EarthLink Is Losing a Lot of Email: LandGator writes “Robert X. Cringely, doyen compu-columnist for PBS, reports on a hidden e-mail problem at Earthlink: They’re losing up to 9 messages out of 10, found as a result of a friend’s testing.” From the article: “He sent messages from other accounts to his Earthlink address, to his aliased Blackberry address, and to his Gmail account. For every 10 messages sent, 1-2 arrived in his Earthlink mailbox, 1-2 (not necessarily the SAME 1-2) on his Blackberry, and all 10 arrived with Gmail. Swimming upstream through Earthlink customer support, my buddy finally found a technical contact who freely acknowledged the problem. Since June, he was told, Earthlink’s mail system has been so overloaded that some users have been missing up to 90 percent of their incoming e-mail. It isn’t bounced back to senders; it just disappears. And Earthlink hasn’t mentioned the problem to these affected customers unless they complain.”

Wow… Can you imagine if you were losing 90% of your email and didn’t know it?

On the other hand, Postini announced Wednesday that 93% of all email transmitted over the Internet is spam. So if Earthlink is actually dropping the right 9 out of 10 messages, then maybe they’re doing their customers a favor. 😉

Rajesh Setty has a great article today titled Making the most of your time. He offers 9 tips:

1. Executing on your current projects flawlessly
2. Strengthening your personal brand
3. Building long-term relationships
4. Increasing your capacity to deliver
5. Making a difference to the world
6. Increasing others’ capacity to make a difference
7. Spending time with friends and family
8. Become a valued member in multiple networks
9. Learning and learning to unlearn

Read his post!

Jason Calacanis writes in Black hat and White hat SEO (or “Is SEO B.S. or not?”):

My belief has always been that:

a) if you do a great site and you take your time you will rise in the Google rankings

b) I have faith in Google’s ability to sort the good from the bad

c) all the SEO folks I’ve ever talked to–and I’ve talked to many over the past decade or so–have pitched me on expensive contracts that you can’t cancel for two years with them to do all kinds of shady things to move up in the rankings

d) the best way to do SEO is make better content, more consistently

That last line bears repeating: the best way to do SEO is make better content, more consistently. I think there are a lot of bloggers who spend a lot of time worrying about SEO when their time would be better spent writing another great piece on a unique topic…

Dave Winer wrote today:

Alan Kay once said the Macintosh was the first computer worth criticizing. Jean-Louis Gassee said that as the monkey climbs the tree, the more people can see his derriere.

The first quote especially is something to think about when your customers criticize your service or product. They are telling you your product is worth criticizing. Your customers believe it is worth their time to provide you with feedback. That’s a gift, take it and be thankful…

Trying to find out if BlogHarbor blogs are being blocked in mainland China…

If you know anyone in mainland China, can you ask them to try accessing this blog or any of the blogs on our list of Recently Updated BlogHarbor Weblogs?

We had reports of being blocked sometime in spring 2005, but later in the year and up until recently we’ve had users in mainland China as well as Hong Kong… But one of our bloggers is now reporting being unable to access any BlogHarbor site…

Any information would be appreciated! If you can help us determine if we’ve just been blocked and if the block is by domain name or IP address (do any of the blogs on our recently updated list which use their own domains get blocked?), I’d be most grateful and appreciative.

Great post by Tom today, Just A Couple Of My Terrible Blunders. Tom gives a couple of examples from his past about mistakes he’s made as a sysadmin or when communicating with partners or customers.

I probably ask too many questions these days. I suppose when you’re comfortable enough to ask questions, indicating that you don’t know something, the things you do assert become more believable, even from a bag of hot air like myself.

Blundering is one thing, but not learning from your blunders is another. Being able to laugh at them comes later. 😉

Missed this last week (Oct. 29) from the Stars and Stripes, Army steps up efforts to monitor military bloggers:

A new Army effort to monitor soldiers’ personal Web sites is raising concerns among military bloggers, who worry the service is discouraging the online community’s positive efforts.

Since July a new 10-man branch of the Virginia Army National Guard’s Data Processing Unit — a team of guardsmen trained in security issues — has been surveying the Internet for the Army, looking for online postings that might violate operational security standards.

The group isn’t reviewing things like soldiers’ e-mail accounts, but it is looking at blogs and photo-sharing sites like myspace.com.

From Media Buyer Planner: Another feature [in the upcoming Skype 3.0] allows users to set up text-based chats with up to 100 web users, whether they use Skype or not; it mirrors Skype’s group audio feature, called Skypecast. The public chat feature can be embedded into blogs to encourage conversation.



Sounds interesting… I’d bet that becomes quite popular…

Des Walsh was speaking at a convention today:

What I hadn’t planned for was the keenness of the people for me to show them how to actually set up a blog.

I took up the challenge and opened the BlogHarbor site. Five minutes later, they had a site up, with their first post – no need to futz about with credit cards, confirmation of emails, no special geeky knowledge required, no configuring databases…

The effect was so positive and the people so enthusiastic about the possibilities, that I know I just have to make sure I include this process in any future presentation.

Awesome – a big thanks to Des for showing how you can get blogging in 5 minutes!

Technorati Tags: BlogHarbor, blog+host

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a new service for Google account holders and Gmail users. Derived from Google’s acquisition of the Writely service earlier this year, this service allows users to create word processing and spreadsheet documents within a web browser, so they can accessed from anywhere. These types of web-based applications are often referred to as “Office 2.0” applications, implying an evolution of the standard desktop-based Office software. Google describes their service on the docs.google.com home page:

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a web-based word processing and spreadsheet program that keeps documents current and lets the people you choose update files from their own computers. You can, for example, coordinate your student group’s homework assignments, access your family to-do list from work or home, or collaborate with remote colleagues on a new business plan.

What’s exciting about Google Docs & Spreadsheets is that it also provides you the ability to post your documents directly to your weblog. It even can update your blog post when you update its original GDS document!

Google has made it easy to configure GDS to post to BlogHarbor weblogs by including BlogHarbor in the default list of blog services (thank you Google!), so all you need to know to configure GDS to post to your BlogHarbor weblog is your username and password.

BlogHarbor users see How to Configure Google Docs & Spreadsheets to Post to your Blog…

Technorati Tags: Google+Docs, BlogHarbor, Google

Bart Giamatti, former MLB commissioner, on the game of baseball:

It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.

I heard that it rained pretty hard overnight in the NY area…

Technorati Tags: Mets, baseball

Congratulations to the New York Mets for a fantastic 2006 season! The Mets lost to the Cards last night in a very dramatic baseball game, one that Mets fans will be talking about for a long time… at least until Opening Day 2007.

And a thank you to Matthew Cerrone’s Metsblog.com, one of BlogHarbor‘s most popular weblogs (public stats).

Matt’s done a fantastic job over the past few years building Metsblog.com, not only publishing great content, but also creating a strong community. It’s so exciting to see our platform helping people to share their passion, and for some to even make a living off of it: Publishing the site is now Matt’s full time job!

Technorati Tags: Mets, Metsblog