The security program is a portable application that can be started right after downloading it from the Technet servers. It will display a graphical user interface that will list all discovered DHCP servers. A click on the Detect Rogue Server button is required to initiate the scan of the computer network.

The Microsoft Rogue Detection Tool will then display all DHCP servers in the list that it considers rogue servers (It is not clear if it classifies all servers as rogue servers in the beginning). Information like the server IP, gateway address and offered client IP are displayed in the list. It is possible to check the valid DHCP server box to classify the server as a valid server which will make that information persistent.

The program can be configured to run once or at specified intervals. It is furthermore possible to select only specific interfaces. Currently only IPv4 interfaces are supported with plans to add IPv6 interfaces in the future.

Microsoft’s Rogue Detection Tool can be downloaded from the announcement page over at the DHCP Team blog.

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Hostnames are most often used for administrative habits. In other words hostnames will show up in some scanning applications, can be used for name to IP address resolution, and much more. But to make this useful you will have to manually set your hostname on your Linux machine. This article will show you just how to do that.

Find your hostname

The most common means to find your host name is to open up a terminal window and enter the command:

hostname

If you have not set your hostname, more than likely you will see returned:

localhost.localdomain

A quick and easy way to spot if you have not changed your hostname is to check when you open up your terminal window. At your bash prompt you will see something like:

[jlwallen@localhost ~]$

As you can see a portion of the hostname (everything preceding the first “.”) will be used in your prompt. In the example you see above you see “localhost” which should tell you the hostname has not been changed.

Temporarily changing your hostname

You can temporarily change your hostname by issuing a single command. You have to issue this command either using sudo or as the root user. To make this change you will use the same command you used to find out your hostname, only you will include the new hostname to the command. Say you want to change your hostname to “willow”. To make this change temporarily issue the command:

hostname willow

Now issue the command hostname which should report back:

willow

This change will last until you reboot your machine.

Permanently changing your hostname

How you permanently change your hostname will depending upon which distribution you use. We’ll examine making this change on both a Ubuntu system and a Fedora system. First Ubuntu.

On a Ubuntu system there is a file called /etc/hostname. The contents of this file will have a single line containing the hostname of your machine. Open up this file in your favorite editor, delete the default hostname, add your desired hostname, and save the file. To make this chang take effect issue the command:

/etc/init.d/hostname.sh start

This hostname will remain intact upon reboot.

Now to change your hostname in Fedora. This is taken care of in the /etc/sysconfig/network file. The default contents of this file will look like:

NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain

Erase the “localhost.localdomain” portion and change that to reflect the hostname you want. Once you have made this change save the file. Once you have made this change issue the following command (as the root user):

/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

For the change to take effect.

Final thoughts

With your hostname changed applications like Lanmap will now be easier to use because machines will have unique names. This change will also make administering your systems easier because you will have set machine hostnames to reflect either the user of the machine or the machines’ job.

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The service is aimed at users from the United States as Microsoft asks for a US zip code to provide the user with data from that area in the United States. There are for example information about the average annual energy costs in the area or the energy costs breakdown.

Users who signed up for the service can start by completing their home profile which basically asks them to fill out detailed information about their home. This ranges from entering the year the home was build to its square footage, heating system and year the water heater was installed. The information are further divided into categories like doors and windows, lighting, appliances or pumps and pools all with about 5-10 questions that need to be answered. This can take some time depending mostly if the information are available next to the user or not.

The data is then linked to energy providers in the region once the information have been filled out (with the possibility to leave answers blank or use don’t know as an answer). This is a great way of comparing energy costs. Probably the most important part of the site are recommendations based on the home profile that has been created during setup.

These recommendations list improvements that can be made to the home to save energy and money. They can be filtered by name, cost or annual savings with the option to plan the improvements, set them to done and to write notes and the actual costs.

The average annual energy costs can be recalculated whenever the situation changes. Microsoft Hohm is an interesting online service for home users from the United States who want to cut their energy bills.

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The second type are ping and trackback spammers. This is either done by auto-posting articles that others have written without their consent on so called autoblogs. Each post generates at least one pingback to the original site. This can lead to hundreds of pingbacks over time which many webmasters and blog owners publish.

The third and most spammy type are the automated spammers that use specifically designed tools to spam thousands of blogs, forums and every other type of site where content can be posted in hours. Now that we know the different types of spammers we have to discuss how to handle them. This post will mostly deal with automated spammers who post dozens if not hundreds of comments and pingbacks.

Webmasters should use at least one anti-spam tool to block the majority of spam reaching the frontend of the website. Wordpress users can for example use Akismet or one of the several other anti-spam plugins that are available. Still, some spam will come through. Today for example a webmaster decided to copy and post more than 300 articles from Ghacks on a website. Each post generated at least one pingback, many multiple pingbacks as the tags and links were kept by that webmaster.

Akismet did not object to these ping and Ghacks ended up with more than 300 accepted and published pings from that blog. Many webmasters would now delete them one by one which takes quite a while. A far better solution is to filter for a common denominator which in this case was the url of the website. All comments, pings and trackbacks that include the domain name of that website were listed giving me the option to mark them all and send them to the spam folder.

There might be situations where this is not possible. Maybe the website or script does not offer the option to bulk moderate comments. There is however another option if the website is making use of a database. This does however require some knowledge about the database as a query has to be run in the administration. Most users will probably use MySql where a basic delete query looks like this:

delete from [table] where [column name] = 'value'

To delete all comments from a specific url in Wordpress one would do the following:

delete from wp-comments where comment_author_url ='www.example.com'

It is possible to use other table columns like the commenters IP or email for example. How do you handle mass spam to your website or blog?

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The computer program has to be installed on the system. It integrates itself into the right-click context menu of executable file extensions such as exe, bat and cmd with the option to add custom file extension during installation.

The advanced run box becomes available after right-clicking a supported file type and selecting run with parameters from the context menu. It is then possible to supply command line arguments to run the software with these additional parameters.

The computer program will remember command line arguments that have been used in the past for that specific software program. This option is also configured during installation. Up to 20 arguments are saved by default. The program will only use system resources during execution. The main application will terminate its process after the selected program has been started with the command line arguments. Run With Parameters is therefor a lightweight software program ideal for launching executables that require parameters from time to time (for example Google Chrome with or without extensions, Firefox with another profile). It can be downloaded from the developer’s homepage.

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Some of the features that are missing are the abilities to pause and resume the copy process and to filter files and folders.Robocopy is a command line tool developed by Microsoft that provides the extended functionality that some users require. Command line tools on the other hand are not always that comfortable to use which is why Microsoft created Robocopy GUI which provides a graphical user interface for Robocopy.

Robocopy GUI is a basic software program that requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 (which is included in Windows Vista). It can be downloaded from the Technet website where it was announced.

Robocopy GUI lets you specify your source and target paths, as well as any custom options or filters you’d like to apply, whether or not you’d like to create a drive mapping, where you’d like to store the resulting logs, and so on. These are all features you can certainly execute with traditional Robocopy command line functionality, but for many, having the options consolidated in a graphical interface may really simplify the process.

Robocopy GUI also extends the functionality of the existing Robocopy tool in some very interesting ways. For example, this tool is multithreaded, allowing you to create a Robocopy script, execute it, and begin creating another one while your first script is still running. It also allows you to save your scripts (even if you don’t actually execute them) so that you can create a library of common scripts or share them with your colleagues. And most importantly, Robocopy GUI allows you to save your default settings so you don’t have to start from scratch every time.

The program is a great help for users who prefer to work with graphical user interfaces. The option to use the command line version as well – for example to make use of the functionality in scripts – is still provided.

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The mailto links in the format mailto:email@example.com are launched with the default application that has been set in the Firefox web browser. To change that one needs to open the options of the web browser. Windows users go to Tools > Options to open the Firefox options.

Users then need to locate the applications tab and filter for the term mailto. The menu should then look pretty much like the menu in the screenshot above. They then need to click on the pulldown menu on the right side to change the default email client in Firefox. Displayed are the current email client, the web based email clients Yahoo Mail and Gmail, the option to always ask the user and to select another email client not on the list.

The last option opens the file browser which makes it possible to select an executable on the computer system. It is therefor possible to select installed and portable email clients on the local computer system. It does feel a bit strange that neither Windows Live Mail nor Aol Mail are available from the menu.

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The programming language, Ruby, was created in the mid 1990’s in Japan, by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto. Ruby is based on Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp and was written to create a programming language that, according to Matsumoto, “was more powerful than Perl, and more object-oriented than Python.”

One of the goals of Ruby is to allow the simple and fast creation of web applications. The language itself satisfies this goal. Because of this, there is much less tedious work with this language than many other programming languages. Ruby is also free of charge. It is also free to copy, use, modify, and distribute. Since Ruby can be modified, programmers can make necessary changes and can code without feeling restricted. Another feature of Ruby is its mark-and-sweep garbage collection which allows programmers the ability to code without having to worry about the need to maintain reference counts in extension libraries. Also, if an operating system allows for it, Ruby can dynamically load extension libraries. Ruby currently ranks as the 9th most popular programming language in the world. There are many online guides where Ruby programmers to-be can learn how to program in Ruby.

Ruby on Rails, often simply called Rails, is an open source web application framework that was designed for Ruby by David Heinemeier Hansson and was released in July 2004. Ruby on Rails makes use of an object relational mapping layer known as the ActiveRecord. Because of this, programmers do not have to specify database column names in class definitions. Rails will retrieve this information on its own from the database based on the class name. Rails also has a testing framework built in which allows programmers to write test cases which helps them create more reliable, robust code.

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You may think the console isn’t a good place for RSS feeds, but it is. Using Snownews is fast, reliable, easy to use, and has a tiny footprint.

You probably have already noticed that ghacks has a few RSS feeds of its own. We’ll use those feeds to illustrate how to use Snownews. But first we must install Snownews. Fortunately this is a simple task. You can install from either your Add/Remove utility (do a search for snownews, select the results, and click apply) or you can install from the command line like so:

sudo apt-get install snownews

or

yum install snownews

Once installed just issue the command snownews from the prompt and you will see what looks like an empty window with the version number of Snownews near the top. Naturally Snownews won’t do you any good until you add a feed. Let’s see how this is done.

Adding a feed

In the main window, if you hit the “h” key (no quotes) you will get the Help window. This window will give you all of the keys you need to do your work. Here are the most important:

• a – Add a feed.
• D – Delete a feed.
• c – Rename a feed.
• R – Reload all feeds.
• r – Reload selected feed.
• m – Mark all feeds read.
• B – Change defalt browser.

Figure 1

There are more keys, but those are really the most important keys you wil need to know. So from the main window press the “a” key to add a feed. What you will see is a bar going across the screen. All you need to do is type (or paste) the feed URL into this space and hit enter. Figure 1 shows where the feed URL is entered. As you can see the ghacks Linux feed is being entered.

Once you enter the feed URL hit enter and the feed will be added. What Snownews has to do is download the feed to the cache.

Once the feed is added you will see the feed listed in the main window. To see the stories listed select the feed and hit enter.

Reading stories from a feed

Figure 2

From within the story reader window you will see the entire listing of stories from the feed your are viewing. To view a particular story use the up or down arrows to move to the story and then hit the Enter key. The story summary will be displayed in the same window.

In order to read the entire story you have to have a browser configured for Snownews. I tend to like to contain Snownews within the terminal window, so I will use Lynx. To configure Lynx as the browser go back to the main window (press “q”) and press “B”. In the browser configuration window you simply need to enter “lynx %s” (no quotes) to set Snownews up to use Lynx as your browser.

Now to read a full story do the following:

Go back to the story listing in the feed

Select a story and hit Enter.

In the story window hit “o” (no quotes).

The story will now open in the Lynx browser. To exit the browser hit “q” (no quotes) and you will return to Snownews.

Final thoughts

Snownews is an outstanding alternative RSS reader for anyone who prefers to do things from the console window. Give it a try and you will find it to be as easy as any of the GUI alternatives.

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Modbook has been treating Apple users to tablet PC’s for ages (mainly because of Apple’s lack of plans to bring a tablet Mac to the market), but to be honest there has been no real players in the tablet Windows field. Most tablet computers have some type of keyboard attached and that makes them kind of bulky. The idea of having a tablet PC for use on the go is an amazing idea that Archos is just beginning to catch onto.

All the former models of the Archos line have been Linux powered and carried little to none productivity capabilities. That will all change when the Archos 9 Tablet goes on sale later this year in the UK (a US date is yet to be decided). A tablet like this would fit very nice into a carry on bag or handbag and could easily be used to check up on emails, weather, stocks as well as providing the whole entertainment pack while waiting for the bus, train, plane or any other situation where a keybaord is not practical and a cellphone is just too simple.

That said, the Archos 9 tablet features an 8.9-inch 1024×600 pixel resistive touchscreen display. While there have been rumors of multi touch support, that has not been confirmed by Archos as of yet and frankly from what I know, it seems pretty unlikely. The device is only 16mm inches thick and carries a host of features such as Bluetooth, 1GB of RAM, 802.11b/g WiFi, an 800MHz or 1.2GHz Atom Z515 processor as well as a SIM card slot for WLAN. Hard drive space is either an 80GB HDD or 160GB model. So far no word on an SSD option but as we all know that would be an arm and a leg.

So far from demos and FAQ’s the system seems pretty capable to run a stripped down version of Windows 7, but it would be a lot nicer if we could get a Core 2 Duo option. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to be able to play WoW on the go or test out Photoshop while miles in the sky. Secondly we’re hearing that it will be fitted with the integrated graphics thingy from Intel. There is no need to go over the fact that NVIDIA’s Ion platform would have been a much better choice.

According to Archos the device can be navigated pretty well VIA the touch of a finger but for some tasks the included stylus would be a better choice. For this reason I doubt it carries multi-touch.
Recently Archos released the pricing for the system. For the 80GB version it will run you £449.99 which is the equivalent of $735 USD. The doubled hard drive space (160GB) will run up the cost to £499.99 or the equivalent of $816 USD. The launch date is set for September. That’s nice and all but this comes in direct conflict with the October 22nd launch of Windows 7. So unless Archos is cutting a special deal with Redmond, or that date is for pre-orders, we think someone at Archos French HQ has their facts wrong or it’s a typo.

In any case, the idea of a full tablet PC without a keyboard that carries the processing power of a netbook is a nice one indeed. My only concern is if the price tag will be the biggest hurdle the Archos 9 has to jump.

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New Folder Wizard is a portable software program for the Windows operating system. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0, runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the operating system and can be downloaded directly from the developer’s homepage. The software itself comes with a set of interesting features to aid the user in the folder creation process.

The configuration of the software is handled in the main interface. The user needs to select a target folder which becomes the root folder for the folders that are created. It is furthermore possible to add folder prefixes and suffixes, starting and ending numbers and steps for those numbers.

Another option is to load a text file containing names into the program to create folders based on these names. The process can be previewed so that the user knows how the folders will be named. The generated folder names can be copied to the clipboard for external processing.

New Folder Wizard is an interesting lightweight application for the Windows operating system.

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OLK Finder is a software program that has been designed to provide a more comfortable solution. The application will automatically scan for the temporary Outlook folder and list all attachments that have been stored in that folder in its interface.

The portable application can be started from any location. The Microsoft Outlook version has to be selected at the top so that the contents are displayed. Available are all Outlook versions from Outlook 97 to Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007. Outlook Finder tries to find the location of the temporary Outlook attachments automatically after selecting the Outlook version. All attachments that have been found are displayed in the lower part of the program’s interface.

It is then possible to select some or all of the files that are listed in the interface. A double-click will launch the selected file immediately. A right-click will display the usual Windows Explorer context menu with options to copy or send the selected files.

Outlook Finder is ideal if you want to restore Microsoft Outlook mail attachments that you have received recently. Users who regularly clear the Internet cache might not be able to use the program to its fullest extent though which means that their only solution are file recovery programs.

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Well, there is actually another option that is provided by the Lazarus Form Data Recovery extension for the Firefox web browser. Lazarus saves form data as soon as it is entered by the user in its SQLite database (lazarus.sqlite in the profile folder). This makes it possible to recover the form data when vising the page the form was on again.

There are obviously some privacy concerns which are handled excellently by the software program. It is for one possible to set a period (minute, hour, day, week) in which the form data is stored. Once the time is up the form data gets erased. Another security measure is that it is possible to create a password that has to be supplied once per browsing session before form data can be restored. The form data in the database is encrypted to prevent that users with local computer access can reveal the form information there directly.

The form data recovery add-on works by right-clicking the form on the Internet website. The user can then select the Recover Text or Recover Form entry to restore the text in that form.

Lazarus works nicely in the background and can be a real life safer for users who regularly post lots of text.

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But no matter what type of user you are, you will appreciate the plugins available for the client. There are plenty to choose from and, unlike the many extensions/addons for Thunderbird, all of them are useful. In this article I will introduce you to a few of the plugins that are must-haves for any type of user.

Make sure you have them

During the installation of Claws Mail you should have noticed the various plugin packages available. If you didn’t install them initially, go back and do so now. It’s simple: Open up your Add/Remove Software utility, do a search for “claws” (no quotes), find the plugin entries available. You will notice all of the plugins available will have the string “plugin” (again, no quotes) listed in their name. Install any/all plugins you feel you might need.

Now, on to the plugins I feel are must haves.

GtkHtml2 HTML Viewer

Figure 1

One aspect of Claws Mail that you will notice quickly is its inability to write HTML mail. This was done on purpose as the dev team felt like HTML mail was not a good thing (I tend to agree). But I do get a lot of HTML mail (mostly from companies that only send HTML mail) and need to be able to read them. In order to do this I load this plugin.

Not all HTML emails will be rendered. But when one does render you will see it appear as you do in Figure 1. You also have to tell Claws Mail to load the images found in the email. When it does get the images, the emails render perfectly. You can configure GtkHtml2 from within the Preferences window.

Notification

Figure 2

This plugin allows you to select a method for Claws Mail to inform you that email has arrived. I set my email client up to check mail automatically, so having a notification is nice. To configure the notification go to the Preferences window under Notification. There are five different types of notifications:

• Banner: A scrolling banner you can configure to tell you what new mail comes in.
• Popup: A small popup that appears when new mail arrives (see Figure 2).
• Command: Create your own method of notification (such as play a sound with the play command).
• LDC: Enable display of message on external LCD monitor – will need an LCD server running.
• SysTrayIcon: Enable a small system tray icon that will display a message.

Mail archiver

Figure 3

I don’t know about you but I get a lot of mail. And much of that mail is work related. Because that mail is critical I have to keep copies for a long time. But I don’t necessarily want those folders to accumulate thousands upon thousands of emails. For this I use the Mail archiver plugin. This plugin will allow you to save a compressed archive of any folder on your Claws Mail client. To create an archive go to the Tools menu and select Create Archive. When the new window pops up (see Figure 3) enter the information you need and click OK. The archive will appear in the folder you’ve chosen. You’re all backed up.

Final thoughts

There are plenty of other plugins to play with for Claws Mail. The three plugins listed above will help extend Claws Mail beyond its default capabilities and make it an even more user-friendly, powerful experience.

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A registration is required which requires entering a name and valid email address. A verification email is send to the mail account. That link leads to a website containing the download link of East-Tec Backup 2009 and the registration code to register the software program.

The backup software program offers four modules in the main interface: Backup, Restore, Tasks and Sync.

New backup jobs are created in this module. One of the interesting – and user friendly – features of East-Tec Backup 2009 are presets that are available. Presets can be used to backup specific, and usually important, files and data. It is for example possible to backup the mail accounts (recognized the email clients Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook and Opera on the test system), Registry keys or user settings from programs such as Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Winamp, Windows Media Player, various web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera but not Google Chrome), Putty and dozens more. It is of course also possible to select files or folders from the computer system.

The data can be backed up to local folders, external hard drives, local area network folders, removable disks, CD, DVD or remote locations using the ftp protocol. The usual set of options are available to use compression and encryption to ensure data safety and integrity. Several backup types can be selected ranging from incremental backups over differential backups to stack backups. Backups can be scheduled and warnings configured.

It is furthermore possible to run programs before and after the task starts and to verify the backup after it has been completed. Another great option is to place backup jobs into groups which can be executed sequentially then.

Backups that have been created can be restored completely. It is also possible to only restore specific files or folders which is obviously great if you only need access to some files or folders of the entire backup.

The Sync option makes it possible to synchronize files and folders between two computers or devices like a local computer and server, desktop computer and laptop or a local computer and a network location.

The interface of the backup software is user friendly, tasks are easy to create. Users who are currently looking for a backup software should take a closer look and download East-Tec Backup 2009 for a test run. It might be exactly what they are looking for.

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The photo maps that are created with the software program can then be published on the web or stored locally. 93 Photo Street is a Java application that is available for Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Users need to import both maps and photos into the software to create the photo maps. Included in the photo software are US road maps which makes it easier for users from the United States (or those that visited the country) to create photo maps.

The photo map creation process is pretty straightforward. It begins with the import of a map and photos. The map is instantly displayed in the application. Pins can be dragged onto the map which represent locations of importance to the user. Photos can then be added to these locations on the map along with a short description (name) for the location.

93 Photo Street supports posting the finished photo map to Typepad or Moveable Type web blogs or to create a generic file using web templates.

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Download Helper for example will automatically identify videos that are played on websites offering the user a download link of that video. Most of the solutions that have been created require at least some manual interaction with the program.

Not so with WebVideoCap. The portable video capture software has been created by Nirsoft, one of our all-time favorite software developers. The software will automatically save videos that are played on websites to a folder on the local computer system. All the user needs to do to start the capturing is to click on the Start Capture button in the application’s interface.

A few parameters and options are available; It is for example possible to select the network adapter, save folder, scan method (between raw sockets and WinPCap) or file types that should be saved automatically. WebVideoCap supports the following web video stream formats:

• Flash video files (with .flv extension)
• Microsoft Windows media files (with .wmv extension)
• RTSP streams. (RTSP protocol is used by many news and live TV/radio Web sites)
• MMS streams. (MMS protocol is used by many news and live TV/radio Web sites)

All videos that match the supported video stream formats are saved automatically once the capturing process has been started. This can be very helpful for users who regularly download videos from video portals. One slight problem was encountered during tests. If the videos contain an age verification (like the 18+ video games over at Gametrailers) then they cannot be saved as the capturing process is interrupted by this). Videos that do not contain this interference are saved without problems.

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Trout can be downloaded as a portable version or installer. It supports a wide variety of audio formats including mp3, ogg, wma, flac and others. Music can be loaded by dragging and dropping files or folders into the interface or by using the menu toolbar at the top. All audio files that have been loaded into the player are displayed in the playlist area in the lower half. This area contains not only information about the names of the songs but also information about bitrates, sizes, artist and album tags and more.

Songs can be sorted by clicking on one of the columns. It is for example possible to sort by album, artist, playing time or filename. Trout offers a set of features that many expect from today’s music players. This includes support for Internet radio streams, freeDB support for audio CDs, compatibility with most tag formats and tag editing, hotkeys, lyrics, album covers or various play modes. Track announcements are another interesting feature that are great when listening to audiobooks.

The minimized music player needs less than 3 Megabytes of computer memory while playing and therefor ideal for low end computer systems. The free music player Trout is compatible with all Microsoft operating systems from Windows 9x on including Windows XP and Windows Vista. It can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website.

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Claws Mail is based on GTK+ so it will install on nearly any Linux machine running X Windows. It features:

• Multiple Accounts
• Threaded Display
• Filtering
• IPv6 support
• Mbox import/export
• Clickable URLS
• Addressbook
• Granular configuration
• Pre and Post processing filters
• Redirecting
• SSL Certificate Manager
• Address Harvesting via folder or messages

And much more.

Getting and installing

If you open up your Add/Remove Software utility and do a search for “claws” (no quotes) you will find numerous listings. Many of these listings will include a vast array of plugins available. The minimum you want to install is:

• claws-mail
• claws-mail-extra-plugins
• claws-mail-plugins

jWhat the “extra-plugins” will do is install a number of the basic plugins for you. Outside of that you will want to go through the list of all the possible candidate to see what you will need. I also installed:

• claws-themes
• claws-mail-pgpinline

Your needs may dictate other installations. There are thirty-three possible packages to install.

Once you have made your choices click Apply to finish up the installation. Once installed you will find the Claws Mail menu entry in the Internet menu of your Main menu.

First Run

When you first open up Claws Mail you will have to walk through a very straight-forward wizard to set up your account. Once you are finished with the account set up you are ready to rock.

The user interface

Figure 1

As you can see (in Figure 1) the interface will be familiar to anyone that has used any email client of any nature.

One of the first things that might be of issue (at least it was for me) is the date. Notice that the form of the date is YY/MM/DD. If you want to edit the date format you have to open up the Preferences window by click the Configuration menu in the main window. Once inside that window click the Summary sub-section of the Display section. Scroll all the way down until you see the Date Format text area. The default is set up as:

%y/%m/%d(%a) %H:%M

You can arrange this any way you like. My preference is:

%m/%d(%a)/%y %H:%M

NOTE: The (%a) displays the day of the week.

Importing mail box

I had 100% success at importing my Thunderbird Inbox with Claws. To do this click on the File menu and select “Import mbox file”.  A small window will open up where you need to locate your Mbox file and a Destination folder. For a Thunderbird Inbox file you will need to then navigate to:

~/.mozilla-thunderbird/XXX.default/Mail/Local Folders/

and select Inbox (or whatever folder you need to import).

Where XXX is a random string of characters created upon installation of Thunderbird.

In Figure 1 you will see some 8,000 imported emails. It worked perfectly.

Harvesting addresses

Figure 2

This is one of my favorite features of Claws Mail. When I have had to move from installation to installation, one of the things I tend to forget it to export my address book. This isn’t a problem with Claws Mail. With all of the email imported into Claws Mail I can then just harvest all of the addresses I need from within a folder. To do this I allow email to collect in my Inbox and then click on the Tools menu and select the Harvest submenu and then the “From Folder” entry. A small window will open (see Figure 2) where you give your address book a name, a size, and tell the harvester which header field to harvest from. Once you do that click OK and the harvesting will begin.

From within my 8,000+ emails the Harvester grabed over 1,400 addresses. The only problem is the Harvester isn’t terribly intelligent as to how to label these addresses. So most likely you will have to go back through and edit each address.

Final thoughts

You can go through all of the features, one by one, of Claws Mail and spend all day tweaking and tinkering. As I said, Claws Mail will make the power user feel right at home. But don’t think this client is only for the elite user…Claws Mail can be used by anyone. It’s easy, it’s powerful, it’s reliable, and it’s all about Linux. Give Claws Mail a try…you most likely won’t turn back.

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The so called MUI Cache is a special cache that contains information about recently launched computer software programs in Windows. The cache does contain application names and paths which can be problematic for several reasons. A system administrator or user with sufficient rights could find out that a user launched applications from removable media. It could also mean that the contents of a hidden or encrypted partition become visible because of this.

Mui Cache View is a Nirsoft application that displays the cache in the usual Nirsoft environment. The portable software program is compatible with several different Microsoft operating systems including Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista. It is likely that the program will also work under Windows 7.

It basically creates a list of all applications that are located in the MUI Cache with editing and deleting options. It is possible to edit or delete entries so that they appear in different form or not at all in the cache. Users who want to analyze the programs in detail find export options to do so.

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