After that number got my attention, I checked my mail account. After the switch around a month ago from my own mail server to Google Apps for you Domain, which now lets me use Google’s Gmail infrastructure for my primary mail adress (first name (at) this domain), I received over 5000 spam mails. Fortunately, only 3 spam messages were not recognized by Gmail’s spam filter and I had no false-positives. (Which is very impressive)

On my own mailserver, I had collected spam mails for some time to train the spam filter software. Around 10,000 spam mails had the size of 65 megabytes. That means, that getting right now 5000 spam mails per month (approximately), I get currently around 60,000 spam mails per year which have a total size of 400 megabytes.

If you are interested in the topic spam, Wikipedia has a good article as a starting point.

Last Sunday, Judith and I went to a show by Cirque du Soleil called “Kooza”. I found this show on the internet back in December, when I was searching for a Christmas present for Judith. The trailer on their website looked promising, so that I booked two tickets for the show in San Jose in February. Actually, I personally do not like circus shows and musicals that much, but this show was really great and spectacular. Especially the mixture of circus, musical and play was interesting.

On Monday noon, I started to a 4 work day business trip to Germany. I arrived Tuesday morning and attended a workshop from Tuesday afternoon until Friday evening. Besides that, several other meetings took place in these days in Germany, which I could attend in person instead of dialing in via telephone which was very good.

Yesterday (Friday), we went with some people to Barrios, a local cocktail bar in Mannheim. It was awesome, as even two friends from Kaarst came a long… (or was it just because I brought two iPhones from the US for them? )

Little drawback is, that I have been fighting with a flu since Wednesday. Anyway, everything which does not kill you, makes you stronger…
Tomorrow, I will relax a little bit, do my tax statement for 2007 (fun! :-S) and visit the Apple Store again (that becomes already a regular ceremony on Sundays ).

I noticed, that this blog gets a little too less technical for my taste in the last weeks, so I will need to come up with something nerdy soon again. Right now I am thinking about switching completely to Google Apps For Your Domain and get rid of my vServer. I already moved mailing from the server to Google’s infrastructure, which worked like a charm (and only took 15 minutes). Especially the spam filter is kicking (spammer’s) ass. Well, more to come in an own blog post…

I quite often share useful links with friends and family (Hi Dad, hi Philipp ). So what I did, was mostly to send the particular link via email, instant messaging (ICQ, MSN, Skype…), direct conversation or “Send Link to Friend” functionality, which is integrated in many websites these days. But although this worked quite ok, it is not very fast forward, as you have to open the particular application, search your contact and send the link. Furthermore, if you already are sending that link to someone else, you probably want to bookmark it for yourself as well.

So, the following requirements arise:

way of sharing, that do not bother (e.g. if I send you 10 mails, each containing one link, you probably ask me to stop spamming )

This article explains a solution combining Del.icio.us, Google Reader and Firefox.

Del.icio.us is a so called social bookmarking site. After creating an account, you can add links to your bookmark list. Though you can assign as many tags as you like for each of your bookmarks to organize them and to be able to easily search for specific content.
All bookmarks, which are not explicitly set as private, can be seen by users and visitors of the del.icio.us website as well. That lets you not only save your own bookmarks, but browse bookmarks of other users and lets you discover new stuff, in which you might be interested.
Furthermore you can explicitly share certain bookmarks with other users. You only have to add these users to your network. If you afterwards bookmark a link, you can assign a special tag to it, to share that link with the selected user. This user sees the link automatically in the “links for you” section on the del.icio.us website.
To get notified about links others share with you, a RSS feed is provided. Here comes Google Reader into play. Just add the RSS feed and as soon as someone wants to send you a link, he just has to assign your tag to it and you can see the link in Google Reader automatically.

The following howto sets up such a scenario for user Alice and Bob (aka user A and B ). Just click on the first image to start:

Bookmarking and Bookmark Sharing with Del.icio.us, Google Reader and Firefox

If you like to share links with me, feel free to add me to your network. My del.icio.us user is: cb2206.

The following has been making the rounds on just about every internal email list I belong to in Microsoft. Here it is to share a little insight with the rest of the world. Microsoft is an amazingly transparent company. Google is not. Any peek is a good peek.

=> Life at Google – The Microsoft Perspective

Logmein.com

LogMeIn lets you access your Windows PC from anywhere in the world. All you need is a computer connected to the Internet. You see your Target PC’s full desktop and control everything on it—applications, network files, email, printing—without the hassle of further downloads or installations. You can even share files that are too large for email. There’s no need to lug around a laptop, because LogMeIn lets you access your PC from an internet cafe, an airport, or a hotel business center. You can even print documents you’ve accessed remotely.

Zoho Notebook

Create, Aggregate and Collaborate on multiple types of content online.

EyeOS
Some time ago, I had a look at YouOS and DesktopOne. Whereas DesktopTwo was more advanced, you need to have Adobe’s Flash plugin installed.
EyeOS is a good combination of both: No Flash needed and even a whole bunch of great features. The best: it is open source software and can be installed on any server you like.
Unfortunately it does not seem to have any session handling. So if you close your browser on computer A and switch to computer B, all applications have been terminated.

In first place, welcome to the eyeOS project. You’re about to discover a new work and organization method: A completely free (Open Source) Web Operating System running from your browser, where anybody can collaborate and expand it. If you want to see how is eyeOS, you can visit the screenshots section, or if you prefer it, watch the video from this page.

Google Gears

Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using the following JavaScript APIs:

Store and serve application resources locally

Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database

Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

This is a presentation of Google Gears from the Google Developer Day in London some days ago:

BTW…the Google Developer Day took place globally in 10 different locations around the world. A lot more sessions can be found on the Google Developer Day Youtube Channel.

UltraMon
Found via lifehacker.com:

UltraMon is a utility for multi-monitor systems, designed to increase productivity and unlock the full potential of multiple monitors.

efficiently move windows and maximize windows across the desktop

manage more applications with the Smart Taskbar

control application positioning with UltraMon Shortcuts

multi-monitor support for desktop wallpapers and screen savers

mirror your main monitor to secondary monitors for a presentation

What I like most is the SmartTaskbar feature:

Each taskbar only shows applications from the monitor it is on, so you won’t have to search for an application after activating it. If you move an application to a different monitor, its taskbar button will be moved to the corresponding taskbar

I like driving around with Judith’s company car very much. The traffic rules here are sometimes different and are a strange from time to time, but it’s cool anyway. The bad thing is, that it is almost impossible to do anything by foot.

Random Stuff

So far, what we did most of the time in the last days was shopping. I probably already spent several hundred dollars for new clothes. Most of the stuff is so much cheaper than in Germany….it’s unbelievable.

On Tuesday we went to San Francisco downtown. We started in Financial District, walked through Chinatown to the Coit Tower and afterwards to Pier 39 in the north. There we wanted to book a tour to the well-known prision Alcatraz, but unfortunately the tours were completely booked out until next Sunday.

2006-08-08 – San Francisco

Therefore we enjoyed the view of the coast and got back to downtown. After visting the apple store (I want a black MacBook! – any generous people here? ) as well as some other shops, we took the trolley to Golden Gate Park. It is quite beautiful and a great place to relax. The bad thing was, that the way back to the place where we parked our car was very long. At first, we thought, that we could do it by foot, but after realizing that we are not trained well enough to walk up and down the streets (Yes – San Francisco is really mountainous ), we had to take the trolley.

Yesterday, we had lunch with Mark Heynen at Googleplex in Mountain View (2 miles away from Judith’s apartment). The Google headquarters are really amazing. In the entrance area they had a big display which showed a 3D model of the earth with lines of pixels comming from the surface of the earth. The length of the lines showed the amount of searches per area and their color reflected the language of the search. Unfortunately I did not take any pictures of it. (I’ll ask Mark, whether he can send me one or two…)

2006-08-10 – Google

In the evening a friend of Judith, Becky, arrived from Seattle. We will go biking on Angle Island today. The island is right behind Alcatraz. So stay tuned for more news reports….;-)