Crunch Mode

Hotmail: JMRP Follow Up

2008-01-16T15:40:44.67-05:00

This is great news! I have been given a green filter result from the Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) since I enrolled on October 9th, 2007. This means that for the first time, Hotmail is not intercepting as SPAM the emails sent by my service IRateMyDay.

Since I enrolled in the Junk Mail Reporting Program (JMRP) and started cleaning all abusive email addresses, there was three months of hard work. Keeping a mailing list as clean as possible when you get new users signing up every day is a non-stop job. Actually, I was starting to wonder if all this work would give result one day. Now, it does!

As another good news, IRateMyDay now has more than 100000 comments written. Interaction between users is great!

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IRateMyDay: 8000 Users

2008-01-02T10:50:05.77-05:00

IRateMyDay has just reached 8000 users! Welcome, new users!

I also want to wish you an happy New Year 2008!

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Micro-blogging Site IRateMyDay.com Turns 1!

2007-10-22T14:26:09.52-04:00

Happy Birthday, "I Rate My Day"!

Great news: IRateMyDay is now 1 year old. A lot of things happened during that year! Make sure to check out some old screenshots of the site. Also, check out the comments left by our users!

The site now has more than 7000 users, and is reaching the 60000 ratings mark!

Micro-blogging is here to stay, that's for sure! Many users will probably tell you that doing micro-posts simply helps get in touch with friends. It's a lot more personal than blogging (especially with IRateMyDay, since you need to rate your day).

Thanks to all of those that support the site! If you are new, make sure that you create an account today!

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Tips for Improving Your Site's Mass Mailing Delivery Reliability

2007-10-18T10:28:32.253-04:00

Well, for the last two weeks, I've been working very hard on improving the delivery reliability of all the emails I send from my site IRateMyDay.com. The problem when having a very high number of users (>7000), is that sending 1 daily email can get out of hands very fast.

Almost from the start of my site, many mailing services (like Hotmail) started to consider my emails as SPAM. At first, I didn't care much, since I was sending a very low number of emails and many messages got through the users' mailbox.

But recently, I saw a decline in my user's activity. I first thought that the summer period was the main reason, but in the last few weeks, the activity level didn't get back to a normal state. The reason is now that most of my emails get to the Junk folder of my users.

I was looking for a solution. Here are some tips that I implemented myself and that are already doing a difference.

Tip: The most basic fact: in EVERY email you send, make sure you include specific instructions on how to unsubscribe from your mailing.

My experience: The truth is, I didn't consider this seriously from the start, and to unsubscribe, I asked the user to login in their account and edit their profile. This was an error, as this was way to much complex. KISS (Keep It Simple & Stupid).

Solution: Include a 1-click unsubscribe link in all emails you send.

Tip: Make sure you have an SPF.

My experience: I took way to look before considering adding a SPF in my domain's DNS entry. The day I added mine, emails got through most anti-spam filters.

Solution: Today's mail server checks the validity of your IP. Make sure you create one. See Microsoft Sender ID Framework SPF Record Wizard.

Tip: Keep your mailing list clean.

My experience: again, I didn't consider cleaning my mailing list until a few weeks ago. This was an error, as most anti-spam filters will consider you a spammer if you send too many emails to un-existing mailboxes. Since I started cleaning my mailing list, I can already see a difference.

Solution: Read, read and read some more the error codes you receive from your SMTP emailing software. Reply codes like 450 and 550 should be taken care of quickly.

Tip: Read more about the most used providers.

My experience: In my case, Hotmail's users are almost 50% of my mailing. So I got interested are to know what makes them consider my emails as spam. As it turns out, they give quite a few tools to help you to improve your mailing list. See my previous post on the topic. I also have many Yahoo users, so I started approaching Yahoo to see how I can improve my delivery.

Solution: There's no secret here: visit the providers' sites and follow their good-behaviour recommendations.

Conclusion: Doing legitimate bulk mailing is not an easy task. These tips are a first step in the good direction.

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IRateMyDay.com: 7000 Users

2007-10-12T15:09:37.99-04:00

Microblogging is pretty hot this week. On Tuesday, Google announced that it just bought the Jaiku service. An interesting move from Google. Many are wondering why it's not Twitter instead that was acquired. In fact, Jaiku has way less users. So Google is not buying users. Some might say that Jaiku has more feature offerings than Twitter. And this might be just the reason why (that is, one of the reasons).

In the meanwhile, I'm happy to announce that IRateMyDay has passed the 7000 users mark. And in a few days, the site will be one year old! So time to celebrate!

I think microblogging is getting very interesting and attractive to more users everyday. Many users like the fact that they don't have to manage big and lengthy blog posts. And with IRateMyDay, then get access to a great community of users around the world!

Let's keep this up!

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Facebook Coding: Too Many Friends? Be Scalable

2007-10-10T12:13:18.113-04:00

I developed a Facebook application a few weeks back. I wrote it using C# and the Facebook Developer Toolkit. Querying the Facebook API is a snap, thanks to this toolkit.

However, I recently received complains that my Faceboook app was generating an error, something like:

Error while loading page from MyApplication

There are still a few kinks Facebook and the makers of MyApplication are trying to iron out. We appreciate your patience as we try to fix these issues. Your problem has been logged - if it persists, please come back in a few days. Thanks!

Of course, I didn't have that problem when trying my application. So debugging was quite problematic. The problem was happening on a specific page, where I list some friends of the user so that he/she can invite them (up to 10 at a time). Also, this specific error happens when my server doesn't return the FBML data fast enough to the Facebook server.

Then, I understood the problem. The user reporting the problem had 458 friends! That's right.

Taking a closer look at my source code, this method looked suspicious:

FacebookService.GetFriends();

And quite true. GetFriends() actually returns ALL data of ALL friends of the user. Make this 458 friends, and this call is very slow. In this page, I only needed to get a few friends from this list (about 20). So this call is overkill.

The solution is to replace this call with two other methods:

FacebookService.GetFriendIds();

FacebookService.GetUserInfo(friendIds);

So, by calling GetFriendIds(), only IDs are returned, which is very fast. Then, simply fill a list of friendIds that you want to get the full details, and then call GetUserInfo() with this list as parameter.

Not only do you improve query speed, but you also lower the request size.

I hope this will help some developers out there.

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Site Administrators: Make Sure to Reach Hotmail Users (5 Tips)

2007-10-09T14:28:14.473-04:00

If you own a Web site, chances are that you send emails from it, being auto-replies, mailing list or others. This post gives a list of very useful tips to make sure your messages do not end up in the Junk folder of Hotmail's users (and quite possibly of other mail systems).

These steps are based on the experience I had with my micro-blogging site IRateMyDay.com. My site sends a high number of automatic messages that users subscribe to. On a daily basis, there can be thousands of messages sent.

In the last months, I started to see some of the messages being detected as spam by Hotmail. In fact, many messages started to get delivered directly in the "Junk Folder" of the users. I then saw a dramatic difference in my site visitor statistics. And there's quite a reason why: almost half of my users have a Hotmail account.

I needed a way to fix this back. Here's what I did to correct the situation.

Tip 1: Create a Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

If there's only one thing you want to do, creating a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) should be it. Today's anti-spam systems check for forged sender addresses. The problem is that even legitimate messages might not get through if you do not have a SPF for your domain. The solution is to specify your SPF by adding a TXT record in your domain's DNS.

What does this SPF entry should look like? Here's the one for digg.com (don't forget, this is a TXT type record):

v=spf1 a mx ip4:64.191.203.30 mx:mail.digg.com mx:old2.digg.com ip4:64.191.203.34 a:www.digg.com -all

But how do you to create yours? Microsoft has simplified the task of creating this SPF entry with their Sender ID Framework SPF Record Wizard.

Simply follow the 4 steps, and then add the result to your DNS record.

Tip 2: Be Added to Microsoft's SenderID Program

Once my SPF record was added, I did some more search and found a way to tell Microsoft about my changes. This step might not be necessary, but I guess this will improve the time Microsoft notices the changes.

I first sent an email to senderid@microsoft.com containing my domain name, iratemyday.com. But I received an automatic message, redirecting me to use this MSN Support page instead. So I completed this form.

A day later, I received an email from Microsoft confirming that my domain was added to the Sender ID program.

Tip 3: Improve Message Unsubscribing

One thing I overlooked from the start, is how users can unsubscribe from my different mailings. I included a link at the bottom of all my messages, but users needed to log on the site to actually unsubscribe.

This was a design flaw. Users that want to unsubscribe usually don't care about log in your site. They want the most basic way to get removed from the mailing list. So I changed my messages to include one-click unsubscribe links.

Most users that will receive your message for the first time will click this link. However, if they keep getting your messages, they will simply notify it as spam in Hotmail. This is why my messages were flagged.

The one-click link helps.

Tip 4: Understand Your Users with Smart Network Data Services

This one is a really great tool from Microsoft: Smart Network Data Services. It's a free service that provides feedback on how users are rating the emails they receive from your service.

First, you need to sign-up by adding the IP of your site you want to monitor by completing the Request Access page.

You will need to go through an activation process (but simple) and you need a Windows Live ID to log to the site and view your data.

Once logged, you can view your data, like this:

The filter result indicates the level of spam, for that day. Red is wrong, and your mail will get to the Junk folder.

Based on these stats and on the recommendations provided by Microsoft, you should use this data to improve your mass-mailing habits.

Tip 5: Clean up Recipient List with Junk Mail Reporting Program (JMRP)

This last tip, I have enrolled, but I'm still waiting to see it in action. The Junk E-Mail Reporting Program (JMRP) is a free program intended to help large senders remove unwanted recipients from their email lists.

By applying to this program, I will receive any email that is reported as junk. This way, I should be able to remove those users from my recipient list.

Take note that enrolling to this program is a bit more complicated. The first step is to complete this form. You will then need to establish an agreement with Microsoft. I'm still waiting on this part to complete it.

Conclusion: with these tips, you should be able to get your mailing back on track. There is a lot of Hotmail users out there, and we must make sure we reach them.

Good luck.

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Tip: How to listen to radio/shoutcast with your PDA

2007-09-21T15:59:56.55-04:00

Recently, my MPIO HD300 MP3 player just hung on me. It won't display any menus, it won't play music, I can't reset the firmware. It's technically dead. So, I was looking to buy a new MP3 player. I would like a Microsoft Zune, but not available here yet (in Canada). I decided not to buy a player yet.

Instead, I was looking for a way to listen to music on my iPaq rx1950. This PDA is running Windows Mobile 5. It has built-in Wifi, and a SD card slot where I added a 2GB memory stick. Basically, I have a pretty nice MP3 player.

But I have more needs. First, since my Wifi connection allows me to connect to the Internet, I wanted to be able to listen to Shoutcast stations. A quick search and I found the software Pocket Player 3.2, which is really nice. It supports almost any file formats and streaming. I installed the demo and in less than 20 seconds I was playing Digitally Imported. How great is that?

My second problem: since I don't have a build-in radio tuner, I need a way to listen to a FM radio I like (98.5FM, talk radio in Montreal). On their Web site, there is a flash player to listen through the Internet. However, the PDA doesn't support flash. Or does it? YES! I found the Macromedia Flash Player 7 for Pocket PC. Cool, I install it.

Still, the player doesn't show up on my PDA. What to do? I must get the direct feed. A quick look at the source code doesn't quite help. After some googling, I found TheStreamCenter.com (Canada / USA). This site lists all live Internet feeds for many (most) radio stations.

Unfortunately for me, 98.5FM is not in the list. However, after looking at the source code, I saw that only a parameter in the URL is needed to specify the ratio station, so I found out the direct feed (here).

Now I can use my PDA as a MP3 player, a streamer and a radio tuner.

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50k Ratings Using Micro-Blogging

2007-09-20T09:06:23.973-04:00

Creating a community is fun when you see your service being used around the World. Today, I'm happy to see that the hard work is giving results. The users of my micro-blogging service called IRateMyDay.com have written 50,000 ratings!

Let's keep this up!

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10 Micro-Blogging Tools Compared

2007-09-07T16:10:22.05-04:00

There's an article at Read/WriteWeb that list some of the current micro-blogging tools available on the market. Well you should know that IRateMyDay is in the list! Go check the article!

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IRateMyDay: 6000 Users

2007-08-30T10:17:59.287-04:00

Yep. Join now!

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