There are several methods that spammers use to obtain email addresses. Educating yourself can help reduce the chance that you will become a victim of spam clogging up your mailbox.

1. Filling Out Forms

Obviously, if you provide your email address on a form you are filling out, you’re giving that address to somebody that may sell it to another individual or company. Most people provide their email address information for something free in return or a membership to a web site. You will have to read a web sites’ privacy policy to see what they are really doing with the addresses they obtain, but sometimes you still can’t be sure to trust providing your address. I always suggest having a separate email address just for these types of things. Open up an email address with one of the many free email providers and use that address every time you need to have a valid email address for free offers and site memberships.

2. Having Your Email Address Posted on a Web Site

If you post on message boards or even have your email address on your own web site as a way of having people contact you, it can open you up to spam. Spammers have robots that crawl the internet that seek out anything that resembles an email address. If you have a link to your email address posted on any web site, it will most likely be added to a spammers email database at some point. If you post on the internet, try to post where your email address or a link to it isn’t displayed. The site may have an option to enable or disable this feature. On your own site, use a form that users can submit messages with that forward the information to your email address instead of a simple mailto link.

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If you’re in the first few drafts of a Word 2007 document, the ability to leave comments can be handy. Maybe you typed something that you need to double-check or you might need to leave a note for yourself to address a certain topic. Here’s how to leave yourself a little comment to remind you:

1. Highlight the area of your document that you wish to make a comment about with your mouse.

2. Click Review > Comments > New Comment.

3. Type in your comment.

Comments are displayed in a balloon and along the right margin.

I like to have certain applications running in all of my different Spaces. Here’s how to assign a specific application to all Spaces.

1. Choose Finder and select System Preferences.

2. Choose Expose and Spaces.

3. Choose the Spaces tab at the top of the window.

4. Click the + under the Application Assignments area.

5. Find and select the application you wish to assign to all Spaces and click Add.

6. Click the area in the top potion of the window and select Every Space.

Leopard is out, and I must say that I am really impressed! I love the way you can create your own widgets easily in Safari, the screen sharing feature and the new translucent look. The OS is just plain”sexy”. That seems to be the strategy that works for Apple.

Apple sells sleek laptops, innovatively designed desktop computers, and the most popular music device on the planet. It’s not only about owning technology that’s easy to use though, it’s about being seen with them too. It’s just plain cool to own something from Apple. You never see them carrying around HP laptops in movies, hell no! That guy uploading the virus to the alien computers to save humanity is using a Mac to get it done!

All of my co-workers regularly bring their Acer and HP laptops to work. If I walked in with an iBook, boy it would make them talk! And the iPod? You always know when somebody is holding an iPod. If not by the look of the iPod itself, you can always spot those white earbuds sprouting out of the pocket of the owner.

My favorite place to go when I visit the mall is the Apple Store. They just have so many cool things to play with and when you walk out with something you just feel cooler. Even the boxes to the products are designed so well, you never want to throw them out. I still own the box (that included a nice handle on the top) to my iBook I purchased 6 years ago.

My one concern with products from Apple is the price, although that didn’t stop people from buying the iPhone. You can get a PC or regular MP3 player for way cheaper than a Mac or iPod. I should mention though that Leopard has way more innovations than Windows Vista and is priced more reasonably.