LeeseIT Blogs » Standards Compliance

postmasters, blacklists and commercial emailers

Leroy Leese — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:50:53 +0000

Recently sent this to a client regarding email applications…

Blacklisted? Not sure? Check http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
and enter IP Address
Spamcop got you down? Not sure? Check http://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml
and enter IP Address
For gobs of information (and to signup to be in the feedback loop) -
visit http://postmaster.aol.com. The whole site has a lot of useful
information. Being in the feedback loop will allow them to notify you if
a user puts your email in the junk mail. This way you can unsubscribe the
customer, instead of risking being blacklisted.
Yahoo! wants to be your friend. How can you be their friend? Visit
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/postmaster-15.html
Finally, here is a legal blurb about commercial email systems:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.shtm

doctype, a predictable problem

Leroy Leese — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:33:39 +0000

I don’t want to sound condescending, but it was something that was bound to come up. I ran into it working with the Tactical Sensor Model (also called the Common Sensor Model, and finally, Joint Sensor Model) working group. In that situation, the API needed to grow as the abilities and capabilities of the Sensors (and their Models) improved. And how do you progress an API (or in this case, specific Standards) and maintain backwards compatibility? Some people who are smarter than me are working on it which is good but I can tell you that we never came up with a solution that satisfied everyone. In this case, if I were developing a browser, I would NOT be interested in handling version cases for rendering a page. It means that the engine will grow and grow and grow and although there won’t be alot to maintain because each version will build on the last and once a version is released, its not going to get modified but what about NEW browsers? Really, they are going to test each version’s engine and move forward? So basically, if you are not in the browser market now, you will have a huge-uphill battle if this goes through. Ick, its a nightmare and its easy from the server side of the problem to sit back and go, “You, client-side people REALLY have your work cut out for you”. If that is the case, I hope the open-source community likes testing (as opposed to developing) because that is going to be where time gets spent.

The alternative isn’t pleasant either, what with all kinds of progress moving forward with standards AND browsers. It isn’t an easy puzzle to solve. Good luck. To everyone.

All Table Based Layout Designers Please Read This

Leroy Leese — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:32:38 +0000

Great presentation for those considering table based layouts. I think its an old link, but still VERY relevant.

http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/

Google using Microformats

Leroy Leese — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:26:42 +0000

I recently discovered that microformats are being used on Google Maps. Even though I am a few months behind on this discovery, I think that it will really broaden the use and start a trend of incorporating them websites. We have incorporated them into this blog for about a year now, and we really enjoyed enhancing the Niceville Chamber of Commerce website with them and their events. So it will be interesting to see if/how microformats build momentum.

Customer Service

Leroy Leese — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:28:44 +0000

It is mostly about Customer Service. What is? Software. It’s all about customer service in fact. I mean, you build a User Interface so that your users can interface with it. And if that interface doesn’t make sense (BTW, that was your first line of customer service) then they call or email you (your second line of customer service). In fact, all software serves, and most of the time, serves its human customer. So you have to have people skills and a heart to serve, or you aren’t going to make it. If you only love the engineering side of it, then get into mechanical or some sort of physical engineering …software is for people.

SEO

Leroy Leese — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 15:58:05 +0000

Search Engine Optimization. Real? or Scam?

My contention is that there are some legitimate additions you can add to your site to help search engines find and navigate your site in order to provide their users with the most relevant results. There are probably tricks, but tricking them really doesn’t benefit you OR your visitors OR the search engine. So what are some things you can do?

Sitemap – Did you know you can actually tell Google what pages you want it to parse? Not only will it report back to you with what errors it encountered and what pages it found, it will also tell you what keywords it found. So if you don’t like the keywords it found, you know you have to adjust the content in your site.
RSS Feeds – I don’t have proof that this will help your site directly. However, the fact is that it will bring traffic to your site. Not only can your regular visitors keep tabs on what is new, they can also use browser tools to add things to http://del.icio.us and http://www.digg.com. And Google themselves admit that having links to your site from other high-quality websites will improve your rankings.
RSS Feeds (Part 2) – Windows Vista has alot of built-in support for RSS Feeds. This gives you direct access to your customers. Imagine, every time you post a news article or update to your site, your visitors/customers get a notification that pops up on the desktop. Sweet.
HTML Validation – Whether you use HTML or XHTML, it behooves you to have validated code. Search engines are good at parsing pages and finding out about your content, but it is wise to make it as easy on them as possible by following standards compliance.

We have case studies of some of our websites and found that ones that follow these four tips, have had improved search ranks within a month and sites that didn’t adhere to these tips had slow ranking improvements, on the order of 9-12 months.

Credit Card Bullhorn

Matt Satorius — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 15:49:09 +0000

In the past week, I’ve come in contact with a surprising handful of random folks with websites who either are sending credit card account information over clear email, or asked me directly for my account information over email in a handy form to just “Reply” to. Why don’t I go out on my back porch with a loudspeaker and just announce my credit card information over and over again. C’mon folks! Fraud is REAL!

With each individual or company that I came in contact with, learning that their practices were this way, I sternly warned them of how carelessly they are handling their clients sensitive data that email is clear as day for anybody to sniff, read, and pick up along the way, meaning who knows who just picked up that credit card information and stored it away (better charge those cards quick cause they’ll soon to be cancelled when the owners finds out he’s been frauded).

One company, of whom I will name, Eli Journals, is a publication center that puts out many newsletters on web design tips, as well as other software tricks. I received an email from them last week asking me to renew my subscription, and simply hit reply to their email and fill out the handy form at the bottom of the email and send it back. You guessed it, they asked clearly for my Credit Card Account and Exp. information. I was honestly quite appauled and wrote them a very stern warning and that I may just cancel my subscription because of the clear example of how lax they are in handling my personal data. I couldn’t believe it!

I’m amazed at how many start up websites all the way up to corporations are transmitting credit card information over email. You would think in this day in age people would know, but aparently people think they are invincible to fraud or something. Help the cause and warn those that you see in this act of the danger of account fraud involved with not keeping credit card data secure and under lock and key.