| LED Digest 1900: PayPal, Blogs and Email Relays |
|
|
|
================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ............................................... November 24, 2004 Issue #1900 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== <Moderator Comment> --== Email Relays ==-- ~ John Smart "...many ISP's will block outgoing email that is not sent through the ISP's mail servers." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Getting Started with Blogs ==-- ~ Amy D. Moore "It is an on-line journal which is open to the public to read and...post comments to..." ~ Johnn Four "My caveat is to understand that their primary cost to you is your time." --== The PayPal vs Merchant Accounts Debate ==-- ~ Mark Roberts "...PayPal has been a real relief for me." ~ Maria Meyers "PayPal is a great concept." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Link Farm Problem ==-- ~ Willie Crawford ~ Evan Lesser --== Why Firefox? ==-- ~ Brad Waller ======== NEW ==================================== <Moderator Comment> LEDers, The "Conflict of Interest" thread just won't die! I continue to receive posts on the thread, and while many of them are redundant, some continue the discussion. I'll go ahead and put out another Special Issue this Friday. That should clean out the rest of the posts (or most of them anyway). Hope it's a great week, Adam ------------------------------ From: John Smart Subject: New Topic - Sending e-Mail Hi LEDers, Many of my smaller clients have a problem which I thought I had solved, but it is coming back to haunt me. We offer hosting. Included in the hosting packages are POP 3 e-Mail accounts. Some ISP's block e-Mail being sent through third party servers. I have heard claim that this is to prevent spam, but that is such a flawed argument. Anyway, whatever the reason, many ISP's (home user ISP's - business accounts don't appear to have this problem) will block outgoing e-Mail that is not sent through the ISP's mail servers. My first fix for this was to have the incoming server as the one we host, the outgoing server as the ISP's outgoing server, and the return address set to match the incoming server. This worked very well for the past two years, then it seemed to stop working for some accounts. My next attempt to thwart this issue was to change the port for outgoing mail. So as well as sending on port 25, some of our servers now accept outgoing mail on port 1080 also. This appears to have solved the problem for many ISP's, but there are still some that cause headaches. Another solution tackles the problem from a different angle - web based e-Mail solves all the issues. But the fact remains that many people like using Outlook / Eudora / Communicator / etc and don't want to use the web based tools that we offer. Is there another solution? Something I am missing? Please help! John Smart, Technical Director InternetDesign.com - "A Human Touch in a Digital World" ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Amy D. Moore Subject: Blogs > I am an ancient old guy and I can prove it. I still don't > know what exactly a "blog" is! How do they differ from > a forum, chat room or just a web site? How much work > is involved in administering one? Dangers? Pitfalls? Cost? - Peter D'Aprix, LED 1899 In LED #1899, Peter D'Aprix asked "what's a blog." That is a fine question, and one which many Internet users do not know the answer to. Simply stated, the word "blog" comes from combining the two words "Web" and "log." It is an on-line journal which is open to the public to read and, quite often, open and available for readers to post comments to (which will also be open to the public to read). When I present "blogging" to the class I teach about the Internet a the local community college, most students' initial reactions are "Why would anyone put their diary up for the public?" Power and popularity come to mind. Some of us just like to write. The impacts of blogs are far ranging and I had quite the education on this during our past election. I worked as the webmatrix for a local candidate and was invited to a number of fundraisers and our victory party. One of our biggest donors discussed blogs with me during the victory party - how she got "all" her political news from the bloggers. Mainstream reporters shun bloggers as incompetant or lacking authority. It is only the commercial nature of television, radio, and newspaper that "gives" authority anyway. Real authority is vested in reporters by their readers - and bloggers have nothing to lose, so they tend to discover and report the real breaking news long before the mainstream would dare offend their advertisers. You can find this kind of blogging on mainstream media on-line such as MSNBC.com. Look in the right menu boxes for "Hardblogger", "Bloggermann", and more. Then there are personal blogs, often filling up major blog hosting company sites like blogspot.com and myspace.com or using open-source software like WordPress installed on one's own web server. I wrote my own blogging software for a personal site. I write erotica, and last month my blog (at 7 months old and about a variety of topics, but mostly sex, gender issues, and libertarian politics - http://dalehwest.com/writing/soupstone) broke the barrier - it now receives more page-views daily than the collection of almost 100 erotic stories on the same site. That impressed me! To get started in being a blog reader (many of us read certain blogs as faithfully as we read our local papers) visit one of the major blogging sites and search for a topic that interests you. Blog back. Then, if you are so inspired, start blogging yourself. What blogs have become are the "pull" reciprocal of newsletters. John Audette (of I-Sales fame) would be impressed. There is real time discussion which occurs between the blogger and readers as well as between the readers / commenters of bloggers. I read a number of bloggers - and make a point to post my comments. The topic of the blog dictates the URL I include with any comments, but a number of my sites have directly benefitted from traffic derived from my comments on like-minded blogs. Amy D. Moore http://internetsupportservice.com Building Internet & Database Solutions since 1996 ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Johnn Four Subject: Blogs > Dangers? Pitfalls? Blogs are great. My caveat is to understand that their primary cost to you is your time. If you can work blogging into your daily processes and workflow, then maintaining one is a legitimate option. How much time each day or week, once you get up and rolling, could you dedicate to blogging? A few minutes daily would be enough, but I have a growing To Do list of things that will only take that amount of time. :) If you decide to jump in, decide carefully on a schedule and stick to it so that the task doesn't become a loadstone. Cheers, Johnn Four http://www.bioware.com ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Mark Roberts Subject: PayPal vs other > What are you using or setting up for clients? Merchant > Accounts to accept credit cards, PayPal, or both? - Brian Rideout, LED 1899 I can only speak for myself. I have used PayPal for many years and have never had a problem with it. I have a shopping cart where people pay for products upon check out (users do not have to create a paypal account to use the service) and I also have some customers that have recurring accounts set up and there cards are charged every month (no problem with this either). Never have had a complaint from a customer about using it. After listening to all the problems and hoops people have had to just through to use regular merchant accounts, PayPal is a real relief. Also they have a lot of other services that I use including shipping on occassion and invoicing which is really cool. It allows me to accept their order, calculate any shipping/handing, then invoice them where they can pay with their credit card. Needless to say, PayPal has been a real relief for me. Is it cheap? Yeah, I really do miss those high merchant account and gateway costs, but it is worth it. Mark Roberts Roberts Computing Systems http://www.robertscomputing.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Maria K Meyers Subject: PayPal vs other > Personally, I see PayPal only as the sign of an online merchant > too cheap to get a merchant account and it doesn't give me a good > feeling about the site. Anyone else feel that way or is it just me? - Brian Rideout, LED 1899 Hi Brian, Most of our business is conducted over the phone. This is followed by internet sales, location sales, and then mail. We have existing merchant accounts, but we are looking at adding PayPal as an alternative payment option for our patrons. PayPal has its flaws. It is the frequent target of hackers and phishers. There have been lawsuits and many disgruntled users. I don't view it as a solution to our merchant needs, but as another payment alternative. Many PayPal users have funds sitting in their accounts, whether this be from eBay sales or transferring money from checking accounts. As an impulse buyer - I know, I know: bad habit - I am more inclined to make a last minute purchase on a site that displays the PayPal icon if I have money in my PayPal account than if I have to put it on a credit card. Several shops that I visit regularly have started accepting PayPal payments, sites like Overstock.com, GoDaddy.com, CafePress.com, etc. This, of course, is bad for my budget; however, it does reflect the acknowledgement of PayPal account holders as another market to tap. If I find a book on Amazon.com, but I don't want to use my credit card, I immediately go over to eBay or do a Froogle search for the ISBN number and PayPal to locate a site that will sell me the book and accept PayPal. PayPal is a great concept. Not-for-profits can receive donations from visitors, small businesses can operate online stores without having to tackle a merchant account, users can have access to transfer money to each other, etc. For medium and large businesses, I see it more as an alternate form of payment to offer. Maria Meyers, Box Office Manager, Website Manager American Heartland Theatre ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Willie Crawford Subject: Link farm > A large link farm is linking to my site and I can't figure > out how to track them down to send a cease and desist > letter. I have sent a letter to ServiceMagic (the link recipient), > but they deny any involvement - Peggy Deras, LED 1899 Hi Peggy and LEDer's, I would try to track down the operator of the link farm to ask them not to link to me. At the same time, I don't believe that you are in any danger of losing your ranking just because they link to you. If you could be penalized that easily for being linked to from a "bad neighborhood" then your competitors could simply set up a link farm on an expendible domain just to link to you and out maneuver you. It's not that easy for a competitor to take you out :-) Willie Crawford http://therealsecrets.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Evan Lesser Subject: Link farm Peggy: Most webmasters and SEO gurus will tell you that your own search engine rankings cannot suffer from who is linking to you. If this were the case, you could "bring down" a competing website simply by creating a few junk portals that employ all of the webmastering "don'ts" (doorway pages, irrelevant linking, hidden keywords, etc.), and linking to your competitor's website a few hundred times from the junk portal. The only harm that will ensue from a link farm linking to your own website is public image. However, most web surfers are savvy enough to know that a link on a website does not necessarily constitute any form of endorsement. Good luck.. Evan Lesser LinksManager.com http://linksmanager.com evan, linksmanager.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Brad Waller Subject: Firefox > I'd like to put out an open call for practical feedback about > the Firefox browser... What are the real and practical > advantages of Firefox, besides just sticking it to Gates > & Co.? What are the disadvantages.? - Dirk Johnson, LED 1894 1) The biggest advantage I see is that it supports tabbed browsing. Once I started using Netscape with tabs, I stopped using Explorer for anything other than verifying sites or viewing those that only worked in Explorer. FireFox also handles RSS feeds well and has easy customization and configuration. I use the left sidebar to display my bookmarks or my history. Search is integrated into the browser, it can remember form information, and keep track of passwords. When you want to find something on the page, it opens a small window in the footer bar where you type in the keyword and the you can click to find next, find previous, or highlight all instances. If the word is not there, the box background goes red. When you are logged into a secure site, the address bar background is yellow. 2) The biggest disadvantage I see is that MS specific things may not work, and I have seen sites that do not work properly. 3) The extensions are great. The one that blows me away is BugMeNot. This one lets you right click in a registration field for a popular site (like the NY Times) and it will fill in a "public" login for you so you don't have to register. The logins come from users of the plugin, so you can add to it as well. The other vital one is called Session Saver. This one will restore your browser (all windows and tabs AND history) in the event of a crash or manual shut down of the program. When you open it again, everything is as you left it! Other good ones add in more places to search, allow you to right click to copy a selection in plain text, copy an image, view cookies, and view HTTP headers as they go by. You can find them at either http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/ or https://update.mozilla.org/extensions/ (busy due to release). One warning. Many extensions are not updated to the full release version of FireFox, so they may not work until they also get released. Luckily, it is easy to check for updates of all installed extensions. Brad Waller - VP, Business and Affiliate Development Manage & Sell Site Banner Space: http://adjungle.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "There is no escape -- we pay for the violence of our ancestors." - Dune |
