Feedblitz

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mike

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#6086 25-Dec-2005 00:06

Not cool sharing geekzone email addresses with a third party!

Is my weekly newsletter being auto converted to a daily digest as well? :(

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
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#25319 25-Dec-2005 00:13

The email is not being given to the tird party, but loaded for our use only. The weekly newsletter is being phased out, and a daily digest is being used instead. - you can opt out of that at any time, and the email address is only used for the Geekzone update.

The Feedblitz service monitors the Geekzone RSS feed and send a single email with the new entries for the day.

I have tested the service before doing this and have not had problems with them.

I can delete any email from the list myself, or you can remove from the links at the bottom of the automatic message.

LittleGreyCat

153 posts

Master Geek

#25427 29-Dec-2005 05:48

Mauricio,

I haven't been active on this forum for a while, but this FeedBlitz thing seems to be just what it says on the tin.
You get Blitzed by a feed. :-(

The weekly newsletters were a good thing. the daily digest is not!

I assume this is because there is no longer the resource to produce the newsletter.
Shame, but that's life.

I will be unsubscribing from the daily feed.

Cheers
Dave R

freitasm

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#25430 29-Dec-2005 08:18

Dave, first of all, thanks for visiting the site. And thanks for the feedback.

The problem of making a newsletter is mainly coping with the barrage of people who change email addresses and do not modify their subscriptions on the Internet. Every week I was inundated with bounced emails, and even with rules set on the Exchange server I can't block these automatic "User not found" replies. Imagine receiving 500 hundred of these in a single day!

Then there's the spam blocking. Hundreds of emails bounce back with "Please visit this page and authenticate yourself".

Next is the automatic spam blocking "Your email was not delivered because it's classified as spam". The last newsletter sent had the word "sexy" in it, as an adjective for the Windows Mobile SP5 Smartphone. I think I've received 200 emails back just for that single word.

Not talking about some people that can't understand the difference between a newsletter subscription and unsolicited commercial emails. I've received lots of emails from my ISP's abuse department asking what I was doing! People come here, register, receive a newsletter and when they don't want anymore, instead of using the unsubscribe links they simply complain to my ISP. I almost got disconnected (not the hosting which is in another provider, but our Internet connection). And I have to say, sorry - all te complains came from AOL users.

So, at the end I couldn't cope with this.

I am sorry to see you let go from the subscribtion. I think the best alternative to an email blast is the use of RSS feeds. But it's a very small part of the Internet users who even know about these...

Thanks again.

a2brute

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#25457 29-Dec-2005 11:51

on the other hand, I noticed a new FeedBlitz subscription magically appear and, having read my emails out of order, I just deleted the new feed. it was the GeekZOne feed. At this point I am not sure how to go about getting an email feed started up again.

a2brute

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#25459 29-Dec-2005 12:08

...and there it is. Got the feed started properly.

freitasm

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#25460 29-Dec-2005 12:08

If you want the Feedblitz emails again you can send me a private message with your email address and I will add it to the list, or visit the feedblitz.com site yourself to register - enter the Geekzone feed address (http://www.geekzone.co.nz/geekzone_rss.asp) or look for Geekzone.

mike

307 posts

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#27092 25-Jan-2006 11:03

The best part about the newsletter was the few paragraphs you wrote at the start.

I can only imagine the reaction of hundreds of subscribers not wanting a weekly newsletter now not wanting a daily blitz! It should have been opt-in, I trusted my email to Geekzone, not Feedblitz and you've lost that trust.

Can't be too hard to send the newsletter from an unmonitored email.

At my end 75% of the Feedblitzes have been autoclassified by Mail as junk.

Most importantly I would have liked to think a great tech site like this would be pushing RSS not treating its subscribers as fools.

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

freitasm

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#27095 25-Jan-2006 11:41

Actually you are the only person who complained so far - either pubicly on in private.

Others have unsubscribed or asked me to remove their names from the list - which I have done promptly.

The fact that your e-mail security program classified some of them as junk does not prove anything - only that said program is being over-zealous. I run the message filter on my Exchange Server and the messages pass without a problem.

I tried, many times, pushing RSS - even on the newsleters. But only a minority of users consume RSS these days. I still think it is the best way of distributing the news, but it simply doesn't have enough coverage, yet.