Seems there was a small slip up with the Spam filters at Gmail HQ today.
More info at the Gmail Blog

I like the tone of these notes – sort of first person, friendly and helpful. Not what you expect as an official correspondence from a big company.

if you are a Gmail user like me then you should check your spam folder to make sure no ‘good’ messages went in due to the error. If you use Gmail through a desktop client (like Thunderbird) this means logging into the Gmail website to check. Probably not a bad idea to do that regularly anyway. Spam is deleted every 30 days so a quick check twice a month ought to keep you safe. Unless you are expecting something important that didn’t arrive!
No spam filter is perfect but in my experience Gmail doesn’t get many wrong either way. Not only is it the best spam filter I have ever used but it is also the best email system I have found – and it’s free! Even my custom email addresses are free using Google Apps for Your Domain.

More details: Gmail Blog explains how it works and Lifehacker explains How Offline Gmail Decides Which Messages to Download

I use Google apps for the hosting of domains and email for my Domains. Considering it is completely free (there is a paid Pro version) it is amazing functionality. As we have a fair few subscribers to emails for a small list I was wondering how many emails I can send per day. Most email hosts have some limits in force – mostly to stop abuse by spammers and the like.

Below is details of what Google Apps allows. Again for a free service I think this is excellent.

Details from this Google Group Page

Here is a list of some of the sending limits in place on your account:

- 500 messages per day (i.e., you can hit 'Send' a maximum of 500
times)
- 500 unique recipients
- 2000 total emails (for example, you could send one message to a
group of 500 people four times)

Please note that there may be additional factors which slightly raise
or lower these limits, but this should be a good general guideline.

Sincerely,

Joanna
The Google Apps Team

We have discussed web searching tricks in the past here. All good search engines and Google in particular offer lots of ways to customise your searches to filter out irrelevant information and hone in on just what you want to know.

I found a YouTube video today (via Digital Inspiration) that explains some of the basics.
(Being YouTube it should work with any connection but will  be slow on Dial Up)

G'day all. Ross and I agree that Thursday night was a really good Mullies meeting for those who braved the cold windy night! Note from Ross:

Hi Matt
thanks for the help and for bringing along your laptops...great stuff.
I was wondering do you still have the article on how to repair XP without having to lose all the info on your hard drive?
I think it was on one of those newsletters that you get?
Can you help, thanks.
What shall we do next month, someone suggested SL ?
Oh and your Mulligroup email address is not working?
Regards Ross Johnson

To answer the questions in reverse, yes the old email address for the group changed slightly when the website address changed. The details were sent through but for those who missed it the new address is:

You should receive an email of this post from the above address and now the website is all set up it shouldn't change again. Please update your address book and if necessary add the address to you 'whitelist' so it doesn't get blocked as spam. Remember if you ever want to subscribe to our emails, change your email address or :( unsubscribe then please just send a note to the same address.

What does everyone think about a topic for next month's discussion? Ross suggests a discussion of Second Life game. Does anyone have any other ideas, suggestions or requests?

I am an early apology for next month's meeting as I will be on stage at "The Entertainers" that night. If you have never been to Entertainers before do yourself a favour. It's a great live show with a 2 course dinner for less than $40 with all proceeds going to charity - not much wrong with that.

OK now on to Ross's question - yes we have discussed a few ways of repairing Windows XP. All the questions and stuff we write is posted to the website which is at:

http://www.mulligrubs.miltonulladulla.com

There are 2 ways to find information on our website.

Website search

I use Blogger to host our page and Blogger is owned by Google. So it is no surprise that the default Blogger page includes an integrated search component. The search box is in the banner at the top of the page - refer the picture below. Type something in the search box and you can quickly see if we have discussed it before.

So for example if we type in Ross's query "repair XP" and this page comes up.

If we look down the list we can see that back in November 2006 we posted some details about Four ways to repair Windows XP. One of the ways referred to here in the article is the The No-Reformat, Nondestructive Total-Rebuild Option which is probably what Ross is after.

The other thing you may have noticed is the "Topic Index" on our Blog page (refer the picture above again). Recently I have been using Blogger's ability to 'tag' each post with topics or details of what it is about. Blogger tallies all these up and keeps the Topic Index. As I have only been doing this for a few months it doesn't link to all the posts but I hope to go back and tag the older posts too. So if you would like to catch up on any particular topic just click on the topic in the list and away you go.

Last but not least there is a Blog Archive link at the bottom of the page that lists all the posts by the month. So if you want to search by date this is your best bet. It's really amazing how easy all of this stuff is. I just write the details and send it to Blogger and the rest takes care of itself.

So please take the time to look back on where we have been. We have already touched on a lot of worthwhile information. And remember this is a group effort -  I will gladly post anyone else's writing -  and Ross and I will and all our members will try to answer any question or help with any problem you may have. So send 'em in!

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I saw a post on the local Freecycle Forum asking for some help as follows:

Looking for the instructions to scrabble cards. They look like playing cards can be used on the floor or table. Even if you could give a run down of the bonus cards etc that would be great we know the basic for scrabble but with the cards games there is extra rules for the bonus cards etc

For all of use internet connected peoples there is always a Google search. I am continually amazed at the sheer volume of information that someone has taken the trouble to type up and publish on the WWW.

This is also part of the problem as a typical search can return millions of results. But with a few little tricks you can really narrow down your Google searches. Just to prove my point I did a search for Google search tips and came up with the following blog site - read it to get all the specifics:

Ultimate Google Search Tips Guide

Anyway back to the question at hand. I did a Google search for "scrabble cards" game rules with the quotation marks around the scrabble cards to search for the 2 word phrase rather than the 2 words individually.

One of the pages that turned up was this review of the game which explains most of the rules: BGG review

By the way the Freecycle forums are great and a good way to turn your Trash into someone's Treasure or the other way around - check it out

Shoalhaven Recycle Link

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This is a brief introduction to some of the aspects of what people refer to as Web 2.0 (or Web version 2). It is really amazing what tools are available via the Internet for free

We've all heard of Web 2.0, but what does it mean? I think of it as the Interactive Internet. It encourages collaboration between users and is driving the trend towards more interactive websites.

The Internet as we have come to know it has been around for over ten years now. To date it has principally been used for searching, browsing and reading static information.

Now it is evolving into something quite different. We are now in what is being coined the “Web 2.0 era”, where the Internet is now about interactivity.

No longer do Internet users want to just look at and read a page they want to interact, leave comments, upload music or photos and be involved in the Internet community.

The Internet is no longer solely the domain of the technical expert. With the increase in user friendly interfaces, it is now possible to get involved even if you have limited technical knowledge.

What tools make up Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 can be defined as the set of technologies which enable collaboration and sharing between Internet users. These can be web pages, web-based communities or hosted services such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs and podcasts.

These tools, such as blogs, make it easier for anyone to get their material online, even if they have no knowledge of HTML.

Blogs are online diaries or journals created by individuals or companies and stored on the Internet. Blogs generally consist of text and images appearing in chronological order with the most recent entry shown at the top of the page.

Wikipedias are online encyclopedia maintained by users. They allow people to contribute to and add definitions or topics.

Social networking include sites like MySpace and Facebook. Here, people put up a public profile about themselves. They can add their favorite photos, music and website links and choose to share these with friends only or the general public.

Podcasting. A 'podcast' is an audio file or series of audio files that can be shared with others. You can subscribe to a podcast in much the same way as you subscribe to an email newsletter.

Interactive websites: Web 2.0