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Thursday, June 17, 2010

Hot Smokin' Weapon Award for June '10 - mailhop.org!

Today's post is another one of my semi-famous "Hot Smokin' Weapon!" awards.  This award goes to DynDNS for their outbound mailhop service.

What's The Problem?

Some people, like myself, keep their e-mail, contatcs, etc., on a laptop they carry with them everywhere they go.

There are these lunatics, like myself, that use a third-party e-mail client - like Outlook - to manage their e-mails, contacts, appointments, etc., while on the road.

These lunatics want the convenience of a centralized store for all their e-mail, (on their laptops), with the ability to send e-mail no matter where they may be - be it at home, Russia, Singapore, or sitting on the beach sipping Margaritas in sunny Mexico.

The problem is that if you attempt to use your own ISP's mail server to send mail, (receving e-mail works regardless of where you are), you rapidly run into all the blocks and restrictions that ISP's use to avoid becoming spam-cesspools.

In a nutshell:  You can receive e-mail no matter where you are, but if you want to use your ISP's mail servers to send mail, you darn sure better be at home, (or at work, as the case may be), on their own network for this to work.

The Solution:

The solution is to use a subscription mail relay service, like the one offered by DynDNS (my dynamic DNS service provider - the subject of a future article in itself!)

A subscription mail relay service is used to replace the normal ISP provided SMTP service - and it allows you to send e-mails via their secure server from anywhere in the world you can scrounge an Internet connection.

The Good News:
It works.  From literally anwhere.  It's secure and you don't get mistaken for a slimy spammer because you are using them.

The Bad News:
It's not free - you do have to pay for this service.  However, for the casual user - like myself - who sends less than 150 e-mails per day, (!!!), the service costs something like twenty smackers - $20 - once a year for the privilege.  Even *I* can afford that!

Why is this a "Hot Smokin' Weapon!"?

If you are like me - and tend to be all over creation at any one time and still want the convenience of a local e-mail client on your computer rather than the crazy web-mail clients, (and their attendant security risks!), this is a Godsend.  I've been looking for a service like this for - literally - years.

Go check them out!

Jim

3 comments:

  1. One other potential problem: Some mailservers don't like getting e-mails from subscription mail servers like this one - so there may be the occasional bounced e-mail. You can usually re-send using a web-mail client in these rare cases.

    Jim

    ReplyDelete
  2. True, but let me be the devil's advocate here.
    There is a story about a man who job was to polish the brass on a 10 foot round piece of sculpture, destined for a large office building. He had been buffing the surface for a few days when a child came up to him and asked, "How do you know when you done?" and his answer was, "When they come and take it from me."
    My question here is who is to decide how far to go? Does every nook and cranny have been examined? You yourself stated on one job that to do the job completely, it would take more time than the world has had since its creation!
    Should companies be required by law to perform a minimum amount (percentage) of all possible checks? If we did try to check everything, some products would never reach the market, and that can be death for a company.
    What criteria determines the cut-off point?

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Hot Smokin' Weapon!" awards??? haha sorry but that name made me laugh, and right now I am waiting for the next "Hot Smokin' Weapon!" awards, I will stay tunned!

    ReplyDelete

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