Re: Information Overload

EMAIL PROBLEMS: I tried the "dump it all and the important ones will get through" approach a while back. In my case, it didn't work at all. Everyday I get new mail from people writing with ideas, feedback and opportunities that they want to run past me -- and no, I am not talking about Solassi Mokumbah (the son of the former warlord of Lower Solumbakhtuu who needs help moving money from their account to a safer haven in the United States).

My ron@creativecow.net account is now over 8 years old and every spammer on the planet has it and passes it around. I tried a new address but I have hundreds of key contacts that I do business with regularly and many were slow to adopt the new address and many more just ignored and didn't update their address books.

I even had to resort to calling many of them and soon figured out that any time I'd save with the new address would be lost if I had to keep calling people to explain "I really AM changing my email address, please use the new one."

OUR SOLUTION: One of the ways that we fought back was by augmenting our all-Linux server backbone with an Apple Xserve server running Leopard OS and acting as our mail server. When we looked into a Barracuda spam firewall, it was about $17,000 at the time, plus a monthly subscription fee for their updates that they send. But the Apple server cost us the base price of the coupla grand or so for the server and OS and Apple handles the filtering. No monthly subscriptions, it is just built into the OS and new rules and exceptions come out with the updates.

How well does it work? Far from perfect but we went from thousands of spam mails a day to a manageable less-than-a-hundred a day by making the move.

Would I use an Apple server for anything else in a major traffic site like the COW? Well, let's be nice and say it this way: There ain't no way in hell, baby. No way. Nada. Never. Nine. Gimme Linux any day of the week.

But when it comes to handling email in a company setting, throw a Mac server into the mix. Let Apple handle the filtering and just forget the problem.

That was our solution.

...oh, and Abraham the Boy Wonder™.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint Exupéry