Do you think what I said is wrong? I mean, look around you, in the forums and in the blogs, you would realize that the biggest problem facing the web directory market now is that everyone is copying each other. Speaking from personal experience, I am one of those blind followers. We sort of do what the industry leaders are doing. You know, they start bidding directories, we follow. They start blogs, we follow. They add this mod and that mod to their directory, we follow. Not only do we follow the industry leaders, we follow everyone else too. Someone think of a good and unique idea for directories, we follow. In the end, everyone is doing the exact same thing with no regards to the Directory Industry on the whole. Soon, it will be next to impossible to differentiate one directory from another.
It is also surprising that we (the directory owners) spend a lot of time in forums discussing about directories (actually is to copy what others are doing). However, the main important thing that directory owners should be doing is thinking of new ideas and working on our directories. I mean, other than promotion and marketing, nothing beats good unique directories and quality content right? So why aren’t we doing it? Simple, we follow. Directory owners gather at forums, so why not let’s all go and pat each other on the back? We do need the Pied Piper to save us all.
Following the story of me setting up an email server for my company, I ran into a little problem. It seems that both Yahoo and Hotmail hates my guts and they are treating my emails as Junk or Bulk emails. Well, my company email server was recently setup and I have checked, the IP address is clean - no blacklists reported the IP address as an relay or spam relay. And the email server does not accept any mailing lists as well. We are not in the business of sending mass mails to our customers at all. In fact, our traffic is mainly direct to customers. Neither is the email server an open relay. All users who send emails must be authenticated first.
The funniest thing, one of my other server which has a very strict Spam policy doesn’t reject or tag the mails as Spam. I have tried serveral email providers like Gmail, Myrealbox, a few other domains which I own, none is reporting that the emails are spam. Only Yahoo and Hotmail. I looked at the email headers of the affected emails, but they gave me no clue. Seems that Yahoo tags the IP address of my outgoing mail server as a Bulk Sender. For Hotmail, they gave me no information in their header at all.
I have read up on Hotmail and MSN’s SPF framework, which claims that setting up a SPF record on your DNS will help verify the emails and reduce the chance of getting tagged as spam. So I did(which was pretty easy, they even have a wizard to do this for you). But that didn’t work as planned. Still Hotmail treats my emails as Junk mail. I am lost now. Anyone knows how to solve this problem. please help me.
Wow, what a busy last few days I had. Actually it was also extremely interesting. First my company was audited and I was interviewed like over a hundred times. But they asked the weirdest questions and most of which I told them to refer to my supervisor. Hahaha, my supervisor was blackfaced the entire time. Next, came the setting up of an email server. This is the interesting part - setting up and hosting an email server. I mean, I had thought that it was just buy a server and that’s it! I was dead wrong.
Setting up a email server requires a number of things, like Domain names, DNS hosting, setting up Reverse DNS records(PTR Records), setting up A & MX records, spam, antivirus, what type of servers and operating system, which Email Server software, which Internet connection to use and so on. I guess if you do it the first time, you learn everything, right down from which Internet access to get to actually how the mails are sent and received. It was a challenge but I hope everything will be alright. And the experience I gathered from this little project will be very useful for me down the line. Soon, I will be setting up email servers for small and medium sized companies (I hope)! So the next email server you send your mails to could be created by yours truly. You should be honoured. If it doesn’t work or rejects your mail, blame it on someone else.
Anyway, it took me a few days to completely setup the server and now, the only thing left is “load” testing the server and seeing whether the server can take the huge load that is expected after the migration. If not, I will be in deep trouble. Wish me luck.
It’s the latest craze in Singapore now, Yoga. Everyone is taking up courses on Yoga and Yoga centres/clinics are hiring Yoga Masters and Experts from India and Greenland to teach these people. So I have created a list of Singapore Yoga Centres for anyone wishing to join in this craze and get some exercise. It’s a small list currently, but don’t worry, I will add more in time. It is also interesting that as this kind of exercise gets more popular in Singapore, the techniques get more exotic. We now have Hot Yoga (whatever that means) and other kinds of yoga available to the public. I just wonder, if anyone finds ordinary yoga so easy that they need to take the next step and look for more exotic kinds of yoga? Must really be a flexible person.
Anyone know that I am actually a Yoga Expert myself? No, I am not kidding. I once was so at peace with myself that I woke up like 100 miles away from my home. Some people say I was drunk, but that’s not possible, I don’t drink alcohol. Especially not the hogwash we call beer here in Singapore. And just last week, I was so joined with the my divine spirit that I ramped my 50 dollar bicycle into a tree that was in my path to enlightenment. Nothing stops me from the achieving enlightenment, wood. Again, there are some people who say that it is my cycling skill that suck big time, but who really listens to them anyway. A true Yoga master only listens to his inner self.
I think I will start a Yoga Studio myself. I will then charge Singaporeans (or anyone stupid enough to come to Singapore) heaps of money for me to help them feel at ease, especially about their financial problems. They will feel great after coming to my sessions, I guarantee. Pay first, feel good later.
Google finally wisen up and realized that more than half the population on Earth is actually from the planet Mars. I told them before but the big bosses there don’t believe me.  I had to drag them out to the streets and force them to talk to the general population for them to realize this fact. One of their engineers (Xatres III the Sexy aka Matt Cutts) is even one of them. So in order for them to get control of the Internet even more (like the Martian market), they have decided to have Google Maps for Mars. Yes, you heard me right, it’s for Mars. So if you are a Martian and would like a bird’s eye view of the place where you live, try Google Maps Mars. It’s pretty cool too.
I guess if you live underneath to that big red rock next to the butt shaped crater, you can show your fellow Martians or those human you trust. And I heard that it is very precise. It even comes with an infrared version for those who are normal spectum impaired. Coming up next will be in the Ultraviolet spectrum. They don’t want to be biased to a certain group of Martians now do they. That’s very thoughtful of them. I also heard that their next Google Maps project will be for Jupiter and if you are full of hot gas (like me), you will be pleased.
But beware, one day humans may use Google maps to invade your planet and bring Starbucks Coffee to Mars and Jupiter. In fact, I think it is inevitable that humans will one day bring Starbucks Coffee to Mars, it is just a matter of time. We all hate horrible tasting coffee, but it definitely taste better all covered with milk/chocolate and cream right? Plus they charge you way more than it is worth. Who does that better than Starbucks? And with Google Maps, you will know precisely where to get them horrid coffee!
Someone from Digitalpoint forums has started a list of directories. It is surprising that the authour named it the Complete List of Directories. Why surprising you might ask? Well, it’s not complete. Not even close. There are probably thousands of directories out there in the wild. And it’s very weird that they didn’t include my directories in that complete list. I mean, my two great and “powerful” directories are famous on the Internet for their editorial integrity and millions use it to search for stuff like gambling and porn. How could the author have missed my directories? Is the author living in a well or what? I didn’t spend years and years building up my directories’ reputation for nothing. And I didn’t spend thousands of dollars in advertising not to be included in these kind of lists. I am going to give this guy a piece of my mind and demand that he change his list name to the puny list of useless directories until he adds mine. I demand respect!
And anyway, if you are looking for a list of directories, it would be better to visit directories of directories. These are directories which lists directories. Ouch! I am included in some of them like Info Vilesilencer and ADD URL.nu. These have been driving traffic to my directories for months now and I can safely say that they work. And adding your directories into these sites is easy too.
I am also going to start The Complete List of Braindead Humans so please help me by listing down your full name and address. It’s going to be a great resource when Judgement Day comes.
I normally don’t have much good things to say about commercial entities. I hate them to the core. But once in a while, we would come across a good for value deal out there. Godaddy’s domain registration is one of them. In fact, all my domains are under registered with Godaddy. There business model is fair. Probably the first Domain Registrar that offers good quality, low priced domain registration to the masses. And with a easy to use interface, Godaddy gave me the flexibility of changing hosts whenever I need to. I have the complains about Godaddy. I guess without Godaddy, we will all be paying US$40-60 per year for our domains. Thank god for the Superbowl ads. What I am even more surprised is that there are still domain registrars out there providing expensive domain registration to webmasters. Don’t they watch the Superbowl? And if Godaddy can offer such low prices, I wonder how much those extremely greedy companies are making off domain registration!!
Yes, Godaddy did offer to show my face at the next Superbowl ads if I say good things about their business, but it was somehow rejected by CBS. They claim that my face would bring down the ratings and scare audiences away. Some old ladies may get heart attacks which could even result in death. So they decided to show me mooning the crowd instead. My butt is am going to be famous! Finally some recognition for my flashing skills.
I wish I could say the same good things about their webhosting services. No, I don’t host my websites under Godaddy but from what I read at WHT and other forums, it seems that there is a lot of problems with their Linux hosts. I think they modify their apache servers and this may break a lot of CMS scripts, even popular ones. Sure, they offer very good pricing for their webhosting service too, but what’s the point? My opinion is for you to check out whether a script has any problems with their hosts first before committing. And get ready to ask your friends for help, I hear their support isn’t that great.
What will you think will happen to the Search Engine market? Microsoft also owns MSN/Live which is the third largest Search Engine and combining with Yahoo!, will we see a real competition to Google? Sure, Google’s Search Engine is probably much better than Yahoo!’s, but now with the resources of Microsoft behind them, how much an improvement will it result? Commercially, it is sound. One less competitor for MSN and one more step for global domination. Microsoft could just ditch MSN and start using Yahoo’s search results while concentrating MSN as a complete Internet portal. Or they could work side by side, each providing their own results and complimenting each other.
I myself believe if such a merger were to happen, it will be a good thing. Google has grown lax and unimaginative in the recent years, and have produced a lot of failures and disasters for themselves(think Googletalk). And their Search Engine, though currently still the best on the web, has not improved much (in my opinion). Their very restrictive policies and arrogance has actually hurt a lot of webmasters and web entrepreneur and this has made the Internet larthargic. I feel that with Google at the helm is not good at all. In fact, I think that Google is holding back the potential of the Internet. Although I don’t trust Microsoft, at least it will force Google to really improve their search engine and start behaving responsibly instead of like a web thug by forcing everyone to do whatever they say. Thus I am still very keen to see what will happen if Microsoft takes over Yahoo!.
What do you think? Will it be a good idea? Will we be trading one monster for two lesser ones? Or will we see the golden age of the Internet coming soon? Please discuss.
It’s here. The ultimate website tracker and stats program/script on the Internet. It’s OpenTracker! Why is it good? Well, this script is really one mean tracker. I don’t mean that kind of scripts which tells you where a visit enter your site, but exactly what your visitor is doing. You know, from which site is your visitor from, which page is he/she visiting, how long does he/she spends on a page and which site they exit to. Yes, from the moment they enter your site to the moment they leave it, everything is tracked by Open Tracker. And with details for the information junkie!
Although some of the features are also provided by other stats script, this powerful script allows is especially designed for “human events”. So they will filter of bots, worms or any automated system that is visiting your site and concentrate on your actual human visitors. This script and all the data are also hosted on their servers so it will not affect the performance of your site. And this data can be accessed 24/7 from anywhere on the Internet. The interface and reports are displayed clearly, allowing you to access the most important information easily.
However, I am still trying to figure out other than being hosted offsite, what difference in features does this script has over free ones like Awstats. Even Google’s analytics data is hosted on their own servers, so it should not affect the performance of the your site too. Why pay for something that has no real advantage unless you are really a detail freak with too much free time on his/her hands?
Yes, it’s finally working properly! My email account using MyRealBox email service is now up and running. No longer do I get mail rejects or timeouts when I access my email. After about one or two months or constant downtime and disruptions, it seems that Messaging Architects got their act together and solved their major problems they have with their email service. I have tried it for 2 weeks now and I found no downtimes. Well, I will keep my fingers cross. They also claim that outrages happen and the result is a “more reliable and stable service”. Errr…….ok, that’s an interesting way to put it.
I also discovered that they have a improved spam protection system. They call it the M+ Guardian Spam protection. Thus I got less spam in my inbox. Well, it could be due to their anti-spam feature or because of the long downtime ( 2 months or more), even spammers have stopped spamming me. They also added an anti-virus and anti-adware system along with their anti-spam service. I am not sure how will the anti-adware will work, but the anti-virus feature is a very important feature no email service should be without. It’s about time they implement it. But note that even with an anti-virus protection, having your own anti-virus software on your computer is still needed.
Anyway, I am glad that it is all working. I don’t have to change to another email account and lose all my contacts I have. I really hate to do that. It’s extremely troublesome to inform my friends, relatives and business partners about the change in my email account. So thank you, Messaging Architects, for doing your job.
