next big update they’re planning, he tells TUAW, will be “a rare new pattern color mutation” that he thinks people will like. And he also tells us to look out for “exclusive surprises in-store for upcoming holidays.” Sounds like NimbleBit has a nice freemium hit on their hands, and we’ll look forward to updates in the future.

TUAWNimbleBit: Over half a million playing Pocket Frogs, “3-4%” buying in-app purchases originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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