43 Folders: Using Categories & Tasks in Entourage

All that said, here?s an overview of the Categories I use most when processing, filtering, and doing the items on my task list (currently ~150 items). Your mileage will absolutely vary.

Wow that’s a lot of categories. Working on Entourage, we know how important the Category feature is to so many of our users, and we continually try to make it more useful. FWIW, I’m not sure if there’s actually a limit to the number of categories you can have - I’m sure there’s one, but I think it might be disk bound or something.

I can’t wait to read the write up on using Custom Views. Custom Views in Entourage is an awesomely powerful feature - unfortunately, few get it, or even try it out. What is a Custom View? Hint: One of the original names for this feature was ‘Saved Searches’. Now do you get it?

I remember when Apple’s Mail.app e-mail client first came out with it’s “Bounce” feature. It came out to rave reviews, with the Mac community all excited about what a powerful feature it was, and how great it was for Apple to think of this feature and enable its customers to fight spam.

See, the way the bounce feature works is this:
1. Select spam.
2. Choose “Bounce” from a menu
3. Mail.app would send a return mail to the sender of that message saying that you didn’t exist.

People love this feature - it gives them a sense that they’re doing something about their spam. That they’re fighting back.

And the obvious question was “Well, why doesn’t Microsoft Entourage have it?” (often with the insinuation that Microsoft is behind much of the spam, which is why there’s so much spam in Hotmail. Right. Microsoft is pushing penis pills and re-fi’s. Not likely.)

Well on Joi Ito’s blog is the reason why we don’t have a bounce feature.

Three reasons:
1. It doesn’t do anything. Most spammers don’t care if mail bounces back to them. Why would they? There’s virutally no cost to spamming, with lots of income potential.

2. It’s quite possible that spammers can detect the Mail.app bounce back and say “Oh ho! This is indeed a legit email address! Muhahahahah!”

3. And the worst reason: More often than not, spam messages use forged e-mail addresses. While it may say that it is being sent from “billg@microsoft.com”, it’s really sent by evil-penis-pill-pusher-3293@evil-domain-that-does-not-resolve.co.zi. So by having this feature, we’re enabling innocent people to hurt other innocent people by flooding their inboxes with bounce messages.

Best way to fight spam once it gets into your Inbox? Delete it. Forget it. They won this round. You’ll get ‘em back another time.

But do you want to do more to fight spam? Tell everyone you know about this site:

Huh? People buy from spam ads? YES THEY DO! About 1 in every 5 Americans do!

This is an older article, but it’s fascinating to read about the kinds of people who buy penis pills (it included the manager of a $6 billion dollar mutual fund - scary huh! Makes you wonder how your investments are doing…)