| LED Digest 2409: The Gatekeeper Mentality |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.GetWebContent.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. May 14, 2007 Issue no. 2409 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== <Moderator Comment> ~ The Gatekeeper Mentality --== Domain Extensions & Age ==-- ~ Sheila Moon "[Should we] keep an old domain name with a history or to change to a new one?" --== Blocked by Hotmail ==-- ~ George Miller "Does anybody know how to get the blocking by hotmail removed?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Do Macs Need Virus Protection Now? ==-- ~ Barb Sybal "I run both Windows and Mac computers here and was curious..." ~ Malcolm Fitzgerald "I've just run MacScan. My mac was clean." ~ Tom Aman "...let's not have any Windows / Mac / Linux bashing as that is totally non-productive." ==== BULLETIN BOARD ============= --== Mac OSX Questions ==-- ~ Shel Horowitz =========== NEW ================================== <Moderator Comment> Greetings LEDer, I had an interesting experience last week. I'm in the early phases of a marketing project for an old liberal arts college. They're focusing on promoting their online degree department, and I'm working with the marketing director and development team. Up until last week things had been smooth as silk, and we had lengthy and productive conversations over email and phone. Part of my initial work involved checking out their analytical data. In addition to Google Analytics, they're set up with Analog - nothing wrong with that, it's a great free stats program - and hard to beat for the price (free). But it's only as good as you make it, and the developer made it suck pretty bad. He sent me a PDF of April stats with only the top 10 keywords searched (which were strangley words like "the"), and only the top 10 referrers, which were all from the college's own domain because he didn't filter those out. I know it's necessary to be tactful in these situations, and I was very considerate when I wrote to him: ------------------- "Ah... I've always disliked these Analog reports :-) Webalizer too. They're okay when used w/ another analytics package, but on their own w/ out a lot of pre-filtering pretty useless. Top search keywords for example." ------------------- I was thinking we'd talk with the mutual respect of colleagues, and didn't give the above a second thought. That's just how I email (I probably use way too many smiley faces). Anyway, here was his reply that totally surprised me: ------------------- "... framing the log data I sent you as "pretty useless" is not the best language to use when building a relationship with the person who generated that data and took the time to send it to you. I'm aware of the limitations of log analysis and page tag analytics like Google as well. There are numerous ways to ask for supplemental analysis tools to support what was provided without marginalizing earlier effort. I know you didn't mean anything by it but had you been talking to our CIO or server administrator, you would have made your life much more difficult." ------------------- When I read this, I thought of what my older brother John ( http://www.mitosciences.com/management.html ) told me about the "gatekeeper mentality." The Gatekeeper relishes the opportunity to dangle his access keys in front of you, or threaten to take your keys away. S/he loves to guard access to things and make your life difficult. Kinda' makes me laugh picturing it that way... The first thing I did was pick up the phone. Enough of this email stuff, sometimes you just gotta make a call. We smoothed things out in about 5 minutes. The real reason I brought this up was to ask you a question: have you faced the "Gatekeeper Mentality" before? How have you dealt with it? For agencies and firms who may have gatekeepers employed, do you realize this, and do you educate people on easing barriers? The Gatekeeper can really make life miserable. How have you coped? Hope it's a great week, Adam Comment? ------------------ From: Sheila Moon Subject: Domain Extensions & Age Influencing Rankings Does it make a difference in search engine rankings what URL [extension] you have? i.e.; .org, .com, .net, .biz etc? Would it be more important for search engine ranking in the long run to keep an old domain name with a history or to change the domain name to one which contains keywords describing the content of the site? Currently my site doesn't even come up on Google or other search engines for any search terms and I am in the process of doing SEO work to fix that. Thank you for any information you can provide! Sheila Moon Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: George Miller Subject: Blocked By Hotmail One of my clients, who runs a recruitment business, sends out about ten e-mails to hotmail every day. They are job offers and descriptions to clients, sometimes with zipped documents attached. They are now blocked with this message: -------------------- "550 Your e-mail was rejected for policy reasons on this gateway. Reasons for rejection may be related to content such as obscene language, graphics, or spam-like characteristics (or) other reputation problems." -------------------- Does anybody know how to get the blocking by hotmail removed? George Miller www.pc24hr.co.uk Comment? ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Barb Sybal Subject: Mac spam > I think it would be interesting if LED Mac users would give > [MacScan] a try and report back to LED on the results... - Tom Aman, LED Digest 2407 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1811/55/ Tom Aman asks Mac users to try MacScan and so I did. Because of the type of business I manage, I run both Windows and Mac computers here and was curious to see if MacScan found anything. On the PCs here, I would never think of turning them on without some protection, but rarely give it a second thought for the Macs. The finding? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. I was almost hoping that after 6 years of absolutely zero protection on the Macs that MacScan would find something and was quite satisfied that it didn't. Barb Sybal GFX Printing Services http://www.gfxinc.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Malcolm Fitzgerald Subject: Mac spam I run my mac behind a router with a built-in firewall. I don't run active anti-virus software. I'm on the web continuously and a lot of spam gets into my mailboxes. I've just run MacScan. My mac was clean. MacScan found some cookies which it labelled "spyware". That seems a bit heavy handed. I know that cookies can be used to collate information about my browsing habits, however, they are only cookies. By way of comparison, I've just cleaned up a computer which is running XP. It also runs behind a router with a built-in firewall. It had a variety of active anti-virus tools running, including Nortons and SpySweeper but it was experiencing problems. I ran my favorite XP anti-virus: avast!. During the boot scan avast! discovered and removed dozens of trojans, viruses and adware tools. There were so many that I lost count. Malcolm Fitzgerald Comment? ============ Sponsor Message =========== Why pay more for less? Some content providers charge extra to search-engine optimize copy. And some are so clueless, they don't offer SEO at all. A lot of good that'll do your site. At GetWebContent.com, we SEO everything we write without any additional charge whatsoever. Get it all, http://www.GetWebContent.com/LED ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Mac spam > PC users became slaves to their adware > and spyware and virusware scanning routine... - Gordon Moe, LED Digest 2408 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1812/55/ Gordon, I am disappointed in your post. Obviously, you did not read mine completely. I specifically said that it was "not intended to start yet another discussion on the relative merits / problems / safety of Windows / Mac / Linux..." but you seem to have missed that part. My suggestion was that Mac users try out MacScan and let us all know the results so everyone would know whether or not there is, in fact, any real threat for Mac users to be concerned about. (I could be facetious at this point and suggest that it is too bad your Mac is so inefficient that you don't have time to do a bit of testing to be really sure you are, in fact, safe, but rest assured that I don't really mean that.) From the couple of other posts in LED 2408, it appears, so far at least, that the worst anyone has encountered are some tracking cookies that can either be ignored or easily removed without resorting to special software. Also, your opening paragraph is totally incorrect. Few, if any, PC users are *slaves* to their anti adware, spyware, virusware. I installed the appropriate protection, use reasonable common sense when surfing and reading email and have never had a problem. The protection does its job on the fly, downloads and installs updates automatically and does its scanning in the background or at night so it never bothers me or takes any of my time. As I have said before, the computer we use tends to be governed by what we do with it or company policy or who supports us or personal preference etc., etc., - dozens of various and different reasons for our choice. If someone gave me a brand new, top of the line Mac, it would be as much use to me as a boat anchor (actually, it would not even make a good boat anchor as modern computers do not weigh enough); give it to my youngest son and he would be in heaven. I create software for Windows based systems as well as support some local users who run software only available for Windows so a Mac is of no use to me; my son works in graphics, uses a top of the line Mac at work with multiple monitors and would love to have the same at home. Different needs, different computers. So please, let's not have any Windows / Mac / Linux bashing as that is totally non-productive. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com Home of CyberSpyder Link Test Comment? ==== BULLETIN BOARD =============================== From: Shel Horowitz Subject: OS X 10.4 questions I recently upgraded my desktop Mac from 10.2.8 to 10.4.6. In general, I'm happy with Tiger, but there are a couple of things that drive me nuts: 1. Printing I had a few presets that I set up under previous versions of OS X, including a toner saving module and then full strength printing at 300, 600, and 1200 dpi. For some reason, this printer driver defaults to printing back to front in its automatic setting. In other words, if I'm printing a 20-page document, page 20 comes first and page 1 comes last. I can set it manually to print front to back, but it's three extra clicks -- which adds up given how many times a day I hit print. Also, and even more problematic, setting the page order has to be done after selecting the preset, or else the paper handling defaults to reverse printing again. And it's totally arbitrary whether I get the preset I select. I printed out a 100+-page e-book that I wanted to archive, and carefully selected one of the full-strength presets -- but I got it in toner-saver mode. And many times, I'm printing a digest of one of my discussion lists, which I read once and throw away, and request the toner-saver setting, but get a nice dark archival-quality print. I cannot figure out how to access the presets and change their settings to incorporate my paper choice, or to change the paper handling default, or to assure that the setting I choose is the one I receive. 2. Sherlock 95 percent of the time, I can search for what I want by filename -- but the default of searching for internal content is brutally slow. I did figure out how to search by filename, but not how to set it as the default -- and therefore I get bogged down in the slow search while I'm setting the criteria, since it starts searching immediately. Surely there must be a way to change the default! 3. This is a problem that existed in 10.2 as well: programs quitting themselves for no reason. The culprits are Word (2001 version) and Eudora 6.2.3, paid version. I try to have Eudora be the front application when the mail comes in, and I try to load Word first (they compete with Spamfire, which loads itself automatically even though I keep deselecting that option). These things help, but I still probably find Eudora quitting a couple of times a day and Word a few times a week. On my laptop, running I think 10.4.2, Word will quit the first time I hit Save As but then after I reload, it's fine. If the mail comes in when something else is the front app, Eudora will usually but not always quit -- but it will also quit for no apparent reason at other times, whether it's the active app or not. Thanks for any help, Shel Horowitz Marketing Strategic Planning, Consulting, and Copywriting http://www.frugalmarketing.com Comment? ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. Free no-obligation proposal: http://GetWebContent.com/LED The Archives: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/126/120/ Subscribe: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/52/77/ Unsubscribe, Change Email, or Hold / Resume Delivery: http://www.led-digest.com/content/category/4/17/86/ (c) Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that." - Norman Vincent Peale |
