Made of Everything You're Not

I had wanted to have a full time Linux desktop for about a year now. I think I’ve gotten to a point with Linux that I’m comfortable enough to use it for development. The problem is that I manage a Windows network and I work solely from a laptop. (Surprise! I’m pretty stubborn about my computer setup; I likes what I likes.)

I’d used Cygwin before but it always seemed… clunky at certain things like, well, everything. It really does works though and it’s pretty nice for doing things like integrating SpamAssassin into Exchange, which is also a pretty cool exercise, just not for a full desktop experience.

Virtualization

Because of that, I was a little skeptical about the whole virtual machine thing. It sounds like a good idea, having another operating system installed on top of another, but until I recently tried it I just didn’t really understand how cool it really is.

First, some details. My personal computer is a Gateway MT6705 with 2GB of RAM running Vista Business. I use the classic theme, fuck you Aero, to keep my computer snappy too. After boot up my computer has 1.5GB of RAM available.

With those specs, my biggest concern was performance; it didn’t really make sense that my computer would still be usable when a virtual desktop was running.

Then I remembered that “usable” is a relative state. Right now, I’m using the fastest computer I’ve ever used, so I’m already accustomed to crappy performance. Plus, I’m already running a stripped down version of the latest, stable, Windows so the only place to go was a lower end operating system.  The biggest question then becomes “What virtual machines do I want to run?”.

The first place I went was VMware; I still wasn’t sure all the details and as usual Wikipedia left me with questions. VMware offers a workstation version that costs $189 at the moment with a free trial to check it out. They also have a free virtual machine client, VMware Player. Unfortunately, when I was researching the two products the VMware site wasn’t allowing downloads so I couldn’t check it out.

Instead, I moved onto VirtualBox; and I’m really happy I did. VirtualBox is a free virtual machine that is also open source. According to their site:

VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See “About VirtualBox” for an introduction.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD.

VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while Sun ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.

On this site, you can find sources, binaries, documentation and other resources for VirtualBox. If you are interested in VirtualBox (both as a user, or possibly as a contributor), this website is for you.

Installation was easy; just like any other Windows program really. It’s definitely worth while to read through manual before diving into the install though; they have some conventions that are really useful to know before diving in.

To install a virtual machine you’re essentially installing the operating system onto a your hard drive so the process can take a little time. I was able to get Fedora 10, Windows XP and Windows 7 (yup, Windows 7!)  running in a long night.

VirtualBox

The way it works is that you allot a set amount of your spare system resources to each of your virtual machines. So, for example, I set Windows XP to have 1 GB of RAM and 10GB of hard drive space and VirtualBox only allows that virtual machine to those specs.

VirtualBox handles the resource detail pretty elegantly; in that it doesn’t use the resource until it needs it. This means that instead of instantly having 10GB of your hard drive used up VirtualBox will only use the amount already taken. You can tweak the settings for a VM whenever you want so you can get just the right mix.

Fedora VirtualBox

That does make me think my current setup isn’t really the best. Specs aside, which are a pretty big issue for me at the moment, running Windows Vista as my base Operating System is kind of wasteful. I’m thinking it might be a good idea to upgrade my computer, I’ve had this laptop for over 2 years and 64 bit is pretty appealing, or more likely, downgrade to Windows XP or a base Linux install and run virtual machines full time.

Earlier this month my department was, finally, able to get approval for an upgraded Internet line for the office. Previously we were using a business level DSL line that just SUCKED. Whenever someone was uploading anything the download and upload would just grind to a halt and we’d have to find out who was doing what. This happened everyday and it was just painful.

New Internet Line

If you’ve never had the pleasure of using business level DSL in an Internet company count yourself lucky.

Anyway, after literally a whole year of research and proposals and meetings and compromises and revisions we finally got the new line approved.

Halle-Fucking-lujah!!

Of course there’s the increased speeds for both up and download, which really can’t be understated in it’s coolness, but there’s also a Service Level Agreement (SLA) which guarantees us an uptime of 99.99%. Having just come from the world of DSL, where the word “reliability” isn’t a part of the vernacular, this was a requirement.

Of course this begged the question of just how much downtime is allowed with a 99.99% SLA. Not really wanting to do the math myself I turned to Google and came across a post on John D. Mitchell’s Blog with the fortuitous title “What does 99.999% reliability really mean?“.

John went to all the trouble of writing a script in Java that quickly outputs the correct time based on the amount of 9s. Since I don’t work in Java I thought I’d take a shot at porting his script to php (what else?).

Here’s my take on it:

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<?php
$sp = array();
$sp['min'] = 60;
$sp['hour'] = $sp['min']*60;
$sp['day'] = $sp['hour']*24;
$sp['year'] = $sp['day']*365;
 
function determine_nines($num_nines, $seconds){
	global $sp;
 
	$seconds = (double)$seconds;
	$str =  $num_nines." 9's (";
	for ($i = 0; $i < $num_nines; $i++) {
		if (2 == $i) {
			$str .= '.';
		}
		$str .= '9';
	}
 
	$str .= '%) = up to ';
	$str .= ($seconds / $sp['hour']).'h / ';
	$str .= ($seconds / $sp['min']).'m / ';
	$str .= $seconds.' seconds of downtime per year.';
	$str .= '<br />';
	return $str;
}
 
echo "Nines of Reliability: (Hours / Minutes / Seconds)<br />";
$base = 100.0;
for($i=2;$i<=7;$i++){
	if($i != 2){
		$base = $base*10;
	}
	echo determine_nines ($i, $sp['year'] / $base);
}
?>

So using my SLA of 99.99% I get a maximum downtime of 0.876 hours or 52.56 minutes of downtime per year.

Cool.

For comparison here’s the complete output of the above script (it matches exactly what John had; so that’s nice).

In How to Not Suck at Email Campaigns I completely left out a HUGE part of not sucking; scrubbing your email list.

Sanitize email list

Scrubbing an email list before sending it out is something that rarely gets done but is actually pretty crucial.

See, email providers, the organizations that provide email like yahoo, gmail and hotmail, and some spam filters, actually look at the email addresses you send to and flag those they deem to be either role accounts or spam traps and they use that to determine part of your spam score. If your spam score is too high; you’re a spammer.

This assumes you have an honest list to begin with. If you’re buying lists of email addresses from people and sending emails to them you’re a spammer and nothing here is going to help you. Oh yeah, everyone else knows you’re a spammer too.

Fuck you.

Anyway, I first learned of the importance of scrubbing a list while preparing one of my clients email databases for a blast (they hired StreetWise to send email on their behalf). During the import process into the mailing solution we were using our account was put in lock down which essentially stopped the entire project dead in it’s tracks. After contacting the mailing solution I got the below response:

I do want to be clear that the list both contains spamtraps, role accounts (such as admin@) and other addresses with aspects that indicate that some part of the list may not be completely opt-in. Spamtrap addresses are those addresses that have generally been retired or are known by the domains postmaster to be inactive and as a result unlikely to be signing up for new mailing lists. These addresses may also be ones planted on a website specifically for email harvesting purposes. Sending to them indicates a lack of an opt-in process, the ideal option being a double opt-in confirmation method where members must both submit their email address and respond to a follow-up email before receiving regular mailings from the list.

Mail sent to spam traps, as with non opt-in mail in general, may result in a loss of deliverability for a sender. This may include domain blocks (refusal of the senders mail by a domain) or blacklisting by spam prevention agenies and further hurts the reputation of the sender.

Combined with negative feedback from the recipients (sent either to the sender, its ESP, or the users postmaster), not honoring opt-out requests, sending to a large amount of non-existent members, spamtrap addresses call into question the entire lists credibility.

So just what do you need to scrub for? Well, duplicates, MX records for the domain and syntax issues obviously but, more importantly, specific keywords in emails.

To start you want to get rid of any email address containing the keywords below (* is wildcard):

junk*
admin@*
root@*
postmaster@*
blackhole*
confirm@*
fuck*
donotreply*
help@*
nobody@*
*@poop.com
support@*
sysadmin@*
*spam*
dev@*
devnull@*

That’s not a complete list of course; just the ones I’ve personally discovered to date. I plan on compiling a database of them once I get more and so should anyone who’s serious about not sucking at bulk email blasts.

There’s also spam trap email addresses. These are email addresses people sign up for that allow them to sign up for accounts and other services without actually giving their real email address.

They are insanely popular (and pretty annoying too).

So far I’ve only had to deal with a few though. You want to remove any email address from the below domain:

*@spamgourmet.com
*@sneakemail.com
*@mailinator.com
*@trashymail.com
*@mailexpire.com
*@temporaryinbox.com
*@spambox.us
*@spamhole.com
*@pookmail.com
*@spamfree24.*
*@kasmail.com

This is especially important on lists you’re sending on behalf of your clients. I have yet to have a client freely admit to having email addresses that haven’t been opted into properly; they always swear that their list is clean. I’ve seen HUGE corporations, we’re talking hundreds of millions of dollar companies, hand over lists that decreased over 20% once it’s scrubbed.

Cool thing is, though, that the client usually has no idea. Usually, someone told them they have a list of email addresses somewhere and, odd as this may sound, they’re actually thrilled to be told their list isn’t “good”. Makes you look like you know your shit

One of the most frequent IT related tasks I have to deal with are email issues. Spam is a big part of my life, on both sides of the fence. I have to deal with legitimate email from clients getting flagged as spam on my network and I also have to make sure email StreetWise sends out on behalf of our clients doesn’t get flagged as spam.

Spam

Over the years I’ve put together a list of requirements for making sure email campaigns go as smoothly as possible. Since no one can seem to get email campaigns right I figured I write it all down and post it and hope someone gets something out of it. Enjoy!

Check Spam Score

A Spam Score is a number assigned by the spam-scanning rules. The higher the score, the more “spamlike” the message appears. It’s very important to how your email ranks so you can fix the before you send out the blast.

There’s a great tool called Mail-Check that will evaluate an email and report on it’s supposed spam score. It has an integrated SpamAssassin engine that performs a series of tests against your email to determine how much like spam it looks like.

The tool is in no way fool proof though. Be sure to use it as just a single source of information and don’t make too many decisions based on the results.

Send Email Slowly

The basic idea behind this idea is that an email provider looks at how many emails is coming in from a particular domain and, if there’s a lot of email coming in at , will assume it’s either a spammer or a virus. Not a good label to have on your domain.

How slowly should email be sent? Unfortunately, that’s a difficult question and the amount of email you need to send greatly affects the answer. For example, if you have 1,000 emails to send you probably don’t need to worry about sending too fast. On the other hand if you have 250,000 emails to send slowing down the send process is HUGELY beneficial.

I’ve heard that the best approach is to throttle your sending by recipient domain. Now, I’ve never done this myself, but throttling by domain is supposed to be helpful because you can keep a consistent flow of email coming from the mail server but since there isn’t a constant stream of email to one provider they don’t know a bulk mailing is being sent to their network.

Get Whitelisted

This ones a bit of a no brainer but you NEED to get your email domain whitelisted by the email service providers you’re sending to. This should include, at the very least, Yahoo!, gMail, MSN (hotmail) and AOL as well as the email recipients. This can be pretty tricky to do because the methods for getting whitelisted by the companies above tend to change fairly frequently. A good method to help would be to send individual requests to “postmaster@DOMAIN.tld”, where DOMAIN.tld is the email providor you want to get whitelisted from, and explain your opt-in process and ask to be added to their whitelist.

It’s also a good idea to ask your email recipients to add your email address to their personal whitelists. This helps because most email providers allow email through that is on their blacklist but on a users personal whitelist.

Setup and Maintain Your Email Server Properly

A lot of newbies make the mistake of thinking that if they can send email they should send email. This is pure folly. There are a few things you should do on the server level to ensure you’re not going to look like a spammer. Off the top of my head here are a couple requirements that have to be implemented:

All e-mail servers must have valid reverse DNS records. Doing this allows email providers the ability to look you up and make sure you’re not sending from a blackhole. A lot of spammers won’t go through the trouble of setting up a reverse DNS record because they have to be ready to move at a moments notice. Setting one up shows you’re serious.

All e-mail servers must be secured to prevent unauthorized or  anonymous use. Preventing Joe Spammer from sending email from your domain shows the email services that the email really came from you. If, for example, they see that anyone can send email from your sever the email services has no reason to trust it actually came from you.

Setup a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) DNS record for your domain. The SPF is an open standard specifying a technical method to prevent sender address forgery. This basically means that setting up an SPF record in your DNS shows the email provider that email coming from a server is being sent on your behalf.

Avoid Evil

This is a topic that’s pretty absurd it even has to be mentioned but, sigh…, it has to be mentioned. (I guess I’m a bit of an idealist, but it seems to me that this stuff is just kind of  evil.)

Anyway, right off, you’ve got to be compliant with the federal Can Spam Act of 2003. If you’re going to be sending bulk email it’s important to understand the rules, especially when sending on behalf of your business and clients.

For the love God, don’t try to hide, forge or misrepresent the sender of the e-mail and sending site of the e-mail in any way. I’ve had this asked of me more times than I can count and it always ends badly; it’s an easy way to get yourself on a blacklist.

The last evil thing might not be too evil but I hate when I get an email and it doesn’t say where they you got the my email address and why they’re sending them an email. It’s an easy thing to do, especially since the act of having that information requires honesty about the list, plus it makes your recipients feel secure.

Write Good Email Content

Much like in Search Engine Optimization a lot of what makes a good email is good content (by content I’m talking about the entire email here; not just the copy). Here’s just a couple must dos:

1. Use alt-tags on ALL images.
2. Use short, descriptive, subject lines. Avoid special characters like the plauge.
3. Avoid using a lot of spammy key words and characters. For example; free, $, Prize, etc.
4. Keep the top header under 100 pixels tall and place a “View Email Online” link first and foremost.
5. Avoid center aligned content; it’s best to keep the email body left aligned on a white background. Spam filters tend to flag colored backgrounds higher than white.
6. Include a plain text version of your email with every blast.

Unsubscribing Should be EASY

This is probably the most important piece in my opinion. It has to be easy, like ridiculously easy, for a user to remove themselves from your list. Bulk mailings should contain simple and obvious unsubscribe mechanisms. AOL recommend that this be in the form of a working link to a one-click unsubscribe system; however, a valid “reply to:” address may be used instead.

There are all sorts of methods for the unsubscribe flow; just pick one that requires the least investment for the user. Avoid the impulse to create a survey asking why a user doesn’t want your email anymore. The fact they don’t want it anymore should be enough. Anything more and you run the risk of pissing people off.

Summary

Looking over the above I’m sure I forgot some things. Still, it should be a good starting point.

It’s important to remember that there really is no silver bullet when it comes to email marketing. Sadly, the reality is that even if all of the above is done there’s still a chance your email will be flagged as spam. Most email providers take their users interests very seriously, while taking the stance that everyone else is evil until proven not evil. Even if they don’t consider you evil they’ll revert a good mailing to evil status after only a handful of complaints.

Additional Reading

AOL Whitelist Information
Email Secrets of a Top Converting Website
Create Better Performing Assets

AxCrypt is a pretty nice open source (OSS) encryption program for Windows. What makes me want to write about it though is that it integrates directly with Windows Explorer and includes a right click context menu for easier manipulation of files so there isn’t a program that has to be started or opened (I always hate the wait for a program to start up…).

axcrypt

According to their site:

AxCrypt is the leading open source file encryption software for Windows. It integrates seamlessly with Windows to compress, encrypt, decrypt, store, send and work with individual files.

AxCrypt is pretty straight forward;

To encrypt:

1. right click over a file
2. choose “AxCrypt”
3. choose “Encrypt”
   

   AxCrypt Encrypt

4. enter a passphrase
   

   AxCrypt Enter Passphrase

5. click ok

To decrypt:

1. right click over archive
2. choose “AxCrypt”
3. choose “Decrypt”
   

   AxCrypt Decrypt

4. enter passkey
   

   AxCrypt Enter Passphrase

5. click ok

If you need to share sensitive files between people this is a really nice project.

About a week ago I was sitting in my office when I needed to find an email I had sent the previous week. As anyone would I go into Outlook (2003) when I’m presented with the below dialog box.

Broken OST Dialog

Which, basically, told me that my OST file was corrupted and I should run Scanpst.exe against the file to repair it. “OK”, I thought, “simple…”.

Where does outlook 2003 store ost files?

My computer had other thoughts though. First, I couldn’t find Scanpst.exe anywhere but after about 20 minutes of using Windows freaking awesomely great searching tool I found it.
On Vista (Service Pack 1) Scanpst.exe location was in:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033

During the research for the issue I found that it could also be in any of the below directories too:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12
C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033

Now that Scanpst.ext was found I tried it but it only works on PST files, not OST files like I needed so I ran Scanost.exe instead. It returned this error message:

15:44:02 Beginning offline folder file integrity check.
15:44:02 Performing initial synchronization.
15:44:02 Synchronizer Version 11.0.8200
15:44:02 Synchronizing Mailbox ‘Eric Lamb’
15:44:02 Synchronizing Hierarchy
15:44:02 1 folder(s) updated in offline store
15:44:02 Synchronizing server changes in folder ‘Calendar’
15:44:02 Downloading from server ‘my.domain.local’
15:44:02 Synchronizing server changes in folder ‘Drafts’
15:44:02 Downloading from server ‘my.domain.local’
15:44:03 Synchronizing server changes in folder ‘Inbox’
15:44:03 Downloading from server ‘my.domain.local’
15:44:03 Synchronizing local changes in folder ‘Sent Items’
15:44:03 Uploading to server ‘my.domain.local’
15:44:03 1 item(s) updated in online folder
15:44:03 Downloading from server ‘my.domain.local’
15:44:03 Terminated in error
15:44:03 [80040600-501-80040600-560]
15:44:03 The client operation failed.
15:44:03 Microsoft Exchange Server Information Store
15:44:03 For more information on this failure, click the URL below: REMOVED FOR SPACE

Shit…

So I had to run Scanpst.exe against my Inbox.ost file whether it wanted to or not. I had to change the View Type to OST to see the OST files.

Inbox Repair Tool

Wasn’t sure if this would do anything though; just an educated guess because Scanost.exe failed to do anything.

Inbox Repair Tool

After about 30 minutes it let me know it had found errors and whether I wanted to fix. 10 minutes later and I was good.

I was curious about the impact of the directory separator and how that affects cross platform compatibilitye ver since I started developing on my Vista machine.

I’ve noticed how different they are compared to the Linux variety. Here’s an example:

File path on *nix:

/path/to/file

File path on Windows:

C:\\path\to\file

Dazed and Confused

As you can see the separator is a slash, either a “/” or “” depending on the OS. Why does this matter? Because if we’re dealing with files on the server, and the path is going to be recorded so they can be displayed on the Internet, through a URI, than this is going to introduce compatibility issues if not handled correctly. Sigh..

I’ve seen open source programs handle this type of issue through concatenation. For example the code:

<?php
//$path = 'C:pathtofile.php'; Windows
$path = '/path/to/file.php';
?>

Is written like:

<?php
//$ds = ''; Windows
$ds = '/';
$path = $ ds.'path'.$ds.'$to.'file.php';
?>

Is this even an issue anymore? Both Firefox 2.0 and IE 7 render HTML assets whether the slash is one way or another. Maybe if all paths are written like the *nix variety it’s all good…

I did notice that when you have a dual slash Windows chokes:

<?php
$path = '//path/to//dir';
?>

Just something to think about…

UPDATE::
According to the php manual:

On Windows, both slash (/) and backslash (\) are used as directory separator character. In other environments, it is the forward slash (/).

With that in mind it seems kind of dumb to even worry about this anymore. Just use the *nix variety and you should be fine.

There were 2 companies under consideration for an upcoming project to help with their email marketing business; MailChimp and Emma. I thought other people might find this useful. Below is a breakdown of each.

MailChimp vs. Emma

Email

MailChimp

MailChimp has over 15,000 customers, manages over 65,000 opt-in lists containing over 75 million subscribers, and we deliver millions of emails a day. According to their site they:

strive to make MailChimp easy and affordable enough for a small business to get started, but powerful enough for a large company that’s looking for an enterprise level solution. That philosophy is why we attract so many organizations from all over the globe, ranging in diversity from Mozilla Firefox to Chumby, from PeachPit Press to Harvard University, and from American Airlines to Dee Snider’s House of Hair. The common bond is they all want a powerful email marketing solution that helps them get their work done.

Pros:

Tracks Bouncebacks
Tracks Open Rates
API
Very fast return on contact requests
Detailed reporting
Slick AJAX interface

Cons:

Click track links aren’t white labeled
Requires templated unsubscribe
Email headers are not white labeled

Cost:

For lists ranging from 400,001 to 500,000 recipients, you can send 4 million emails monthly for $1,860.
For lists ranging from 500,001 to 600,000 recipients, you can send 4.8 million emails monthly for $2,220.

Emma Mailing

Emma is a Web-based service that includes everything you need to manage your email marketing and communications from start to finish. It’s a unique platform that combines easy self-serve features, a custom-designed brand template, and personal assistance whenever you need it. You might say Emma’s changing the face of self-serve email marketing. Seriously, try saying it out loud now.

It should be noted that I wasn’t able to perform a hands-on analysis due to time constraints so a lot of this info is from Emma directly. Take with a grain of salt.

Pros:

API
Tracks Bouncebacks
Tracks Open Rates
Tracks click tracks
100% white labeled system
Client interface

Cons:

Custom templates have to be designed by Emma
Lengthy delay in contact requests
Emma requires design options for all internal pages.

Cost

$2500 Custom Licensing one time cost (includes one free sub account, and a free account for a Non-profit (up to 5000 emails/month)
$100 For each additional client account to cover setup/licensing
$250 unlimited Remote Sign-up API
$375 for web services if you needed it.

For up to 5 Million emails Emma charges $.00200 per email. So, 4 million emails would cost 8,000, which is billed retroactively. Send 1 million one month, 6 million the next? The price will fluctuate accordingly.

They provide unlimited storage for email addresses at no charge (ahem….good stuff!) and our delivery team makes sure it de-duplicates when you send it.

Summary

As you can see from the above both companies are pretty comparable in terms of features and pros vs cons breakdown. The biggest advantage that stands out is the white listing option available from Emma. This will allow you to keep your clients in the dark over your methods and allow you to build out your email marketing business.

If you’re just looking for a simpler solution but still want the ability to send bulk MailChimp would probably be best.

Sorry

I spent this Christmas with some family doing the usual holiday activities of drinking and merriment. Getting together with family really does recharge (so long as it’s short enough; this year it was). As usually happens, I was conscripted to help everyone with their new electronics; ipods, digital cameras and the like. This always turns into a full blown “thing” where first I have to figure out how the gadget works then, as inevitably happens, as soon as I hook the gadget up to the computer I notice it’s running really slowly. This always leads to five hours spent trying to clean out spyware and viruses. Usually, there’s the standard fare of spyware and a couple viruses but this time I walked away feeling my family could, almost single-handedly, destroy the Internet.

Now, I run the IT department as my day job so I’ve seen some messed up computers. I don’t want to go into too many details so suffice it to say that you can learn a lot about someone by cleaning up viruses on their computer. Anyway, the first thing I noticed on my families computer this time was that automatic updates was off, their anti-virus protection was disabled and the firewall was turned off. My first thought; they’re completely screwed.

It took me the better part of the day cleaning everything up; I did it in the usual method of start a process, have drink and laughs, start next process, repeat.

During the cleanup, and the drinking, I started thinking about what to do about the larger issue of making sure they remained secure. I’ve tried, multiple times, to explain to my family the importance of maintaining their computer(s), but every time I return for another visit I find the pattern above repeating.

I’ve gone through the entire spiel about how their computer is acting as a hub on a botnet. How, when they hear stories on the news about piracy and spam their computer is usually at fault too. I get the same reaction as when I try to explain my day job; blank eyes and a nodding head but no real comprehension. Obviously, they just aren’t computer people.

Which is really the problem, though not really. Here’s what I mean:

The problem is that, while the dumbing down of computers for “regular” people brought them into the mainstream the lack of any type of education about security and management created the perfect melting pot for this type of fiasco.

See, regular people just don’t care. As far as their concerned if the computer works than WTF is up with all this NAGGING ABOUT VIRUSES AND SPYWARE! I JUST WANT TO USE THE STUPID THING!!! GOD! So long as their computer can access the Internet and they can write email everything is just hunky dory.

And that’s a problem because as we all know, computers require maintenance and attention.

The moral?

Computers are complicated creations, programmers, geeks, nerds and IT folk know this; Granny, unfortunately, does not and she doesn’t care to. It’s important that we instill common sense into our loved ones even if it means BEATING IT INTO THEM.

Tell them:

You need to run regular virus and spyware scans. Uninstalling unused programs is important. Defragging the harddrives is good. Regular backups? Yeah, that too.

Anyway, sorry for the slow Internet and all the spam. I’ll be seeing my family around Easter and I’ll get everything working around then.

One thing I’ve been waiting to become practical for a while is video mobile blogging (VMB). In case you don’t know, VMB is the practice of taking a video with a mobile device and automatically adding it to a blog or website. It’s pretty much exactly like a moblog except instead of sending photos you send a video. Due to poor quality, varied video formats and slow network speeds VMB just hasn’t become mainstream yet.

The general idea behind a VMB works like this:

1. Record video
2. Send email with video as attachment
3. Script parses email and extracts the video
4. Process video for online play
5. Extract all meta data
6. Record in database

Really, a basic idea; works GREAT for a moblog . The reason’s pretty simple; ever since phones started coming with cameras as a standard accessory they’ve improved in quality and couple that with a data plan (so email can be sent) and it’s a perfect fit.

The same thing can’t be said for video though. Video on a cell phone is just too new and, well, clunky to be useful in business level applications. In fact, RIM just recently upgraded the Blackberry Curve OS to include video playback a couple of months ago (yeah, I have a Curve).

Problem is, the quality on the video sucks and it takes me about 15 minutes to send the video as an email on an EDGE network. Now, I’m pretty sure my speed isn’t a good baseline; I have AT&T so my service downright sucks. That being said, I did do a couple tests on a couple of my friend’s phones from various vendors and even though the speed was a little faster the quality was still crappy.

The above doesn’t really matter though because, according to friend I have in the mobile industry, there are about 20 different formats the different phones use to encode videos in. This is a biggie; embedding a video into a webpage requires that videos be encoded to the lowest common denominator. Since phones aren’t using a standard format the videos would have to be converted to a standard format on the server which increases the complexity and cost of such a platform.

It should be noted that a lot of phones are encoding their videos using the 3GP format; but because it’s not common enough to be a standard codec on users computers I don’t consider this a full solution.