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2011

Mail Checker Minus; Or Why Are You Maintaining a Chrome Extension?

Outdated

I am no longer maintaining the Mail Checker Minus extension. I recommend switching over to Jason Savard's Checker Plus For Gmail. He's already done a good bit of work cleaning up code and adding new features. For those of you happy with the extension as is, I will continue to make it available via the Chrome Web Store, but please note that I will not be fixing bugs or supporting the extension.

It's fairly likely that you found this site because of the Google Chrome Extension I now maintain, Mail Checker Minus. That's a pretty good assumption since it's fairly popular and links here. For the two people who somehow found my site and don't know about Mail Checker Minus, it is (in my opinion) one of the most useful plugins for Chrome. It allows you to see the number of unread mails for Gmail at a glance, preview them, and even take actions on them.

Conversation with a Spam Bot

Today, while I was working on the inventory system for the Dallas Makerspace I received a message from an unknown person via AIM. This is not an unusual event for me since I have had the same AIM screen name for over a decade, so I tend to get messages out of the blue from people I used to know or who I gave my info to and promptly forgot (sorry).  While this wasn't the first spam bot to contact me, it was the first to fool me into thinking it was a real human, at least for a bit. Here's the chat log, with my comments: