Well, I have searched high and low for a linux distro which you can use right out of the box without much meddling and can be easily configured with a web-based interface, but thus, without much success. I would like a Linux distro which comes with an MTA, Webserver, Webmail, Web-based interface, database, DNS, POP, anti-virus, anti-spam and other authentication tools properly installed with it and if I need to do or edit any changes, I just need to login to a web-based interface and do the changes without the complicated linux commands. Sort of an dedicated Linux Email/Web distro without the headache. Won’t this idea be great? I know there are dedicated Web server distros out there, but it seems that such a dedicated distro for emails are rare. Perhaps it is just not popular enough for it to be made into an standalone distro?

Here are some distros which has the above features.

1. Clarkconnect - Not exactly an standalone email server distro, more like a distro for an Internet gateway and server. It combines routing capabilities(just like your router), NAT, firewall, VPN, Proxy Server, Email, Groupware and Web Server into a powerful package. All you need to do is to install the distro (combined with the actual Operating System) and you do the rest of the configuration through a web-based interface. Even updates and additional software can be applied through this web-based interface. Their email service comes with anti-spam and anti-virus(ClamAV) features.

It has some very interesting anti-spam filtering and checking options available as well. It supports Blacklist/Whitelist filtering, OCR and Spam training (Bayesian).

They have a 10-mailbox community edition (boohooo) and if you are looking for groupware and/or more mailboxes, you will have to pay for it. They have the Office and the Enterprise edition for richer customers.

2. SME Server - From the looks of it, this is the same as Clarkconnect. It acts as a gateway and server application. So this should sit between you and your Internet access. Of course, you can remove the gateway portion of it and make it as your email/web server. Just like Clarkconnect, it provides routing, firewall, proxy, email, web, database, file sharing and DNS services. And yes, everything can be configured through the web-based interface as well.

However, it seems that the number of options and features available for SME Server seemed somewhat limited compared to Clarkconnect. And compared to Clarkconnect’s anti-spam system, this software doesn’t even come close. But then SME server doesn’t cost a single cent and you can have unlimited number of users. And this software being a open source one, you can find a lot of help and technical support from it’s community forums.

I have taken a brief look at these two nice distros. And both are very good software but somehow they are still not as user friendly as those made for Windows. And their features, especially the anti-spam system are also lacking in comparison. I hope one day to find such a Linux distro and it would be a great day for mankind.

I will now start a review on the email server software MDaemon by Alt-N Technologies. Pretty unique name for a software developer this one. I had known for a long time about this software, during the days when I started having broadband access (was about 2001 or so). Well, then I was using the err….”trial” version of MDaemon from my home to act as my email server. I think it was under another company called Deerfield or something (Editor: Got info from Alt-N that Deerfield was actually one of the resellers, not the developer). All you need back then was a Dynamic IP client (yes, it was dynamic), unlimited internet access and you can start your own email server. And it was pretty easy to setup, install the software on a Windows system, configure a domain name to point to your IP and add users and you are well on your way to become an email administrator.

Now, my company decided to setup their own in-house email server and I made use of my previous experience with MDaemon to do it. It has been years since I had used this piece of software but I was still very impressed with it. MDaemon Pro allows you to have multiple domains (or virtual domains) and it is licensed per user. For 50 users, the pro version cost US$760. You still need to pay for anti-virus and anti-spam and that’s per user too. Again for 50 users, it is US$330 yearly. And yes, it is not cheap. Especially when you compare to some Linux email solutions. For installation, it’s the same thing, just install the actual software and the Security Plus (anti-virus and anti-spam addon) on your windows system (Win2k/WinXP/Win2003).

The first thing you would realize after you have installed the software is that it has a lot of features! I mean really a lot. I have tried other email solutions (mainly Linux ones) and these email solutions do not have so many features and options for you to configure. Well, it can be confusing at first glance, but after a while, it gets easier. Anyway, if you understand how an email server works, the administrator interface is pretty well organized. Okay, the next step is to point your MX records to your server and start to add users. If you have more than 1 domain, you can configure it as well. Actually, if you are looking for a basic system, that’s all you need to do. Just make sure the FQDN for your server is correctly setup.

But of course, this review will not stop here. We have a lot of features to go through. Some of which are very useful to email administrators. The software allow bandwidth throttling (which allows you to control which service to throttle), event timers (how long a connection have to wait before giving up), archival (which creates a copy of incoming and outgoing mails from the server for your paranoid boss), forced signature (leaves a signature at the bottom of every message like saying everything is not to be blamed on the company) and so on. You really have to use this program in order to see how powerful it can be. It even allows you to have “attachment linking“, which sort of removes any attachment and replace it with an URL for your receiver to download. This can save big on bandwidth, disk space and server resource.

If you are into micro administrating, you are also in for a treat. You can assign administrators (Global or Domain) privilege to the email users. A global email administrator can control the email server and it can be configured through a web-based interface. A domain administrator can configure only users in his/her domain. This gives you the flexibility of dividing control to different “administrators”, each only to their own domain.

If you are worried about security, you will be pleased with what this software can offer you. MDaemon allows you to do content filtering (like which file attachment to reject), DNS Blacklists (for blocking spammers), Reverse Lookups (to check whether an IP address sending the mail has a domain name registered to it), SMTP authentication, POP before SMTP, SPF, DomainKeys and comes with a powerful spam filter. This powerful spam filter can be configured to use a scoring system and a variety of spam fighting techniques like Bayesian Classification.

I have run my company’s email server for about 1 month now and I didn’t find any major problem. Although the domain name is pretty new (about 6 months), it seem to have fewer spam and viruses (in fact no virus email went through) than before. I don’t have any complains about sending and receiving mails from users either. This is surely a good sign and if all goes smoothly, maybe I can get promoted to like a Director or something cool sounding and have my own parking space.

Yes, I was impressed before, I am even more impressed now. It’s true that it is expensive but if you are keen on running your own server, but think that it is not wise to spend a lot of money hiring an experienced Linux administrator purely for administrating your email server, MDaemon running on Windows system is the best solution. It’s simple to install, simple to configure and troubleshoot. I mean, anyone with some knowledge of Windows and a little on Internet and setting up servers will not have any problem with this software. I would recommend this software to small and medium businesses. But I think if you are a big company, with a hell lot of users, using Linux email servers which probably be more worth while in the long run. Not that MDaemon cannot handle the load (I think it should be able to), but the users licensing cost will be too great (plus the yearly cost of Security Plus) and it would be better to just hire an experienced linux administrator to maintain your linux server (which software can be virtually free, that includes ClamAV as well).

I am now hoping for a Linux version of MDaemon. It would be real cool to have such features embedded in a Linux email server, making all the other Linux email administrators jealous! Surely such a email server will encourage other developers to incorporate such features in their own releases too. Let’s all keep our fingers and emails cross.

And no, Alt-N did not pay me money to do this little review. My crap blog and I, we are too unimportant. If you are learning to setup an email server, please take a look at my article on setting up of an email server.

If you are using Linksys WRT54G v1-v4, WRT54GS v1-v4, WRT54GL v1.x, WRTSL54GS (no USB support), Buffalo WHR-G54S, WHR-HP-G54, WZR-G54, WBR2-G54 or Asus WL500G Premium (no USB support) as your router, I would like to introduce you a great firmware - Tomato. It is an solid replacement for the default firmware that comes with your router.

I guess the biggest advantage is that it is lightweight and small in size. That’s important in a consumer router because of the limited RAM inside the router. If the firmware takes less RAM, there are more resources left to do all the other work and function of the router. This little firmware also improves on the features of your router by adding the ability to increase the limits on the number of maximum connections and wireless features like WDS and wireless client modes. It also has a very user-friendly interface which even a beginner can easily configure their router.

I have been using this firmware for about 3 months now and it works great. I am using some P2P software to download, err…Linux Distros which can go up to several gigs and never once did it hang or require reboot. And I have been downloading mightily heavily for continuous periods of time. I must say, I am very impressed with the firmware. Of course, if you need more advanced features (for most users, they don’t need such features), you will have to look at other firmwares, but if you are just looking for a stable, lightweight but powerful firmware, you should really take a good look at Tomato.

If you want to learn more about Tomato’s features, try this Tomato wiki page.

This software used to be my favorite media player years ago. And no, it’s not BullShit! It had all the features you need to play your avi files, mp3 files and other types of media files and more. And it is reasonably fast as well. And compared to the sub-par Microsoft Media Player, it was like superb. And from my experience, no other player even come close to it. Sure, Winamp was great for playing audio files, but it still lose to BS Player when playing video files.

But that was years ago. Now with so much competition, it has lost out a lot. I personally feel that BS Player is now a bit of bloatware and it’s kind of slow when playing video files when compared to other software. If you take Media Player Classic to compare, the speed difference is very apparent. Yes, it supports a boatload of media formats, but so does other media players out there. And with Microsoft’s Media Player maturing with a huge amount of features, BS Player has not kept up with the competition at all. I mean, it’s just like Netscape. People tend to use the media player that comes with their Operating System if it suits them fine. They won’t think of changing to another software. Worse, BS Player comes with advertisements (aka Adware aka Spyware) now. If you don’t want the advertisements (served by SaveNow), you need to pay for the “Pro” version.

I am currently using Media Player Classic to play all my media files. It supports a variety of formats and even allows the use of “subtitles” too. And I don’t have any problem playing files using this lightweight software. It doesn’t come with adware either. So why should I use BS Player? The developers need to really improve more on their software first before I would consider using it.

Yes, it is true. Google has now taken control of the sun and they are directly tapping power from it. Although they had spun a tale about using Solar Panels to produce electricity from the sun, we all know the truth about it. It is not the solar panels that are creating electricity, it is energy directly beamed from the sun. They need the energy to power their brand new Google servers which basically are the same servers as before. Looks like they are just too powerful even for the almighty sun. You can even call Google The New Sun God.

From my inside information, they are now powering the Sun’s core with their own algorithms and this will result in less solar flares but will produce more Sunspots to confuse you. And instead of viewing advertisements on their web search results, you will view Google advertisements when you go outside. You can even do searches without a PC! Just look at the sun with Google’s special sunglasses and do your search. The results will be displayed clearly on the Sun’s surface plus irrelevant advertisements, unless there are clouds or something blocking. And with less solar flares, there will be less disruption to our communications and our satellites too. Thank the Sun God for that one.

And also from my inside informant, Google will now punish people who sell links by frying their servers with a concentrated beam of energy. This beam will most likely be from the sun. And there is no where to hide from that. So if I were you, I would not to sell links to others anymore. Make money by paddling porn is the most preferred method now.

Yes, what has happened to my KFC Chicken? I mean, has it strunk or what? And if it has shrunk, what did they do to the rest of the parts? Wait a minute, I don’t want to know. Seriously, I don’t want to know. Another complain I have is the KFC Chicken’s favour seemed off and dry too. Perhaps they miss one and only added 99 secret spices or that Colonel guy decided to add some other “spices” in the mix for entertainment? It tastes funny and different. The new favours don’t seem to agree with me either. Their new Miso Crunch Chicken taste exactly like their Spicy Chicken, just a few flakes of seaweed added on top to cater to the Japan crazed Singapore youngsters and their weird hairdo.

I am not sure whether you Singapore guys have realized (or perhaps you were too young to realize) that the chicken pieces by KFC seemed to have shrunk. I mean the pieces are much smaller than before. I used to feel full after eating two pieces of KFC chicken, but now it just don’t cut it. I need more chicken to make me full. And worse, the prices of KFC Chicken has raisen considerably in the past few years. Have you even tried their Shrooms Burger? You can fit the entire burger in the palms of my nephew’s hand. That’s how big that 2 dollar burger is. Even their Fillet Burger is tiny. Very disappointing even for small eaters like me.

I really miss the old KFC. You know when they have real juicy chicken instead of the tough leather we are having now and every meal I had at KFC was an great experience. I remembered before, the food was served to you fresh and they provided you with plentiful of Ketchup (real Ketchup, not that crappy tasteless packet ones). Now, you wait in line and they throw a few pieces of rocks into a paper plate and call it Chicken. Perhaps it is because I am getting fussier (or old) or perhaps it is just that KFC has gone off the rails and now only provides purely “Fast Food”, period. Actually, in Singapore, eating is no longer an experience for most of us. Spolit for choice maybe? Well, that could be it, but I think the problem lies with big commericial entities taking over everything. Everything has become completely FOR PROFIT. If it makes money, nothing else matters. So you now know, this is what happened to my KFC Chicken.

I am here to introduce to you yet another authority site - Big Upload. Yes, from it’s name you will know that it’s an file storage site. What you do is upload your files to their site (and you can upload up to 500MB) and they will do the rest. You may also send an email to your recipient to inform them of your storage URL for them to access it. And you get to have it stored online for as long as you constantly access it. If you don’t, it will only stay for 30 days before it is deleted. So if it is a popular file, you won’t need to worry about it.

I guess it is good for people who need to send big files (which a lot of email servers will reject) to each other. Instead of sending files through email, all you have to do is upload the file(s), key in your recipient’s email address, write a few words and you are done. Your recipient will just need to click on the link provided and he will be able to download the files. This way, you won’t clog up your email server with big attachments and you don’t need to worry about file size limitations. It also gives your recipient the ability to choose whether to download the file or not, unlike through email since he has to download the mail first.

You can also use this service as a temporary file storage system. Let’s say you need to send a file from your home PC to Office PC, instead of using floppies or thumb drives, you just need to click on a link, and you will be able to access your files from your Office. It also gives you the flexibility of accessing your files anywhere you want. From overseas in an Internet Cafe, or your client’s computer or anywhere with an internet connection! And best of all, this service is free. You can also join their premium membership, which provides you with a bigger storage space and no time limit for your stored files.

But nowadays, this service has been abused very often. A lot of people have used this service to share illegal or copyrighted files like MP3, Videos and software. Although it seems that they do respond to reports of illegal files and take action, I am pretty sure that a lot still gets through. Hope that it won’t get shut down due to this.

I have decided to change my email service provider, yes, to another free email provider. Which would you guys recommend? Yahoo? Hotmail (Yucks)? Gmail? Or some other email provider? I have an Yahoo email account, but sometimes it becomes very slow for both mail delivery and sending, so I don’t think I will go for a Yahoo account. Hotmail? Na, no way. I have an hotmail account as well but I don’t think it is a good choice, especially when you get tons of spam. I think Gmail is probably the best because it provides me with both a webmail and a POP option. Big storage space, and the email attachment limit is 15MB and it seems to have a good spam filtering system.

But the bad thing about the Gmail account is the address, it is so popular that all the good addresses is taken and I am reduced to having an email account with my full name. And yes, that’s a very long name. That’s not practical especially if I have to give others my email address through the phone. And it’s prone to spelling mistakes as well. What do you guys think? Or should I just use my own domain’s email address?

Well, I had thought that my email service provider had solved all their “teething” problems, but I was wrong. The problems are starting all over again. It started like a few days ago, I couldn’t receive or send all mails from MyRealBox. And it is getting very irritating for me. So if any of you send me mails and I did not reply, please be patient for a while. Well, you can access their web mail, but POP mail is out. It gives an error saying that the server is not responding. If you are sending mails, then it says that there are too many connections. I find it weird that their POP is having problems but their webmail is working perfectly fine. Webmail should take up more resources than POP right? And sending mails from the webmail is working too.

What is really happening? Is MyRealBox aiming to be a free web-based email service rather than a POP mail service? Webmail services actually is a more profitable business than a POP mail service since you can actually put advertisements directly on your web interface. Which you can’t do in a POP mail service. Sure, you can send advertisements through email, but this can be largely ignored while the advertisements on a website (or your web based email) cannot be easily removed.

Well, I really don’t want to use a web-based email service. It’s just too slow and inconvenient, having to login every time I need to access my mails and waiting for the page to load. Looks like I may be changing to Gmail mail soon. Or maybe I would use one of my domain’s email account. But this is highly undesirable since I may not keep all my domains and I surely don’t want to restrict the bandwidth limited to my site by my service provider. Decisions, decisions….

Well, I am here to share with you guys some of my thoughts on the web directory industry again. This time it is on big and well-known directories. The current buzz on the directory scene is well, to grow in numbers. No, not grow big but grow in numbers. These people think that there are strength in numbers. If you were to look at the famous web directories, you will realize that the directory owners are starting new directories and in great numbers. They no longer own 1 or 2 directories, they own like 5 to 6 directories.

I understand that directories need to grow and expand, but having like 5 to 6 directories isn’t the right way to go. By all mean, expand your directory and add more features and content, but how does having so many directories do that? It will just dilute the attention and the care a directory owner can give to each directory and hence the quality will definitely drop. Sure, some directory owner employs editors to do the dirty work for them, but still it isn’t the same thing as the (famous) owner himself doing it. And, is this really good for the web directory industry on the whole? This industry is already overcrowded and by adding more directories into the fray will not help.

What we really need is high quality directories, not just more directories. Being successful in one directory, does not mean you will be successful in another. And being successful can only work if a directory is well-maintained and well-oiled. This requires effort and time. And owning is web directory is a full-time job (especially if you are a commercial entity), it’s not going to improve by having MORE of such directories. I would rather directory owners spend more time on their current directories rather than creating more directories and asking me to “invest” again. Feels like I am being cheated, you know what I am saying?