For many years, my email footer said "Sent via my Casio cPhone" - my attempt to poke fun at the users who hadn't updated their iPhone's default email signature. This leads to an interesting question: Marc Blank-Settle @bbcmarc on Threads@MarcSettleIs there an easy way to see what device an email is sent from? If I type the attached on an email on my PC, can the truth be shown easily? pic.x.com/i8impwkxlo❤️ 1💬 3🔁 014:44 - Wed 26 October 2016 Because 2016 is maximum news, I'm sure there are som…
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We all know what an email address looks like and how to validate them, right? A few years ago I got the Chinese domain name 莎士比亚.org. You can browse to it, link to it, and send email to it. Or can you? When I tried two years ago, none of the major email providers supported sending to non-ASCII email addresses. Today, I tried again with six of the big "Western" webmail providers. How did they do? Show Me The Data! I tested by trying to send an email to test@莎士比亚.org and the Punycode repre…
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I had dinner with the outgoing editor of The Guardian the other night. Clever chap, sure he'll go far in life. The Guardian is very hot on security. Many of their writers have PGP keys which they publicly advertise. In theory, that's great (complaints about PGP notwithstanding) - but the reality shows just how tricky it is to act in a security conscious manner. Have a look at Alan's Twitter profile. In the bio, we see a link - http://bit.ly/1g4S9WR which points to…
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Does your email suck? Chris Woods has some suggestions on how to fix it. Check out his Better Emails tool for Outlook. 🔊 Better Emails🎤 Terence Eden 💾 Download this audio file. Get About A Minute as soon as each episode goes live. Stick this Podcast Feed into your podcatcher Or you can Subscribe on iTunes Intro music "Gran Vals" performed by Brian Streckfus. Stopwatch Icon by Ilsur Aptukov from The Noun Project. This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribut…
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Hanlon's Razor states, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." It would be nice to think that all mistakes and errors we encounter are just the result of bone-headedness. Sadly, that's not the case. Quite often malicious people deliberately try to trick you into taking actions you would normally have ignored. In usability, we call this a "Dark Pattern". A Dark Pattern is a type of user interface that appears to have been carefully crafted to trick users …
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As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm sick of people not being able to spell or pronounce shkspr.mobi correctly. So I've decided to double down and start using my alternate domain 莎士比亚.org. It's pronounced "Sha-shi-bi-ya", if that helps. Getting my email account set up with my hosting provider was easy enough but it turned out to be quite tricky to send email to my account. This is what happened when I tried to send an email from Gmail to test@莎士比亚.org: Error The address "test@莎士比亚.org" i…
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I was listening to a podcast recently which was kind enough to mention one of my blog posts. The presenter said: ...and you should Google for this, because I'm really not sure how to pronounce this. Is it shu-huk-spur? dot mobby? Le sigh! It's a conversation I have most weeks when I'm on the phone to someone - usually a call centre - and they ask for my email address. "Sierra Hotel Kilo Sierra Papa Romeo Dot Mike Oscar Bravo India" Whereupon I am inevitably asked: Is that dot com or dot …
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Like many people, I used to be a slave to my work inbox. It's hard to maintain a decent work/life balance when you're receiving business emails during evenings and weekends. Sometimes it's due to a workaholic colleague, or someone in a different timezone, or just those damned automated reminders from the finance system. I don't want to carry a separate device, and I know I can't rely on will-power alone. So, I've been using Samsung's "Peak Schedule" feature for its Android phones. I know I…
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I spent several hours in school learning how to write a letter. From the correct placement of the address, right down to the "Yours sincerely / faithfully" - every aspect was drummed into me. That never happened with email. Judging from many of the people I work with - young and old - the art of writing an email has not been adequately explained. I want to take a few moments to explain how I write effective emails and what simple tips you can use to make your work emails better. Short…
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As with most tasks in life, there are two paths you can go by - the easy way, or the right way. Sadly, many of us choose the easy way which, in the long run, means more work for us all. Take, for example, the seemingly dull task of email unsubscription. A developer wants to make it easy for a user to unsubscribe from an email newsletter. They want to place an unsubscribe link at the bottom of an email, a user can click on it, be taken to a web page, then confirm her unsubscribe. Let us…
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For the last few years, I've been trying to opt out of having any postal mail sent to me. Wherever a company offers online billing - I sign up in a flash. My insurance company are now bored of me saying "rather than posting the policy - can you email it to me instead?" I've opted-out of receiving unaddressed mail and I've signed up to stop junk mail. Mostly, I'm pleased to say, it has worked. The only things dropping through my letterbox are small packages from Amazon, the occasional…
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The Metro have been on quite a QR splurge recently - this is their latest effort encouraging people to write in to the paper. On the surface, it's quite a simple idea - yet Metro have needlessly complicated it. The Process The simplest process would be Scan Code Send Email That's not what Metro have done. By using Scanlife as an intermediary, they change the process to Scan Code Connect to web Get redirected Get redirected again Load web page Click on…
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