As I was going through my mail yesterday after returning from a week away, I was skimming through the Worcester Business Journal and saw an article by Christina Davis called "An Editor Gets Hooked On LinkedIn." It was pretty much a primer, a business persons course in Online Social Networking 101. And as I read it I can't say I learned anything new but it was intriguing none the less. I've had a LinkedIn account for about 5 years now, and it laid dormant for about 4 of them, but in the last year I've been slowly building a network.

But the thing that's frustrating about the suggestions in the article were that one of the people interviewed talked about how important it is to keep your status up to date; to tell everyone what you're doing every day. Sounds great, but I also have fledgling profiles on Facebook and Twitter as well, so who's micro-blog is best? I don't want to, and really can't practically update all three together. I can't seem to get them to read off each other's RSS feeds and I've only downloaded one of their plug-ins for my Blackberry. So do I have to choose one network?

I think I'll post a message to my LinkedIn network and see if anyone has any suggestions...

-- Mike

So I'm back in the office after a week's "vacation." Of course vacation doesn't really mean no work these days, at least not for me. I carry a Blackberry which means that I'm never really away from work. While on vacation I must have dealt with at least 30 emails that came across. Of course I could have ignored them but then this morning would have been that much harder. As it is I have to review around 550 messages to make sure I didn't skip one that really needed a response.

I thank my lucky stars that our MailSweeper service does a great job filtering out the SPAM.

I remember though when email was useful. But today it seems to really be a time hog, stealing moments away from productivity in order to get another useless tidbit of information that someone decided was important for me to see. Now don't get me wrong, I know I created my own monster here, and email is incredibly useful, but it's still refreshing to run into someone that isn't running to their email all the time.

Maybe I should write someone a letter, or even better, make a phone call...

-- Mike

So what's your take on email today? In business? At home? Let me know.

In case you hadn't been paying attention we are in the midst of another round in the Browser War. The Mozilla Foundation just released their latest and greatest version of FireFox yesterday with version 3.0, Opera released version 9.5 last week and Microsoft is in throngs of beta testing IE 8.0, and then there's Apple who has released versions of Safari for both Mac and Windows now.

Once again as developers we are being challenged with browser inconsistencies and ever-evolving standards that make our jobs harder and projects more expensive for you. And, does it really matter what browser you use anyway? The answer is a 100% unqualified "Maybe!" As developers have to make choices it is very probable that something you do doesn't work in FireFox that looks fine in IE, or vice versa.

Our own decidedly unscientific survey shows that FireFox's market penetration is still hovering at around the 15% mark. Is it necessary to put additional resources at 15% of the market? That's a question that's important for you to consider when working on a website redesign. If it is then you need to be sure that you're budgeting time and dollars into that effort. If not, then just remember that when a FireFox fan reaches out to say hello.

-- Mike

All outbound mail queues have been cleared and mail delivery is back to normal for all users.

Thank you for your patience and understanding while we fixed this issue.

Currently some users are experiencing issues while attempting to access mail. Most users accessing mail via webmail may experience slowness in navigating the interface, and may get 500 Internal Errors. About 40% of users may also experience connectivity challenges while accessing mailboxes via a POP or IMAP connection and sending mail. 

Our engineers are working feverishly to help resolve the issue, for which information will be posted on the network status page at http://www.dovetailinternet.com/default.asp?LINKNAME=NETWORK_STATUS as it is made available.

Thanks for your patience, and we do apologize for this and any inconvenience you or your users may encounter.

Updated: 03:51 pm

As of 2:39pm, this issue was resolved.   We appreciate your understanding.

Updated: 12:16 pm

Currently, connections for many users to the SMTP Outbound mail servers are not resolving correctly, resulting in connection errors and an inability for those affected users to send mail via third party mail clients.

Updated: 12:04 pm

Currently users may experience access challenges while checking email via a webmail interface. 

Technicians are working to resolve the problem. Please note this interuption is only affecting some domains and is limited to the Web based email portal -- Direct connections via Outlook are NOT affected.  All other services are operating normally for subscribers.

We will update this post as events unfold. Network status can also be reviewed here

- The Dovetail Customer Service Team

Updated: 11:47 am

All services are running normally.

Updated: 9:11 am

One of Dovetail's web servers is currently experienceing downtime as the result of a hardware issue.

Technicians are on-site working the problem. Please note this interuption is NOT affecting all sites, and AVOID Emergency Web hosting is operating normally for subscribers.

We will update this post as events unfold. Network status can also be reviewed here

- The Dovetail Customer Service Team

Rolling out a new website can be an incredibly daunting, tedious and complicated process. This is especially true when (as is typically the case) the lion's share of the workload falls on a single person. If that's you, I'm here to tell you that it doesn't have to be that way.

When planning a web project you can keep your sanity if you are able to establish additional support through others. So where can you look? Well you should look both within and outside the organization.

Gain Support Within your Organization by:

1. Establishing the project sponsor and getting buy-in.
2. Creating a web committee with representatives from various departments.
3. Find and hire support personnel to aid in maintenance (possibly even an intern)

Gain Support Outside your Organization by:

1. Working with a marketing or advertising agency to ensure brand and message consistency. (like one of our agency partners)
2. Buying and using a web content management system. (like novo)
3. Hire a writer to help establish a single, consistent voice throughout your site.

And just keep in mind, building a website is not a simple task, it takes time and a team can be a sure way to help alleviate some of the pain.

-- Mike