CATPrints - April 2003

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Email Migration Completed

Last accounts moved on April 14th

This eighteen month project has come to a close with the migration of the last of 6000 mail accounts. This task has been carried out successfully due to the efforts of dozens of field technicians and other support personnel. The entire project has been very competently managed by Richard Serafin of the Computer Center. Many thanks go out to the faculty, students and staff of the College for their patience and cooperation in this mammoth undertaking. The implementation of the Exchange Mail Servers has provided the College with a robust, reliable and expandable mail service; for the last five months there have been no service interruptions of any kind, and we anticipate comparable levels of service into the future.

Wireless phone technology

Preventing intereference

Wireless headsets and cordless phones are becoming popular additions to office technology here on campus. They do share the radio spectrum with our wireless network, however, and it is important to avoid interference with those and other devices. If your office is considering the purchase of any wireless device, please call Joe Graig-Tiso of the Telecommunications Office at 2622 - he can advise you about the best frequency choices to make that will give you the best service.

 

Cell Phones Turn 30

Ringing cell phone reportedly disturbed celebration

The first Cell Phone call was placed on April 3rd, 1973 on a busy Manhattan street by the CEO of Motorola. The phone was a little unwieldy, weighing two pounds and having a relatively short range and a very short battery life.

It took ten more years to bring the cell phone to market, with the first units costing $3500. It took seven years to build the first million subscribers, but in 2002 alone there were 423 million phones sold!

The future of cell technology is being created in countries like Japan and Finland, where phones are being used to make vending machine purchases, provide email, internet access and two-way image transmission, and even allowing emergency workers to transmit patient information to hospitals from the scene of an accident. It is anticipated by people familiar with the cell industry that within ten years the phone, the computer (in the form of the Pocket PC), and several other small electronic devices like the camcorder, mp3 player and the ATM card will morph into a single device.
 

Newly Revised Websites

A fresh look generates new interest

Several websites have rolled out a new look this semester, fully compliant with disability access requirements:

Religious Studies Minor
http://www.oneonta.edu/academics/religious

Multicultural Affairs
http://www.oneonta.edu/development/multicultural

Omicron Delta Kappa (National Honor Society)
http://www.oneonta.edu/development/clubs/odk

 

Outlook Tid-Bits

Using Rules to Filter out Junk Mail

In this newsletter we have commented many times on the plague that is junk email. Some users receive little or no junk email at all while others are inundated with scores of unsolicited messages daily. Technicians at Computer Services are working on a campus-wide strategy to address this problem, but in the meantime there is a way you can use Outlook Mail to filter your mail and keep unsolicited messages from appearing in your inbox. The basic concept here is to establish a list of people from whom you regularly receive messages, and put their mail directly into your Inbox. Every other message you get will be placed in a special folder for you to review.

The first step is to create a Quarantine folder. Right-click on the folder list where it says Outlook Today, and click on New Folder. Create a folder called "Junk Mail?".

The list of people you want to accept mail from is, in fact, your Contact List / Address Book. To set up a filter to discriminate between messages based on who sent them, open Outlook and go to Tools- Rules Wizard-.

Click on the New button, and then click on Start from a blank rule. Click Next. The first step asks you to define which messages you want to apply the filter to. You want to check all messages, so you just click Next. Click Yes in response to the question This will be applied to every message you receive. Is this correct?
 

The next step asks what action should be taken with these messages. Check the box that says move it to the specified folder, and click on the word "specified" to choose the Junk Mail? folder you created earlier. Click Next. Step three asks for exceptions to the rule. Check the box next to the last choice, except if sender is in specified Address Book. Click Next. You can specify a name for this rule if you want, otherwise click Finish. Click OK and you are all set.

What you are really doing here is saying to Outlook "Please look at every email that comes in, and put every message in the Junk Mail? folder UNLESS the sender is found in my Address Book." You will find that messages start appearing in your Junk Mail? folder that are from people who you don't consider junk mail senders. When that happens, open their message and right-click on their name. A little menu will pop up with the choice Add To Contacts. Click it, and their name will be added to your contacts list.

The next time they send you a message, it will appear in your inbox rather than in your Deleted Items folder. At first you have to do this a lot, but after a few days you will do it rarely and after a week or so you will hardly ever have to do it. Don't forget to look at your Junk Mail? folder from time to time. Remember, any message from anyone not in your address book will end up in there, so you need to check it.

Another critical component of this setup is to go to both your Inbox and your Junk Mail? folder and turn off the Preview Pane. As was noted in a previous issue of CATPrints, some junk emails are equipped with code that will alert the sender that your email address is an active one if you merely preview the contents of the message. To turn off Preview, just go to the folder in question and then go to the menu bar at the top of the screen and click View- Preview Pane to turn it on and off.

If you have any questions about using filters to manage your mail, call the Help Desk at 4567.