PhishTank is a collaborative clearing house for data and information about phishing on the Internet. Also, PhishTank provides an open API for developers and researchers to integrate anti-phishing data into their applications at no charge.

What will be very interesting to see will be how the community grows and how their API is utilized. A wordpress plugin anyone?

So come on everyone, “Shop a Phisher!“

One use may be having the ‘European Sales Invoices’ for last 30 days as one saved search. At any one time they are instantly available yet keeping the mail in the same place. Further examples of saved searches could be introducing a ‘flagged’, ‘important’ or, the one I find most valuable, ‘unread’ mail folder into Thunderbird. The micro management of these saved searches is down to you, though the customization is limitless. Fortunately creating saved searches is straightforward and can be completed in a number of ways:

First up, when you perform a search from the quick search box in Thunderbird, click on the down arrow to show the drop down list and select ‘Save Search as Folder’ (1).

When you perform a detailed search with more conditions select ‘Edit’ -> ‘Find’ -> ‘Search Messages…’. Customise the search and click ‘Save as Search Folder’ (2). Alternatively, a quicker variation the above is to select ‘File’ -> ‘New’ -> ‘Saved Search….’

Lastly from the view menu above the message contents, select ‘Save View as Folder’.

Russell was probably the first blog that i started reading and for the last two years have enjoyed ‘hearing’ his thoughts and opinions on the cutting edge of mobile design, ui and technologies (and Yahoo!). While I am sad to see him go I really do want to say thanks for all the effort he put in making it among the first headlines I’d Rojo and even making it to my netvibes homepage (gasp!).

Good luck Russell.

Pike’s Mozilla Firefox extensions offers an excellent SessionSaver though and is available to download here. Fully compatible with 1.5, Session Saver supports crash and multiple windows and I have got to say I don’t know how I ever lived without it!

According to Mozillazine here is a full list of the supported features;

• Remembers all open windows:
• Remembers window-chrome settings (toolbars, etc.)
• Remembers window position / size
• Remembers every tab’s scroll-state
• Remembers every tab’s history scroll-states (in dev.)
• Stores only 1 pref-string per window
• Writes prefs to disk for every tab/window open + close
• Captures complete session-state on shutdown-request
• Writes flag on shutdown-request /
• Crash-recovers prior session if flag wasn’t written

So while there is now a period of at least three months to get what minor fixes implemented in new sites and whatever new fixes will be required there is an issue with running IE6 and IE7 on the same machine. IE7’s beta installs over IE6 which will be fine for the everyday user but for those who want to try it out first or developers who need to test on both browsers the official line has been to run Virtual Machine for this beta browser.

Well short of Microsoft releasing a stand alone IE7, which isn’t gonna happen, the alternative appears to be a simple batch file that Jon Galloway has written. By extracting the IE7 install exe (which is just an self extracting archive) into a directory and creating a batch file the program starts up and functions fully it would seem, without effecting the IE6 installation in anyway. The two programs even seem to function side by side without causing problems.

This does make temporary alterations to the registry though so I would advise backing up before running for the first time in case something goes wrong.

As a way to distribute large files though the system is excellent, sharing the load between users in a peer to peer system allows increased reach of your files for comparatively very little increase in cost to the original distributor. Contrary to the traditional client server model of downloading files from a single server to multiple users, the more people who use the BitTorrent system increases efficiency (speed) of the service and decreases the overall cost per user.

The system works by a peer to peer method, though crucially different to most normal peer to peer protocols where you download whole files from a single user. BitTorrent allows each user or peer to download from each other, different bits of the same file. Enabling the parts of the file you have downloaded to be uploaded adds value to the whole system and utilises the bandwidth available more efficiently.

Make the most of your bandwidth and follow these 5 golden rules.

1.      Never cap your uploads. Most people on ADSL or cable have higher download than upload bandwidth available to them anyway. By limiting you upload you are simply throttling the overall BitTorrent system and also limiting the download speed you receive. Which leads onto no. 2

UPDATE: Capping your uploads would appear to be a good idea. Leaving space to negotiate the downloads would seem to be crucial to BitTorrent so an 80% cap would be sensible. Remeber that setting your cap too low will degrade the download rates you will get though. Thanks to the comment below for raising this point.

2.      Ratios, ratios, ratios – Once you have finished downloading don’t stop seeding till you have uploaded more than 100% of the file. If nobody finished uploading their files you would never be able to complete a download and the system would cease to be a success.

3.      Limit your concurrent downloads, don’t try to download too many torrents at once. Not only does it limit the download speed of your file it also limits each upload further degrading the system for everyone.

4.      Configure your client based on the bandwidth you have. Set up BitTorrent sensibly, considering your upload speeds. Allowing at least 5kbs per torrent but ideally 10 will maximise the results you get. For example, if you have a 128/256kbs upload, limit your download to 1 torrent and your uploads per torrent to a maximum of 3.

5.      Finally make sure you configure your Firewall and router correctly. This will greatly effect the efficiency of the uploads and downloads your BitTorrent client gets. Check out this site for correctly forwarding your ports.

The only negative to this system is the way the system works. Having to press a browser button before posting you comments is not outrageous in itself, the bigger issue is forgetting to use the button. Enter the Firefox greasemonkey script originally written very simply by Brian Benzinger it has now been improved upon by Johan Sundström by automatically checking once a day for supported platform updates. For blogs that have not been fully integrated this eliminates the need for the browser button.

Pick it up here. (Greasemonkey and Firefox is also required)

Update: The Userscript site appears to be down at the moment but hopefully be back up soon.

I have now have seven email accounts operating from Thunderbird – the excellent, free email client from Mozilla. As you can imagine sometimes recalling what email was from a particular account can become quite tiresome. As good as Thunderbird is as a client, the search facility is ancient and the indexing of Google’s Desktop Search offers exactly what I want (privacy issues aside), instantly . I am not a fan of the sidebar that comes with the Google desktop, it reminds me too much of the Office sidebar they inflicted on us a few years ago, and floating deskbar just gets in the way. While the deskbar is more possibility it is still intrusive, what I really need is an extension to integrate my Google desktop search directly into Thunderbird. There is implementations of this available for Outlook and even Outlook Express but an extension could be done so much better and seamlessly integrate into this great app at the same time. Is there anything out there?

This strikes me as absolutely ludicrous and it would seem Dell have completely lost sight of the meaning of unfair competition. Surely, I am not alone in hoping this case gets thrown out of court at a great cost to Dell?