Archive for May, 2008
At Google I/O
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008I’m at the first ever Google I/O checking out the OpenSocial wares for GoTV Networks. Shoot me a tweet if you’re also attending.
To the Emerson Class of 2008
Monday, May 19th, 2008CA Supreme Court overturns gay marriage ban
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
LA Times: California Supreme Court overturns gay marriage ban
Mother’s Day
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
I was going to post a happy birthday poem for my mom yesterday, but couldn’t write. I was going to post a happy mother’s day remembrance today, but I couldn’t feel the loss that I know is sometimes still there.
So I simply present a link (via Adam): “On saying goodbye” by Wil Shipley
Trouble sending email with AT&T DSL?
Saturday, May 10th, 2008If you’re one of the many who suffer AT&T DSL, you already know that you cannot use your own outgoing (SMTP) mail server. You also know that SBC Global (before AT&T bought them) outsourced its email service through an awkward relationship with Yahoo!.
Recently, AT&T’s mandated outgoing mail servers stopped working. Macworld discovered that AT&T changed the name of its SMTP server and added the requirement of user authentication and SSL. If they had bothered to tell their customers, that would have been a nice gesture, but this is AT&T and the only thing they care about is allowing the Bush administration to spy on us illegally.
This change worked for a few days and then it stopped again with this error: Unable to send the message. Please verify the e-mail address in your account properties. The server responded: 553 From: address not verified.
Again, AT&T gave no warning and its technical support completely was unaware of this error message. It must be because you’re on a Mac.
But then I received this atypical proactive notice a week later:
Dear AT&T Internet Services Member,
We have received questions regarding the following error message which is received by customers when they send e-mail using a non-verified e-mail address. [...] You will continue to receive it for emails sent with a non-verified address until you verify your Yahoo! email address or any other non AT&T email addresses. Verification instructions are available on the AT&T Help site.
To recap: AT&T decided to block my port 24, force me to use its SMTP server, authenticate, connect using SSL, and then demand that I add my “non-verified” email addresses to a whitelist managed through a Yahoo! Mail account that I don’t use for anything.
I could have added my four “non-verified” email addresses and audaciously resumed sending email from a desktop application. But I paused for a moment. I have a Yahoo! account that I use exclusively for push email with other iPhone users as a replacement for text messages. I don’t use it for anything else and yet I receive a steady flow of spam to the account. I suspect that there is hole somewhere in Yahoo!’s setup where spambots can see my address publicly. It’s a rather unique email address, so the likelihood of spambots guess sending successfully is slim. Regardless, I don’t trust Yahoo! with my email. I decided to not add my “non-verified” accounts to the whitelist because I get very little spam to those accounts.
I was just about to setup my own SMTP server to run locally when I discovered that my new hosting company runs SMTP servers on several ports that typically are not blocked by overzealous ISPs. Sweet. Then all I had to do was blog about how AT&T made me feel as a customer.
