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Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife » Blog Thoughts http://www.discoveraid.com Midlife is a time of change: lifestyle, career, relationships. Time for some self help support to guide you out of the down days. Topics also cover parenting, narcissism, self-esteem, depression, anxiety, divorce & surviving infidelity & midlife crisis. Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:22:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Earthlink and Spamhaus: closing down the Internet http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/earthlink-and-spamhaus-closing-down-the-internet.html http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/earthlink-and-spamhaus-closing-down-the-internet.html#comments Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:38:58 +0000 Ruben http://www.discoveraid.com/?p=192 “SMTP error from remote mail server after MAIL FROM: SIZE=3060:
host mx00-dom.earthlink.net [my mail servers STATIC IP address]:
550 550 Dynamic/zombied/spam IPs blocked.”

Following on from my rant the other day I have read about more and more people who are stuggling to legitamately communicate with people on or from Earthlink connections. Spamhaus, who are part of an anti spam organisation think it’s legitamate to block those of us on dynamic (DHCP) IPs, that means, everyone sitting at home or in a small office using broadband. If you choose to use your own domain name (like ALL businesses) to send mail to your customers, then Earthlink in their wisdom think you are a spammer.

So, my prediction of the day is that Earthlink along with their equally misguided & equally unhelpful buddies at Spamhaus are slowly closing the doors on communication with Earthlink customers.

So either, Earthlink becomes a closed community that can not communicate with the outside world, or, they choose to stay in business by thinking more logically about their ’spam’ policy.

All I want to do is to email customers I have who use Earthlink. So either the policy stays as it is, I loose my customers, or my customers, finding it hard to talk to anyone listed as having a dynamic IP address, move to somewhere more business focused.

I get the impression that there is a bunch of smart-arsed tech heads who think they are in control here. They will be in control washing cars in a while if they carry on the way they are.

Rant Over….

©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.

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Too Much Talking And Not Enough Action At TalkTalk http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/too-much-talking-and-not-enough-action-at-talktalk.html http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/too-much-talking-and-not-enough-action-at-talktalk.html#comments Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:46:14 +0000 Ruben http://www.discoveraid.com/?p=188 I recently attempted to make a complaint about support at Talk Talk. The recommended route via the web was to use a generic Contact form (which only works with some browsers). After squeezing my explanation into 300 characters which is reduculous and un supportive, I get this message:

“Oops, we can’t find that page, You can press the back button on your browser and try again. Or click on our site map to find the page you’re looking for.You can call us free on 0800 049 7802 if you need more help.”

The reason why I am complaining is because when I attempted to call it was a cock up and no one was helpful. Not that the web route was any better, I had no response to my first attempt. This attempt above doesn’t look too promising either.

I guess they are all too busy talking at TalkTalk to help customers out.

Life is challenging enough without organisations that have grown too large and are too inward focused. The worst large organisations are those that will argue that they are very customer focused when it is clear that they are not and will blindly carry on refusing to admit their failure to listen and support customers.

©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.

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What I Nightmare E-Mail Has Turned Out To Be http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/what-i-nightmare-e-mail-has-turned-out-to-be.html http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/what-i-nightmare-e-mail-has-turned-out-to-be.html#comments Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:17:12 +0000 Ruben http://www.discoveraid.com/?p=186 The hottest application on the web, spammed to death and now the ISPs are all pluggin into these spam databases and everyone with a dynamic IP address (like… everyone not in a medium to large business that is !!) that is using their own domain name… IS F*****G blocked!!!

What in the world is going on? Back in my day we could buy a domain and use it as a way to brand one’s self to send and receive email.

I started up my mac Monday morning and have not sent much out since.. once in a while I get one mail out, then it blocks up, and the mail server tells me things are busy but I also get a SPAMHAUS message telling me some rubbish and telling me to get my ISP to unblock me, which is ridiculous if you are on TalkTalk since those guys are unable to even read a technical support request and are well out of the depth with an issue like this.

Time to change ISPs perhaps.

©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.

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Google to “retire” Adsense Referrals http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/google-to-retire-adsense-referrals.html http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/google-to-retire-adsense-referrals.html#comments Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:12:03 +0000 Ruben http://www.discoveraid.com/?p=162 Google say, “AdSense referrals feature will be retired for both AdWords advertiser products and Google products”.

I say, “that’s a lot of work you have now given me to change in a lot of my articles Google ! I shall remember that next time I consider trying one of your services you are pushing”

Time to move on.

©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.

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Google to “retire” Adsense Referrals http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/google-to-retire-adsense-referrals-2.html http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/google-to-retire-adsense-referrals-2.html#comments Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:12:03 +0000 Ruben http://www.discoveraid.com/?p=162 Google say, “AdSense referrals feature will be retired for both AdWords advertiser products and Google products”.

I say, “that’s a lot of work you have now given me to change in a lot of my articles Google ! I shall remember that next time I consider trying one of your services you are pushing”

Time to move on.

©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.

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Brief Message To Subscribers: Hello World & Fruit http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/brief-message-to-subscribers-hello-world-fruit.html http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/brief-message-to-subscribers-hello-world-fruit.html#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 10:43:48 +0000 Ruben http://www.discoveraid.com/?p=138 Hi guys Im sorry about the “Hello World” message you got the other day. I recently moved hosters as the old one was not coping with the traffic anymore and the new site pumped out that little message automatically.

Hope you are all having a good day. Im eating fruit and looking at a hazy sunny sky today :O)

All the best

Guy

©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.

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Brief Message To Subscribers: Hello World & Fruit http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/brief-message-to-subscribers-hello-world-fruit-2.html http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/brief-message-to-subscribers-hello-world-fruit-2.html#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 10:43:48 +0000 Ruben http://www.discoveraid.com/?p=138 Hi guys Im sorry about the “Hello World” message you got the other day. I recently moved hosters as the old one was not coping with the traffic anymore and the new site pumped out that little message automatically.

Hope you are all having a good day. Im eating fruit and looking at a hazy sunny sky today :O)

All the best

Guy

©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.

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Blogs Should Be Our Minds Open To The World http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/steth-godin-blogging-writers.html http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/steth-godin-blogging-writers.html#comments Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:51:35 +0000 Ruben http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/steth-godin-blogging-writers.html Steth says, “What would happen if every single high school student had to have a blog? Or every employee in your company? Or every one of your customers?” in his blog on new bloggers (like me) called his blog on new bloggers (like me) called “Write like a blogger”.

Well, the world would be a richer place for all our opinions since if we all wrote with honesty and clarity we would all be able to read most of what is going on in each other’s minds. Another thing, we would all need a mac laptop and all be less healthy because of our passions for typing.

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Im going to spend more time writing.. http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/steve-pavlina-spam-link-management.html http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-thoughts/steve-pavlina-spam-link-management.html#comments Tue, 11 Dec 2007 13:39:17 +0000 Ruben http://www.discoveraid.com/blog-managment/steve-pavlina-spam-link-management.html .. and less time using semi-automated link assistant programs.

I had a mail from Steve pavlina to say I was spamming him. I was shocked since I detest spam as much as the average person but there I was with Steve telling me he had got a couple of mails from me both asking for a link.

As much as Im ambitious I don’t do it by treading on other people’s toes especially when one of the guys that gave me my initial motivation to try some commercial blogging tells me Im spamming him. See Steve’s great article at

Steve Pavlina: Making Money From Your Blog.



So I apologised and went to the suppliers of the application to ask how this could have happened. Their response was that I must have not put a filter on to stop this happening..which I always do, so something else must have gone wrong.

So after that I decided enough was enough, the program I was using wasn’t good enough to stop this duplication of emails happening, and it was also sending mails to site owners who had little to do with my markets so a waste of time all round really.

Nowadays I do some searching and mailing people asking for a link. I get to know a few more people out there and its all quite casual and relaxed. Maybe not the 100 links or so I wanted to achieve, but then Google wouldn’t take kindly to that sort of boost in links so Im happy to move on in a more careful way. At least I tried the other way.

Im thinking the application concerned, which is incidentally made by a bunch of nice guys who do well, so I wont knock their app down in public, well, Im thinking it would be good for tracking link partners, ensuring that the links are still there and keeping and managing a link database of partners.

Sounds good. next week perhaps.


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