| <Abel> | We have as our guests The folks from Sundial. |
| <Abel> | and Before we turn the session over to them we have an Election Announcement. |
| <Abel> | The VOICE BoD is pleased to announce that we have a new PRESIDENT and a new SECRETARY. |
| <Abel> | For president we had two candidates and the winner is: Walter Metcalf. |
| <mandie> | congrats Walter! |
| <Walter> | Thank you all for your support. |
| <Swanee> | Close race too! |
| <Abel> | For secretary we had two candidates and the winner is : Andrew Welty (aka sector). |
| * | XRange Congratulations Sector ! |
| <mandie> | Sector: congrats! |
| * | Sector demands a recountð |
| * | lynn congratulates Walter. |
| * | Abel bows out. IT was a fun ride. I look forward to the challenging duties of sysadmin. |
| <Walter> | Thank you, Lynn. |
| * | XRange congrats Walter! |
| <Randell> | Sundial congrats both Walter and Sector... |
| <Walter> | Thank you Randell. |
| <Walter> | Congrats Sector. |
| <Abel> | OK. I pass the meeting mantle to Sector. |
| <Sector> | Ok, election results being covered, lets move on to why we are really here. I'de like to thank Randell and rolling for stopping in |
| <Randell> | And, as always, thank you for having us! |
| <Randell> | Should we start? |
| <Sector> | Sure, sounds good to me. |
| <Swanee> | Let's do it R & R! |
| <Randell> | Ok then... |
| <Randell> | Tonight we will be focusing on two topics... |
| <Randell> | Though we are open to discussing other Sundial-related things as the audience sees fit. |
| <Randell> | First, we're going to spend some time on Junk Spy 2.0. |
| <Randell> | Now that its out, we'd like to get your reactions to this new version... |
| <Randell> | and share some of the things we've been observing lately about junk email (aka "spam" in lower case) |
| <Randell> | After that, we'll spend a bit of time on something new we've been cooking up... |
| <Randell> | that's not quite "done" yet... |
| <Randell> | called ClikClok (not the spelling for later). |
| <Randell> | Walter, your question? |
| <Walter> | I had to install 2.0 from scratch because I ran into a number of problems... |
| <Walter> | As a result my exceptions didn't get loaded. |
| <Walter> | My exceptions that I had added from 1.0 I mean. |
| <rollin> | I can see the "new feature handwriting on the wall" Import and export exceptions. |
| <Walter> | Is there anyway to add them into the 2.0 database now that I'm running? |
| <rollin> | Had you backed up spec.* and detect.* you could have copied them into your newly installed Junk Spy directory and would have kept all of your customizations. |
| <Randell> | If you installed into a new directory, that's correct. |
| <rollin> | Only if you have a backup of your 1.0 directory. |
| <Walter> | I believe they're backed up on my backup tape. |
| <rollin> | IF you restore spec.* and detect.* you'll get your exceptions back. |
| <Walter> | OK, thanks. That's what I needed to know! |
| <Randell> | On of the things we did in 2.0... |
| <Randell> | was to add some "security" settings that made it more difficult to for an external program on another system... |
| <Randell> | to connect to Junk Spy running on your own system. |
| <Walter> | On the positive side, 2.0 seems a lot more aggressive and seems to learn better than 1.x did. |
| <rollin> | Walter, great! |
| <Randell> | We changed the default settings on those a few times during the prereleases... |
| <Randell> | and, in some cases, that meant the "most restrictive" setting was in place on systems where |
| <Randell> | the "restrictive" setting was more appropriate. That's been at least one reason why some folks have |
| <Randell> | had a bit of "connectivity" trouble after installing the final 2.0... but I think we're past those now. |
| <Randell> | One think I'd like to talk a bit about... |
| <Randell> | and Walter touched on it... |
| <Randell> | is how well folks feel 2.0 is correctly identifying their junk mail? |
| <Randell> | We've been running our own tests and feel it's doing a pretty good job but we'd like to know what others are experiencing. |
| <Randell> | Comments? |
| * | Swanee hasn't had a chance to try any new software lately... He's soooo ashamed... |
| <Walter> | My "detected messages" count increased nearly every time I start my email program, which is *much* better than 1.x. |
| <XRange> | it seems to be working nicely. |
| <Walter> | Currently my Junk ratio is sitting at 3. |
| <madodel> | What is the Junk Ratio? |
| <Randell> | Walter, you are lucky that have that low a junk ratio! Mine hovers around 19-20%. |
| <XRange> | mine setting at 2 |
| <rollin> | Madodel, it's how many junk messages divided by total messages. A typcial Junk Spy user is in the 5-25% range |
| <madodel> | OK, thanks |
| <rollin> | Mine's at 46% :( |
| <Randell> | Obviously we test how good Junk Spy is versus other ways of filtering junk mail that are out there on the market. |
| <madodel> | How well is the windoze version being received? |
| <rollin> | Madodel - well. We're making the rounds of the user Groups in So Cal and later in the Summer Northern California. We still have a huge task of getting the word out. |
| <Randell> | madodel, quite well! We're still trying to get the word out about it, but we've had great reaction at the couple of user group demos we've done so far. |
| <Randell> | One of the issues with Windows users is that a large percentage of them are AOL users.... |
| <Randell> | and Junk Spy just can't work with AOL right now since AOL does not use POP3 for their email protocol. |
| <madodel> | Are you planning a Linux version? |
| <rollin> | We're not actively working on it. We've had a few requests, but not enough. |
| <Randell> | There are also perceptions out there like "I don't get junk" or "I just change my email address every few months" or my ISP filters junk for me. |
| <Randell> | And, speaking of ISP's filtering junk... |
| <Randell> | All our current tests show that Junk Spy filters far more junk than any of those ISPs that we've tested against so far. |
| <madodel> | good god. I've had my email address for 8 years now. I wouldn't let spammers force me to change it. |
| <Randell> | For instance, in our tests of the recently introducted filtering by attglobal.net (based on Brightmail)... |
| <Randell> | we've found that Junk Spy filters as much as *3 times* as much Junk! |
| <Randell> | And, in that particular case, we haven't see attglobal.net filter a message that Junk Spy did not. |
| <Randell> | So that tells us we're on the right track... and that our technology is far superior. |
| <Randell> | Now we've just got to continue to convince people thats that case. |
| <XRange> | just wish the filters would work faster on incoming mail. |
| <Randell> | (Once we're got more solid numbers, we will be posting the comparisons on the www.junkspy.com website.) |
| <rollin> | XRange, care to elaborate? Are you using dial-up or DSL/Cable? |
| <XRange> | still on dial-up here. Dsl not available. |
| <rollin> | If you watch, is it while the envelope is yellow or during the black hole icon? |
| <XRange> | have watched that close . I watch it little closer from now on. |
| <Randell> | When we added support for the ORBS list in 2.0... |
| <Randell> | The black hole checks got longer... |
| <Randell> | Normally, this isn't a significant problem... |
| <Projects> | what are the little glasses? |
| <rollin> | Most likely it's the black hole. It does several external requests, and as Randell pointed out, we added one in 2.0). We do have some technology down the road that will improve it, especially on dial-up. |
| <rollin> | Projects, it's querying the mail server for mail. "looking" for mail. |
| <Projects> | ok |
| <Randell> | but, sometimes, if your ISP doesn't support name lookups quickly, this can bog the black hole check down. |
| * | Projects thinks he'll have to wipe Junkspy and start again :( |
| <rollin> | Why wipe it? |
| <Projects> | I can't convince it to update... |
| <Projects> | and the counter/monitor problem still persists |
| <rollin> | I'm not sure why it's not processing your updates. I looked at the logs you sent and they didn't really provide the information I was hoping for. |
| <Projects> | I enabled junkspy for the other email account, hoping that would fix things... it didn't :( |
| <Randell> | One of the great things about Junk Spy (compared to some other approachs)... |
| <Randell> | is that it lets you "customize" the filtering based on exceptions. |
| <Randell> | "Out of the box", it does a very good job... but it can be very aggressive about filtering out things... |
| <Randell> | that's particularly an issue for some folks... mostly it seems people that subscribe to lots of newsgroups. |
| <Randell> | Is there anyone out there that's found they've had to add lots of exceptions with 2.0 to "not" filter things? |
| <Projects> | not here... just did it once |
| <Projects> | Sector's email in fact :-) |
| <Sector> | Oh that one... |
| <Randell> | Sector's email? |
| <Randell> | What was the reason? |
| <Sector> | Actually one I sent him during hte Beta phase |
| <Projects> | hehe... yeah, when we were testing |
| <Randell> | So it was a "one shot" issue? |
| <Projects> | yeah |
| <Projects> | I think he used the word "biz" in there somewhere |
| <Sector> | Was filtering biz.net |
| <Projects> | something like that |
| <warspite> | Hi Gang..Sorry I'm late. |
| <Randell> | Ah, yes, "biz" is one of those words that turns up in lots of junk mail. |
| <Randell> | Any other folks found the need to add filtering exceptions? |
| <Randell> | I take that silence as a positive thing! |
| <Projects> | there's another, but I haven't made it an exception yet. Quite often, mail to members@os2voice.org gets junked, due to the word members@ |
| <Randell> | Rollin, want to comment on that one? |
| <rollin> | Yes, I'm well aware of that one. Unfortunately members@ is a popular spam header. |
| <Projects> | yeah, that's why I haven't created an exception :) |
| <Randell> | But it's real easy to add an exception for that... manually or using the exception wizard. |
| <rollin> | Has anyone tried the exception Wizard? |
| <mandie> | Randell: is JunkSpy shrink wrapped or an electronic d/l? |
| <rollin> | Mandie, both, either. |
| <Projects> | rollin: yes, I've used it |
| <rollin> | Projects, did it perform as expected? |
| <Projects> | rollin: yes. Was slick. |
| <rollin> | Good, like to hear that! |
| <Randell> | mandie, yes, the primary packaging is an electronic download... but we also have a CD version for those that want such or want to give it to someone else. |
| <Walter> | I've used it several times. |
| <rollin> | Walter did it work for you too? |
| <mandie> | thx |
| <Walter> | Most of the time. In a few cases, I found it tricky to get the right mask. |
| <rollin> | If you have feedback that would help improve it, please drop us a line at support@junkspy.com. |
| <Walter> | Hi Rat-Salad. |
| <rollin> | Does anyone have requests or suggestions for 2.1? |
| <Walter> | Rollin: I've got a problem now, that I'll send you info on. |
| <mandie> | nice discount! :) |
| <rollin> | Look forward to it. |
| <rollin> | Mandie, yes we try to reward our loyal OS/2 users. |
| <XRange> | exception Wizard looks like it works pretty kool. on "members" |
| <Randell> | XRange, great! |
| <XRange> | that first time i had tried it. |
| <Walter> | I'm getting buried with stuff from dhs@org and I'm find it very difficult to stop it. (e.g. dhs-discuss-admin@dhs.org) |
| <wdl> | whois walter |
| <XRange> | now mark message want get junked. |
| <Walter> | Whhois wdl? I'm Walter Metcalf. |
| <rollin> | First, have you tried unsubscribing or changing to a digest? Assuming yes, why can't you just create a detector for dhs.org in the header? |
| <Walter> | Rollin: at first I didn't want to get rid of everything. Second I did try dhs.org, and it didn't work. :-( |
| <rollin> | Maybe forward me a single message and I'll see if there is something strange. |
| <Walter> | We can finish this by email, and not take up time here. |
| <rollin> | Any other comments on Junk spy? |
| <wdl> | Tx. Thought so. Hi. |
| <wdl> | Bill Loughman. Met you at Warpstock2000. |
| <Walter> | I think I remember. |
| <Randell> | Let me remind anyone who still thinking about Junk Spy... |
| <Randell> | or who hasn't upgraded yet... |
| <Randell> | that our special pricing on Junk Spy 2.0 runs through July 31! |
| <Randell> | You'll find all the details at www.junkspy.com. |
| <Randell> | And, if you have Junk Spy 1.0, don't forget about our "secret" Junk Spy Rewards program just for you loyal customers. |
| <Randell> | (If you have questions about Junk Spy Rewards -- like even "what are they" -- send them along to rewards@junkspy.com) |
| <Randell> | Ok, one last call on Junk Spy and then it's on to the preview of ClikClok. |
| <Randell> | Great! |
| <Randell> | ClikClok is a little project we've been working on for far too long.... |
| <Randell> | I won't admit to when we first started working on it but lets just say that it was a very long time ago... |
| <Randell> | It's not a major, revolutionary thing... |
| <Randell> | But one of those handy programs when you need something like it. |
| <Randell> | Basically, it's a graphical world clock... |
| <Randell> | The kind of thing that has been available on many other platforms for a very long time... |
| <Randell> | But, the ClikClok spin on it is very much an OS/2 program. |
| <Randell> | Now, we'ver prepared one our famous (infamous?) overview pages for it... |
| <Randell> | and I'm about to give you the URL. |
| <Randell> | But, since I *know* some of you will make typos in it... |
| <mandie> | ditto :) |
| <Randell> | please note the spelling of ClikClok (not ClickClock)... |
| <Randell> | (Yes, I know most of you will cut and paste it but I'm spent too many years in customer support...) |
| <Randell> | Here's the URL: |
| <Randell> | http://www.sundialsystems.com/clikclok/clikclokpreview.html |
| <Randell> | While folks are loading that... |
| <Randell> | I'll note a few of the features for those of you that might be reading this without immediate access... |
| <Randell> | Basically, ClikClok takes the form of a graphical map (fully scaleable) that displays all or part of the world.... |
| <Randell> | On that map, you'll find cities and time zones... similar to other maps. |
| <Randell> | Each city, or those you select, displays the current time (and possibly other information). |
| <Randell> | There are also options to display the sun's position, the day/night area, airport codes for cities, etc. |
| <Randell> | You can find the time at any point on the globe just by clicking and the time will be displayed for the correct time zone. |
| <Randell> | You can also determine the sunrise/sunset times for a city by clicking on it. |
| <Randell> | You can add cities or other places of your own interest... |
| <Randell> | You can calculate distances between cities or point with just a couple of mouse clicks. |
| <Randell> | Questions/comments? |
| <Sector> | Looks nice, could be usefull for travelers |
| <madodel> | Does it include a database of all those locations? |
| <Randell> | Sector, it's also great for finding out what time it is where all those VOICE members are! |
| <Randell> | madodel, yes, it does include a database of locations. |
| <lynn> | Are you familiar with World Clock for OS/2? |
| <madodel> | Can locations be added? |
| <Projects> | not at all the same |
| <Sector> | And letting people know what time the meeting starts... |
| <Randell> | We are still deciding how large the database will be... but you can also turn locations on/off without removing them. |
| <Projects> | can other information be added to city information? |
| <Randell> | Also, yes, you can add as many locations as you want... you can identify a new location using the mouse or enter lat/long info. |
| <madodel> | That is very cool |
| <Sector> | How about a link to weather information for a particular cityù (just thinking of uses for travelers) (assuming of course the computer it's running on is connected). |
| <Randell> | lynn, yes, I am... ClikClok takes a bit of a different approach is uses a more comprehensive database... |
| <Randell> | the time zone information, and the city information, includes a much more complete view of how daylight saving works, etc |
| <Projects> | there's no downloadable version :-/ |
| <Randell> | Sector, let me follow up on that weather information question a bit (then, Projects, I'll get back to your question)... |
| <madodel> | I've used WorldClock and the new eCS Clock app. The problem with those is you have to preselect a few cities to monitor time for. |
| <mandie> | Projects: just sparking interest :) |
| <Sector> | Wouldn't be available for all locations of course |
| <Projects> | :) |
| <Randell> | Sector, see that little bullet that says "optionally display external data values associated with particualur cities"? |
| * | Sector noticed that |
| <Randell> | Now, what other Sundial product deals with external data sources and real time information? |
| <Projects> | Junkspy |
| <StevenL> | Mesa/2 DDE? |
| <Randell> | No, not JunkSpy... at least in this sense. |
| <madodel> | I'm using the real time feed in Mesa2 |
| <Randell> | Yes, Mesa 2! |
| <Projects> | Relish? |
| <Projects> | Oh, right! Forgot about that |
| <Randell> | ClikClok "knows" about the Mesa 2 real time feed pool. |
| <Randell> | So, you can feed your external data into Mesa, manipulate it if you want... |
| <Randell> | then ClikClok will display the numerical data associated with the particular city (or location0! |
| <Randell> | Is that cool or what? |
| <Projects> | cool, that answered my question :) |
| <Randell> | Projects asked about downloading... |
| <Randell> | Sorry, no, we're not quite ready yet though we had hoped to be by the time of this chat. |
| <Projects> | says here "Fri Jun 1 2001 DST"... that was days ago! :-) |
| <Randell> | We will be going through the Sundial "standard" series of pre-release versions with ClikClok... |
| <Randell> | Initially, those will be limited to a set of testers and then, later, we will be having a public prerelease available. |
| <Projects> | where do we sign up? |
| <Randell> | If you might be interested in qualifying for the early test phases, send me a note (randell@sundialsystems.com)... |
| <Randell> | and I'll contact you over the next few days... |
| <Randell> | Did I miss any other questions about ClikClok? |
| <lynn> | Price? |
| <Randell> | Price and availablity will be announced as we get closer to release. |
| <lynn> | :-) |
| <Projects> | ballpark price? :) |
| <Randell> | Projects, you tell me. |
| * | Sector estimates somewhere between $0.00 and $100.00 (either US or Canadian) |
| <Projects> | heh... /me *hates* it when people ask for ballpark pricing |
| <Randell> | Sector's estimate is correct. |
| <Projects> | hahahaha |
| <Randell> | It won't be expensive. |
| * | Sector doesn't think any of Sundial's products are overpriced |
| <Randell> | Any other questions for us tonight? Junk Spy, ClikClok, or any of our other (reasonably priced, thank you Sector) products? |
| <Freiheit> | Hmm... Clearlook 2.0 -- yes/no? |
| <Randell> | Freiheit, we've still working on it... but I don't have a projection at this time... sorry. |
| <Randell> | Well then, I think that about wraps it up for us tonight... |
| <Randell> | Remember you can always reach us via www.sundialsystems.com and wwww.junkspy.com... |
| <lynn> | Time for R&R is over? |
| <madodel> | Any ideas for the next Sundial Speakup? |
| <Randell> | and we're always interested in your feedback, questions, comments. |
| <Chip> | Thanks, very nice presentation. |
| <mandie> | We thank Sundial, as usual :) |
| <Randell> | And don't forget about our Product Forums where you can share ideas with other folks using our products as well. |
| <Randell> | Thanks all! |
| <rollin> | Thank you! |
| <Walter> | Thanks for coming!! |
| <Projects> | thanks guys... always a pleasure |
| <Randell> | We'll be back in August (assuming you'll have us)... |
| <Sector> | Of course we'll have you. If you're not here I may have to go down there and drag you in... |
| <XRange> | it's a pleasure having rollin , Randell |
| <madodel> | Do you expect ClikClok to be GA by then? |
| <Walter> | GA might be rushing things a bit. :-) |
| <Randell> | madodel, too many things in the pot at the moment to say for absolutely sure. |
| <madodel> | Any of those things that might be ready to eat by then? |
| <madodel> | :-) |
| <Randell> | Hope so! |
| <Randell> | And to followup on madodel's earlier question, please let us know if you have particular things you'd like our future Speakups to focus on! |
| <Randell> | Night folks! |
| <Walter> | Night! |
| <Sector> | So long Randell, thanks for stopping in |
| <XRange> | bye Randell |
| <rollin> | I'll see everyone in august (if not sooner) |