All posts by Mitch Mitchell

I'm an independent consultant in many fields, so I have a lot to share.

Your Comments Going Into Spam For No Reason? I’ve Got One…

I have a few consistent commenters on this blog. Most of them I’ve known for quite a few years and they’re pretty popular commenters on the blogosphere as well. And yet, some of them have an interesting problem.

~Balance~
Stuart Williams via Compfight

They’re comments have been showing up in my spam filter, and spam filters of other blogs they comment on. They didn’t do anything wrong as far as they knew, and as far as I knew either. One day their comments were showing up fine, the next day and every time after that they were going to spam.

Now, I do have some settings where some people are going to go to spam. One too many words in the name field, email addresses that begin with certain words… that’s where you’re heading. If I’ve named you as spam and added your IP address, you’re going to spam. But that’s not what was going on with these folks.

A couple of weeks ago I decided it was time to check something out. I was talking to Brian at Hot Blog Tips about it and I asked him to send a comment to me using his smartphone. He did and his comment showed up without going into the spam filter. He thought that maybe it was coming from a different IP address.

I then wrote our buddy Adrienne about it in the private message area of Facebook and asked her to try the same thing. It worked for her as well. However, when I looked at her IP address I noticed it was the same as her normal comments, and when I looked at Brian’s I noticed the same thing. So it wasn’t the IP address.

But I had the mind working well at this juncture. I asked Adrienne to pull up a different browser and send me a comment. She did and it went through; yippee! I told her it worked and asked her which browser she normally used, and she said Chrome.

I then reached out to Brian and asked him to try leaving a comment on my blog using a different browser. At the same time I asked Mitchell Allen if he’d try leaving a comment on this blog using a different browser as well. Both of them did & their comments came through just fine.

What browser were they all using? Chrome! In my mind, it was a pretty good experiment and possibly the reason so many people were ending up in spam filters around the world! Well, that might be dramatic, but one of my friends is in India and he always goes to spam, and I’m not sure which browser he uses.

Firefox cupcake
Mixy Lorenzo
via Compfight

Now, whenever I see something like this that looks like a pattern, I always go to Google to see if there’s anyone else mentioning it. There were lots of topics that looked like it, but they were all talking about something else. So maybe I get to scoop them all! 🙂

Meanwhile, Adrienne decided to try something else first. What she did was uninstall Chrome, reboot her computer, run her antivirus program, reload Chrome, and try again. This time her comment came through perfectly; problem solved.

The only question would be what’s in Chrome that could be affecting so many people? Well, there’s a second question, which is what if it’s not just Chrome users this is affecting? Anyone else who shows up in the spam filter isn’t a regular writer, at least yet, so I don’t know if the initial problem could happen with other browsers and could be solved by switching.

So, this is a twofold testing question for all of you. One, if you notice that your comments, or the comments of someone who comments on your blog often, seems to be going into the spam filter, ask them to try a different browser to see if their comment comes through fine. If it does, ask them what browser they originally used and let’s find out if it’s a Chrome thing (by the way, I’m a Firefox user). Tell them that if they want to continue using their regular browser to try uninstalling, then reinstalling to see if that takes care of things (running the virus program wouldn’t hurt, but I’m not sure if that’s a part of it or not).

If it doesn’t, then it’s possible they’re really on a blacklist, which is a totally different issue and one I’m not ready to address right now. Still, I know I’ve taken care of a couple of people who comment so far, and maybe we can help some other people as well. As an addition, I was talking to Adrienne about this and supposedly some people have found that if they leave everything off before the domain name that it seems to work for them & CommentLuv still works. So try domainname.com to see if that might cure your issue also.
 

CNET: The Site That Was Cool Isn’t Anymore For Downloads…

When I was first getting acclimated to being online a couple of decades ago, everyone used to say that the place to go for downloading things was CNet. Back in the day, even PC World used to always send you there to download many of the things they found that they thought were great free programs for all of us to use.

Malware
mdaniels7 via Compfight

Even though PC World still does this sometimes, they’re a lot less likely to do so these days, and there’s a major reason why. At least from my perspective, it seems like every file one downloads from there is loaded with bloat ware and, dare I say, a lot of malware, to the extent that if you’re not paying attention to what you’re loading onto your computer, the next thing you know you’ve added toolbars, coupon and sales software, and who knows what else.

It’s gotten so bad that I refuse to download anything else from them. Unfortunately, my friends haven’t learned their lessons yet, so who keeps getting the calls because something’s gone wonky with their systems? You guessed it; sigh. Thing is, it’s hard to tell someone not to download things from a site that’s so highly ranked and well known. What happened to CNet?

I’m not the first one to talk about this, and it’s not really all that new. Back in December 2011 the Inquirer talked about it in relation to a forum poster of some significance who was irked with the process. In Early 2013 botcrawl.com confirmed the malware coming through CNet’s new download site, correctly called Download.com (nope, not giving them a link).

What’s funny is many of their bigger accounts put out warnings to their potential customers saying that consumers need to make sure they’re clicking on the correct button when downloading products because it could lead to other problems if you’re not downloading the right thing. You think?

If you can, find another place to download your stuff, paid or free. Otherwise, unless you’re technically savvy, you’ll find yourself awash in ads and unable to get out from under it. That is, unless you have a friend like me who lives close enough to fix it for you.
 

What Is Your Reason For Blogging?

Some months ago I wrote an article here based off a question one of my friends asked me. He asked me “what are you getting out of making videos?” I responded “I like it.” Actually he never heard or saw that response, as I did a video first, then wrote the post.

Me_Shanice 01
Me speaking to a baby 🙂

In the last few weeks I’ve started thinking about this in a different way after having a Hangout conversation with my friend Joanne DelBalso. We were talking about business in general and she asked me what my intention was for blogging. She further explained she wanted to know what my purpose was, or what I was hoping to get out of it. Finally, she wanted to know if I had expressed that purpose anywhere, if I even knew what it was.

Of course I’ve known since late 2008 what I wanted the purpose of this blog to be. Okay, it has many purposes, but the main purpose is to get organizations to request me to come speak to them, and get paid for it. My long term ambition is to be a professional speaker and presenter. At this point I’ve spoken in 8 states but I haven’t given a presentation outside of my own area in 4 years now.

I had to think about it a bit to see if, at least on this blog, I had indicated that anywhere. I looked at my About page and realized that I had linked to a bio on my business page but never mentioned speaking. I looked at my contact page but there’s nothing on that page about it. It seems the last time I even mentioned it on this blog was on June 16th, 2010, on a post talking about social media strategies. Wow!

You can imagine how disconcerting that was to discover. How is anyone supposed to know what my intention, purpose and reason is for writing this blog if I don’t mention it anywhere? Heck, I didn’t even mention it on my focus post at the beginning of the year, nor put it into the video I recorded about the same subject; Oy!

All of us hate selling so much… at least directly. We also have this thing in our heads where we believe that self promotion is a bad thing. I’ve worked hard on breaking both of these because I’m self employed, and if I don’t promote or market I won’t get business, will starve, my wife will leave me and the dog won’t come home (I don’t have a dog; see? lol) and I’ll be forced to get a grocery cart to push my stuff in and eat in shelters because I won’t have enough money to put gas in my car (which is paid off; whew!) to stay warm.

Educational Postcard:  "If you want me to engage in learning..."
Ken Whytock via Compfight

By the time you read this I’ll have fixed that About page and added a little something to my contact page, but now it’s time to ask all of you if you’ve stated the reasons for your blogs somewhere? I’ll pick on my buddies Brian Hawkins, Adrienne Smith and Peter Pellicca, aka Sire for a quick moment. 🙂

A true intention for all of them is to make money in some way. Brian kind of hides it in the middle of a very long paragraph on his About page, but it’s there. Peter talks about it early on, saying that once he learned he could make money blogging and had passion for writing he was hooked. Adrienne doesn’t specifically say she blogs to make money, but she does mention her intention well by telling us she makes money via affiliate marketing and consulting others on how to create a presence online.

It behooves all of us to have a stated intention, especially if you’re kind of like me and you’re not writing a niche blog. Even with a niche blog, you should want your visitors to know whether you’re talking about something because you like it or because you’re hoping it works out in bringing you business in some fashion, whether through consulting or selling products or getting hired to do some work for them.

And… well… I guess you should mention it more than once every 3 1/2 years. 😉
 

People Aren’t Getting Your Response To Their Comments – A Redux

Wow, how time flies. It was just over two years ago that I wrote a post asking people to check their blog commenting systems because many times when I comment on their blogs I’m not receiving anything telling me my comments have been responded to. That post was well received, and got a nice number of responses.

Thomas Leuthard via Compfight

You know what? It seems that it’s time to bring this subject up again, and in a weird way it ponies on a topic Brian, Sheryl and I were talking about once in a video. I was lamenting how it seems that so many times I visit blogs that have titles making me think I’m going to see something new, only to see the same, tired thing I’ve seen previously. And Brian said that even if something is old to us because we’ve been around a long time, it’s a new concept to someone.

That being the case, I’m bringing this up because I figure that many of you aren’t intentionally ignoring me and my comments. The thing is I visit so many blogs and many new ones that I don’t often remember where I’ve been. If I’ve been to your blog often I’ll at least remember to check back on that one but many others… nope, no clue. Thus, I might be thinking you’re a blankety-blank when in reality your commenting system isn’t letting people know you’ve responded to them. By the way, I always check the boxes asking to be informed of responses, though not all of you have that on your blogs.

What should you do to check things out? As I said two years ago (just so everyone knows I’m being consistent lol), go to your blog post (you might have to sign out or use a different browser), sign in as if you’re leaving a comment but use a different email address, write yourself a comment (make it short), and after you get your notification of your comment go into your blog, respond to yourself, and see if your other email address gets it.

You can do this on an existing post (if you do, I’d recommend being the first commenter so you’re the only one who’ll see it & you can delete both before anyone else sees it) or create a test post and go through the motions, then delete everything.

If you get it, then others should get it. If not… well, now it’s time to see what’s wrong. You might have your setting wrong or you might need a separate plugin to get it taken care of. At least you’ll know to take care of the issue.

My final words… this is happening on some of the blogs of those of you who comment here, whose blogs I may have written a comment on. I’m not calling out any names; if you check, you’ll know who you are. lol
 

Learning About Evernote – An Interview with Mitchell Allen

Mitchell Allen is a prolific writer, pretty good chess player, and all around technophile. He did a Q&A on the topic of online cloud storage with Sharon Hurley Hall and one of the programs he talked about was Evernote, which I use and love but know I don’t use all that well. After discussing whether this should be a guest post or a Q&A we decided on the Q&A. Don’t get confused with both of us being “Mitch” here; I asked the questions so I’m in bold; thus, Mitch gets the first word here. 🙂

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Mitchell Allen

Mitch, thanks for inviting me to answer some questions about one of my favorite productivity tools. I’ll leave the techno-babble on the doorstep and bring in this little basket of basics.

1. For folks that don’t know (because they didn’t read my Evernote for Android post), tell folks what Evernote is.

Evernote is a tool for saving just about anything. Notes, pictures, music clips, videos and files. Once you have saved your stuff, Evernote helps you find it later. It is like having your own little World Wide Web.

Like the real web, you can access your stuff on many different devices. That’s because Evernote automatically syncs your devices with your online account.

Finally, you can share your stuff. I will talk about that in a moment.

2. At a very high level, can you tell folks how you personally use it?

Here are the top five things I do every day:

•  Save web pages
•  Jot down ideas for stories
•  Update to-do lists
• Hunt for references (stuff I said a long time ago, links to resources)
•  Manage my disaster recovery plan

The web pages are better than bookmarking because the text is right there. Sometimes it looks awful, but most pages are legible.

I have dozens of notebooks, each of which could be the next Great American Novel. LOL Most of the time, I’m just feeling creative and I like to jot down the ideas while they’re fresh in my mind.

Evernote has a very simple keyboard shortcut for creating a checkbox in a note (Ctrl+Shift+C). I create lists and try to check them off as soon as I can.

Hunting for references is probably the most frequent activity. I am always looking up stuff about Microsoft Excel, for example. I also spend a lot of time tracking down web addresses to include in my email correspondence.

Because of my freelance software business, I am always looking for the best ways to safeguard my stuff. Evernote is the perfect tool for me to keep track of my progress, as well as my thoughts about different backup strategies.

Evernote001

3. You pay for Evernote; what extra benefits does that get you and is it worth the expense for most people?

The limits on a free account are very generous: 100 notebooks, 60MB upload per month, 25MB per note and 25MB per attachment (actually, the attachment plus the note together cannot exceed 25MB). I was pushing up against the 60MB limit, so I don’t mind paying 5.00 a month for a premium account. I get 250 notebooks, 1GB upload per month, 100MB per note and 100MB per attachment (same restriction on combined size of note and attachment.) I am always editing my notes and all that syncing counts toward my quota!

Folks who only occasionally hit the limit on uploads can pony up the cash for just the months when they need it.

4. I just discovered that I can keep a journal or log by using Notebooks on Evernote. Can you explain Notebooks better and how people can really use them to their advantage?

Well, I promised not to get too technical, so think of a notebook as a steno pad. For a journal, you add a new note each day, similar to starting on a fresh page in your steno pad. You know those colorful sticky tabs that folks use to bookmark different sections of a report? Well, that’s your tags. Only, with Evernote, you kind of have to remember what tags you use. Otherwise, there is no point – you won’t be able to search for them later!

Actually, you don’t have to use tags, because Evernote will let you search for phrases, just like a Google search. Here is a useful link from the Evernote blog.

5. Is there a way to set up Evernote as a task manager?

As recently as February, 2013, the CEO of Evernote stated that the tool wasn’t all that great for to-do lists. But, if you Google task manager +evernote, you’ll find a bunch of people who seem to manage it.

Personally, I stopped using Evernote for task management. Gmail, Basecamp and my own custom-built tools are more suitable for the types of tasks I need to manage. I use Evernote to keep to-do lists for personal stuff, if I don’t need a reminder.

6. We actually share a notebook; can you compare the differences between sharing notebooks as opposed to using Dropbox for sharing?

This is one feature I don’t care for. It clutters up my space. I have joined a few shared notebooks and I have to wade past their tags. Ugh. I prefer to use Dropbox to transfer files and Google Docs for, well, documents!

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7. I’ve never understood how to use the Shortcuts area; can you talk about that?

The new version of Evernote shortcuts took some getting used to. Instead of bookmarks across the top, the shortcuts now appear on the left side, along with the tags, notebooks and everything else. The trick is to drag the note from the preview area onto the Shortcuts title or within the section itself.

I discovered that, if you drag a note onto a tag, that tag is added to the note, which was not what I expected! As a further experiment, I dragged a note onto the title Notebooks and it moved the note from its old notebook into my default notebook.

8. What’s that Atlas thing all about?

I never paid the Atlas any attention. From the Evernote website and forums, I learned that it uses geotagging to establish where the note originated. So, if you take a lot of pictures, this might be useful. Of course, that brings up the issue of privacy and security surrounding geotagged images. If the notes are private, that should be no problem. But if you link to them or share them, be careful about the information you are sending along with the image!

9. I tend to mainly use it for saving URLs to look at later on when I’m either on the Nook or my phone, and I have my grocery list there as well. You know me a bit better than most; how better could I use it?

I don’t subscribe to a best practices philosophy for productivity tools. Each of us has his own way of viewing the world and how things should work in it. If the two uses you just mentioned make your life easier in some way, then Evernote has done its job.

What I will say is that you should play with it as much as you can. As you get comfortable with the features and annoyances, you will come up with more ideas.

The beauty of Evernote is that you don’t have to commit to anything. I used to save my freelance proposals on Evernote. It was a hassle, so I stopped.

10. I know you use a lot of things. Is Evernote the easiest, the best, or is there something better or easier?

The only thing easier than Evernote is pencil and paper. There may be better-designed alternatives but I am satisfied with 90% of Evernote. The lone 10% annoyance is that it freezes temporarily while I am typing. Not always, but enough to get on my nerves if I’m trying to get some ideas down. I have a lot of software running on my laptop, so it may not even be Evernote!

The best thing about Evernote is that it does not force you into a specific way of working. As I work with it more and more, I continually refine my interactions. Yet, like most productivity software, it just sits in my taskbar until I need it.