I'm Just Sharing

Clearing Away Irritations In 2010

Posted by Mitch on Jan 2, 2010

Back in September on my business blog, titled Mitch’s Blog, I wrote a second post on the topic of tolerations. The original post on that topic was only about a paragraph long, so I wanted to boost it up some more. On that post there’s a link to a pdf file called 1001 Tolerations, which pretty much means things we put up with instead of getting them out of our lives and making us feel better about things.

Well, this is a new year, and I think it’s time for me to clear some things out of my life that have been irritating me in some fashion. Actually, most of us should think about doing that from time to time because we all tend to allow certain things to drag us down, even if it’s only occasionally. For instance, you have someone who you call a friend, yet you avoid them because they bring you down whenever you talk to them. All they talk about is themselves and their problems; they never ask you how you feel or even listen when you try to talk; it’s all about them.

I don’t have anything like that in my life, but I do have some things that I will be eliminating. One is going through my email address books and eliminating anyone who hasn’t responded to anything I’ve sent in at least a year. I think that’s not a bad place to start, but I might even go back further than that; I’m not sure yet. I go through my email all the time, and I see these email addresses of people I send stuff to that never write back. I tolerate that, but no more; they’re gone. Well, kind of gone; I’ll save the email addresses in a file, but at least I won’t be seeing them anymore.

Two, remember my post against Disqus? Well, I’m now resolving that any blogs I’m following that has Disqus on them, or any other blogs I go to that send me a message saying I have to subscribe to find out if someone has commented back to something I’ve commented on, I’m deleting from my blog reader and moving on. Any new blogs I come to that has Disqus I’m not even reading. Now, I know some of you have it on your blogs, and if I like you, I may not delete the blog, like our friend Peter; we go back a long way after all. But Peter, sorry, I’m not commenting anymore because I hate getting that email every time asking me to subscribe.

Three, I’m going through all the blogs in my reader and I’m going to make sure I’m following people who are talking about stuff I really care about. Also, I’m going to drop anyone who hasn’t written a post in 3 months. And, while I’m doing that, I’m going to find the time to get to Twitter and release people who I started following a long time ago, who either aren’t talking anymore or aren’t talking about anything I care about. I follow nearly 1,400 people, and I’m not going to say that’s too many, but I am going to say that I do listen to a lot of folks, rather follow a lot of folks, who aren’t really talking to anyone, but instead are always selling. Twitter isn’t supposed to be a one way conversation, just like blogging isn’t supposed to be a one way conversation either.

You know what? At a certain point, we all deserve to have more positivity in our lives. And sometimes, heck, all the time, it’s up to us to make our own happiness and get rid of those things that help to make us unhappy. It’s time for me to do that; what about you?

Colors Address Book Price – $10.10

Mailwasher

Posted by Mitch on Dec 14, 2009

I’ve been told that if you write a review post about a product that it will drive sales of that product, especially if what you have to say is very good and very true. Let’s see how true that premise is.

Back when I was warning y’all about hidden messages in email, I mentioned Mailwasher for the first time. I even pointed you to a review I wrote about it on another site. I’m writing this review that I hope will end up being different than the previous review, since I’m not going back to look at it before I write this one. And I have this program and I’m always telling people about this product and I’ve purchased this bad boy, so now I’ve just fulfilled the FTC thing that everyone is so worried about (except me; I probably won’t write about it, though).

Mailwasher is a software program that allows you to check your email while it’s still on the server. It doesn’t care what you use as an email program, so no worries there. However, by checking email while it’s still on the server, you get to decide what you’re downloading to your computer and what you don’t want to download to your computer. You get to see the links that are hidden in email while it’s still on the server to validate whether those emails are true or not. You can add as many of your email addresses as you need to, but I’ll talk about that one because if you have email being redirected you won’t have to add those email addresses.

Let’s start with what it looks like. Here’s a screenshot of the program in use:

Actually, the way you’re looking at it here is pretty small, but you can right-click on it and open it up to see it better. And I apologize to John now for now long it’s going to take to download this one for him.

There are some other categories you can have, but these are the ones I use, and I feel they’re the most important. You can also move the categories around if you want to. That first column is probably the most important because that’s the one where you can train Mailwasher on what should be blacklisted and what should be made friendly. The status box tells you what it thinks the email coming in is. It has its own way of determining what it considers as spam or junk, and it’s pretty good.

If you look at that last column, you see where I have two separate classes, personal and second account. Though I have lots of email addresses, I have all of them directed to one of two accounts, both through my internet provider, which is Road Runner. I have two separate email addresses for that. That’s important because when you create your accounts, you need to put in your username and password so that it can check your email while it’s still out on the server.

Now, for the bottom part of the program. That’s where you’ll see what you’ve been sent. You can see as much or as little as you want to see there. I have mine set to give me 445 lines of data, which is more than some might like, and less than others might like. But that’s where you’ll see any links that might be embedded in an email, and where you’ll see some of those strange words that you know means that’s an email with images and hidden stuff that might contain viruses or malware. If a friend is sending an attachment you won’t see that, but at the top you have a column that tells you how big the email you’re getting is, and you can pretty much bet that any email more than 200K has an attachment of some type.

I’ve been using this program for about 5 years now. I’ve only had one email slip through in all that time that had a virus on it, and that wasn’t the program’s fault, but timing. Once you delete all the email you don’t want anymore, you should then download your email. However, sometimes a new email is coming through at the same time and will slip through; nothing you can do about that. I swear by this program, and I really do believe that anyone, from those of us with a bit more web savvy than others, or those with very little savvy whatsoever, should be using this bad boy. Every time I learn that someone has a virus on their computer, I think of Mailwasher and ask why they don’t have it.

Probably because they haven’t read this review. Now that you’ve read it, think about your safety and see if you believe you could use a little bit of help. Trust me, the price is worth it.

And there you go. Now, let’s see what happens.

How Much Do I Write?

Posted by Mitch on Dec 9, 2009

At the time I was originally asked this question about how much I write, I thought it was an odd question. My initial inclination was to say that I’m always writing, but that’s not necessarily the case. I do write a lot, but not all of it is what I’ll call creative writing. That being writing my blogs, writing my articles, working on my book, writing for webpages, etc. But most of it is. I thought I’d talk about it a little bit here, just so y’all can see what I do with myself most of my days, unless I happen to be on the road consulting somewhere.

Let’s start with my blogs. You can easily see how much I write here. The first full year of this blog I wrote 300 posts. At the clip I’m going now, it’s going to probably come in around 275 for the year, as my anniversary date is the 12th. I just hit my 200th post on my finance blog, Top Finance Blog and on the anniversary date I wrote post #201. On my business blog, Mitch’s Blog, I just wrote post #622 earlier today, and I’ve had that blog just over 4 years, which means I average about 150 posts a year for that blog; not too shabby if you ask me. So, all told, that’s over 600 blog posts a year.

Next, my newsletters. I write two newsletters, one on general business issues, the other on health care billing issues. I’ve been writing them since 2003. I put the first one out every 2 to 3 weeks, which means at a minimum 18 a year, and the second one, because it takes more time, I write maybe 5 or 6 a year. Each one is a minimum of 800 words, often getting near 1,500 words each.

I write blogs for other people. At this point I’m writing 3 other blogs, each one getting at least 200 words, but y’all know me; how often am I writing anything less than 350 words? Those are all at 20 articles a month.

I’ve been writing articles for other people. My main client has me writing 27 articles a week, almost all of them at least 400 words. One of my other clients has me writing one article a week of around 500 words. I write articles for two other websites that I’m not going to mention here and average 3 to 4 articles at each a week.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m subscribed to around 200 blogs or so. I’m starting to whittle that number down because some folks aren’t talking about things that are keeping me as interested anymore, plus it’s really time consuming trying to keep up with that many blogs, as you can imagine. Being kind of a news junkie, I also read a lot of news sources each day, plus research for articles has me reading even more material. Anyway, I make it a job, so to speak, to comment on at least 5 blogs a day, but some days it can go as high as 30. I don’t write one line comments because that would be disingenuous, and only comment when I have something to say, but I also know that blog commenting is what helps drive traffic to your own blog.

I write articles and other things for my other websites, some of which I’ve talked about here before. I try to write one new articles every couple of weeks for my medical billing site, Medical Billing Answers. I need to write more articles for my reviews site, Reviews of Everything, and I now have a different perspective on how writing reviews could lead to product sales, thanks to these ladies at Affiliate Blog Online, and at my anti-smoking site Smoke Not So Much. I should be adding more articles to my other site Services and Stuff, articles, which actually has a few of those articles being read often, and is my own ezine article exchange that I should be taking more advantage of. By the way, anyone else who’d like to have an article listed on that site, contact me.

I’m also always writing outlines for projects I’m either planning or am working on. For instance, last week I gave a presentation at a medical billing meeting here in town, and I put together an extensive outline for the presentation, which lasted a week. Sometimes I have even more writing that has to come out of those presentations. For instance, when I gave my presentation this summer that resulted in the webinar I’m marketing at the top left of this blog on social media, that came out of an outline I had to write.

And finally, I think, my books and stuff. I’m working on a detective story and, of all things, an advice book for young people. The second was supposed to be a joint project, but it looks like I’ll be doing it all on my own at this point. There was another story also that was supposed to be a joint project that I think, once I get extra time, I’ll be writing that one on my own also. And I have two more ideas for websites that aren’t even at the outline stage yet, as I’m trying to determine how I’d like to work it and what I’d actually put on it and whether I believe anyone would actually come to it.

All that, and the occasional request for other articles and such, and I’m kind of a writing fool. Oh yeah, I didn’t mention the forums, Twitter, Facebook, the 150 emails a day that I actually download and respond to as opposed to the hundreds of others that I eliminate through Mailwasher every day; oy!

Is it fair to say that writing is my life? How do I get it all done? Well, some days I plan it out, and other days I just wing it. But I never miss a deadline; my credibility is always on the line in that respect. And yeah, at times it’s pretty hard work. But I don’t think I’d want to have it any other way, at least right now.

Hidden Messages In Email Images

Posted by Mitch on Jul 22, 2009

What would your reaction be if you received spam email that began with something like this:

“I believe the Ku Klux Klan has been badly maligned in the history of the United States.”

What about:

“The Tyrians whom Pharaoh Necho sent down the Red Sea more than six hundred years before Christ, brought back after three years a story of their finding Africa an island,…”

Or even:

“To figure in drawing-rooms with the reflected lustre of her husband’s fame, and to find other women envious of her, was to Augustine a new harvest of pleasures; but it was the last gleam of conjugal happiness.”

I hear you now saying “I don’t receive any junk like that.” Well, I’m here to tell you that you do. Want to know how?

Any time you open up a spam email, or receive one, and it’s got a template image over it, you can bet that someone has written or posted something like that underneath it. You may never see it because the image template covers it all up, but it’s almost always there. I know this because I use Mailwasher to check my email before it gets downloaded to my computer, while it’s still sitting on the server.

Sometimes it’s amazing just how much stuff from a junk message is there. For instance, all three of these examples came with more than 2,000 word articles, though, if you ever deign to read any of them, most make no sense whatsoever.

Why do they do this? Because it makes it easier to get these messages through most spam filters, that’s why. Using a lot of text can sometimes overwhelm normal spam filters, which explains why these things sometimes get through to your inbox. Many of them look at the text, and the thing is that if they post a lot of stuff that at least, to a spam filter, looks just like a long email, it’ll go through. These people don’t care about SEO, and they’re not worried about repeating words over and over, which would trip a filter. They just want to get this stuff through to you in any way possible.

Of course, the other side of this is that sometimes this stuff brings malware and spyware to your computer also. It’s hard to hide a real virus in an image, though it’s been done, but the other stuff is pretty easy. Both of the emails my wife got contained malware scripts in them, and if she’d downloaded it, thought it was interesting and clicked on it, she’d have definitely had malware on her computer, and I’d be in there fixing the sucker right now.

I alert you to this if you’re wondering why you might keep getting this junk in your email. Meanwhile, the company that makes Mailwasher, Firetrust, also has an affiliate program to market their products, which I just learned about, and since this is a product I talk about all the time, I’ve signed up, and now can market their products. Guess which one I’m starting with?

Click on the image to check out Mailwasher