Welcome to part 3 of my series on Anti-Spam and Whitelisting. My last post referred to a method which makes it easier for email senders and recipients to request and complete the whitelisting process. I just wanted to take a moment to elaborate on that procedure now that its available for our customers.

Normally when an email is bounced back to the sender, the error message can often be a little cryptic and difficult to understand for those of us who are a little less technical. This is also the case when your email is bounced due to an RBL blacklist. We’ve attempted to alleviate this by sending a more user-friendly error message which explains the reason why the email wasn’t delivered. This error message will also contain a URL, which when followed will lead to a web page where the sender can request that they be whitelisted.

After following the link, the individual will then be asked to provide their email address and the email address they were attempting to contact. Once the request is submitted, an email is sent to the web hosting account owner or the hosted exchange account owner. The email will also contain a link which will lead directly to the Whitelist administration page, where they can quickly approve the request.

Once approved, the sender will be able to send email to the original recipient - bypassing the RBL blacklist completely. Although this procedure isn’t fully automated, the steps take only seconds to complete and are completely painless. Neither party needs to spend any time figuring out which IP Address needs to be whitelisted, and only minor input is required.

We hope that all of our customers will enjoy this new feature.

Regards,

Tim Attwood
Product Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

January 2007 marks the tenth anniversary of SoftCom.

The world has changed a great deal since we started. The Dot-com bubble saw the founding (and in many cases, dramatic failure) of numerous new Internet-based companies. The political and economic situation has been marked by increased globalization and the aftermath of the events of September 11th 2001.

Looking back to 1997 according to wikipedia.org:

• Bill Clinton was starting his second term as US President.
• The Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl XXXI defeating the New England Patriots, 35-21.
• Tony Blair becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ending 18 years of conservative rule.
• The first book in the award winning Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling is published.
• On January 12, the computer HAL 9000 comes online (in 2001: A Space Odyssey)
• Microsoft buys a $150 million shares of financially troubled Apple Computer.
• The domain Google.com was registered

SoftCom has also seen some changes over the years.

• In May 1997 mail2web.com was launched.
• In June of the same year we offered Microsoft Windows web hosting services.
• In 2001 we added support for 16 international languages to mail2web.com.
• 2002 saw myhosting.com become the world’s largest Microsoft exclusive hosting company.
• Later that same year mail2web.com got involved in car racing sponsorship with the Porsche Team at the Le Mans 24 and as the title sponsor of the Mosport – mail2web.com Grand Prix.
• In 2003 we took two large steps forward by upgrading to Microsoft Server 2003 and moving to a telco-grade Data Center.
• The following Year we introduced a unique web hosting package; a blended Windows and Linux offering.
• 2005 was the year of communication and collaboration, seeing the launch of both Exchange email and SharePoint hosted services under mail2web.com.
• Early in 2006 we took web based email to the next level when we launched mail2web.com LIVE. A free email service based on Microsoft Exchange.

Today SoftCom provides valuable, efficient and cost-effective Internet based services to more than 16 million customers with support of 26 languages in 220 countries worldwide.

I can’t wait to see where we will take things in the next ten years!

Thanks,

Stephen Nichols
Marketing Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Blogging is certainly a publishing revolution. Anyone with a PC and an opinion can now make their views and photos available to the world. And get feedback . . .

And yes, some blogs and opinions are downright boring. I’m sure I’ll get feedback to that effect. But some are great, niche sites that offer the highly focused information you can’t get anywhere else.

Further to my last post, I love gadgets. Check out gadgetmaniac.mail2web.com (based on WordPress) and you’ll find a massive collection of product reviews and articles about some products and developments I didn’t know existed, I will probably never buy but I find incredibly interesting just the same.

Some blogs can actually generate money through advertising. Don’t quit your day job, I’m not talking about ‘get rich, working from home’ schemes but rather the ability to generate enough money to cover your hosting costs and maybe a little left over for the odd gadget purchase.

Free sites have all sorts of limitations – file sizes, forgettable domain names, bad reporting and ultimately little control when it comes to integrating things like Google Adsense – the easiest way to run ads and make money.

But for less than $5.00 a month you can get a WordPress account with myhosting.com. WordPress is the leading application for blogging, can be set up in minutes (we have an auto-install script), and you can use the domain name of your choice (could be an extra fee if it’s a new domain name, but you can transfer an existing domain name for free).

Part of the setup includes an automatic installation of the Adsense plugin, so once you get an Adsense account it’s easy to place ads around your content. Write a few articles a week – check your traffic through Google Analytics (also included as an auto install provided you have an account) – and provided what you write is interesting and somewhat targeted, your opinion will be heard and you might even make some money.

That’s revolutionary.

John Carthy
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.
V.P. of Sales and Marketing