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Junk Processing is not all created Equal
by Ross Lasley
Recently I retrieved a message from my filtered “junk” box, it was: |
To: ross@itsallgeektome.com
From: xxxxxx@earthlink.net
Subject: Re: Re: July 31 Newsletter
I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.
To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.
If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.
Click the link below to fill out the request:
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Ahhh – another crappy challenge response junk system at work, and failing miserably, as usual. First thing – I have indeed replied previously and should be on the safe list for this particular client. Second thing – systems like this were always lousy and now they are simply useless.
Today – it is a requirement that you have some sort of system to filter your junk mail.
I know you desperately wish it wasn't so . . . I know you are ready to change your email address daily . . . I know you promise not to sign up for anything ever – it doesn't matter anymore; receiving email with no junk processing system is like having no anti-virus on your machine, and it qualifies as just plain dumb.
The thing of it is that most folks are just so darn proud they have something at all they don't know much about the different types of systems and their pros and cons.
It is likely – almost certain – that your ISP filters your mail at least twice. The first time they filter it through their own corporate system designed to catch things that are very obvious – like, it should nab messages when they are getting tens of thousands of copies of the same thing. The second level of filtration might – but often does not – offer you some level of control , and this is the one that's supposed to get most of the garbage before it gets to you.
Important – you should know that as a result of all this filtering, email communication is fundamentally less reliable today than it was a year ago, and a year from now it will be worse.
Good junk processing systems all have some features in common, and you should be sure to use one that has what you need.
Whitelisting – a list of email addresses that are “known good” , and no mail from them is ever junk. Wildcards should be supported here: example, *@kisscomputing.com is anyone from the domain kisscomputing.com
Blacklisting – a list of email addresses that are “known bad” , like *@sex.com for instance. This is the simple way to ensure you never again receive another message from a particular sender.
Capture System – no matter how good they are, all of these systems make errors (even if they happen only one out of ten thousand times, and that means about six errors a week for me). Your junk processing system should have a way for you to search a junk box for messages that were processed incorrectly – when your client says he/she sent you an email last week and you didn't reply, you want to be able to check for it.
Flexible Control and Test Specifics – The way all of these systems work, basically, is they read your email and then “score” it on the basis of content. If it says Viagra, that's 2 points; anything related to home financing, that's 1.5 points; and so on. (click here for the list of tests KISS uses, as there are several hundred of them). If the total score is above a certain level, it's junk. The best systems allow you to adjust the score. My mailbox currently is running 6.5 but if I find that too much junk is ending up in my inbox, I'll adjust the score. If certain tests are always problematic – for instance, say you're in the real estate business, so all of those messages you get about low mortgage rates are valid – there should be a way to adjust specific tests.
A great junk processing system is actually the most important feature of your email system today – your time is valuable and no matter what you do, you'll be spending some time with your delete key. How much time is up to you.
(note: Clients of KISS all have a best of breed advanced junk filtration system. If you have any questions about it, feel free to contact Desiree)
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A Simple Formula: Content Squared
by Michael McGrath
I recently published a column at my blog, www.celticwordman.com, on the subject of copy for the web, and referred to web site content as “king.” Earlier columns have addressed the subject of “audience,” and I thought I'd tie that all together in a short piece for IAGTM this week.
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Search engines don't index (review and log) images on the home page of your web site. They look for keywords in the page title, the page's headings and blocks of text. Points are assigned for keyword frequency and placement, and those points determine where search engines rank your web site. This is the short version, but I think you get the idea. A home page with lots of images and eye candy, but little copy that has not been keyword optimized, is like a “sticks and bricks” store without windows, doors or a sign. Oh, sure, once a customer enters the store by the door in the back, it's beautiful - - but how will they know you're there?
Search engines, then, are the primary audience home page copy is written for, with your visitors being the secondary audience. Remember this.
But there's more. Further points are awarded for refreshed content. The more often you add new copy to the home page, the more points you'll score. There is a word count threshhold above which you'll lose points, so it's more a content rewrite than simply adding more words, and keyword frequency and prominence will continue playing an integral part in the point totals.
All right, then, what do we know so far? Carefully chosen keywords wrapped within well-crafted copy written with the search engine audience in mind and regularly refreshed will improve our index score and move our site up the natural ranking. Pretty simple, when you put it that way, I think.
I have a suggestion, then, to help you execute that formula. Blogs and RSS.
One of our clients, www.whalewatch.com, uses a blog for posting his daily whale sighting reports. The blog is at whalesight.kissblogs.com. If you go to the home page of his web site, though, you'll see a little section in the lower left we built for him that pulls the daily sighting reports from his blog and adds excerpts from them to that section. The Whale Watch site is all about whales, as you'd expect, and the whale sightings reports are all about whales, too. The copy from his blog is refreshing the content of his home page every single day. RSS (real simple syndication) is the mechanism that sends the sightings reports to the home page, and it is possible to configure what gets sent.
I use the same dynamic at my site, www.mlmcelt.com, to draw an excerpt from every Celtic Wordman column to the home page of the site. I make sure there are some appropriate keywords in the title of the column, and in the first few lines, too. The home page content, then, is refreshed every two weeks with the publication of each new column. In short, I practice what I preach, and follow my own advice.
You should, too. Posting copy to a blog is about as easy a task as there is, and if you can write and send an email, you can post copy to a blog. Content is king; the search engines are your audience; and blogs are easy. This formula actually can be expressed in this way, too: content squared. The columns on your blog will remain on the Internet, and excerpts from each new column will appear on the home page of your web site. Same content, appearing in two places, each of which will be indexed by the search engines. . . . .content squared.
For those of you not intimidated by the writing process, this is a terrific solution for refreshing your home page content. KISS, of course, offers both the product (Blogs) and the services (set up, tech support, RSS feed), and Desiree would love to hear from you. It's simple and easy, and it does get results.
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Apple Announces iTunes phone: Motorola ROKR |
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by Josiah Cole
The teaser for this big event was a single line: “1000 songs in your pocket changed everything. Here we go again.”
At a special event today in Moscone, San Fransisco, Steve Jobs announced the long awaited iTunes phone made by Motorola entitled “ROKR.” After a brief state of the union type address where Jobs shared some iTunes sales figures, he moved on to announce iTunes 5, and then eventually the Motorola ROKR, which will be exclusive to Cingular here in the US.
Pictures, specs and plenty of write ups have been circling the net for months, so much is already known about this device. What was not known, however, was whether this phone was the “big announcement” coming from Apple. This was answered for me when Jobs moved on to announce the iPod nano, which many will believe to be, and will undoubtedly write about as, “the big announcement” from Apple. I'm here to say the opposite . . . . the “ROKR” is the big announcement. Yes, we all knew it was coming, and, yes, it's a completely boring phone, but it represents something important - - entry by Apple into the cell phone world. This is the foot in the door that Apple needed, and is much more intriguing than yet another variation of an existing digital music player. The iPod is a known thing, and the iPod nano is simply a rehash of that same thing. It will sell very well and probably make Apple a ton of money, but it is not going to start a “second revolution”, like the “ROKR” will.
From a hardware standpoint this new phone is exceedingly boring, with no ground broken anywhere. Steve was quoted this afternoon when announcing the ROKR as saying “it's really an iPod shuffle on your phone”, and that pretty much sums this one up. A pretty standard Tri-band GSM phone coupled with a mobile version of iTunes, and enough space for about 100 songs is all she wrote. No hard drive, no decent camera, no uber device revolution. The collective yawn of geeks around the world could be heard from my little office here on Cape Cd.
The not so secret weapon of this phone however is iTunes, and its stranglehold it has on the digital music industry. This will be the beginning of the revolution, and will be Apple's first step toward expanding their dominance into new fields. Jobs informed the world for the first time today that Apple had just crossed 10 million paying customers for iTunes, and your average iTunes customer has about 60 songs out of now over 2 million songs available. These figures back up the fact that this new phone will be a success, maybe not an iPod level success, but a great first step for Apple. The iTunes software will allow this phone to sell well, and will further solidify iTunes as THE platform for digital music distribution. The next phone will be better, and will have better specs and better software, just as was done with the iPod. This phone will evolve and will continue to leapfrog competitors (with the help of that sticky Apple brand name attached to it).
The exclusivity with Cingular means great news for customers like myself who already have contracts with Cingular (new phone, great!), and great news for all cell phone customers, as many providers will be forced to follow the model that Apple and Cingular have setup when it comes to digital music. As I wrote in our April issue of IAGTM, when news hit that US cell providers were poo-pooing this new device, Cingular wins because “I see the advantage being solely in the corner with the cell provider who chooses to side with Apple/Moto. If Apple/Moto could team with just 1 major cell phone provider, that provider would gain a huge advantage over the others, and would have a considerable head start in the market.”
Consumers win because Apple has a track record of not screwing people when it comes to digital music. If other providers are forced to follow suit, their policies will be close to Apples because ultimately consumers dictate the winning model, and most likely that model will be the one from Apple and Cingular. |
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