I just wanted to post a note on email spoofing. In the past two weeks, I’ve become a victim of this shitty practice, with my inbox inundated with thousands of all sorts of not-so-great spam, along with the thousands of mail-delivery failures that accompany a spamming storm of this sort.
To anyone receiving email allegedly from my domain (rickmahn.com) I apologize for any inconvenience it may cause you, but understand that I’m not generating this spam. I am in the process of reporting as many of these messages to the FTC as possible and also am working with my email server host (Google) to help identify, report and curtail as much of this unwanted traffic as I am able to.
This has been happening for about 2-3 weeks, and I’m most worried that my domain will be black-listed because of this spoofing event. Yes, I’ve published the SPF for my domain, and have enabled all technical means to deal with this problem, but this does not stop the people actually trying to spoof my domain (or potentially yours!). It’s all down to detective work at this point, reporting as many of these messages as I have time for around my real job and home life – not an easy task at all.
So, if you’ve gotten spammed by an email that seems to be originating from my domain, I apologize and understand your frustration – I also am being spammed (doubly so) as this happens – and my name and reputation is being affected because of this. The funny thing is that there are only three actual email address that send email from my domain, so it’s easy to tell what’s spam.
I’d like to let my fellow SMBer’s in Minneapolis & St. Paul know about the next SMB-TC event! It’ll be held at the Caribou Coffee in Roseville, just off Snelling Ave. They’ve got a dedicated conference room that may be more conducive to being able to talk with everyone, working WiFi, and great coffee.
Although the room is smaller as it holds ~12 people or so, I think it may let us have better ability to talk without having to play musical chairs. I’m interested in all feedback on this one as I’m going to try to find a similar, larger venue for the May event when we may have some folks from out-state MN join us! So if you can’t make this one, I hope to have the details for the May event all figured out in the next week or so.
That’s the question I Friday morning, mainly because I’m just curious what people thought. Originally I had planned to post this later that day, but… life intervened. Anyway, a number of people shared their thoughts and I thought I’d put them together in a short post. So the question was…
What makes today special for you? Is today the day?
I want to say thank you to all my Twitter friends that sent responses, and I really appreciate you letting me share your Friday! I hope that everyone get’s a bit of insight and inspiration from what we share in these Q&A sessions on Twitter – they’re fun!
This morning I was getting started on the day, fired up Twitter and immediately saw that Chris Brogan had a new post. One that hits home to an issue I’ve been having as a consultant or freelance professional. The post is a great resource for those starting out freelancing, or re-launching their personal brand.
The biggest thing I took away from his post was the importance of blogging. That is the piece that I’ve struggled with for several months. Most of the other parts, I’ve been working on for some time. But the most important part is blogging.
Without sharing your ideas, or expertise, or passion on a topic, people can’t gauge how interested or engaged you are in your profession. When you write about your profession or interest, you are sharing your knowledge – your expertise on the subject and providing content that attracts the attention of others.
That is the point I wanted to reinforce in Chris’ post earlier today. While all the points are very important, providing the content and networking with peers are the top two things that you can do to help show who you are and why potential clients should choose you over another freelancer.
It’s contract renewal season for me, and I’m kind of “heads down” working on what comes next. So I’ve been kinda distracted from sharing ideas and discussions with everyone.
I’m continuing my evolution into cloud computing, shedding local software as I figure out my approach. I’m lucky enough to have access to excellent coverage by T-Mobile, albeit EDGE only, plentiful free WiFi and T-Mobile HotSpots available to me as I go through each day. So I’m always able to be connected, most all the time.
The first step has been dropping Microsoft Outlook. This was a the biggest step of all, as it’s been my email client for over a decade, and a damn good one at that. Just a quick note on usability – much nicer to not have to wait for all the IMAP folders to sync! GMail is… well GMail, and has it’s own peculiarities to adapt to.
Now that I’ve got that one figured out, and completed, it’s on to the next steps. I’ve got hundreds of Microsoft Office documents that I need to review and move into the cloud. Reviewing them will not be the problem, and getting them into whatever service won’t either.
But… which service to move these to? Google Docs & Spreadsheets because it’s tied to all my Google account stuff? Or should I go for Zoho Office? I’ve used both for almost the same amount of time (~2 years) and find pros/cons to both. There’s also ThinkFree, which may be most like the native Microsoft Office environment.
That’s going to take some thinking… in the meantime I’m going to sort through several hundred megabytes of documents, some quite dated to be quite honest. It’ll be nice to trim down to what’s actually valuable and relevant.
Probably the biggest Microsoft Office app besides Outlook that’ll be hard for me to replace is OneNote. Since the release of Office 2003, this application has been a staple of my note taking. For all sorts of things, like projects, seminars, meetings, online research, etc… It’s become indispensable and its really hard to find a replacement, but I think I may have it. Zoho Notebook is the closest I’ve seen of anything, so I’ll be working with that for the next few weeks to see how viable it is as a replacement.
So there you have it, an update on where I’m at. I still have more questions than answers, but I’m finding many more online solutions than a year or so ago when I last really considered doing this. It’s now actually feasible to migrate online. With the critical components of connectivity and software services, I’m well on my way to reducing my dependence on legacy software.
Have you bit the bullet? What’s worked for you? Heck, what headaches have you had that may have pointed you back to locally installed software?
