Anti-SPAM SMTP Proxy (ASSP) One Month Later

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I’ve been running ASSP at a client site for Just over a month and I’m really impressed. It was easy to configure and has been quite effective at blocking SPAM.

The nicest feature of ASSP is the way that the Bayes filter trains itself without requiring much in the way of human intervention. I have had to spend some time manually combing the logs for false positives (right at the beginning), but it really hasn’t been too bad.

Auto-Whitelisting
All recipients on outbound emails are automatically whitelisted (nice feature!) and a copy of every email is placed in the “HAM” folder for training the Bayes filter. It really hasn’t taken long for the filter to stockpile a large number of SPAM and HAM and this has really improved the situation for the users.

Conclusion
If you are evaluating anti-SPAM solutions for your network then I suggest you evaluate ASSP before dropping big bucks on a proprietary solution. There really isn’t much point in spending thousands of dollars on a commercial product when ASSP is free, easy to configure and effective.

I like it.

Essential SEO Tip For Small Business

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If you run a small business that services local clients then listen up!

When your potential clients hit Google to look for products and services they are almost always going to search using a geographic location and the name of the product/service.

When you put your pages together, you MUST take into account what people are going to be typing when they search for your products/services.

Example Searches

  • If I’m looking for business cards in Calgary, I’m going to type “Calgary Business Cards” into Google.
  • If I’m looking for cell phones in Canada, I’m going to type “Cell Phones Canada” into Google.

So WHY do so many small businesses neglect to have their geographic location in their page titles, body text, and footer? This is mind boggling. Yet I see it every day.

How on earth are people going to find you in Google if the name of the region that you service isn’t featured prominently on every single page on your website?

So what does a good page title look like?

  • Bad page title: “Joe’s Printing”
  • Good page title: “Business Cards | Joe’s Printing | Calgary, Alberta”

See the difference? Now go fix your website! Every single page should have your location in the page title, body text, and the page footer to maximize your chances of being found by your potential customers.

Using Postfix to Bounce Invalid Recipent Email Before it Reaches Microsoft Exchange

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Postfix is great for filtering SPam

Many email administrators prefer to filter inbound email using Postfix running on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD or some other UNIX platform before relaying it to an internal Microsoft Exchange server. This strategy allows administrators to take advantage of the flexibility of Postfix and a wide variety of open source SPAM filtering solutions like Spamassassin, Amavisd-new, ClamAV, and a host of other open source solutions.
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9 Reasons To Love WordPress

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I’m sure that there are more that 9 reasons to love WordPress as a blogging platform, but here’s the ones that stand out for me:

#9 – Free Themes Galore!
I built my own theme from scratch but I’m not exactly your average blogger either. Do a quick search and you’ll uncover thousands of free themes that can be downloaded and quickly applied to any WordPress Blog. If you’re not a designer, or don’t know how to PHP, then you have a lot of options. If you want to build your own them then there is no shortage of downloadable source code to peruse. Theme Viewer is a great place to start if you’re looking for some inspiration or to download a new theme.
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Using Social Networks to Research Your Website’s Audience

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Using social information to measure user information is an effective way for bloggers to understand what their readers like. It is also possible to use the methods we’ve outlined here to measure the popularity and effectiveness of pages on a corporate web site.

I check my Google Analytics quite frequently to get a feel for what my readers are most interested in. My WordPress Popularity Contest Plugin is also helpful in showing me which posts are getting the most attention. And lastly, the number of comments is also a good indicator of what you’re all interested in.

It hadn’t occurred to me to actually do research in Digg and Del.icio.us to see which of my posts got the most play on the social networking scene. Nice work by the guys at Read/Write Web to document their research process.

Google Local Search is Going to Kill the Yellow Pages

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If you run a business then you NEED to be registered in Google Local search.

Remember the Yellow Pages? I’m sure I must have a phone book around here somewhere? Maybe I’m just really “bleeding edge”, but I can’t remember the last time I went to the phone book to find a local business. I just go straight to Google and I don’t think that I’m alone. Seriously, when was the last time you looked for a local business in the Yellow Pages?

Google is now giving preferential treatment in their main search results to businesses that have registered with Google local search. When I say that, I mean that local search results are showing up at the top of the page when you do a search that includes a place name and product/service (e.g. “Calgary Computer Consulting”). You can add your business to Google’s local search results by clicking the “Business Owners: Add/Edit Your Business” link at the bottom of any Google Maps page.

Times have changed. You need to change with them. If you’re not in Google’s local search results then you are losing business right now.

What are you waiting for? Stop reading this blog and go get your business listed!
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Memo to ISPs: The SPAM Problem is Partly Your Fault

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ISPs are one of the most vocal opponents of SPAM because it eats up their bandwidth. Yet, a lot of ISPs continue to allow their customers to send email out to the world on TCP port 25 with no restrictions. Huh?

I’m of the opinion that the ISPs need to take more responsibility for the email that is leaving their networks. If you are an ISP and you have SPAM zombie PCs on your network spewing thousands of outbound SPAM messages per day, then you need to shut them down. Continue reading →