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CyberArtisans Web Developers Newsletter |
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Our goal is to present information that will be useful to you as a website owner and as a user of the web. If these newsletters are useful, please forward this to a friend. To unsubscribe, follow the directions at the bottom of this email.
We're sure you've read articles about self-defense for web users - being wary of visiting websites based on email from someone you don't know, for example. But how about self-defense for the website owner? Read on. Ever wonder how all those spammers got your email address? Yes, they can get them from online forums or blogs when your email address is listed. But they also get them from your web pages. It's called email address "harvesting" and, of course, there are programs that will search the web for email addresses and record any found. Having your email address on your website is such an accepted act that many people don't even think about it. Those that do sometimes resort to strategies that seem almost silly, such as spelling it out: "jspencer (at) cyberartisans (dot) com." If you resort to this strategy, which makes emailing you a lot more inconvenient, then the bad guys have already won. We have a cleverer strategy: Your email address can be encoded using JavaScript, a language your browser speaks fluently. Without going into the underlying technical mumbo-jumbo, we use JavaScript to present what looks and acts like an email address to ordinary users. That is, it reads like a normal email address and clicking on it pops up a blank email. But to the email address harvesters it looks like gibberish. That way everybody wins. Well, OK, not the address harvesters, but we aren't in the business of making their lives easier.
This is as home-brew a project as they get, but everything we've read says it works. Does your wi-fi peter out before you get to the front porch? Do you wish for more range? You can buy range extenders, of course. We're familiar with the Linksys WRE54G, but that costs upwards of $85. You can also get a high-gain antenna from Linksys for about $45. But for the cost of a little cardboard and some wire screening, you may get enough additional range that you don't need the high-priced spread. Go to http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/ to see a plan. It's a little crude but it's easy to build. We recommend hardware cloth if you have some handy, since it's fairly stiff and will hold the shape without reinforcement.
Most of you probably remember Windows 98 and 95. But does anyone remember Windows 1.0? How about 3.0? Some enterprising individual with too much time on his/her hands has compiled Windows logon screens and sounds from Windows 1.0 through Vista. You can see it here.
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