What is DNS Propogation?

I have received this question many many times over the years as an internet … person… most recently from our new graphic artist contractor, a fine young man from Joseph Turner Graphics. And it’s a very valid question, since people are often told things like “Your website won’t be up until DNS propagates which could be as long as 72 hours.” 72 hours! This is the age of the Internet! 72 hours is an enormous amount of time. Why does it take so long? Why is the range so gaping? I mean if it was EXACTLY 72 hours, that’s more believable than “could be one hour, could be 12, could be 39, could be 72”.

Unfortunately, there is a reason. And it’s one that no one has control over.
Continue reading

What in the world would we do without Akismet?

The world of online marketing is split into two separate and occasionally difficult to distinguish groups: The first has legitimate products and services and attempts to spread the word about their products and services to the attention of the masses. The second sprays the internet with unsolicited garble and hopes that enough suckers will click thereon to justify their sad existance. Predominantly, they peddle pills, porn, or poker.

This article is about the latter… and queue the Law & Order music…
Continue reading

Expand your desktop with Synergy.

The other day, several clients from up north came to visit as we helped them launch a new marketing product. As they sat watching me pound out code on my computers, they were quite curious about my three monitors. They watched me flow back and forth amongst the three, changing this, checking that, saving here, reloading there… normal operations for me, but not for them. One, who had some previous programming experience, asked if I preferred Linux to Windows. I replied that both had their uses and so I was using both. He was somewhat taken aback by my statement and looked closer at my monitors.

Yep, two windows, and one linux…
Continue reading

Monitor your IPs with SenderScore automatically.

In a world of increasing SPAM, IP reputation has become a must-know statistic if you want to be able to send an email to a customer, prospect or even grandma. So if you are running an ISP, as we are, maintaining a good IP reputation isn’t some nice frill that makes you feel good, it’s a necessity. The problem is, no one wants to tell you what the reputation is. Sure, you can monitor the hundreds of various block lists out there, and probably should, but that only tells you when the IP’s reputation has reached a critical low. Luckily, most big email providers are turning to ReturnPath their spam complaints, feedback loops, and all those other tedious tasks that need handling when dealing with customer level email delivery. This places ReturnPath in a unique position where they can monitor, generate, and, more importantly, display the IP reputations of our IPs.

And so they do. Enter SenderScore.
Continue reading