If you are running SBS2003 and Exhange and you are using the built in POP3 connector to check for email on other pop3 boxes, you are probably really annoyed that you cannot check pop email boxes more frequently than every 15 minutes. Well, there is a way to make the POP3 Connector in SBS2003 check for email as frequently as you like. Here is what I did and it seems to work fine on the two SBS 2003 boxes I am running:

1. Open regedit and browse to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/
Microsoft/SmallBusinessServer/Network/POP3 Connector

2. On the “Edit” menu, point to “New”, and then click “DWORD Value”.

3. Type “ScheduleAccelerator” (no quotation marks) as the entry name, and then press ENTER.

5. On the “Edit” menu, click “Modify” or just double click ‘er.

6. In the “Value data” box, type the value that you want, and then click “OK”. To determine the polling interval, the value that is configured on the “Scheduling” tab in the GUI is divided by the value that you type for the ScheduleAccelerator entry. Assuming you already have this at 15 minutes, the value you put in here would divide 15. So, if you enter 5 the POP3 Connector will check for email every 3 minutes. Boom.

FYI, you can enter the value as Hexidecimal, which should be the default.

7. I then restarted the POP3 Connector Service by going into the Services console, finding POP3 Connector, right clicking it and selecting restart.

tags: exchange, microsoft, pop3 connector, sbs 2003, small business server

First things first, I AM ALIVE. A lot of things have gone on in the past month or two. Our home was basically destroyed because of a dumb ass plumber. So, $40K+ later, hopefully it will be fixed. We have moved, hit me up if you need the new address. I started a new gig…which is kinda funny because I am not really a gig kind of guy. And, there is a bunch of other stuff, but that is not what is important right now. What IS important is that there are only 125 calories in a 12oz serving of Guinness beer. That is quite nice, especially if you like Guinness like I do.

Hope all is well with everyone out there. Drop me a line and let me know how you are doing. I am going to get back to my Guinness.

tags: calories, guinness

Linkbait - The Chicken or the Egg?

As with many things in life, trying to figure out how to create great linkbait (content or ideas that attract links from other web sites and blogs) can be difficult and downright confusing. My personal feeling is that you have to believe in your idea and create great content or something that is worthy of people spending their time on…or be a great liar. Since I don’t like to lie, I will focus on the first two in this post. IMHO, you are better off spending more time creating one great post or idea than spending a little time creating a bunch of junk. Some of my most successful (in terms of attracting links) posts on this blog took me the longest to create. My intention, in most cases, was not to attract links, but was to help other people who were having difficulty trying to figure out what I just spent a lot of time figuring out. Giving something of value away for free is probably the easiest way to attract readers and liniks. Now, let’s talk about some of the problems people face when trying to create linkbait. “Paralysis of Analysis” can become a very real thing when trying to conjure up a great way to attract links. There are a few issues that many people get stuck on:

1. You don’t have a big readership
2. You don’t have a lot of money to promote your idea
3. You wouldn’t link to a lot of things, so why should you think anyone will link to you

You Don’t Have a Big Set of Readers or Subscribers

While having a big base of people that read your website or blog on a regular basis makes generating inbound links easier, it is not the only way to attract links. This just means that you are going to have to be more proactive about getting your message in front of people with websites and blogs. So, how do you do that? This is the internet, there are a bazillion ways and here are a few:

Press Releases

Yeah, I know, press releases are nothing new. But, that doesn’t mean that most people have probably not submitted them and if they have it was some lame attempt at getting some inbound links or getting into Google News or something. If your content or idea is not something worthy of you talking to someone about on the phone, then a press release is not the way to go. But, if you are pumped on your idea and it is your life’s work, then by all means spend some time learning how to write compelling copy and press releases. You can even shell out a few bucks and have a pro copywriter put one together for you if you have the funds.

Communities and Forums

Most people who have spent a lot of time on line have found themselves browsing a forum or two. Forums are a great place for like-minded people to share ideas, ask questions, and interact with people who are interested in similar subjects. Just about all of them are free to join and most allow you to post links to other websites. NOTE: Don’t just join up and post a link to your website or blog in your first post. If you don’t know why, then do yourself a favor and vow not to post a link to anything for 30 days. Then spend some time on a few forums and read their Terms of Service and posting guidelines to find out their preferred methods of posting information, questions, and links. Forums are a great way to get people who are already interested in your field interested in your idea or linkbait.

Blogs on similar subjects are probably a dime a dozen these days. Interacting on these blogs and even emailing the blog owner with some information about your idea or linkbait is a great way to get a free “promo” on their site.

Social Networks

Websites like Bumpzee, Sphinn, specific Google and Yahoo Groups, and other social “networking” sites are great places to get interested readers, bloggers and web site owners to check out what you have to say as well. Many times you can join groups or communities and gain instant readers. You can also include your linkbait or idea in your signature on email lists like you would on a forum. Again, the idea here is not to barge into a conversation and say here is my linkbait, learn the medium first, then pounce by asking people their opinion or feedback. This way you are promoting your idea while not sounding like it.

Craigslist

I had to mention Craigslist here as not a day goes by that I don’t wonder what that site is really worth. It is incredible what kind of traffic you can send to a site simply by posting something on Craigslist. Try the community pages on CL or even post in a relevant category. You may be shocked to find that you get some readers out of it.

You Don’t Have a Lot of Money to Promote Your Linkbait Idea

Well, as you have just seen it doesn’t really take any money to go out and attract readers and potential links…it takes time. To most of us, time is money. If you have a wife and kids you have even less of both, so work smart and efficiently. Money is great to help jump start things, but many time it is not the best idea. You may want to plan out specific actions you would like to take to promote your linkbait and then pay someone to carry them out, if you have the chachi.

You Don’t Link to People, Why Would They Link to You?

At the end of the day, there is only one way to find out if you have what it takes to attract links. You may be writing about something that nobody cares about (doubtful). I used to think that I am never going to link to anyone else’s website, after all, I am losing PageRank. Well, at some point a few years ago I realized that the whole point of the internet is to share information…linking to relevant information helps the world go around. If you create something of value (something funny is valuable to people, how to articles are valuable, a way to make money is valuable, etc), people will find it and link to it. If they don’t, let me know and I will link to it.

Ideas for Linkbait

So, now that you have a few ways to promote your linkbait, what is your linkbait going to be? Here are a few ideas to help get the linkbait juices flowing:

• “How to” articles - Have you ever spent a few hours trying to figure out how to connect your phone to your laptop? Tried to figure out a new road bike circuit to ride in a particular city? Tried to figure out how to fit a square peg in a round hole? There are an infinite number of things to write about when it comes to “how to” articles. Not only are they very helpful to people, they are easy to write if they are something you are very interested in.
• “Why” articles - This may sound silly to some of you, but to know it alls like myself, it does not. Do you know why something is a bad idea, policy, law, bill, etc? Write an opinion piece or why article touching on the specific reasons why it is a good or a bad idea. Send it along to your newspaper’s opinion column. Many of you would be surprised to find out how many people are looking to argue over things on line. An argument usually means links.
• Studies - Many of you have spent a lot of time working in a particular field. While you may not have realized it, you have probably amassed a lot of specific information. You can condense a lot of that knowledge on a particular subject in a white paper or conduct a study to find out how people will actually react in the real world. This is a great way to attract links from authority sources.
• Funny Pictures - Posting a funny picture and writing a descriptive caption or description can attract a ton of traffic and links. One thing to watch out for here is remote linking from little kiddies on Myspace and other forums. This can bring your webserver to its knees in short order…trust me.
• How to Make Money Ideas - While this is nothing knew, it seems that the world has an insatiable appetite finding the latest and greatest way to make money. Some of the biggest bloggers today have built their readership by posting information on how they made/make money.
• Freebies - Yes, people love free stuff too. Give things away or even hold a contest. People are attracted to free, don’t believe me? Go to Costco on any day of the week and watch people climb over each other to get that dentist office cup with a lick of chili in it.
• Stick to What You Know - If you are an authority on something, become one on line. Some of the most successful (monetarily and in terms of traffic) people that I have seen on line have positioned themselves as an authority in a particular field. This is not a simple one-shot linkbait idea, but you should have a longer-term vision IMHO than just a one-shot linkbait.

  So, there you have it. This is not the end-all-be-all of linkbait posts, but it should give anyone reading a few ideas on what they can do to create a linkbait idea, how to promote their linkbait and overcome some of the most common hurdles when it comes to creating linkbait. Good luck and let me know how it goes.

  tags: how to, internet, link bait, link popularity, linkbait, links, marketing, online

  Related:

  • See All Inbound Links on Google
  • Value of .EDU Links
  • Forget What Your Mother Told You About Link Building
  • The SEO Paradox
  • Google Updates - Are We Back on the 30 Day Cycle?

Let’s all just hope that the tech market holds and that the ever-weakening US Dollar helps our technology exports continue to rise. Credit Suisse has upgraded their price target for Google stock (GOOG) to $900 from $800. On the flip side, Freddie Mac posted a $2B loss in Q3 of 2007 and they are looking to raise capital. The reason this is really big news is that Freddie Mac doesn’t guarantee “sub prime” loans, they typically deal with “A” borrowers. Happy Thanksgiving.

tags: freddie mac, google, loss, mortgage, stock market

Just a quick FYI for anyone with Comcast cable and On Demand…Three O’Clock High just showed up in the free movies section.

tags: classic, movies, three o’clock high

I established a while back that Prius owners cannot drive, but felt compelled to say a few things here in their defense…and to thank them. You see, many of the green bashers (people who think doing things to conserve scarce resources is stupid) out there always use the argument that hybrid car owners are overpaying for the car simply to save gas…and it doesn’t pencil out economically. The numbers I usually hear are that it would take 6 or 7 years to recoup the additional costs the hybrid power plant adds to the cost of the car. Here is the thing, the Prius gets ~50 mpg (just a rough number) which is clearly way ahead of most vehicles on the road today…probably by a factor greater than 2 on average.

The way I see it, the people that are buying these cars, and other hybrids, are pre-paying for their fuel, and more importantly, they are helping reduce the amount of gasoline they consume…helping the rest of us by lowering demand ever so slightly. So, I just wanted to say thanks and please don’t drive like an entitled SOB.

tags: conservation, mpg, prius, thanks

If you are running Wordpress, then you will want to check out this post at SEO Egghead about a new Wordpress vulnerability. Some clever folks have figured out a way to inject some links fo free. Nice.

tags: crack, h4×0r,vulnerability, hack, wordpress

Well, people are freaking out. People are bitching and moaning. People are talking about suing Google. Nothing has changed. I hope that the peeps down at the G-plex get together with some cold beers and laugh at everyone freaking out and talking out of their asses whenever they do something “dramatic.”

From what it sounds like, people who have lost considerable TOOLBAR PageRank have not lost anything in the SERPs. What they have lost is the ability to sell links based on PR. Time to get your Guerilla Selling books out team.

Here is my prediction. Some people on the selling side are going to freak out and remove all of the links that they are selling to people…good news for people who are not changing what they are doing. Some people on the buying side are going to freak out and have the links they have been buying removed…good news for people who are not changing what they are doing. Google gets some of what they want (people to stop buying and selling links) and people who have patience and some sack get better SERPs.

tags: freak out, google, page rank, toolbar, update

I like when I find things online that actually work. Most things are usually someone’s blatant attempt to monetize on someone coming to their site or using their service…which is fine by me. But, it just makes me take notice when I find something that I actually go back and use on my own because I find utility in it or I like it. Last.fm is one of those services. Last.fm is a music service that allows you to setup any number of “stations” based around one musical artist. I only have one Last.fm station, and it is based on The Smiths. From that their engine uses data from my own play preferences on my radio station (you can favorite or skip songs in their web based player), songs I listen to in Windows Media Player (with their plugin I have installed) and the preferences of other people on last.fm who listen to the same artists. It is akin to the Pandora service that I found a while back and then became a paid service (not sure if this is related or not). The cool thing is that last.fm is amazingly accurate and has introduced me to a number of artists who I have not stopped playing since I first heard them on last.fm…which is the point. You can check out my last.fm radio station (if you like the Smiths =P ) and take it for a spin.

The service is free. But, after a month or two it hit me up for a $25 annual donation (or something like that)….which is honestly money well spent in my book.

tags: cool, internet, last.fm, music

One of the easiest ways to get your top SERP positions is to have a domain name that helps you out. Typically this means having some or at least part of your main keyword(s) included in the domain name itself. A year or two ago, it became a no-no to use mega hyphenated domain names in order to get your keywords included in the domain. At that point, I think a lot of people thought that it was pretty much impossible to find a .com domain name that was good for branding and SEO. However, there are still great domain names out there that have never been registered. I just reg’d 4 .com domain names that a lot of people would pay some good money for today if I were to put them up on the blocks…but, I am going to use them for a little project I have in mind. The point is, do some leg work and you may find that there are still great .com names available.

tags: domain names, tlds

It is that time of year boys and girls, clearly what you need is to pimp a Halloween ringtone on your mobile phone. Duh.

tags: halloween, ringtone

Sucks.

tags: parking, san francisco, sucks

In the past, I have always focused on the mid to high paying affiliate offers. I was never a high volume guy I guess from my experiences with online retail sites I have owned and operated. No matter what you sell, you always have to deal with customer service, so why not make 5 times as much on the product you are selling if you are going to have to deal with stupid people? Well, that is and was the mindset, but recently I have realized that there is probably some money to be made using the “freebie” offers that every affiliate network has available. The “freebie” offers are called that because the offeree does not have to shell out any money to get a chance to win something or get some “free” software. Nevermind that the company offering the “free” software is probably going to sell your information to 200 other affiliate networks. Anyway, the point is, I am going to be testing out some of these freebie offers on some organic search sites as well as via some PPC arbitrage sites to see how they perform. The nice thing about offers like this is that they are designed to appeal to a wide audience and there is a ton of traffic that you can throw the offers at. This is good for testing as you will find out quickly if your offer works and it is good for scalability as there is a hellovalotta traffic to put your offer in front of, if and when you create one that works. More to come on Project Low Buck.

tags: affiliate, arbitrage, cpc, how to, make money, ppc, project low buck

So, I have been hesitant to continue to upgrade Wordpress on this site whenever a new release is out for a number of reasons. I have hacked up a number of the native functions and add-on plugins and since I am such a rookie, I have not made a log of what I have done. This is probably why I will just start from scratch, import the posts over to a clean install and build from there. Probably the biggest reason for moving over to 2.3 is native support for Tags. I think tagging is something that every type of media (audio, video, still image, etc) should have support for. Indexing becomes much easier and people are becoming more accustomed to using tags every day because of services like Delicious, Amazon and dare I say Technorati. I was just reading a great introduction to Wordpress 2.3 and I the first thing I thought of when I read about tag support was the demise of Technorati. I think Technorati is a good idea on paper, but I think it is a poor execution. I don’t really have any mind blowing ideas on how it could be done better, but one thing is for sure, I don’t like them. Maybe it is because every link on their site has nofollow on it and has for as long as I can remember. Yeah, actually that is it. Screw you Melon is what I say. Let them go down in a blaze of glory when everyone upgrades to Wordpress 2.3 and links to their own pages with their tags rather than to technostingy.

Anyway, version 2.3 is supposed to be released today, and I will be putting together a new install to check it out and set things up. Apparently there are some issues with the awesome Google Sitemaps plugin that I have been using since its inception. I will wait until that issue is fixed before I make the new install live.

tags: 2.3, blogging, tags, technorati, wordpress

About a month ago, I got serious about finding a new hosting company for our dedicated servers. Right now we have a couple of FreeBSD boxes with a company called Dedicated Now and while they offer a really good value on their base prices as well as their add-ons, they are less than helpful and informative when something goes wrong. And, it seems that something goes wrong every couple of months or so. Plus, I am not so great on FreeBSD and Debian makes life so much easier for rookies like me that I was on the look for something Debian and something on this side of the country. It didn’t take long for me to read a lot of good things about Server Beach. Server beach is based in Texas (I think) but has a NOC out here in Los Angeles (I think…sorry, not much into fact checking today). I was checking out a site that lists Debian dedicated server hosts around the world (great resource) and Server Beach was at the top (and it seems like for good reason). I actually ran down the entire list. There are some great values on there, especially if you are looking for a box in Europe somewhere, which is on the list for another day. I ended up going onto the Server Beach website and clicking on the Live Chat button. I am sure most of you know that these usually say “nobody available” for most smaller companies these days, but they had someone available.

I started chatting with a guy named Roger Gonzales, who it turns out is their Sales Manager. He was very knowledgeable and up-front….two qualities I am not used to with my current host. We chatted for about 10 to 15 minutes and discussed what I have now and what SB might be able to offer. I told him I would sign up for a Debian box and try them out. I was not disappointed.

I ordered the box at 4:59pm and received a call from someone at ServerBeach to confirm my order and go over the configuration details and billing information. He was very nice as well, and I got the feeling quickly that everyone was on the same page over there…good. We ended the call and by 7:10pm I had my server up and running and had received a few emails with the details and login information. I logged in and and was super fast. The new Debian release, Etch, was installed and up to date.

Since then, I have run a few sites on there to give it a whirl and I have absolutely no complaints. Uptime has been 100%, no network issues and I am back on Debian. I will continue to update this post on progress and the service levels at Server Beach, but I can honestly say that I don’t think there will be any issues that are not resolved quickly and where I am kept in the dark.

Oh yeah, here is the kicker. Server Beach has a coupon code that allows current customers to earn rewards of up to $250 per person they refer. The pricing is exactly the same for referrals, and the person signing up gets $100 off, just for using my code. If the referrer stays signed up for 90 days, everyone gets their money….pretty nice gig, especially from a rock solid host.

My coupon code is NWX3DCU3BW and my name is Jason Golod if you need it…not sure. You can click here to make it all happen

tags: coupon, debian, dedicated server, hosting, server beach

The first time I heard about this “dofollow” plugin for Wordpress, I thought, wow that could really turn up the heat from comment spammers, But, then I thought about it and realized that it is a great idea and for a number of reasons.

1. First, most applications don’t get really good until people lean on them for a while. Blogging platforms like Wordpress have had a lot of comment spammers attacking them for a while now. I use SpamKarma, and have for years, to combat spam comments. While it is not 100% accurate, it does a good enough job for me. Opening up the link love at this point, will probably help to make Wordpress and anti-spam plugins even more solid in the future.
2. Having links to “things” on the web are what help the search engines figure out what they should return. More links with more descriptive anchor text will probably help that in addition to all of the link love lovers out there spamming it up by hand.
3. Plus, you only live once. WTF.

I just came across a really great dofollow plugin that takes things a step further. Many of you are probably thinking that you don’t want to just give up the goods on your first date, right? Well, enter Lucia’s Linky Love plugin for human spammers. That is right folks, you can control when you give up the goods and it all takes place behind the scenes. Want to wait until the 4th time someone posts a comment? Done Jackie. It definitely deserves some linky love.

tags: comment spam, link juice, link love, linky love, seo, spam

Google announced yesterday that their Adsense for mobile browsers is now live. Google has taken notice that mobile browsing is becoming bigger and bigger, when will the big affiliate networks get on board and create some offers? Is this thing on?

tags: adsense, browsers, contextual ads, mobile, wap

Looks like Google has updated their webmaster tools section (I still don’t know why they don’t have a standard naming convention ie: webmastertools.google.com for their products) and you can now see a much larger sample, if not all, of the external inbound links to your site. For instance, Google shows 1,440 links if I do a link:www.golod.com, but inside the webmaster tools deal, I see almost 40k links. Now, this really isn’t a big deal, because we have all been going to Yahoo! for years to do this, but it is nice to finally see something different from Google.

tags: google, marketing, seo, tools, webmaster

Since I have not been able to get anyone at the Internet Archive to give me anything more than a, “yeah, we got your email” regarding their SFLan “project”, I noticed today that someone posted a question about the San Francisco Meraki WiFi project. Right now, they will give one of their repeaters to you for free if you live in San Francisco to help build their network for free wireless internet in SF. Nice. The only thing is that I was hoping to get on board with the IA people because they seem to have some serious bandwidth on tap. Merkai appears to use DSL connections that are probably much smaller.

tags: free, meraki, san francisco, sflan, wifi

Most of the geeks have seen the YouTube video of the kid that unlocked his iPhone. He, however, did not give out the nitty gritty details on how to unlock your Apple iPhone…all of that has changed now. Apparently Collin Mulliner unlocked a phone today and it works on T-Mobile now. I don’t own an iPhone and I am not sure I will. But, for the iMasses have a day.

tags: hack, iphone, unlock