OpenDNS

A few months ago, a friend of mine got his mac hacked all to pieces after falling victim to either a honeypot router or having horrible personal network security, or a little bit of both. Probably a little bit of both. This led to him ending up on the wrong end of some phishing and all kinds of bad things developed from there. Like Chester Bennington kinds of bad things.

I am by no means an expert on network security, but some other people have turned me on to OpenDNS as a good step for reducing one's vulnerability to phishing. I made the suggested changes to my computer and to my router and I am pretty pleased with it. It has saved me from one phishing site so far, which, after seeing the ordeal my friend went through, is worth the 5 minutes it took to set it up right there. It's free, so it has that going for it as well.

OpenDNS does have its detractors though. I am watching the comments/ongoing discussion to the post on this site to see how it comes out now that John Roberts from OpenDNS has chimed in. Unless something more horrible comes out of it aside from OpenDNS' practice of retaining personal DNS request information for 2 business days, I'm staying with them. Besides, if you register (I did) you can choose not to have any data collected.

 

Three-Pane Viewing

One of the few good things about Outlook is the three-pane view: mailboxes on the left, message list in the middle, and message on the right. It is such a time saver when you have to crank through a ton of e-mail. 

One of the major shortcomings of Mail is its lack of the three-pane view. Thanks to some inspired work by Aaron Harnly and Dane Harnett, the three-pane view can be yours in Mail via a sweet plugin. 

Peep Letterbox and Widemail.  

I'm rolling with Letterbox right now, but Widemail has some nice unique features as well. Someday a mash-up of the code for the two of these will create the perfect three-pane view for Mail, probably just in time for Apple to enable a three-pane view itself. 

Eight Blogs of Note

Here are some blogs I check out on a regular basis. Reading these might give you a little background on where I'm coming from. Check 'em out.

1.    43 Folders is a life hacking blog ramped up by Merlin Mann and now with other contributors. I learned about it when I was trying (unsuccessfully) to implement GTD. Merlin is on point, but the other contributors are somewhat hit or miss.

2. Call Me Fishmeal is Wil Shipley's blog. Wil is with Delicious Monster who makes one of the best Mac programs out there, Delicious Library.

3. carpeaqua is from Justin Williams, a mac geek who is behind one of my favorite iPhone applications/sites, PocketTweets, for using Twitter on an iPhone.

4. Beth Cherry is not dead yet is Beth Cherry's daily or so update on what is going on in her world. I like her no archive style of posting. If you miss it, you've missed it. Might have to implement that some day myself.

5. HorsePigCow is from Tara Hunt of Citizen Agency. I don't remember how I came across her blog, but I still keep up with it. She has unknowingly introduced me to a number of cool 2.0 kinds of things, like tumblr and dopplr.

6. Factory City is Chris Messina's blog, a great source for the next big thing, conceptually, on the web. He's also at Citizen Agency.

7. My Money Blog is something someone else turned me on to a while ago. I've been following this dude and his financial exploits for a while now and have also been putting a number of his ideas into practice. The 0% credit card and high yield savings account idea has been absolutely killer.

8. Like It Matters is from Brian Oberkirch and it is also a place to learn about up and coming 2.0 issues and general cool stuff.

Remember, RSS is your friend for keeping up on your reading.

The Inquisitor

Despite the crazy speed of the new Firefox 3 beta, there are still some cool things about using Safari, like the Inquisitor.  

Here's their short pitch: Spotlight. Immediately. Autocomplete. Shortcuts. Free.

Here's my suggestion: Download. Install. Awesome.

Firefox 3 beta

Here's all you need to know: the Firefox 3 beta is fast! Like really, really, really, fast! Its speed shames Safari like someone with a can of spray paint and a passed out frat boy. (What? You guys just use permanent marker, bunny ears, a tiara, and a melon? Better step it up.)

It's also buggy as hell, but hey, it's a beta. Download here.  

Be sure to download and install the Proto theme as well.