From the article, TOP MISTAKES BY PHOTOGRAPHY BUSINESS OWNERS BY NIGEL MERRICK

#5: WORKING FOR FREE

This is an interesting one, and encompasses a subject I see quite often in the many online photography groups: The idea of photographing for free (or almost free) in the hopes of gaining exposure.

You can’t be in the photography business for very long without someone asking you to photograph something (often an event of some kind) for a very low rate on the promise it will give you great exposure or the prospect of more, higher-paid, work down the line.

This is an insult to the photographer, and does a lot of damage to the photography industry. The promised “exposure” more often than not turns out to be non-existent, and further work usually entails poor compensation at best.

Consider the concepts presented in items #1 and #3 when making your decision about these types of jobs, and you can’t go too far wrong.

My advice to new photographers is to not fall into the trap of imagining that just because you’re not experienced in the business that you can’t ask for what you and your photography are worth.

full text of the article is here:
http://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/top-mistakes-by-photography-business-owners/ 

You’re email bounced? How do you know?  Did you receive a reply?  OK, let’s take a look at the error message you got back.  Maybe it says something like this (the IPs & emails have been replaced with make-up stuff to protect the innocent):

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at blahblah.blahblah.com.
I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.

<name@domain.com>:
1117.1338.2367.51 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 5.7.0 Blocked – see https://support.proofpoint.com/dnsbl-lookup.cgi?ip=00.22.38.000: name@domain.com
Giving up on 1117.1338.2367.51.

— Enclosed are the original headers of the message.

What that means is that the 3rd party company “proofpoint.com” has blocked the mail proxy server using the ip 00.22.38.000.

NOTE: This is about THEM and THEIR block, not us. This article is trying to help you understand, but it’s not something we can “fix” – but we can offer workarounds while 3rd party blocks exist.

This happens time to time as various 3rd party companies try to block spam.  Unfortunately, what they do is to BLOCK LEGITIMATE EMAILS almost as much.  From their point of view, they don’t care.  Their customers aren’t getting spam so they seem to be doing their job.  From the point of view of the rest of the world it is not a happy place.  Emails to their customers bounce!

Well, are they really protecting their customers?  Maybe.  Maybe someone who also uses our services or someone else in the datacenter sent out a bunch of spam.  Maybe.  But maybe not.  Companies such as Proofpoint are doing what they can to make their customers happy, but sometimes at the expense of the innocent.  It could have been that someone (or even you!) sent out a huge emailing or with suspicious content and that got our company flagged.

What is happening to resolve this?  People at our datacenter are working hard to negotiate with Proofpoint (and others, as/if needed) to resolve this issue.  They are learning that even though our people have satisfied the criteria that they are still not lifting the blocks in a timely manner.  Worst case scenario, 2 days.  But the good news is that it’s only blocking one server, and there are many, so read on …

As one customer said, “This is sooo frustrating.  It’s important that I be able to use my email confidently.  What else do you suggest?”  A legitimate concern and we are sorry for the frustration.  But we share it.

So, what can You do in the meantime?
1. You can try again in few minutes / hours.  The server used to SEND your mail is the one most available.  That can change and so you can play a bit of server roulette and hope it goes.  Again, worst case scenario is wait a day or two.

2. You can send using a different account.  In this example, proofpoint seems to represent me.com (mac.com, etc) and so any email sent to a me.com or mac.com is being rejected.  That means that until the block is lifted you can use your gmail or me.com or whatever other account.  Of course, there may be a block on them too, but if not, that might provide temporary relief.

3. You can setup google docs account and run SMTP through Google.  That requires configuration of your DNS info, but Google may be less likely to be blocked than the rest of the data centers in the world.

4. You can add-on SMTP services from a company such as AuthSMTP http://www.authsmtp.com/business/index.html
AuthSMTP provides an outgoing SMTP email server for use on your computer in your business / home office. It will allow you to send emails from most of the major email programs using your own email address or domain name

NOTE: none of the solutions above are definitive “fixes” – but rather just “alternatives in the interim.”  And they might not work if the blocking agent is also blocking one of the alternatives suggested above …

You might think that you should switch services or abandon using their domain based email, but that would not solve the problem.  Other companies have the same problem and really the problem, in this example, is with Proofpoint blocking legitimate emails.   Our datacenter staff is in contact with companies who put on blocks, such as Proofpoint (the company discussed in this example, today) and so they are representing us.  So we don’t have to fret.  They are working on our behalf.  In the future it could be another company.  If not Proofpoint it could be someone else.  They aren’t really the “bad guy” but rather it could be that they need to be more sensitive as to who has been naughty and who has been nice.  We don’t deserve punishment just because we live in the same neighborhood as an offender.  And certainly suffering from false accusations is no good at all.

Hang in there and if need be, send emails to me.com using me.com, gmail, hotmail or other and hope that Proofpoint hasn’t blocked them, too.  It’s a war against spam that is going on around us.  We are suffering the collateral damage from that battle, but we are not alone …

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This photo on “Everything Washington” “
http://bit.ly/CLLshockwaveRainbow

iCal: On a personal preference note, I am also dissatisfied with the new iCal interface.  I was once so very happy navigating using the mini-months pop-up – GONE.  And would turn calendars on & off using the tick boxes on the left –  now only available via a pop-up menu – more awkward.  I’m all about customizing and navigation ease and I feel that the new interface hinders more than helps. For $50 you can buy software that is, in the opinion of many, all the iCal should be.  http://www.busymac.com/    But from what I am reading the sidebar may return in the next version of the OS, “Mountain Lion.”

Here is some discussion on OS X Lion:

If you are thinking of going back to Snow Leopard, you can pretty much forget it:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3200632?start=45&tstart=0

Pros & Cons for pre-change thinking:
http://www.everymac.com/mac-answers/os-x-lion-faq/os-x-lion-pros-and-cons-worth-it-or-not.html

Regarding the end of PowerPC apps:
http://www.cultofmac.com/103458/os-x-lion-kills-rosetta-powerpc-support-heres-what-to-do-about-it/

Many other avenues were attempted, but what worked was simply to
modify the php.ini file line:

post_max_size = 40M

The post_max_size was the line to modify and not  upload_max_filesize
Which is what had me stumped for awhile – you’d think you’d have to modify the upload parameter, but actually it’s the post parameter which needs modification.  Not intuitive, but there it is.

.

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Jumpcut: Minimalist Clipboard Buffering for OS X

When multi-tasking goes wrong  - cutting the last item into clipboard oblivion – but maybe this will help:

Jumpcut: Minimalist Clipboard Buffering for OS X.

Trying out this new app.  The idea is great, we’ll see how it goes.

Next day, February 10, 2011: LOVE IT – and just discovered the hot key which brings up the bezel: control+option+V  Excellent.  Also, went into system preferences > Accounts and added it as a login item.  (It doesn’t appear in the dock when running (although you could drop it in) so I did it this way).

February 21, 2011: Love it even MORE – it has enhanced my workflow as I can now do sequential copies and recover the contents for pasting at will – instead of flipping back & forth & back & forth & back …

more info here:

How to Open MHT Files | eHow.com

WordPress wins!  Glad we’ve picked the winning horse

On the other side of the coin, some of my clients send to hundreds / thousands of targets.  For that I use php scripted database driven lists through our server.  So coming back to this small under 25 management – it was a challenge to get my thinking back to small & ultimately simple. Kind of refreshing actually!

So, the easiest / most basic way I could think of is simply to write the email addresses into a document (like a “Word” or “Publisher” or any text document), save that document, and then copy and paste the addresses into the “To” line of a new email when you want to go to send it.

This is very primiative, but simple and effective method.

Your text document with the email list would look like this:

Jane Doe <nowhere@yahoo.com>, Clyde Lovett <clyde@notarealdomain.com>, Charlie Brown <charlie.brown@fakecompany.com>, John Doe <john.doe@madeupname.com>

and so on, with each address entry separated by commas.

When you want to send an email and you you need the address just copy the whole kit and caboodle into the “To” line and off you go.

The email program will recognize the stuff in between the < > as the email address and the other name info is for your reference.

I can take people to any level of sophistication they want with this, but this is the most basic, easy method to manage a group

Let me know if you need more / different / more sophisticated or if this answers your question.

Cheers,

Clyde