[Spambayes] SpamAtBay 1.1 Beta Candidate 3 Announcement

[Sean True]

SpamAtBay is a commercial spam filter, based on the open source Spambayes
project, extended with bug fixes, functionality, documentation, and support.
We share ideas and occasional code with Mark Hammond.

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 few weeks, I've had a team of several people
working on polishing, layout, docs, QA, and (gag) marketing oriented
features. We're going to release a supported version sometime soon.

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
Beta 2 Tech Refresh. 
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 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 actually want to buy one (hey, two kids heading for college here,
that's why I work), there will be a way to do that within the next week, if
it kills me (or my web designer).

Changes since release 1.0:

Release 1.1 BC3

1) Improved handling of Hotmail and Exchange inboxes
2) plugin system in regular use by developers
3) Survives Hotmail "Server busy" failure more gracefully
4) Runs faster than 1.1 BC1,2
5) Improved handling of Hotmail messages

Release 1.1 BC2

1) Support unicode folder names
2) Silently accept Eudora MAPI provider, complain about Netscale
3) Whitelist dialog called just once, instead of once per explorer
4) GetOutlookItem() should now work in more cases
5) Remove sample plugin from build
6) Impersonal DB reduced from 8MB to .5MB
7) Add more logging for startup failure
8) Support for Hotmail folders, should work for MSN -- must be manually
added
9) Fixes known bug in 1.1 BC1 (see below)

Release 1.1 BC1 

There is a known bug in 1.1. If you install a second user on NT without
admin privileges, the system may hiccup and refuse to respond to button
clicks for menu items that have not yet been excercised by the admin user.
This will be fixed in the next candidate, and is due to the install
directory being write protected from the internal script compiler.

1) Advanced/Merge database lets you add an exported database of statistics
to your current database 
2) "Marking spam as read" checkbox in the filter dialog 
3) Uninstall optionally uninstalls all data files (complete uninstall) 
4) Fixed a bug in installing a second user without admin provileges 
5) Filtering is now disabled during training and manual folder filtering 
6) There is a control panel item to change the data directory, suitable for 
   moving to a network drive. Currently not supported for simultaneous
access by multiple machines or users. 
7) Multiple profiles are now supported: all data files are copied to profile
specific names, and downgrading 
   to 1.0 will lose incremental training (unless you manually rename or copy
the files back). 

Developer note: an external plugin architecture is included for the first
time. The plugin is able to move, copy, delete, and control the spam
category assignment. Contact us for additional information.



-- Sean

Sean True
CTO
Webreply, Inc.