[Hidden-tech] DSL & Voip

[Tom Adams ~ Reelife Productions & Folktography]

I consider myself a "young fogey" and I agree wholeheartedly.  virtue is a
virtue...

Regards,

Tom Adams
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Director/Editor/Videographer ~ www.ReelifeProductions.com
High Quality Photography Prints & Products ~ www.FolktographyByTom.com
Professional Portal ~ web.me.com/reelifeproductions
www.twitter.com/Reelife_Tom
www.facebook.com/tomadams4
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(413) 575-9707
Williamsburg, MA



On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Lynne Rudié <lynnerudie at verizon.net> wrote:

>   ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
>   ** If you did, we all thank you.
>
>
> Hi Mik
>        I agree with you about the "creepiness factor" and I'm glad to hear
> another techie say it out loud. I consciously keep my business small
> (and local) enough that I don't need to consider the global issues
> that Maria has to deal with, otherwise I'd probably be using Google too.
>        The parts of Google I use (I have gmail accounts for specific
> purposes and/or groups) are great but the indexing issue is something
> that I'm not sure how to feel about. The data is there and that's the
> way the world is going, but I think we need to keep a certain amount
> of mindfulness about it. It's one of those things that can be used for
> good or evil, and one really evil person/entity who puts their mind to
> it has the ability to take down a whole lot of good folks. Maybe that
> will never happen and I'm just being an old fogey. But still, it's
> worth thinking about.
>
>        And I know, this has nothing to do with the subject of this thread
> so
> those of you who aren't old fogeys please disregard.
>         Lynne
>
>
>
> On Oct 29, 2009, at 12:24 PM, Michael Muller wrote:
>
> >   ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's
> > area.
> >   ** If you did, we all thank you.
> >
> >
> >
> > Well, the future may be here already.
> >
> > I guess I am one of those stalwarts who wants to hold back hyper-
> > global-integration wherein everyone uses one platform that provides
> > everything for everyone.
> >
> > Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying what Google offers is bad, or
> > that what you're doing, Maria, is bad. It serves your purposes and
> > probably you couldn't be efficient if you didn't have this system.
> >
> > But, although I'm a technologist and a programmer, I still prefer to
> > hold off on full adoption of anything that removes my control, or
> > puts me into a single-entity hosted matrix of a gajillion other
> > people.  Not only is there an all-eggs-in-one-basket issue, but
> > there's the creepiness factor too.
> >
> > And outside of the subpeona issue, there's also the indexing issue.
> > They know what people are talking about en mass because they index
> > everything they touch.  That sort of global trend awareness scares
> > me a little.
> >
> > Anyway, that's my reasoning for trying to remain the little local
> > guy who could.  Keeping SOME things out of Google's databases is
> > probably a good thing, including our emails.
> >
> > Mik
> >
> >
> >
> > At 12:08 PM 10/29/2009, Maria Korolov (Trombly) wrote:
> >> Another option if you have to have your own email address is to use
> >> Google's hosted mail service. It's part of their Google Apps
> >> platform, and the basic service is free.
> >>
> >> For example, for this account, i have unlimited email addresses
> >> that end in @<http://tromblyltd.com>tromblyltd.com, as well as
> >> shared documents and shared company calendars.
> >>
> >> (And free Google Analytics and everything else.)
> >>
> >> If you don't mind running your business on Google, you can't beat
> >> the price, and their spam filters are basically the best around.
> >>
> >> And they'll replace their own branding on top of the email page
> >> with your company logo. Again, for free.
> >>
> >> They do this because they put a little sidebar on the far right
> >> with a list of Google ads, which I believe you can get rid of if
> >> you upgrade to their paid service.
> >>
> >> I've been using this for ... about four years now, I guess. They've
> >> been more reliable than any other email platform I've used so far,
> >> and I've had zero problems getting anything to work. They have had
> >> a couple of outages this year, which brought down the system, but
> >> again, fewer than I've had with my previous email hosts.
> >>
> >> You can access them online from wherever you are by using a URL
> >> something like this: <http://mail.google.com/a/tromblyltd.com/
> >> #inbox>http://mail.google.com/a/tromblyltd.com/#inbox
> >>
> >> (In my case, I have <http://mail.tromblyltd.com>mail.tromblyltd.com
> >> redirect automatically to that address.)
> >>
> >> Since I have employees around the world, this is a great deal.
> >>
> >> If you want to, you can also use Outlook in conjunction with this
> >> -- they support POP3 and IMAP access. They've also recently rolled
> >> out an offline version where they store backups of everything on
> >> your computer, for when you don't have access to the Internet.
> >>
> >> Currently, the free version offers more than 7 gig of storage, per
> >> employee or user. The Premier version offers 25 gig of storage per
> >> employee, at a price of $50 per user per year. (Nor per domain
> >> name, per user.)
> >>
> >> I don't mind the privacy issues -- if someone wanted to subpoena my
> >> emails for a court case, it probably wouldn't make much difference
> >> if they were hosted with Google or a smaller provider or on my own
> >> server. Though I have been careful not to have discussions in email
> >> relating to Chinese human rights issues while I was based in China.
> >> If you're going to be doing that, I strongly recommend using one of
> >> the encrypted, secure email systems specifically designed to avoid
> >> detection by totalitarian governments.
> >>
> >> Some webhosts today -- Dreamhost, for example -- automatically
> >> offer Google Apps integration as part of their domain services, in
> >> addition to or instead of their own webmail platforms. I don't
> >> blame them. I've seen the webmail offered by the other guys, and it
> >> lags significantly behind features and usability of Gmail. In
> >> addition to the spectacular spam filters, for example, Gmail emails
> >> can be stored in multiple folders (they call them "labels") -- most
> >> webmail systems will only allow you to put an email into one folder
> >> at a time. Gmail also has a huge number of other features --
> >> automatic translations of emails from other languages, filters that
> >> automatically sort incoming emails into folders, canned responses
> >> that you can pull from a menu and drop into an email, group
> >> calendar integration -- it can even remind you if you forgot to
> >> include the attachment you mentioned in your email, or are sending
> >> your email to the wrong "Bob". (Creepy, but can be very useful!)
> >>
> >> I know that Google doesn't provide the personalized service that
> >> local hosting companies do. But, on the other hand, I've never
> >> needed it. It just works. If it doesn't work, then it's not working
> >> for everyone on the planet and you know they've got a gajillion
> >> people on it fixing it.
> >>
> >> Oh, the other great thing about Google's hosted email system --
> >> it's integrated with Google Chat (and AIM). I can instantly see
> >> which of my employees are online, chat with them -- even have video
> >> calls with them, all inside the email system. I use this daily to
> >> stay in touch with my guys in India and China and Europe, and with
> >> some of my clients who prefer to IM me.
> >>
> >> Best,
> >>
> >> Maria
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Maria Korolov
> >> Technology columnist, Securities Industry News
> >> Editor & publisher, Hypergrid Business (<http://
> >> hypergridbusiness.com>hypergridbusiness.com)
> >> President, Trombly Ltd.
> >> 508-443-1130 | <mailto:maria at tromblyltd.com>maria at tromblyltd.com
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 11:31 AM, Michael Muller <<mailto:
> michael at mullertech.com
> >> >michael at mullertech.com> wrote:
> >> ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's
> >> area.
> >> ** If you did, we all thank you.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Stacey,
> >>
> >> You are not the only one who is experiencing the issue of Verizon
> >> unilaterally changing the SMTP port blocking / firewalling.  This
> >> behavior costs small companies like mine a lot of time and
> >> agravation. (Disclaimer: Montague WebWorks, of whom I am a partner,
> >> is Stacey's hosting company.)
> >>
> >> Whenever Verizon makes a change we get barraged with calls.  Since
> >> this occurance is really out of our hands -- essentially we're on
> >> the other side of a wall we have no control over -- all we can do
> >> is offer suggestions for port numbers and server names.  And
> >> Verizon's support numbers and pages are usually very hard to get
> >> and sometimes completely useless.
> >>
> >> I would imagine if they keep this up one of two things will
> >> happen:  (a) America will give up on vanity domains for email and
> >> all switch to gmail or hotmail or yahoo or whatever, thus
> >> abandoning the small ISP's services, and/or (b) the small ISPs will
> >> organize with the cafe owners (will explain that in a sec) and file
> >> a class-action suit against Verizon and any other large
> >> connectivity providers for loss of business and unfiar practices.
> >>
> >> To say that switching to port 587 will stop spam is a complete
> >> joke. I mean really, what spammer sits in a cafe and sends a
> >> million emails from their laptop?  If you're a real spammer you've
> >> got your own server or you're using virus-bot technology, which
> >> infects and uses unsuspecting desktop and laptop machines across
> >> the Internet to send their spam emails.  Also, do you think they
> >> don't know that Verizon has changed to port 587?  Aren't the
> >> spammers EXPERTS in how email works?  Do you think everyone else
> >> will know to use port 587 and they wouldn't? Are they walking
> >> around right now scratching their heads saying "well hell... how
> >> come it's not working?"
> >>
> >> Bell South and Comcast both require that ALL outgoing POP-style
> >> email (not webmail) uses their own mailservers with a username and
> >> password.  This is unfortunate for people sitting in a cafe
> >> somewhere, using Outlook or an iPhone or any email client, because
> >> they'll never know the username and password to use.  So, they're
> >> screwed.  And maybe they'll stop going to that cafe.  Sucks for the
> >> cafe owners.
> >>
> >> No, it's bogus. And at a certain point they should all have to stop
> >> these inconvenient practices.
> >>
> >> The best thing they could do for the convenience of users of their
> >> service if they want to stop spam is to simply throttle down
> >> traffic over port 25 and 587.  Stop any connection if more than,
> >> say, 25 emails are being sent in a single shot. Simple.
> >>
> >> They have the technology, and that would open up commerce again for
> >> the small ISP (such as myself) and the cafes who can't get their
> >> customer email out.  I can get testimonials from two cafe owners
> >> that the recent change impacted their business.
> >>
> >> Mik
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> At 02:45 PM 10/27/2009, Stacey Langknecht wrote:
> >>>  ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the
> >>> member's area.
> >>>  ** If you did, we all thank you.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Hello Everyone –
> >>>
> >>> A few things here…first, some feedback about Verizon: the worst
> >>> customer service I’ve ever experienced, and this was from the
> >>> beginning of my dsl service a few years ago! Everything is awful
> >>> from their obnoxious auto-operator to the incompetent csr’s. I
> >>> just got my email back up and running really due to the help of my
> >>> host company, not Verizon, even though it was their fault (they
> >>> blocked the port a few weeks ago, then told me port 587 was fine,
> >>> then after a few weeks that stopped working, and now port 26 is
> >>> working again, but who knows how long this will last?!) – all this
> >>> is because we have a home business with our own domain name.
> >>> So….does anyone know of another company that offers dsl service to
> >>> home biz folks that’s also reasonable???? I understand that
> >>> Comcast, AT&T and the other huge companies are all doing the same
> >>> thing, and Crocker is more expensive and I hear that they don’t
> >>> offer ‘round the clock service if something goes wrong. Any
> >>> suggestions?
> >>>
> >>> I’m also looking into VOIP and have heard mixed reviews on Vonage
> >>> and Magic Jack. Has anyone used Ooma? I have a friend down south
> >>> who uses them and says they’re OK. It seems like the big issue
> >>> with Voip is the connection. Any feedback here?
> >>>
> >>> Thanks for all your help!!
> >>>
> >>> Stacey Langknecht
> >>> Hotsapp Woodworks
> >>> 413-367-9408
> >>> <mailto:stacey at hotsapp.com><mailto:stacey at hotsapp.com>
> stacey at hotsapp.com
> >>>
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> >>
> >> --------
> >> Michael Muller
> >> office (413) 863-6455
> >> cell (413) 320-5336
> >> skype: michaelBmuller
> >> <http://MontagueWebWorks.com>http://MontagueWebWorks.com
> >>
> >> Information is not knowledge
> >> Knowlege is not wisdom
> >>
> >> Eschew Obfuscation
> >>
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> >
> > --------
> > Michael Muller
> > office (413) 863-6455
> > cell (413) 320-5336
> > skype: michaelBmuller
> > http://MontagueWebWorks.com
> >
> > Information is not knowledge
> > Knowlege is not wisdom
> >
> > Eschew Obfuscation
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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