0. Technical Updates: 1. New wireless deals: 2. Referral Contest Winners: 3. New TV Commercial: 4. Surge Protection 5. Speed tip for IE users: -- 0. Technical Updates: The Midcoast.com email server system has experienced some wonderful upgrades in the past few weeks. Quick Summary: All @midcoast.com addresses now have virus protected email and better spam detection. Detailed Summary: We protect your @midcoast.com email from more than 21,000 viruses. This virus scanning is done on every email just before it hits your inbox. The antivirus definitions are updated several times per day for protection against fast new viruses. This is not a substitute for having antivirus software on your computer. There are many ways viruses spread, email being only one. We do this to help keep your inbox safe and clean. In the past few weeks you may have seen a decrease in spam in your inbox. If you haven't, you probably need to either filter out your PJM messages or ask us do that for you on our server. The reason for the increased detection ability is that we have added network tests. Prior to network tests, the primary method for determining if a messages was spam was to look for content in the message or problems in the message headers that are spam-like. Recent virus-borne spam and tricky spammers reduced the content in their spam so spam detection was more difficult. We added network tests. We receive lists several times per day from several organizations that track what IP numbers and computers propogate or generate spam, either from virus infections, or security problems. If a network test determines if a message is coming from a host listed on these lists, it increases the score and may tip the message over the SpamAssassin spam threshold. We score based on network checks from six different carefully chosen lists. There are hundreds of lists available, but we choose only the most reliable, most up to date, and most reputable lists for our antispam network tests. Each of these lists are updated and transferred to MIS several times per day to help catch new spam sources and remove sources that have had their exploited computers repaired. We also outright block email transactions (instead of score higher) from hosts appearing on one particular list. It is the xbl.spamhaus.org list. The XBL list is a database of illegal 3rd party exploits. This accounts for a great deal of spam, viruses, and worms. We have not observed this to falsely block legit email. It is just a database keeping track of exploited infected computers on the internet. http://www.spamhaus.org/xbl/ is the website of the XBL list maintainer. In contrast to MIS using one carefully selected list for blocking, some ISPs use a large variety of lists to outright block incoming email. This causes many falsely blocked legit emails. It can also cause real problems if poorly selected lists get out of date or cease to exist. We think email is immensely important and that is why we prefer to score and tag junkmail rather than block it. In the past 6 months, we have gone from one server computer for midcoast.com email to seven! We have a rack in our datacenter building filled with computing equipment just for midcoast.com email processing! We will probably need to add more machines as time goes on. We put a great deal of work and expense into reliable email systems for our customers that accurately detect spam and viruses without blocking legitimate email. I've put a photo here of our email processing servers: http://www.midcoast.com/mis/mailcluster.jpg Competitors' email systems will either block a bigger percentage of legit email, not give you tools to adjust sensitivity or whitelist people, or not detect junkmail as accurately. It's a serious job requiring constant change, innovation, and plenty of computing power. If you have any questions about what we are doing to help stop spam, please call one of our offices or write to help@midcoast.com. 1. New wireless deals: We're running a Spring special on wireless equipment. Take a one year contract, and you can get a wireless radio, antenna, and router/firewall for $295! And that includes the installation too! And a $50 wireless account now includes connectivitiy for up to four computers. (Previously, adding computers was an extra $8/month. Now, you don't pay the $8 extra until you hit computer #5) Supplies are limited, so call soon! 2. Referral Contest Winners: Congratulations to Todd Vincentsen, who won our referral contest for March. Todd won a box of lighthouse cards from Gene at Maine Lighthouse Cards (http://mainelighthousecards.com/). This month, we're giving away a $20 gift certificate to Second Read Books and Coffee. Use the gift certificate for whatever you like. (We like the Morning Call blend and Darkstar.) 3. New TV Commercial: For those of you with cable tv in the Rockland, Thomaston, Camden, Boothbay, Newcastle, Damariscotta, Wiscasset, and Bath/Brunswick areas: Keep your eyes open for the new MIS Internet Accelerator TV commercial. In typical MIS fashion, it was filmed with a lot of humor. Other very hi-tech commercial (a Minority Report styled spin-off) is also in the making. We hope you like them as much as the MIS Basketball ad! 4. Surge Protection: Every year around spring and on through the summer our Tech Support Department is flooded with calls regarding modem problems due to lightning strikes and surges. You should be protecting your computers from these electrical surges coming into the computer via the power cord by using a surge protector. Many surge protectors do not protect the phone line running into your computer, though. We recommend that you have the phone line protected as well as your computers power cord(s). This device when installed between your modem and telephone wall jack will stop any unwanted current from reaching your modem. If the current is too great it will ultimately sacrifice itself to protect your equipment from damage. Modems are very sensitive to surges. A small surge that wouldn't affect your computer may be enough to toast your modem. And if you're using a $150 DSL modem, how much more you'd want to be sure your equipment is protected. These devices can be found for under $30.00 at most stores that carry computer supplies. You can buy other brands that may be cheaper, but there is a greater chance of modem phone line problem due to the quality of the hardware. We recommend APC (http://www.apcc.com/), Tripp Lite (http://www.tripplite.com/) and Panamax (http://www.panamax.com/). 5. Speed tip for (Windows XP) Internet Explorer users All web browsers cache, or store, data on your computer to make repeat visits to a page quicker. This is why a page loads quicker when you visit it via by going back to it. This is also why logos that are common to several webpages come up quickly as you visit those pages. After a while, and for various reasons, this cached information gets out of hand on your computer and can slow things down. Early versions of Internet Explorer were notorious for this, but things are getting better. Still, a manual cleaning of the cache can help speed things up. Double click on "My Computer". Right click on your "C:" Drive and click on Properties. Click on the "Disk Cleanup" button and wait patiently. After some time, a window will come up that lets you choose what you wish to delete. Make sure "Temporary Internet Files" is among those checked. Then click the OK button and confirm when requested. Your computer will then start to delete the accumulated files. If it had a large number of files to delete, you may notice a performance increase next time you use Internet Explorer. If you wish to use a different browser, try the new Mozilla 1.7B browser, Opera, or the new Firefox from Mozilla. These browsers are known for their speed. The different browser makers (Microsoft included) are often leapfrogging each other in the quest for time efficient browsing.