Wednesday, August 17, 2005
RSS Feeds or Web Feeds
We just announced our official release of our RSS Reader and a hot debate inside the company for weeks has been what to name the reader. We finally settled on the label "RSS Feeds". There were many other suggestions including "Web Feeds", "RSS Subscriptions", "My Feeds", and "My Subscriptions". I think we made a good decision but David Coursey of eWeek.com seems to disagree. Although David was not talking about our product, it was rather ironic that his article came out the same day we released our reader. I really like "RSS Feeds" because it can't be confused with any other technology. If you have heard of RSS you will "get it" right away. And if you haven't heard of RSS hopefully curiosity alone will inspire you to click on our help section and learn all about it. I'd like to hear other opinions though, so feel free to email me or leave comments!
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Hackathon 1.0
I really enjoyed our first Hackathon and I want to thank everyone who participated. We accomplished a lot and the day was a big success, but the reason it was a lot of fun is because of the great people we have working for us.
Our morning breakfast started with everyone laughing at Steve for walking in like a zombie, laughing at me because of my great math skills ( 35/6 = 4 ? ), laughing at Jing for his wonderful attire, and laughing at Manny's story about his first car "tune-up" that resulted in the car catching fire.
After all the hard work, each team had to present their work to the group. The presentation were great, but also non-stop funny. Ellen cracked on Jing's shirt (again), Wenjie called Huey out for being nervous, and Huey inadvertently pulled up an email from me that show my "un-happiness", and of course Steve's love affair with Mike is a great bit of comedy.
I've worked in environments where there is a lot of hostility between co-workers. I'm glad everyone on our team gets along so well, it really makes working 10 hours on a Saturday enjoyable. I can't wait to see everyone at Hackathon 2.0!
Our morning breakfast started with everyone laughing at Steve for walking in like a zombie, laughing at me because of my great math skills ( 35/6 = 4 ? ), laughing at Jing for his wonderful attire, and laughing at Manny's story about his first car "tune-up" that resulted in the car catching fire.
After all the hard work, each team had to present their work to the group. The presentation were great, but also non-stop funny. Ellen cracked on Jing's shirt (again), Wenjie called Huey out for being nervous, and Huey inadvertently pulled up an email from me that show my "un-happiness", and of course Steve's love affair with Mike is a great bit of comedy.
I've worked in environments where there is a lot of hostility between co-workers. I'm glad everyone on our team gets along so well, it really makes working 10 hours on a Saturday enjoyable. I can't wait to see everyone at Hackathon 2.0!
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Free Stuff
Today we released lots of free goodies! First, we officially launched Webmail Lite. And second, we launched the free code section of our website. Below is a short blurb about the code that we released, see the documentation of each utility for a full description.
MAILBOMB SMTPD POLICY DAEMON FOR POSTFIX
---------------------------------------------------------
This program is a Policy Daemon for Postfix MTAs version 2.1 or later. It's purpose is to identify unacceptable volumes of mail from various sources, and take action to prevent that mail from being delivered. The most common use is to limit the rate of mail that local users are allowed to send. This is especially useful to companies who provide email hosting services to a large userbase and who need to catch spammers who are abusing their system, BEFORE the unacceptable use can damage the provider's reputation.
cleanq
------
This utilty searches for mail in the Postfix mail queue who's first mailq output line matches the specified pattern. The script will remove all matching emails from the mail queue, moving them to a folder - either a subdirectory of the Postfix mail queue directory called "cleanq/PATTERN" or DIRECTORY_NAME depending upon if DIRECTORY_NAME was passed to this script as the second parameter.
The most useful way to use this utility is to pass the sender's email address or domain name as the only parameter.
mq
---
This utilty displays the contents of the Postfix mail queue, outputting the details for each message on a sigle line.
qv
--
This utilty displays an email that is in the Postfix mail queue, coresponding to QUEUEID.
qvmv
------
This utilty deletes an email that is in the Postfix mail queue, coresponding to QUEUEID.
showdb
--------
This utilty displays the contents of a DB_File.
Email Auto-Config
------------------
This is the source code for a program that will automatically configure a user’s Webmail.us-hosted email account in Outlook, Netscape Mail, Thunderbird, or Eudora. It can configure a new account or adjust the configuration settings for an existing account. The Email Auto-Config tool is only for Secure POP3 accounts.
MAILBOMB SMTPD POLICY DAEMON FOR POSTFIX
---------------------------------------------------------
This program is a Policy Daemon for Postfix MTAs version 2.1 or later. It's purpose is to identify unacceptable volumes of mail from various sources, and take action to prevent that mail from being delivered. The most common use is to limit the rate of mail that local users are allowed to send. This is especially useful to companies who provide email hosting services to a large userbase and who need to catch spammers who are abusing their system, BEFORE the unacceptable use can damage the provider's reputation.
cleanq
------
This utilty searches for mail in the Postfix mail queue who's first mailq output line matches the specified pattern. The script will remove all matching emails from the mail queue, moving them to a folder - either a subdirectory of the Postfix mail queue directory called "cleanq/PATTERN" or DIRECTORY_NAME depending upon if DIRECTORY_NAME was passed to this script as the second parameter.
The most useful way to use this utility is to pass the sender's email address or domain name as the only parameter.
mq
---
This utilty displays the contents of the Postfix mail queue, outputting the details for each message on a sigle line.
qv
--
This utilty displays an email that is in the Postfix mail queue, coresponding to QUEUEID.
qvmv
------
This utilty deletes an email that is in the Postfix mail queue, coresponding to QUEUEID.
showdb
--------
This utilty displays the contents of a DB_File.
Email Auto-Config
------------------
This is the source code for a program that will automatically configure a user’s Webmail.us-hosted email account in Outlook, Netscape Mail, Thunderbird, or Eudora. It can configure a new account or adjust the configuration settings for an existing account. The Email Auto-Config tool is only for Secure POP3 accounts.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Code Reviews
Today we did code reviews on two projects codenamed "Louie" and "CD". These projects will be released in a few months but the code reviews were a big success. Code reviews are a critical part of the development process for the following reasons:
1. Everyone that participates learns something they didn't know before the review.
2. Future code is made better because we learn from our current mistakes.
3. Current code that has issues gets fixed immediately.
4. Developers work hard before a review to make sure code is commented and standards are followed.
5. Bugs are identified before the product goes to testing, saving time in the long term.
My favorite part of the review today was when Wenjie and Mike stood at the whiteboard writing out pseudo code and arguing whether each other's algorithm would work. You wouldn't know it by looking at them but these two guys are pretty strong-willed when it comes to code. I enjoyed watching them trying to explain their logic to each other, you could really see two great minds at work, it was quite the site to see and I can't wait for Wenjie to get his shot at Mike's code at our next review. :)
1. Everyone that participates learns something they didn't know before the review.
2. Future code is made better because we learn from our current mistakes.
3. Current code that has issues gets fixed immediately.
4. Developers work hard before a review to make sure code is commented and standards are followed.
5. Bugs are identified before the product goes to testing, saving time in the long term.
My favorite part of the review today was when Wenjie and Mike stood at the whiteboard writing out pseudo code and arguing whether each other's algorithm would work. You wouldn't know it by looking at them but these two guys are pretty strong-willed when it comes to code. I enjoyed watching them trying to explain their logic to each other, you could really see two great minds at work, it was quite the site to see and I can't wait for Wenjie to get his shot at Mike's code at our next review. :)
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