Domino, Email, Spam and IT Related

There are still many users that using outlook as they email client. So far it run smoothly. Users can do send and receive without much problem. Most problem that I encounter are double emails because the send and receive process disconnected in the middle and the pst file already reach it maximum size which is 20 GB and that is very rare.

But few days ago, I got called form three of my users that they have problem when receiving emails. It always popping up for password, even though they already entered the correct one.

I checked the server log, and it said something about maildrop exclusive access. This is common problem, the problem usually solved just for waiting three or five minute. But this time, waiting for ten minutes still did not solved the problem.

So I check the server for more hints.

From Domino administrator, I check the server task, there I saw that there is pop3 task still providing task for the problematic users even the users already closed their outlook, so I guess the pop3 task is hanging or something.

So I tried to restart the pop3 server in office hours, and that caused more problem. The pop3 server can’t closed completely because it seem that the pop3 for the problematic users can’t be closed. So I have to restart the whole server.

After restarted the server I tried to do send and receive again. First is running and then asking for the pasword again. I checked the server task and realize that the pop3 task is hanging again.

Searched both google and lotus domino forum and there is no helpful hints.

It’s time to be panic.

There was not much that I can do, except to told the users that temporarily they can access their email via webmail, while I tried to solved the problem.

In a way home, I realize that what if one of email is corrupt and cause the problem?

So at home I login to the server again, marked all the emails as read via webmail so it will not be downloaded via pop3, and than restart the server.

After the server restarted I quickly check the server task, there is no pop3 task hanging. Good.

I setup a new outlook account for one of m problematic user and than do the send and receive. It worked.

I did several task, and it seem it solved the problem.

So the rest of the emails, I downloaded them via imap not pop3.

I still don’t know why email got corrupted and cause problem for pop3 task.

I’m sure that this problem will happen again, even I don’t know why it happpen, but at least I know how to solved it.

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I’m not using blackberry device or use blackberry service for my push email solution. I only helping others to install blackberry connect in their nokia phones. I’m quite happy using Seven (free service) as my push email solution.

I already installed and setup blackberry connect in two nokia phones, E61i and E90. The way how to install it is very similar. So, I think this how to also can be applied with other nokia phone that support blackberry connect.

Too bad that the new nokia will not support blackberry connect anymore because nokia want to implement their own push email service.

This how to should be sufficient to help you to setup blackberry connect into your nokia phone.

Make sure that your nokia phone support blackberry connect. You can check whether your nokia phone support blackberry in nokia website.

Download the blackberry connect application that match with your nokia phone and your firmwire version. You can check your firmwire with this combination *#0000#. Blackberry connect will not work if the firmwire is different.

Register blackberry plan with your phone provider.

Install the blackberry connect application in your nokia phone. You can install it with nokia pc suite, or just copy the sisx file into your memory card and run it fom there.

Register your phone with blackberry by selecting option and select register now.

Open the blackberry website (this should be dependent with your phone provider) and create a new account (I assume that this the first time you using blackberry service). You need the PIN and IMEI number to register. PIN and IMEI number can be found in status page in your blackberry connect application.

From there you can register you email addresses or even create a new one. The steps are easy enough to follow.

Now, all you have to do is wait while blackberry setup your nokia phone.

Enjoy the blackberry service

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This is interesting. Typealyzer, A fun way to check what kind of blogger you are.

This is my type of blog

ESTP - The Doers

The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

Thanks to wissel.net about this site.

So, what kind of blogger you are?

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Finally, I have time to look at my wordpress design. It’s been a while for me to re-configure or install a new plugin for wordpress.

One of my plugin doesn’t works with the new Wordpress 2.6.3, that is Popular Post plugin. After searching the net, I still can’t find the new version of popular post. So, with regrets, I have to disable the popular post plugin.

While searching, I found another plugins than can really usefull for my blog, there are Simple Tags and Google XML sitemap.

Simple Tags

Somehow, my ultimate tag warrior got corrupted. It’s cannot show my tags anymore. I tried many things to fix it but failed, so I have to disable the plugin and remove it form my template.

Now I need another plugins to manage my tags. I can however to reinstall the ultimate tag warrior plugin, but I think it’s te time to playing arround with my wordpress.

After a few search, I found this plugin. I give it a test and found out that this plugin is so amazing. It have many other usefull features like rename tags and mass edit tags (the best features imho). It’s also have the related post feature, but I don’t use it yet.

The installation is easy, more easy than the ultimate tag warrior.

Google XML Sitemaps

This the plugin that I loved. It will re-generate a sitemap for google, ask.com and many other search engines. The best thing is, it will automatically re-generate a new sitemap every time we post a new post and submit it to search engines. So our sitemap will always be up to date.

The day where I have to create a new sitemap manually and submit it to google are gone.

Those are the two ne plugins that I installled in all my wordpress blog. If you new in wordpress, you need to install these plugins.

These are the plugins that need to be installed.

These two simply you MUST have.
1. Askimet
2. All in one SEO pack

These four are very important plugins
1. Simple Tags
2. FeedBurner FeedSmith
3. Related posts
4. Google XML Sitemaps

And the rest are not necessary but good to have.
1. Subscribe to comments
2. WP-Contact form

These are why wordpress is so loveable, with tons of plugins, it seem that it can do anything (but still can’t make me a cup of coffee )

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Outlook Express may be the worst email client ever for business purpose. If you only use email for your personal life, where email is not that important, maybe outlook express will be suitable for you. But for your business or daily works, the rule is simple, DO NOT use outlook express. You can use Ms Outlook, or even better use Lotus Notes for your daily works, both email clients are stable as rock.

With outlook express, you will be facing many problems.

These are the most common problem that I encounter with outlook express.

Missing emails (corrupt dbx files)

Outlook express based on dbx files. Each folder in outlook express actually one dbx file. The structure of the folders are stored in special file called folders.dbx.

The problem with folder in outlook express is if the outlook express closed unexpected, one of the folder may become corrupted. Whe the folder got corrupted you will notice missing emails, worst case all the emails in that folder are missing.

When this happen, DO NOT run compact, or you will loose your emails for good.

There are many utility to recover the corrupted folder, the utility actually extract each emails from the dbx file into may eml files. One email one eml file.

The utility that I like most is Advanced Outlook Express Repair,is very simple and do the job done.

There is also freeware for it called Macallan Outlook Express Extraction, or many more in http://www.insideoe.com/resources/tools.htm or try google it for more tools.

==Update==

Alex just added outlook express dbx extractor as his favorite dbx recovery tools, you can read his comments in here.

Thanks for Alex for this info.

====

Can’t send and receives emails

These two problem most likely because the inbox folder or sent folder already reach it maximum size, which is 2 GB.

The real problem with outlook express is there is no warning at all if one of the folder reaching it maximun size until it’s too late.

When you can send email or your email stack in oubox folder than your sent items folder is already full, reached it’s maximun size.
If you can’t receive email, than your inbox folder already full.

There are two options to fix it.

1. The easiest way is to moved emails from sent or inbox folder (respectively) to another folder and than run compact. It may take sometime to finish.

2. Or you can create a new folder, click it once so outlook express will create the dbx file. Quit outlook express. Find the dbx file in windows explorer and delete the dbx file that you just created. Find the inbox or sent folder (respectively), rename it with the same name of the folder that you just created. When you run outlook express again, it will re-create the inbox or sent folder (respectively). The old inbox or sent folder is now in the folder you just created.

There is also another possibility that outlook express can’t send and receive emails because of buggy anti virus software. I found it with symantec anti virus 8 and symantec anti virus 9. With symantec you just disable the internet email auto protect, with other anti virus should be similar.

Relaying Not Allowed

You can send email to your colleague within the same domain, but you can’t send email to another domain. You will get the 505 Relaying Not Allowed message.

If this happen, try to enable outgoing email requires authentication. It seem the mail server you use require smtp auth for users to send emails to another domain.

Can’t open Outlook Express

This problem some times happen without any reason at all. It actually still trying to load, just take a long time to finish. Many user will think that their outlook express is hang or crash.

To test it very simple. Just login in safe mode, and try to open outlook express. If it run, than there is nothing wrong with your outlook express, just need a longer time to load. In my case it may take 30 minutes to one hour.

If in safe mode the outlook express still not run, than you might have corrupt folders. You can take a look at my previous post about it.

That’s all, the most common problem that I encounter with outlook express. Maybe other people have another problem that not in my list. For that try this Inside Oulook Express for solutions.

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Before I begin this post, first of all don’t use outlook express for your daily works simply because outlook express is not reliable. Ms Outlook is a much better pop3 and imap email client, or for enterprise try lotus notes with lotus domino. Don’t use outlook express.

So many times that users with outlook express loose their emails, so I have to recover their emails. If they got lucky, I can recover their emails. If they not, the emails is lost.

One user came to me because her outlook express can’t start. I tried to start it and wait for 1 hour, nothing happen. Form the task manager I can see that outlook express is working because the process use almost 100% of cpu resource.

The Outlook express simply can’t start. Usually when this kind of problem happen, I will boot up to safe mode and run outlook express. Most of the time that will solved the problem. But not this one. I already tried to boot to safe mode, run outlook express and wait for more then another 1 hours and nothing happen.

So I tried another way.

I create another identity in outlook express, and try to import messages from the original store folder. First, it start to import the messages but then it stop.

Curious, I start again. And again it stop.

So, I tried again, but now I import one folder at a time. One folder imported, another folder imported, and it stop when I tried to import the inbox folder.

Curious, I did it again and it gave me the same result.

So, the conclusion is the problem caused by the corrupted inbox folder. I moved the inbox folder to another folder then start outlook express, and it started fine. Outlook express will created a new inbox folder.

All I have to do next is to recover the inbox folder into many eml files, then copied them back to the new inbox folder. Solved.

So, I just wasted my full day of work just to fix one unreliable outlook express email client.

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Being as a mail administrator and also support, I have to meet many kind of people. There are people that really curious about computers, but some people are not.

To become a good mail administrator you have to have a lot of patients. Really, based on my 12 years of experiences.

Don’t believe me?

This is my conversations with my users over the phone.

User : The server is down (it’s not a question).
Me : Which server?
User : (silent) That server.
Me : (guessing that will be the mail server) No, the server is not down.
User : But I can’t connect to the server.
Me : Is your friend that sit next to you can’t connect to server too?
User : (I can hear that he asking the question to his friend) No, he can connect to the server.
Me : So the problem is in your computer, not the server. What is your computer name so I can remotely access from here?
User : (long silent) My computer name is samsung.
Me : (confuse) Your computer name is samsung? (ping samsung, got reply time out).
User : Yes, it written here samsung.
Me : Written where?
User : Here in my monitor.
Me : (big smile in the face) No, it’s not your computer name, is the brand of your monitor.
User : (silent) How do I know my computer name?
Me : No, it’s Ok. What is your email address? (I can found out his computer name from the server)
User : (silent) You don’t know my email address?
Me : (can’t help it, now I’m laughing) Sorry, who is this again?

It’s not happen everyday, but some times this kind of conversations do happen.

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Now you want to create your own blog or you want to upgrade your blog from blogger to self hosted wordpress, the first thing you need is a web hosting.

Web hosting is going to be cheaper and cheaper everyday, for wordpress you can go for shared hosting.

Shared hosting is enough for most blogger, it’s capable to serve up to hundreds or even thousands of visitors a day. You can find shared hosting price range from $1 and up to $6 per month. More than that, just too expensive.

There are so many web hosting available, you need to choose the one that good enough to host your blog and of course that fit with your budget.

These are tips for you to choose the right web hosting. I hope these tips can help you to find one.

Research, research and research
Find as many reviews about web hosting as you can find, do the research and take your time. You can start research from these two forums.

1. http://www.webhostingtalk.com
2. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=98.

Read the forums carefully, it will help you to find the web hosting that right for you.
But don’t stop there, if you still have the times, do more research, and google is your friend.

Reputation
Choose web hosting only from reputable web hosting. Do not fall for cheap and brand new web hosting company, many of them are just hit and run type of web hosting. They start last month and will be gone in the next month. In the next two month they will create another web hosting company with different name.
Better choose a web hosting company that already in business for years with good reputations. Mostly they will cost you more, but your blog will be safe.

TOS - Terms of Services
Read the TOS carefully and understand it. There are so many restrictions in TOS that you need to know. You don’t want your blog being suspended or even terminated because you just broken their TOS.
As example, one of my blog suspended because it take too many cpu resources. I have to negotiate with the web hosting and redesign the blog.

Resources

Right now, there are so many web hosting that offers you unlimited space and unlimited bandwith. Please remind this, there is no such thing as unlimited resources. Any web hosting that offers unlimited space and unlimited bandwith only trying to tricks you.

You do not need unlimited web space for your blog, believe me, 1 GB web space is more than enough for most bloggers. That is why their offer unlimited space, because they know that you will not use it more than 1 GB for your blog.

If they offers you unlimited space or unlimited bandwith, read the TOS again, usually there are certain file types or certain services that not allowed.

Examples:
You have unlimited space but you can’t use it to save big files.
You have unlimited bandwith but you can’t stream videos.
So what the points?

Specially note about cpu resources.
Select your wordpress plugins carefully, you don’t want that because only one plugins your blog will eat up cpu resources and then your blog got suspended because your blog broken the TOS.

Fantastico
Most web hosting support fantastico, but to be safe make sure that your web host support it. It will make your life easier. You can upgrade your wordpress blog in only two clicks.

That are my tips to choose a good web hosting company for your blog, I hope that these tips will help you to find one.

Yes, is not easy to own your own blog, specially with wordpress. But that just a minor thing to pay, and in rewards you can own your own blog powered with the most powerfull and flexible blog software available.

If you not willing to take this kind of problems, you can just keep on blogging in blogger if you can live with so many limitations.

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I just bought a second hand Dopod 900 from a friend. I want to try how stable and usefull Windows Mobile OS is. I already tried Palm and Symbian OS, and now it’s about time to try Windows Mobile.

My choice of Dopod 900 because it upgradable, VGA display, Wifi, 3G and most important thing is qwerty keyboard. The first thing I did is upgraded the OS form Windows Mobile 5 to Windows Mobile 6.1. The upgrade process is easy enough for a newbie like me.

Dopod 900 is very big and heavy compare with others PDA phones. I will not use it as a mobile phone, and actually I will not consider it as a mobile phone at all. I consider it as a PDA with wireless capabilities. You still can use it as a phone if you want, but I recommended to use a handsfree, wired or bluetooth one.

My second choice is Dopod 838 Pro, also have the same features but with smaller QVGA display, but smaller than Dopod 900 and have 3.5G instead of 3G. The most advantage is that because Dopod 838 Pro smaller than Dopod 900, Dopod 838 Pro much more usable as an ordinary phone.

I choose Dopod 900 because of VGA display. With VGA display, it very pleasure to read email and surf the net. Many software doesn’t works nicely in VGA display, and what worst is that Dopod 900 doesn’t have extra four buttons like many other Windows Mobile PDA’s , so many games that required the extra four buttons will not run at all.

Because this gadget is designed as a wireless gadget, I bought a data plan for Dopod 900, unlimited data plan, so I can maximize the use of it.

Overall this gadget is a very useful gadget for me. I mostly use it to read and write emails and surf the net. I also use it to do routine check of the servers. I can do it remotely via ssh or vnc. Fortunately most log files are sent through email so it easier for me to check the status of the servers. If I need serious work, than I will switch to a notebook and use Dopod 900 as a 3G modem. I can do it all of it with my Nokia E61, but with Dopod 900 I can do it better with larger display.

With so many capabilities, I still keep my ordinary mobile phone. But that the trade of that I willing to take rather than to use it as a mobile phone.

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With Lotus Domino, we have the abilities to access our mailbox via web. First, is nothing more than quot;Hey, I can access my email via webquot; or simply webmail, and now it become ‘full features’ Lotus Notes client or iNotes (later it called Domino Web Access or DWA).
Now in Domino Web Access there are three options on how to access your mailbox via web.

• Domino Web Access
• Domino Web Access Lite
• Domino Web Access Ultra Lite

Big thanks to Gunawan’s blog who give me the news about the new web access ultra lite and how to enable it.

Domino Web Access
This is the standard web access. If your main internet browser is Internet Explorer and you have fast internet connection, than this kind of web access is the most suitable for you.
As normal Lotus Notes client, It give you more features, like preview and full access to your calendar.
I still having problem to access Domino Web Access via my Firefox 3.0.1, it still buggy. One big problem that I can’t attached any files to new email. I’m not sure if the problem is in Domino or Firefox, but I do hope that both parties can work together to solved this problem.

Domino Web Access Lite
As in the name, this web access is a liter web access version than the standard. If you have slow or medium internet connection maybe you can try this web access. It does not give you preview and full calendar functionality, but it will give you tabs for email and sidebar for calendaring.
You can easily change from full dwa to lite dwa from the right top menu.

Domino Web Access Ultra Lite
This is new since Lotus Domino 8.02, designed for mobile users with smartphone or pda. It designed to run on iphone but it run perfectly in my Opera Mini under my Nokia E61. But because of the landscape screen in Nokia E61 , the icons does not fit very well. It should fit well in any screen that in portrait mode.
As in Gunawan’s Blog you can try to access your Domino Web Access Ultra Lite via Google Chrome, but because Google Chrome is using some part of Opera engine, I think it should run in Opera browser too (it run in my Opera Mini).

Domino still support standard webmail for older internet browser or non standard internet browser (I can access webmail via Opera Mini).
For more security, it is wise to enable SSL encryption in your web server to prevent someone else hacking into your data, specially your username and password.

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