Web Servers: Architecture and Security
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Online MBA Degree
The other day I was talking to my colleague at work about getting an online degree while working at the same time. There are a lot of online IT degrees but would it be really worth it since are already working as IT professionals. After all we aren't planning to do research in IT. After I while we thought getting an online MBA degree Management or e-business as minor would seem like a better option than getting an IT degree. After some more discussion, it just seemed that we could not get out of our IT mindset. After all, getting a second degree in the same field would do little more than well give us a second degree, albeit a masters degree. So in order to be more versatile (in the job market) we thought getting an online degree in finance or economics would do more justice. IT is everywhere. We could still be able to use our well earned skill in these two fields. How about stock market trading? Anyone?
Email address validation/verification and clean user list.
EMAIL ADDRESS VALIDATION / VERIFICATION for sending bulk emails/newsletters:
| SN | Approach | Pros | Cons |
| 1 | Using javascript function. | Using Javascript method to validate email address is fast. And as it runs in client side, it has nothing to do with the network traffic. | Javascript method can validate email address syntactically not semantically i.e. it can validate both abcd@yahoo.com and abc@yahoo.com correct. So you can just validate the email address but cannot verify it. |
| 2 | By sending user a test mail to check whether the email address exist or not. | A test email can be sent to check whether the email address exists or not. When you send an actual email, the email server MUST reply with a bounce message if account doesn't exist. And the best thing is that most email servers respond immediately, so you get bounce message within seconds. During the registration the system validates not only the domain name and syntax of the email address but also checks that the mailbox is valid. | Many mail servers lie about mail boxes these days, so spammers cannot find out if a mailbox exists.
If you 'spam' hotmail or yahoo for example, they will start bouncing back your emails late (few hours or more), or not at all. |
| 3 | Using handshake method. | Using handshake method. That is, just reach up to the email address, connect with the mail server, get the welcome note and disconnect without actually sending a test mail. Faster than the approach#2. Can check for the misspelled address. Validate the domain name and user can see the result then and there. | This method depends highly on the network condition and may give incorrect or delayed or no result. DNS failure and grey listing can wreak havoc in this method. It doesn't prove that the person that completed the form actually owns that email address. |
Most Trusted And Widely Used Approach:
Double/Confirmed opt-in method:
In this method, when a user registers in your web site with his email address, send an email to the user with a link and ask him to click the link in order to confirm the email address is valid and authentic. In case, if you do not receive the response from such user (i.e. no link is clicked in the email), you can conclude that, that user is fake.
Advantages:
1. It reduces the probability of spam complaints. The confirmation process will help to ensure that people are only subscribed to your web site with their consent. Thus significantly reduces chance of email being ignored as “spam”.
2. Cleaner list -- people have to use their real email addresses in order to confirm their subscriptions in your web site. This also eliminates misspelled email addresses or those with typos.
3. Potentially more responsive subscribers (Higher response rate). Those who are genuinely interested enough to confirm their subscriptions/registration may also be more inclined to respond to your emails.
4. Safeguard against being “blacklisted” on DNSBLs by various anti-spam organizations.
5. Faster delivery.
6. Eliminates the possibility that an erroneous or problematic address may be added to your email list, i.e., someone signing up with a spamtrap or somebody else’s address, thus “poisoning” your email list.
7. Reduces the probability of an email/newsletter being bounced.
Disadvantages:
1. The main disadvantage is that many people may not understand your confirmation message or may not want to go through the extra step. This may cause the loss of subscribers.
Google's new Buzz targets Facebook
Launching a frontal assault on Facebook, Google on Tuesday plunged deeper into the realm of social networking, introducing a sort of e-mail on steroids that will allow Gmail users to interact through multiple media and dig into the rich smorgasbord of services already available from the world's king of search.
Dubbed Google Buzz, the new feature enables Gmail users to create status updates ala Facebook, pull in Twitter tweets from friends, and corral a whole slew of elements — YouTube videos, Picasa and Flickr photos, Web links — into a Googlized version of virtual social interaction.
Pitting Google's full and formidable search and mapping arsenal against both Facebook and Yahoo, which has had a
Silicon Beat
At its unveiling at company headquarters in Mountain View, Bradley Horowitz, vice president for product management, said Buzz was Google's latest effort to foster social networking by cleaning out the Internet's clutter, a mess caused in part by social networking sites in the first place.
"The stream of messages has become a torrent," he said. "There's real content in that stream. But there is no way to parse that amount of information, that ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime."
'Static e-mail' evolves
By embedding
Buzz directly into Gmail, Google engineers hope to streamline sharing and make it smarter, both online and through mobile devices. By clicking the Buzz icon, users will automatically "follow" friends they most often e-mail and chat with, tapping into anything they are posting, from Web links to vacation photos to real-time reviews on the taqueria where they just ate. The new feature lets you make your own Buzz posts public — and therefore searchable with Google — or private, accessible only to specified friends. And by harnessing its trademark algorithmic search and categorizing powers, Google will "score" the incoming updates into good and not-as-good Buzz. With Buzz on board, product manager Todd Jackson said, "it's no longer just a static e-mail but a live object in your inbox." Google software, he said, will collect feedback when users click on updates, and "we'll learn what you like. Organizing the world's social information has become a big problem — but it's the kind of problem Google loves to solve." Buzz, which will be available in coming days, is Google's direct response to Facebook's rapid rise since it started six years ago. With more than 400 million worldwide users, Facebook's large audience — whose posted information cannot be indexed by Google's search engine — threatens to siphon away some of the search giant's advertising sales. "This is a direct attack on Facebook," said veteran tech analyst Jeremiah Owyang with the Altimeter Group. Buzz "comes as no surprise because it's part of Google's mission to organize Web content for users, then become the intermediaries and put advertising around it. This is more of the same." Twitter's new rival Owyang said Buzz could be a threat to Twitter, "since Gmail is more mainstream, and users may adopt it faster than they've adopted Twitter." And he sees Buzz as possibly "disruptive to businesses." He used the example of mobile phone users disappointed in a yogurt shop, then having their real-time negative Buzz review show up in a Google search for that business. "And their Buzzes could show up higher in the search results than the business itself." Not surprisingly, Yahoo and Microsoft, two powerhouses coveting the social networking sphere, blasted Buzz within minutes of Tuesday's announcement at the Googleplex. Yahoo, whose approximately 303 million users dwarf Google's 176 million Gmail customers, sent out a release boasting, "It's been almost a year and a half since we first launched Yahoo Updates — a social feature that lets people share their status, content and online activities and stay connected to what their friends and family are doing on Yahoo! and across the Web." Uphill battle And Microsoft, practically gloating in a statement, said, "Busy people don't want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We've done that" with Hotmail, which has an estimated 369 million users. IDC analyst Karsten Weide, who studies the intersection of new media and the digital marketplace, said Google's new feature faces an uphill battle in breaking Facebook's domination of social networking or stunting Twitter's phenomenal growth spurt. "I'm not that optimistic about Google Buzz," he said. "It's similar to what Yahoo already does on Yahoo Mail — leveraging social connections that are already there in e-mail. But it's pretty much a flop because people who are likely to use it are already using Facebook and Twitter, so why use Yahoo?"
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