Yesterday I got offsite backups going again after the equipment failure on the 15th. Today I’ll be creating a new disk image backup for the problem system just in case there’s another failure in the future. This backup stuff seems mundane to most people … that is until there’s a real problem. At least I’m secure in the knowledge that my data was never in jeopardy last Friday, since offsite backups were up to date at that time. It takes about 5 days for a completely “restore” of all files offsite. That process started yesterday, so it should be done by the end of the week (it runs 24x7).
I spoke to one of the staff consultants in India today who works for the company we awarded the bid to for completion of GroupCaller. The main programmer is out of town right now but I was told I’ll be able to talk to him tomorrow morning about 8:30 a.m. In the meantime, I have initiated dialog with one of the other bidders (in Pakistan instead of India) as a backup in case this one proves to be unreliable. Sadly, it takes more time than I would like to deal with overseas programmers. However, the end result is my primary goal; and I remain convinced we are on the correct path. Outsourcing of this nature allows us to provide a much more complete and robust system than we could otherwise afford if we used “only” domestic talent to create our entire system. The difference in pricing is truly stunning. We’re getting a system capable of scaling from only a few channels ( phone lines ) to start, up to hundreds and thousands of concurrent phone lines dialing as we need them. To get the same capacity in the USA would cost us six figures of cash (in advance). Outsourcing reduces that cost by more than 97%. It’s truly amazing.
And well worth the wait.
Today I’ll work on a number of technical issues here at the office. I’ll also be working on the SEO project as well as the bulk email server. The primary reason I have delayed sending regular emails for the past six months is that I haven’t found a satisfactory solution to email verification yet. I thought I had one last week, but the software I purchased had been replaced with a hosted solution which is way too expensive for our budget. Today I’m testing some other verification software. Email verification is essential when sending bulk email. This is the process by which we verify that each and every email address in our database is valid BEFORE sending email. Failure to do this can easily result in “blacklisting” our URL by the major email providers. Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail and the rest will block all emails from www.globaltmailusa.com if we send multiple mailings with even a small percent of non-existent email addresses.
It’s very common for people to switch from one email provider to another, or from one ISP to another and get a new email address. When they do this, just like when people move, they often don’t notify everyone they know about their new address. This is especially true in the online world. The majority of our registered members fail to log in and change their email address when it changes. Because changes like this occur nearly everyday, if we fail to verify addresses, we’d soon find ALL of our emails blocked. That’s why I have relied primarily on this blog in recent months to keep you updated, instead of sending emails. Our database of users is now large enough that email changes happen continually, but in most cases, our members don’t update their profile to let us know. So we must be careful to ensure an accurate email list before sending these messages.
As always, if you have any comments or questions, please post them using the “Comment” link below. More is coming tomorrow …
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