Friday, November 16, 2007
00:23 by FoxTwo Ahhh the wonders of what a restrictive company firewall can do to its staff....
Well I spent the whole day surfing whatever sites I could, and they're usually technology-related sites (and yeah the network guys didn't block my domain so I could still do stuff on it). Yup, I came across this website which is new to me, and which I think should have been discovered by me much sooner, like maybe 5 years sooner.. :)
The website? It's called Contactify.
What does it do?
Nowadays it's damn dangerous to even put your email address up on the web in the clear, unless you really like attracting spam-bots. One of the ways to beat these spam bots is to convert your email address into a graphic to foil the spam-bots, the other is to use Contactify. It's sorta like what Haloscan does for comments and trackbacks in a blog. It's a free service which presents a form where users on your website can email you, but you don't even have to reveal your email address at all.
The basic service just gives you a URL link which is uniquely yours. You just slot this link just like any other link onto your site, and when the visitor clicks on it, it brings them to contactify's website to fill in a form to send an email to you.
Better yet, it also offers a widget which you can use to integrate it into your own website, and even use the CSS stylesheets on your website, so that it has the same look-and-feel as the rest of your website. When you choose this option, the visitor doesn't get whisked off to contactify's website - they can fill in the form right there on your own website, with a form that is css-styled to suit the rest of your website theme.
Want a real live working demo? Sure, click here to email me :)
Cool huh?
As I said, this service should have been around years ago, before blogs became prominent. Back then, spam was a big problem (still is, now). People used to have "homepages" and left their email addresses as valid mailto: links, and spam-bots quickly picked these up and spammed them. If Contactify had been around back then, this problem would have been quickly nipped in the bud.
Now, I guess you don't really need this service much. Most people now have "blogs" instead of "homepages" (I'm one of the few dinosaurs who still have a homepage, and you're on the "blog" part of it). I just happen to have both, and integrated my blog as part of my "homepage". Yeah my website's kinda retro heh!
00:23 by FoxTwo Ahhh the wonders of what a restrictive company firewall can do to its staff....
Well I spent the whole day surfing whatever sites I could, and they're usually technology-related sites (and yeah the network guys didn't block my domain so I could still do stuff on it). Yup, I came across this website which is new to me, and which I think should have been discovered by me much sooner, like maybe 5 years sooner.. :)
The website? It's called Contactify.
What does it do?
Nowadays it's damn dangerous to even put your email address up on the web in the clear, unless you really like attracting spam-bots. One of the ways to beat these spam bots is to convert your email address into a graphic to foil the spam-bots, the other is to use Contactify. It's sorta like what Haloscan does for comments and trackbacks in a blog. It's a free service which presents a form where users on your website can email you, but you don't even have to reveal your email address at all.
The basic service just gives you a URL link which is uniquely yours. You just slot this link just like any other link onto your site, and when the visitor clicks on it, it brings them to contactify's website to fill in a form to send an email to you.
Better yet, it also offers a widget which you can use to integrate it into your own website, and even use the CSS stylesheets on your website, so that it has the same look-and-feel as the rest of your website. When you choose this option, the visitor doesn't get whisked off to contactify's website - they can fill in the form right there on your own website, with a form that is css-styled to suit the rest of your website theme.
Want a real live working demo? Sure, click here to email me :)
Cool huh?
As I said, this service should have been around years ago, before blogs became prominent. Back then, spam was a big problem (still is, now). People used to have "homepages" and left their email addresses as valid mailto: links, and spam-bots quickly picked these up and spammed them. If Contactify had been around back then, this problem would have been quickly nipped in the bud.
Now, I guess you don't really need this service much. Most people now have "blogs" instead of "homepages" (I'm one of the few dinosaurs who still have a homepage, and you're on the "blog" part of it). I just happen to have both, and integrated my blog as part of my "homepage". Yeah my website's kinda retro heh!
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Thursday, November 15, 2007
00:06 by FoxTwo
Well, I just found something really useful today and thought I'd share it with everyone.
First of all, I am sure that for many of us who have registered their own domain, we usually get ONE measely "free" email address that is named for the domain we purchased. In some cases, may be 5, or 20. Or, in worst case scenarios, none.
Well when I registered mine, I only got one free one. It was a no-brainer to create the email address. However, most "professional" sites have email addresses like "support@domain.com" and "sales@domain.com" etc for different purposes. Assuming you registered your domain for a business goal, having just one "free" email probably wouldn't suit your business, and you would probably already have paid a small fee to "upgrade" your plan so that you can get more email addresses to run your business.
Today, I ran across Google Apps. Ok, with a name like that, it's nothing to shout about. Google Apps is a web-based office productivity suite, kinda like Microsoft Office On The Web. Yes you get the usual Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Pages and all that jazz. However, what drew me to it was the fact that the "standard" edition, ie FREE edition, already allows you to create up to 100 free email accounts, and they can be named for your domain! Not only that, each of these email account is a Gmail clone - ie you get 4GB (and counting) storage for your email PER ACCOUNT. FREE! If you went ahead and created 100 accounts, you'd have 400GBs of storage for your email.. wow! For a small business, I doubt anyone would need more than 50. Oh did I mention they are POP and IMAP capable too? Would probably fit right in to most organisations.
In any case, I wasted no time in signing up, and configuring Google Apps for a few more email addresses to my domain. Instructions provided by Google Apps are easy for guiding you to create DNS entries or to point them to Google so that your brand-spanking-new email addresses are ready to accept email.
No I'm not making any money off this, and there's no "referral link". Just something really cool that I'd like to share with you guys.
00:06 by FoxTwo
100 Free Email Accounts For Your Domain!
Well, I just found something really useful today and thought I'd share it with everyone.
First of all, I am sure that for many of us who have registered their own domain, we usually get ONE measely "free" email address that is named for the domain we purchased. In some cases, may be 5, or 20. Or, in worst case scenarios, none.
Well when I registered mine, I only got one free one. It was a no-brainer to create the email address. However, most "professional" sites have email addresses like "support@domain.com" and "sales@domain.com" etc for different purposes. Assuming you registered your domain for a business goal, having just one "free" email probably wouldn't suit your business, and you would probably already have paid a small fee to "upgrade" your plan so that you can get more email addresses to run your business.
Today, I ran across Google Apps. Ok, with a name like that, it's nothing to shout about. Google Apps is a web-based office productivity suite, kinda like Microsoft Office On The Web. Yes you get the usual Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Pages and all that jazz. However, what drew me to it was the fact that the "standard" edition, ie FREE edition, already allows you to create up to 100 free email accounts, and they can be named for your domain! Not only that, each of these email account is a Gmail clone - ie you get 4GB (and counting) storage for your email PER ACCOUNT. FREE! If you went ahead and created 100 accounts, you'd have 400GBs of storage for your email.. wow! For a small business, I doubt anyone would need more than 50. Oh did I mention they are POP and IMAP capable too? Would probably fit right in to most organisations.
In any case, I wasted no time in signing up, and configuring Google Apps for a few more email addresses to my domain. Instructions provided by Google Apps are easy for guiding you to create DNS entries or to point them to Google so that your brand-spanking-new email addresses are ready to accept email.
No I'm not making any money off this, and there's no "referral link". Just something really cool that I'd like to share with you guys.
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Labels: domain, email, Google, internet
