June 2007 Entries
I've struggled with email spam heartily, so I know how much of a pain it can be. And now, through no fault of my own other than choosing a tier-two co-location provider, I'm suffering at the hands of a well known blacklist provider called SpamHaus. It turns out that a few servers down from me in the datacenter a box was taken over by a spammer. Spamhaus decided to go and blacklist the entire IP range and now I can't send email to hotmail, optonline, and countless other domains. Technically they don't do the blocking, they just...
As a tech startup builder, I'm intensely studying online communities -- what makes good ones work, why do others fail. As a runner, I have insanely detailed questions and some geeky answers to share and I need an online community to fill that need. Message boards are the standard solution for this type of community and they work pretty well in many cases. I began my search at CoolRunning.com, which is part of active.com, which does a lot of race registrations. The community there is pretty good, but the design of the system suffers from a...
I'm going to go ahead and declare these things dead. While I haven't signed the contract yet, and I can't vouch first hand for the service, the online backup service Mozy wins over tape in every dimension imaginable. Helping out my dad's company take over some IT related tasks today and this seems like such a no-brainer in 2007. MozyPro supports encryption, Exchange Server, SQL Server, open and locked files, automatic/continuous block level incremental backups! MozyPro (the business version), as of this post, costs $3.95 per server and $.50 per GB/month. Doing the math on what it costs...
Open Table powers through a Dip Open Table is an online reservations service. It's free to use and the restaurant pays a dollar per diner. The company has raised more than 20 million dollars to date. (original Times story). During the company's first three years, they booked a million diners (in total). Now, they book two million every single month. Five years ago, they had 1,000 restaurants to choose from, now they have 7,000. [via Seth Godin's "The Dip" blog] Little known Corey professional trivia: I designed a (the first?) restaurant reservation system before Open Table existed. ...
Just a note to say that the Indianapolis Formula One Grad Prix will be on Fox this Sunday. And unlike years past when F1 has been on CBS, the normal Speed channel announcers will do the race.
From Corey.Japan Race You might remember that on April 1st, I was just barely beaten by 56 year old Joe Kvilhaug in the Scotland Run. Well, I'm here to say that I've continued training and I managed to out kick a child* at the finish this time. Still though, I'm pretty pleased with my race and times. Next up half-marathons on the 24th and August 3rd. And the McMillan running calculator says that my projected marathon time is now just 26 seconds** behind qualifying for Boston. Japan DayDistance: 4.0 Miles, 7.7 Kilometers Date/Time: June...