Implimenting the Nuclear option to Fighting Spam

Dec 6, 2015 by Paul White

As mail servers get more advanced ways to detecting spam, spammers are getting more advanced ways to get through.  I finally broke down and decided that enough was enough, and implimented my own nuclear option to fighting spam.  Thus far its been extremely effective.  This is not something most mail servers support, so if you want to do this, you will need to be prepared to write your own code.

Tricks to getting into Yahoo and Gmail's Inbox

Aug 24, 2014 by Paul White

Gmail and Yahoo are not the most friendly to Email Marketers.  But there are a few tricks you can use to help get your messages into the Inboxes.  The key is to remember it is about user privacy.  

What IP Blocks does iContact use

Sep 11, 2013 by Paul White

Recently I had to whitelist the IP blocks from iContact to ensure their newsletters would get through to my clients.  I had to directly contact iContact to get their IP Blocks, of which they gladly gave me.  I rarely see spam coming off their servers so I felt it was safe to whitelist them on my mail server.

Graphics Card for the Fastest Rendering in Sony Vegas Pro 12

Jun 26, 2013 by Paul White

If you read my previous article, you already know I tried upgrading to dual GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST Video Cards, in an attempt to dramatically cut down the time to render 1080P Video using Sony Vegas Pro 12.  To make a long story short, the cards did not perform as expected.  You might have read other tutorials showing you how to encode faster, but these usually include reduced settings ( using 720P instead of 1080 P ) and reduced frame rates as well.  Join me on my quest to find the most powerful video card that Sony Vegas 12 Pro will actually utlize.

Sony Vegas Encoding Performance CPU vs GPU

Jun 21, 2013 by Paul White

Recently I started doing more video work thanks to my new Sony a99.  However after shooting video I needed to add a few overlays ( logos, descriptions ) and then encode it.  At this point I realized that my 3 year old first generation Intel Core i7 Chip wasn't really up to the task of encoding HD video in any reasonable amount of time.  So instead I used my graphics cards ( Nvidia Geforce 9800 GT ) to do the heavy lifting.  The result was a drastic improvement in speed.  But still not quite as fast as I would like.  So how can we make it even faster?

Backup your Mini DV tapes to your Hard Drive

Sep 10, 2011 by Paul White

If you ever need to backup your Mini DV tapes to your hard drive and you don't want to loose any quality, there is a free program that will do the trick.  In my case I needed to backup all my mini DV tapes because I was selling my Sony HDR-HC1 HD camcorder, and would no longer have a device that could read the tapes. 

Trick to getting past Gmail Spam Filters

Aug 11, 2011 by Paul White

After building a CRM system for a company, we noticed that some of our marketing emails were hitting the Gmail's Spam folder.  A little Trial and Error revealed some interesting facts about how Google's Spam Filter works.

What ports to open for Vicidial Vicibox Asterisk

May 13, 2011 by Paul White

For those of you who are setting up your own Asterisk based dialer using one of the many variants such as Vicidial, Vicibox, Vicidialnow, or GoAutoDial, you might have found that one of the most painful parts of setting it up is knowing what settings will make it work.  Specifically what ports do you forward from your router, and what special settings do you need to set in your sip.conf file.  After trial and error I have discovered the settings that work. 

ISP Feedback Loop list

Sep 22, 2010 by Paul White

If you run a mail server, and do any kind of bulk emails, you need to sign up with the feedback loops to ensure you keep your mail list clean, and your IP reputation in good standing.  I have put together a complete list of all known feedback loops.  I also include some background information on FBLs and return path who manages most of them.

Thunderbird not saving sent mail

Jul 12, 2010 by Paul White

If you find yourself in a situation where thunderbird is no longer saving your sent emails in the Sent folder, then I might have a solution.  In my case all emails from July 4th 2010 on were not showing.  That and anytime I clicked on my Sent folder it would take a very long time to load.  If any of these symptoms sound like your problem, then my solution should work.  Keep in mind by the time I got to this solution I had already gone through and deleted my .msf files, ran compact folders, and even created a new profile.  None of these solved the problem.  In short the problem was a bad email in my sent folder. But it also turns out there is a 4GB limit on folder sizes in thunderbird