It's been a while since I updated the list on where we were with SpamAtBay/InBoxer. We are now in the prerelease cycle for 1.1, and I am announcing a final beta. I plan to wait a week and then change the version string and call it a release. SpamAtBay is a commercial spam filter for Outlook 2000+, based on the open source Spambayes project, extended with bug fixes, functionality, documentation, and support. We share ideas and occasional code with Mark Hammond. Many of the features announced here have been added independently to the SpamBayes code base. We've (regretably, and with regrets) forked the Outlook code. Mark adds features faster than we can absorb them, and we have a customer base to _answer_ to. The core engine remains the same, thank goodness. Brief history: I wrote the first, really, really bad integration with Outlook, using VBA and a Python COM server. Mark Hammond thought the idea was neat, but that the execution was, err, flawed, and pretty much rewrote it from scratch. Over the last 5 months, I've had a team of several people working on polishing, layout, docs, QA, and (gag) marketing oriented features. We have released a version for sale under the InBoxer label which is getting very nice reviews (most of the credit to the developers here). We're focusing on Tim's "easy enough for my sister" metric. Supported systems: Win98SE, ME, NT 4, Win2K, XP; Outlook 2000/2002/XP/2003. Not supported: Win95; Outlook Express. If you were a beta tester for 1.0 you already have a permanent activation code. If you are a SpamBayes developer (code, docs, frequent question on the list answerer, etc) you can ask me for an activation code, and get one. If you are interested in testing SpamAtBay or evaluating, you get a 14 day trial from our standard download site. Go to http://sean.t.spamatbay.com/referafriend.fhtml and fill out the brief form. A download link will come back to you via email. If you want to test the other product built from this codebase, you can find it at http://www.inboxer.com. InBoxer comes with a 21 day free trial, and SpamBayes developers (see above for loose definition) are also entitled to a free activation key. Feel free to use it for a parent or a sibling. Then they can call us instead of you. ================================================================ Changes to SpamAtBay Version 1.1 New features include : * The advanced menu now offers an option for merging an external database of Spam statistics with your current database. You can use this feature for sharing your Spam statistics with friends, or for merging Spam statistics provided by us. * There is a checkbox in the filter dialog (which can be reached from the control panel) which enables the new "Mark Spam as read" feature. Messages which are categorized as spam by statistics, or which are designated as spam using the toolbar button are marked as "read" before being moved into the Spam folder. * There is a new button on the control panel which will allow you to change the data directory. If you use multiple workstations to read your mail, but only use them one at the time, and you have access to a network drive you can use this button to let each workstation access your personal Spam statistics. Simultaneous access by two users, or by two copies of Outlook from the same user is not supported. * Multiple Outlook profiles are now supported: when you upgrade to version 1.1 your statistics databases will be copied into new profile specific files. Additional profiles will use unique statistics files, and if you downgrade to version 1.0 any changes to your statistics since the installation of version 1.1 will be lost. * Hotmail folders are now supported for filtering, and can be watched like any other Outlook mail folder in Outlook 2002, Outlook XP, and Outlook 2003. The Hotmail "junk mail" folder cannot be watched. This is a limitation of Microsoft Outlook. * A new menu item, Filter Current Folder Now, has been added to the advanced menu. This menu item allows you to quickly filter your currently selected folder. * A system tray icon now shows when the software is actively filtering messages. Typically, this will happen right after Outlook downloads messages into your inbox. The system tray icon will also show a green envelope when there is non-spam waiting to be read. Double-clicking the system tray icon when the green envelope is present will read the oldest unread, non-Spam message. The green envelope will show only mail that arrives in folders we are watching. * If you hover over the system tray icon, the software will now show you statistics of Spam, non--Spam, and unsure messages for the current run of Outlook, as well as how many messages are waiting to be seen with a double-click. * Right clicking on the system tray icon brings up a popup menu. * The system tray icon can be disabled and enabled from the Control Panel. * The sliders in the filtering dialog which set the threshold above which a message will be categorized as unsure, or as spam, are now linked in such a way that the threshold for unsure Spam cannot be set higher than the threshold for certain Spam; and so that the threshold for certain Spam cannot be set lower than the threshold for unsure Spam. * Outlook 2003 is now show is completely supported by the install dialog. * The size of the adults, health, and money statistics databases have been decreased, and they will now adapt faster to your personal definitions. In general, these databases have been superseded by the default database, and will be made into an optional download in a future version of the software. Other specialized databases for particular kinds of Spam may also be made available for download. * In Outlook 2003, we now use any messages in the "Junk E-mail" folder as training messages. * The Setup Wizard now warns the user if the configuration that was selected is not valid, which can happen if the user cancels the Setup Wizard. * The registration code is now insensitive to leading or trailing blanks. Bug fixes: * Uninstall will now optionally uninstall all data files, allowing you to do a complete uninstall of the program. The default behavior is to leave data files intact, while uninstalling the program files. This allows you to uninstall and install an upgrade of the software without losing your current Spam statistics. * Mail filtering is now disabled during training, and when you are manually filtering a selected folder. Items which come and during these times will be filtered when the activities are complete. * Additional users on the same machine can now be installed without administrative privileges. Previously, the software allowed such installation but it did not work consistently. * Unicode folder names are now accepted, improving the usability of the software in non-English environments. * The size of the impersonal database has been reduced substantially, and the database will now adapt much more quickly to your personal definition of Spam. The database is still derived from more than 17,000 messages, but only the most significant information is now retained. * Microsoft Exchange compatibility has been improved, and failures due to temporary network or server issues appear to be less common. * We now put up an hourglass while building the folder views for selecting filters for training and filtering. * Occasionally, messages would get remarked unread after being read. This should now be corrected. * White list and blacklist code has been substantially improved, and will deal with bad or missing addresses better. In particular, this code should now work better with internal Exchange addresses, allowing you to white list all people on your own Exchange server. * The persistent bug with occasionally missing toolbar buttons now appears to be fixed. * The about dialog now shows the proper length of trial period for the software. * Toolbar buttons are now shown even when the inbox is empty at startup. Thanks for your indulgence and occasional encouragement. -- Sean Sean True and the SpamAtBay and InBoxer teams.