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• Adobe Photoshop CS2
• iView Media Pro

Since the conversion to working with the DNG format, I have made the leap from Apple's iPhoto to iView Media Pro. iPhoto is a great program and one that I am very saddened to get away from, however it doesn't support the DNG format (yet at least). iView Media Pro is similar to iPhoto in how it lets you view your photos, but it allows you to organize your files on your hard drive in anyway you see fit.

The Process

There are three tasks we need to accomplish during the import process: we need to delete the reject photos (out of focus, otherwise bad pictures), perform basic adjustments our photos and finally physically copy the images to our hard drive. The nice thing is that with the much improved Photoshop Camera RAW window we can do all three steps with one application, here's how:

Step 1: Browse your media card using Adobe Bridge

Connect your card reader or camera to your computer. Open up the Bridge application (/Applications/Adobe Bridge/Bridge.app) and browse to your compact flash card. Select all images on your media card (or in the individual folders on your card) and press COMMAND + O (windows: CTRL + O). This will open up the selected RAW images in the Photoshop Camera Raw.

Step 2: Delete the rejects or otherwise bad photos

Figure 1. Click for larger.

The Photoshop Camera RAW window in Photoshop CS2 allows you to browse multiple RAW images at the same time. Notice the vertical scroll bar and the thumbnails for each of your pictures on the left side of the window (See figure 1 at right). If you find a photo that you do not wish to keep simply press the "delete" key or click the trash can icon in the menu bar. Go through each of your photos until your camera media card has only the photos you will be keeping.

Step 3: Perform basic adjustments to your photos

Figure 2. Click for larger.

You may notice that CS2 will attempt to auto-correct your photos - In my experience it does a really good job, however you may need to make some minor corrections to some photos. One thing you may want to do is reset the white balance for your photos. Your camera (and Photoshop in this example) uses the color white to determine how all the other colors should look on your photo: so it attempts to locate a white part on your photo and adjusts all the other colors based on that point of reference. So choose a part of your photo that is exactly white is vital to getting color accurate pictures. To manually choose a white point click on the eyedropper icon in the menu (see figure 3) and choose a part of your photo that is pure white.
Figure 3. Experiment until your photo looks as you would like it. You can also choose one of the preset options from the "White Balance" pull-down, or manually adjust the Temperature and tint (though manually adjusting the white balance is extremely hard to perfect.)

The 3 sliders that you will want to focus your attention on are the Exposure, Shadows and Brightness sliders, with the most emphasis being placed on the Exposure settings. By adjusting the exposure settings you can add or remove 2 full stops of exposure from your shots - this can be a life saver for low-light situations where your photos would otherwise be under-exposed. Unfortunately these adjustments are not an exact science, and will be different for each photo, so experiment until your photo looks as good as possible.

At this stage of your image processing you can also add an artificial crop mark to your photos - at this stage it wont modify your actual photo, but will instead note it in the DNG (or sidecar file if you are not using dng) and will open in Photoshop cropped if you press the "Open 1 Image" button.

Step 4: Save your images (copy them to your computer's hard drive)

Figure 4. Click for larger.

Once your image is as you would like it to be, do not press the open button but instead press the "Save 1 Image" button. At this point Photoshop will pop-up a window asking you how you would like to name your image and in what format you would like to save it. The format and location you save your files is a personal choice, but I save all my images in the DNG format (for reasons discussed here). I have a folder on my hard drive named "Digital Negatives" that contains folders for the Year, which contain folders for each month of the year. Therefore pictures that are taken during the Month of July will be saved in "~/brian/Pictures/Digital Negatives/2005/7-July/" Instead of keeping the camera's default naming convention, I choose to rename my files according to when they were taken, so I choose the "yyyymmdd (date)" option in the Save dialog box. When choosing the DNG (or digital negative format) as your save type, you are given the option to compress your images - I would recommend you choose that option as it employs a lossless compression method whereby no data will be lost. I would not recommend choosing the "convert to linear image" option or the "Embed Original Raw File" options.

This information only needs to be set once per session (or once each time you copy images to your computer) - after you have it setup each subsequent image you would like to save you can hold the option key as you click the "Save 1 Image" button and Photoshop will simply save to your desired location in the format of your choosing. You will perform this step for all keeper photos on your camera card.

Step 5: View your final photos in iView Media Pro

Figure 5. Click for larger.

One of the great features of iView Media Pro is the option to auto-update folders of your choosing. What does this mean? Since I have a dedicated folder for my Photos "Digital Negatives" I told iView to auto-update the contents of that folder (and subfolders) every 5 minutes. This means if I add new photos to that folder iView will automatically add them to my photo index: all I have to do is launch iView and my photos are ready to view and look at.

Conclusions.

Obviously you could then open up your Digital Negatives in Photoshop and do more advanced 'touching up' to perfect them, but for most of your shots this will be the complete workflow for managing them. As you can see, when compared to simply clicking the import button in iPhoto this process is still complex, however the results you will get by shooting in RAW and working with professional image editing applications will be well worth it. The better the pictures you take from the beginning, the less you will need to do when post-processing them, but even the most experienced photographer has photos that can be improved. Shooting in RAW gives you the flexibility to make some pretty significant improvements to your shots after the fact - and when the quality of your photos really matters, every little advantage is vital.

If you aren't aware, most new high-end digital cameras give you one of two options for capturing images: you can capture in a compressed preprocessed format like JPEG, or you can capture the RAW image sensor data. All camera manufacturers refer to the later as simply "RAW" but each use a different method for storing the data. Each of the manufacturers base their format on the TIFF image type, but each include sensor and EXIF data, and White Balance information in their own proprietary ways. Canon uses CRW and CR2, while Nikon uses NEF files, Kodak uses the DCR format (and others use different formats.)

This lack of standard is what really hampers the adoption of the RAW format by mainstream image processors. Moreover, because these methods are proprietary, they cannot ever be modified by 3rd party applications. While programs like Adobe Photoshop allow you to make changes to the exposure, white balance, and other settings you cannot set those as "defaults" for that given file. Photoshop has gone around this limitation by creating separate sidecar files (.xmp) that store all this data. This redundancy is more than a nuisance - it also doubles the amount of files stored on your computer - and heaven forbid you should ever lose one of those sidecar files (or simply separate them from your RAW images).

Adobe DNG

Along comes Adobe and their open format: DNG. The DNG format is Adobe's effort to create an open standard for RAW images. Similar to what the PDF format did for documents, Adobe has made this an open document format for camera makers and image editors to store RAW camera sensor data. The world of web design can attest that standards are a good thing: creating standardized file formats and methods will help all camera makers and image editors leverage the benefits of shooting in RAW.

As you can probably gather from my remarks, I am really excited about the DNG format. Not only does it reduce clutter (by removing the need for sidecar files), but Adobe also managed to compress the RAW data in a lossless format. This compression makes storing your RAW 'negatives' take even less space (which when you shoot a lot of pictures is a very good thing). Moreover when you convert your proprietary RAW images to open DNG images, you are given the option to embed the full proprietary RAW image inside the DNG file. While this is a good idea in theory, there are no real reasons to keep a duplicate, because DNG format keeps 100% of the RAW sensor image data.

For those interested, I wanted to post about the re-design that was completed today of Fox Digital Media. The old Fox Digital Media site was great, but was too 'common' looking: i.e. - it looked like 1000 other websites out there. The new site design is unique and simple, but for those with capable browsers has some cool niceties. All modern browsers like Firefox or Omniweb will see nice PNG based transparencies, while Safari users (and any other browsers that support the CSS spec "text shadow") will see some cool drop shadows on the header text.

Redesign concept

With this redesign, I wanted to create a unique look that was unlike anything else out there. As always the site was designed using Photoshop to get the "look and feel" of what I wanted to accomplish. I then think out how I can build the completed design out using modern and accessable web technologies like XHTML and CSS. Though it would be easy to use a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver or GoLive, I personally like to cut and code by hand. I find that I can work much more quickly in this manner and the code is much cleaner in the end.

After the CSS mania fiasco, I wonder if I should search the web for other sites that "may look like this re-design" prior to posting it. (that was a joke - i doubt anything else looks like this). Not to say that I wouldn't like to see Fox Digital Media listed on CSS mania, I would. Overall I really like the design - let me know what you think.

Visit Site

If you don't know me personally that may be something that you could believe. But hear me on this one - I started this website with an empty Photoshop canvas and did not rip off, or copy someone else's design. As The web has been around for a long time and It has been years since I've seen a "completely original" design idea. Most sites, for the sake of user simplicity (and simply because it works) take similar form of content with a small navigation column: this site is no exception. I have seen various sites use the "big button" navigation theme on the top of the site with a header image. There is nothing new with that concept.... yet I guess my choice of colors are too similar to another site so that makes me a "shameless copycat."

Was I inspired by thousands of other websites? Definitely, who isn't? Did I copy or attempt to emulate one (or several)? No. My site is my own creative work - from scratch.

Recently Keith and Garrett had a " conversation" about this whole idea using their blogs, and made alot of really good points. Its not anything new in the design world. One person thinks someone else's design looks "like a rip-off" of design 'X', and the mud slinging goes from there. I will not be enganging in such slinging, but have this to say: Was I inspired by thousands of other websites? Definitely, who isn't? Did I copy or attempt to emulate one (or several)? No. My site is my own creative work - from scratch. The site that I am being compared to looks very similar to this site, and I can see how some may assume that I "copied" that design, but I can assure you that is incorrect. (Actually I am honored at the comparison, the site in questions looks awesome)

Thats all... nothing to see here. If you have comments, contact me directly...I won't allow my site to become a mud slinging arena.

In closing, please read Keith's conclusion on this whole topic - its well worth the read.

From that point it was all me, or so I thought. See—I surf sites and I analyze design. I can’t help but be influenced by what I see. I do my best to be original, but it’s difficult. Frustrating even. So what do you do?
- D.Keith Robinson

While the change in processors will be no problem for the Operating system, Apple says developers will need to make "minor tweaks" to their applications to take the most advantage of the new processor architecture, however emulation will be part of the OS in such a way that PowerPC apps will run fast (enough) on the new machines. More importantly with the new Developer tools, software engineers can compile their applications for both Intel and PowerPC architectures at the same time - thus creating one app that will work on both machines: smart move Apple!

All-in-all this move is a surprising one that will be interesting to watch as it unfolds. Apple expects to ship their first Intel based Mac by this time next year, and have the entire product line transitioned to Intel in the next two years.

While ordering the book I was forced to enter my credit card information about 5 times, and given a multitude of obscure and unreadable error messages. All I wanted to do was order the book! I was told that all orders would have free shipping, but 3 of the 5 times I went to check out (yes you heard that correctly - I had to try over 5 times!) it said I would have to pay for shipping. Finally with my final checkout process I was able to get free shipping.

Conclusions

I would highly recommend this book to any person involved with web design. The principles in this book seem basic, but really are foundational for any web designer / team. If every web designer read this book (and followed it), the web would be a much better place.

My most anticipated new feature will be Spotlight - Apple's new search engine built into the core of the operating system. This new feature supports metadata, so searching will be much better. Metadata is basically all the details about a file, for example, when you have an digital music file (AAC, MP3, etc) all the song information, title, etc are stored in the 'metadata' for that file. So being able to search inside all of that good data quickly and accurately will help you to find the things you want - right away. Almost more importantly spotlight searches your computer as you type, so you won't have to wait around for your computer to find your stuff.

Ohhhhh.... I can't wait... 17 more days to go ;-)

Needless to say, I didn't win any races this time, but not to worry, I will keep practicing (in warmer weather) and will be back soon to take the checkered flag!

Check out the pictures of the event.

My tools of choice:

• Adobe Photoshop
• Image Capture.app (if you are working with a modern Mac)
• Apple iPhoto

Throughout my course of working with RAW images, I have learned alot about the process, and have formed some best practices that may be helpful if you are new to, or are interested in shooting in the the RAW format. The most important aspect to working with RAW is having a basic understanding of Photography.

When you take a digital photo using one of your camera's "Automatic" modes, the camera analyses what you are shooting, and makes several adjustments to your photo on the fly, without your interaction. For an amateur (or for those occasions when you don't want to have to think about it) this is a great feature, and helps users produce rather good photos. However if you are wanting to get the VERY best out of your photograph, RAW is the way. Shooting in RAW leaves all the color correction, and exposure up to you: so it is best if you have a solid understanding of those concepts prior to shooting in RAW. Though, unlike shooting in Film, with digital images, you have a lot of room for improving your otherwise mediocre images.

For a good definition and understanding of exposure, see The DPReview Exposure section.

Part 1: Importing (or copying) your images

The first step is obvious, you need to get your images from your camera to your computer. Every photohropher I know has a different orgizational structure for storing their files on their computer. I personally like to keep my RAW images separate from my finished JPEG's or TIFF's. So when I import my images, I put them all in to a folder called "RAW NEGATIVES" inside a folder by date. So for example, If I were to import the contents of my camera today they would be stored at: ~/Pictures/RAW Negatives/March 2005/.

The tool I use to actually import my images is Image Capture. This is a rather simple looking application that has been bundled with the Mac since the inception of Mac OSX. The reason I use this app is simple: it works for what I need it to do.

Click for a larger image.

Step one- Open Image capture

Image capture does two things for us: it first copies the images from your camera (or card reader), it then can perform an automatic task.

Step two - Choose your options

Now you will need to choose where you would like to save your images. It is really up to you where you want to save your RAW images, but it is vital that you keep them somewhere so that you have them incase you ever need to refer to the original. In this case I will be saving my images in the folder named "March 2005" which is in the "RAW Negatives" folder on my computer.

The automatic task really is just opening up your newly imported images in a program of your choosing - I choose the application "Adobe Photoshop." What this means is once the images have been imported they will each automatically open up in Photoshop. Great - one less thing to do after importing. ;-)

Step three - Choose "Download some"

Click for a larger image.

At this stage, you will have a chance to view a small thumbnail of your photos. You can then delete those which aren't up to snuff. For each of the photos you do want to keep, some post-processing will be required, so don't keep photos you are not interested in keeping. Select all the photos you are wanting to import and press the "Download" button. The photos will then be downloaded to your computer and automatically opened (one by one) in Photoshop.

Part 2: Edit and color correct your photos in Photoshop

Click for a larger image.

This step is the real reason you shoot in RAW. Also if you are using a PC, or decide not to use Image Capture, this will be your starting point. Whenever you open up a RAW image in Adobe Photshop, the photo opens up in the Camera RAW plugin. This plugin is built-in to Photoshop CS and is an optional purchase for Photoshop 7.0. This plugin gives you the creative flexibility to perfect each of your photos.

Unlike the "automatic" modes on your camera, things like white balance and exposure have not yet been solidified (though they have been predefined by your camera settings, they can be changed using the Photoshop plugin.) Changing these settings is how you can really get the most out of your photos: you can bring back an over or under-exposed photo, correct white balance to compensate for things like inside fluorescent lighting, and much more.

Step one - Correct white balance

Select the eyedropper tool (pictured at right) and select a spot on your picture that is completely white. The thinking is this: if you know what pure white looks like, you can adjust all your other colors to be more "life-like." (Note: iPhoto's omission of an eyedropper tool, is one major reason I cannot use the program for color correction.) You can then fine-tune the temperature and tint to get the most photo-realistic colors possible. This is one area, where you will need to use your best judgment on what looks best.

You may also choose to use one of Photoshop's built in preset white balances: As Shot, Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Tungsten, Fluorescent or Flash. Generally one of these will work correctly if no true white spots are available in your photograph to use.

Step two - Adjust exposure (if required)

You can now do the work of magic - you can adjust your exposure settings -2 or +4 stops. This works great if you are shooting photos indoor and don't want to make use of the internal flash. You can really bring back some underexposed shots (or vise versa), but the best practice is trying get your photos perfectly exposed in-camera.

Step three - Perform other adjustments (if required)

You can also use the RAW plugin to make other adjustments like: Shadows, Brightness, Contrast & Saturation. I generally only adjust the shadows, but each photo will require different "fine-tuning." When you have the photo as you like it, press the OK button.

Part 3: Save your corrected photo

When you have a RAW file on your computer, they are read-only meaning you cannot save over them. This is good because it ensures you don't ever lose your original "digital negatives." So when you attempt to save your file, Photoshop will prompt you to save your file in a different format. You can choose any file type you'd like, and some may be better than others. I typically save my corrected photos as jpeg's. I do this for two reasons: (1) I have the original RAW files for print projects, I save the jpeg's for posting to the web or using in iPhoto or other projects so jpeg is the most compatable and (2) becuase they take considerably less hard drive space than TIFF or PSD documents.

I generally save my corrected photos to my desktop (as I don't generally keep ANYTHING on my desktop. Once I have completed the above steps for all my photos, I then drop all the jpeg files into iPhoto for cataloging.

Conclusions

That's it. Thats the process that I use for working with RAW images. Will it work for you? Maybe. Does it work for me? Most definately. I experimented with several AppleScripts (and even wrote one or two) but in the end decided that this method was the best fit for my workflow. The flexibility that the raw plugin in Photoshop gives you allows you to really perfect each and every photo - and when your shots really matter, that is absolutely vital.

Cool Transparent PNG's & Text-Shadows

The new website is a very forward looking site, and utilizes several great technologies that are really interesting. For one, transparent PNG's were used to add nice drop shadows throughout the site- these should be visible from any modern browser that supports transparent PNG files. Secondly, the new CSS2 attribute text-shadow, which allows for really nice looking text shadows on the main headers (like the name of each article on the homepage, or the sidebar, headings or h1's). Unfortunately, Apple's Safari is the only browser that seems to support this attribute so far, hopefully more will soon as they begin to support CSS2. In-case you don't have a browser capable of viewing the cool text effects, the screen shot at right will show you what I'm talking about.

.htaccess rewriting

If you visit the site often you may have noticed that the "archives" section has been renamed according to the new naming scheme: "notebook." In order for me to be nice to all those people who may have bookmarked pages in the archives, and to ensure any Google rankings arent lost due to 404 errors, I used the wonderfully difficult .htaccess hacks to ensure no one is left in the dark - All bookmarked links should continue to work.

It may seem simple to some, but to do this, I simply added a file named ".htaccess" to the root directory of my web server's "html" folder that contained the following:

The first line turns on the Rewrite engine. The second line points people who happen to find a broken or missing page are directed to my custom error page. The Last 2 lines tell the server to forward anybody seeking information from the "archives" pages to be automatically redirected to the "notebook" directory. It's one of those things that only a geek would find interesting, but hey Its cool.

Enjoy the new site

Though I've spend a good deal of time doing to QA testing with the site, I'm sure there are lots of issues left. If you find any issues, please leave a comment or use the contact form to let me know. (Please don't bother telling me about Mac IE issues - I know about them already, and may get around to working on them for the occasional Mac user not using Safari ;-) Enjoy!

Some features of the new site

Using Cameron Moll's Node o' matic I will be combining some of my favorite elements / ideas I've seen on websites over the past few months, in addition to some of my own creations. The main entries section will be moved into a section called "notebook" (inspired by Simplebits naming, which I really like!) The main homepage will contain the newest entry in addition to the newest headings.

The site will be much more simplified, with only 3 major sections: notebook (for writing, family news and other notebook entries), photos (which will contain photos and other media, like desktops, videos, etc) & about (which will contain the current about page as well as the contact information).

You will notice some changes over the next few days - please pardon the dust in the meantime.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
-Erica Jong

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
-Mark Twain

A few prayers from the United States Presidents -

Almighty God: We make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt keep the United States in Thy holy protection: that Thou wilt incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government, and entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another and for their fellow citizens of the United States at large.

And finally that Thou wilt most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation.

Grant our supplication, we beseech Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
- George Washington

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
- Abraham Lincoln

So we pray to Him now for the vision to see our way clearly - to see the way that leads to a better life for ourselves and for all our fellow men - to the achievement of His will to peace on earth.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

We petition God to show us His mercy and His love, to heal our weariness and uphold our hope, that we might live ever mindful of His justice and thankful for His blessing.
- Ronald Reagan

Then I got one.

Leave it to Apple to put irresistibly cool technology in the hands of a "gadget freak" like myself - I have to admit - I'm sold. Just like the original iPod, people may look at this device and say, "what makes this thing better than device X from company Y." The iPod shuffle offers the convenient, streamlined, intuitive user experience that the other iPods offer. The iPod offers the entire package, from CD to music jukebox, to device - all so easy, you wonder why its taken so long to figure this stuff out. The device is so small, and has SO much style you can't believe it can actually play music.

The largest selling point: the size.

Maybe they should have called it iPod micro. In showing it to my family and friends the most common question I heard was "this thing actually plays music? It's so small!" Once you hold an iPod shuffle in your hand (or in your pocket) you will wonder why you ever carried anything else. Now don't get me wrong, my 20GB iPod is here to stay, but considering the size of the shuffle, it is just TOO convenient to carry - I foresee myself carrying it everywhere. The device is physically smaller than most packs of gum, which is really tiny when you consider it contains a 1GB memory module, a 12 hour battery and all the circuity required to playback digital music.

Unlike its larger brothers, the iPod shuffle has no moving parts: no hard-drive that is susceptible to shock damage or skipping. This feature makes it the perfect choice for those interested in running or doing other physical activity with their iPod (or simply those who are clumsy). Also because of the small size, it won't slow you down much when wearing it during a workout.

The shuffle: a fashion icon?

Maybe they should have called it iBling. The iPod has become the de-facto standard when it comes to digital music players, and the shuffle aims to take that a step further. The iPod shuffle is not only a great music player, but thanks to Apple's inclusion of a neck strap for the shuffle - it is a fashion statement. I'm not one for flaunting my technology devices, but the iPod shuffle is just too cool not to wear. The first day I had my shuffle, I couldn't resist- I wore it into the supermarket. It was really funny to watch people's reactions, "Oh... isn't that the new iPod...thats cool" one kid whispered to his mom as I walked by.

The cool white iPod earbuds have already become synonymous with iPod users, now people can actually wear their iPod for all to see. I have a feeling this is going to create quite a buzz in the fashion world. Sure some rappers wear their "bling" (gold), when wearing the iPod shuffle you have iBling®. To commemorate this milestone, one of my coworkers (Todd Johnson) created a desktop picture affectionately called iBling. You can download the desktop picture in 1280x854 (widescreen) or 1024x768 (regular).

But there is no LCD display.

I just know there are people out there that are concerned about this issue. Understandably, if this device held thousands of songs, having a display to choose your songs would be vital - however on a device that is so physically small, it is not necessary. I can't describe other users listening habits, but ALL of my playlists contain well over 240 songs, so choosing a playlist is a bit redundant. On my 20GB iPod I do have a display: it gets used only when choosing a playlist - the rest of the time my iPod stays in its carrying case. Competitors devices list MP3 bitrate, time remaining, time elapsed, and song info: I can't remember when any of this was important to me when listening to my music.

Probably more importanttly, the removal of the LCD allows the cost to be lower, and the device to be more durable. Working with people and their iPod's, I see time and time again people who have broken screens on their iPod (this is not unique to iPods, where there is something fragile, people will break it ;-) The removal of the LCD removes weight, size and dollars from the iPod price - all good things.

The iPod is here to stay.

Once you have tasted the iPod water, you don't want to switch to something inferior. I think once people use an iPod or iPod shuffle, it is difficult to move (down) to another player. Things should get interesting over the next few years as the competition tries to catch up. I know for me, the iPod is the best music player around - it is surely here to stay.

When the internet was created, the online world was a safe and trusting place. Developers of the time probably couldnt even imagine that the internet would become what it is today. Well, things have changed, and as things changed service providers and web server administrators have been faced with the task of securing the internet and making it a better, safer place despite people who attempt to use it for evil.

Spoofing is forging of an email header so that a message appears to come from someone other than the actual sender.

Spammers have lots of different methods to their madness, but no spammer is upright enough to send email from their own email address. (This is for alot of reasons, but mostly because sending spam in alot of areas (including California) is illegal!) How do they do that? Well, they find a working email address, and then send out thousands of emails pretending to be that address. This fraudulent spamming method is called spoofing. Spoofing is forging of an email header so that a message appears to come from someone other than the actual sender. (Think of it as sending an envelope through the USPS with someone else's return address listed - its not hard to do, but is illegal and fraudulent.) I seem to get 10-15 duplicate emails each day, all pretending to originate from some different person.

This nefarious forging method has recently used to go a step further. That next step is called phishing; this is when a spammer pretends to be a company (like your credit card company or online bank). Spammers often send an email that looks like an authentic email from a reputable company - they attempt to solicit personal financial information from trusting users; they will ask for passwords, pin numbers, credit card numbers or any other thing they can get. Here is a hint people: trustworthy companies will never ask for that sort of information over email - don't give it up!

The Solution

If you have received an email from me lately, you will have noticed (if you were using an email program like Mail or Outlook Express) that my emails are digitally signed. Digitally signatures are very similar to analog signatures - they help the recipient of an email to ensure what they are getting (a) was actually sent by the sender listed in the from address and (b) the email was not modified in-transit. This is a huge step in the digital world. What kind of place would the internet be if no one would read an email unless it was digitally signed by the sender? This would cut back on the entire Spoofing / Phishing scams, and would reduce the amount of spam I personally get - dramatically. The other great thing about digital signatures is that if you and your recipient both have digital signatures, you can encrypt your emails.

What kind of place would the internet be if no one would read an email unless it was digitally signed by the sender?

This is great for businesses sending proprietary information (which otherwise is fair game for opponents and hackers alike), and regular people sending emails they don't want other people to be able to read (and really, who wants their email to be read by someone other than the recipient?). As an example - Lets say, my mom wants me to order something for her online using her credit card. If she sends a regular email to me with her credit card number, there is a very good possibility someone can intercept that email. If she sends an encrypted email, no one can read the email except me and her. Thats a great step for digital communications.

How do I get a Digital Signature?

I'm glad you asked. The only place to get a digital signature is from a trusted certificate provider. The most popular email certificate provider (mostly because they are FREE!) is Thawte. Thawte provides two levels of free email certificates: basic and name based. To get the basic certificate, Thawte asks for some personally identifying information (like a Drivers license number or Social Security Number) and then they verify your email address by sending you an email. Applying for and getting an email certificate is a rather quick process and is FREE. For most people this is sufficient. For a great tutorial on how to setup a certificate on a Mac, check out Joar.com.

As an example, the basic certificate will certify that the email you receive was from someguy245@example.com, but it wont tell you who someguy245@example.com is in the real world. This is where the name based certificate comes in - it not only verifies your email came from someguy245@example.com, but will also verify the real name of the sender. To get a name based certificate, you have to meet with a Thawte notary to verify your identity by checking your Identification. This is the only way to verify that you are who you say you are. This is the best thing around, as it is still free, but verifies who you really are- and on the internet that's a hard thing to do. I personally met with a notary to ensure that when you receive an email from me, you REALLY know it was sent by me.

Conclusions

Eventually, email providers will start offering certificates to their members as a basic service, until then I guess we will either have to put up with spam, or signup for free services like Thawte. For the security of your email and the internet, I would definitely suggest that everyone get an email certificate today- and hey, its FREE!