ameir dot net

My site has disappeared from Google's listings, and I initially blamed the cause on my site going down for a long period of time a while back. After finally getting back online, I decided to start using Google Sitemaps. After trying to add my site, though, I ran into a problem; Google claimed my site was inaccessible! I could browse the site fine so I figured it was a temporary problem on Google's end. After trying multiple times over a course of a month or so, I decided to investigate. What I found was a bit surprising: freedns.afraid.org (my dynamic DNS provider) blocks all requests from Google! I couldn't believe it!

A bit pissed, I emailed Joshua Anderson (the maintainer of FreeDNS) about it. He asked for my domain name and stated that Google can now access my site. He didn't respond to the portion of my email asking why Google is blocked in the first place.

Well, Google is now able to download my sitemap, but I will have to wait a LOOONG time before I show up in Google again. It took me a while the first time, and I'm basically starting again as if I'm reborn.

I also enlisted in a secondary DNS service, EditDNS.net, just in case there are some other surprises in afraid.org's services. Hopefully if any queries to afraid.org's servers fail, EditDNS will come through successfully.

Isn't blocking Google such a bad idea? I wonder what the reasoning behind it is. I don't see freedns.afraid.org having any trouble getting listed by Google.

UPDATE: FreeDNS has updated their FAQ to address the Google issue. Here's an excerpt:

For the past few years that I've had a cell phone, I've been known to be very bad at checking my voicemails. It's so clumsy, and if not checked soon enough, they pile and pile. If someone calls and there is a voicemail that you just must listen to, you have to go through ALL previous voicemails first. This is the same way voicemail was checked years ago, and I think it's time for a change. I'm glad others agree with me.

There are now services that can take over as your voicemail service. When you miss someone's call, the caller is redirected to your new voicemail service instead of your service provider's.

For a while, I was using Privatephone.com. PrivatePhone gives you your own local phone number that is intended for use as a personal number that you give out for spam-style offers online, or to people you meet randomly that ask for your number while you really don't want to give it out. I found a useful link at Howard Forums that details how to enable call forwarding on T-Mobile (my provider) phones, and I went ahead and gave it a shot. Months later, I was satisfied with my decision.

With PrivatePhone, I was able to check my voicemails through my phone like before, through email, or through a web-based email-like interface. I had .wav of each voicemail emailed to me, so I was notified immediately by Thunderbird as soon as an email arrived. In addition, PrivatePhone sent me a text message telling me a voicemail was left, with the caller's number. The text message only showed the caller's number (along with a short PrivatePhone message), even if the caller was in my PrivatePhone addressbook.

I then stumbled upon YouMail. YouMail did everything PrivatePhone failed to do. It not only is a third-party voicemail service, but it also has excellent features such as custom voicemail greetings for each caller, text messages with the caller's number, name (if the caller is not in your contact list, it shows the caller ID name), and length of the voicemail. In addition, the emailed copies of the voicemails were sent in .mp3 as opposed to the .wav of PrivatePhone; I had bad luck with VLC and .wav files for some reason. The only drawbacks to YouMail are that you don't get your own private number (everyone uses the same voicemail number; your voicemail is handled based on the number that forwards the call to them), and that you can't currently set caller groups. It would be nice to have friends, family, work, etc., be greeted with different voicemail messages, but not have to individually set the message for each individual caller. Still, this service to me far exceeds what PrivatePhone could offer me, and I am still using it today.

If you have multiple phones or need a number you can comfortably give out to near-strangers, you might want to try GrandCentral. If a caller dials your GrandCentral number, GrandCentral can have multiple phones ring at the same time. Think of this as phone redundancy when you have service problems with your phone(s). GrandCentral used to offer ringback tones (where callers are greeted by music or whatever you decide to upload), but since being bought by Google, that feature has disappeared (for copyright reasons I'm sure). Still, there is a library of ringback tones you can choose, but none of them are anything special. I suggest you give this a shot, I'm sure you'll like it

UPDATE: YouMail has recently made tons of changes to the site, and it appears to be getting better every week.  I strongly advise you check it out.  Whenever I think of a possible improvement, I end up seeing it implemented shortly after.  I'm quite impressed with the service.  Let me know what you think about it in the comments.

UPDATE:  Privatephone.com will be ending their service on December 31, 2007.  FreeDigits was the closest replacement I could find to Privatephone, but they now no longer offer dedicated phone numbers; they instead make you use a "short code" which is the same as an extension.  My guess is that they didn't want to pay for more phone numbers.  If you're still interested in that service, they offer it through a sister site, ringtonumber.com.

I recently ran into a problem with my server setup where I would have incredibly long and random moments of downtime. The downtime wasn't the server's fault, but moreso due issues at the colocation site (i.e. my friend's house ). During this time period, of course, I was unable to send, receive, or retrieve any emails. Because I'm so dependent on email, and because the downtime was becoming excessive, I had to find some way to get around this. After doing some searching, I came up with these possibilities:

1. backup MX service that tries to deliver your mail to your main mail server periodically; once your server is back up, the mail will be delivered to your usual inbox. If you only expect minor downtimes this solution is a good safeguard to ensure that you'll never lose any emails, but for those of you with shaky configurations (or if you have a long-term project to complete that requires downtime), this may be inideal because your emails will not be accessible until your mail server is back up and running.
2. backup MX service that forwards all of your email to another address; you will be able to read these emails immediately (even while your mail server is down), but the messages will not appear in your mail server's inbox once it comes back up. This is nice for those who need immediate access to their emails, and cannot afford to wait until the server is back up (knowing that in many cases bringing the server back up is a time-consuming task). You unfortunately cannot access your existing email with this method, but then again, you can't do so with any method so long as the server's down. You also have to be aware that your mail server is down so you'll know to check your other email address. Hopefully an error message from your mail client is enough.
3. outsourced email; an external provider completely handles all aspects of your domain's email; your MX records will point to the provider's servers, as will your email client. All spam control, filtering, mail rules, etc., will be handled at the host's end. Your mail server is essentially unnecessary with this solution. You certainly have much less control over your emails and cannot perform low-level tasks such as messing with your mboxes/Maildir, but you do have the relief of not worrying about your mail server's status.

You can see that each of these methods have their pros and cons, and I cannot tell you which method works best for your situation. I can, though, explain my situation and explain what works best for me.

My situation: I have excessive, spontaneous, and oftentimes lengthy downtimes due to various reasons (ISP issues, people tampering with my server >:-[ , etc.). Because I'm in school and often expect important emails, I have to make sure that I can access incoming emails at any time.

My solution: I first started off using a backup MX service that forwarded all of my emails to my Gmail account. This was useful since I already had a copy of all of my emails forwarded there (I had procmail send a copy to two other email accounts for archiving/backup purposes, while keeping a copy on my mail server). This method worked and worked well. Because I had my previous emails already in my Gmail account, all new emails arrived smoothly and I couldn't tell (from a Gmail perspective) that my mail server ever went down without looking at the message headers to see what mail server accepted and forwarded the email. I recommend this solution for those who archive their emails like I did by forwarding copies to other accounts, and for those who are comfortable with that backup email address. Gmail is able to respond with another From: address, so your replies will look like they're coming from you@yourdomain.com.

I eventually ditched this method just because I am in love with IMAP and missed the convenience of it. I never looked back at POP after using IMAP, which makes me want to yell at Google for only supporting POP. Anyways, my solution turned out to be one that allows for me to use IMAP, and still have access to all my emails when my server is down. I never thought I'd do it, but I did; I outsourced!  I ended up pointing my MX records over to AOL's servers (yes, I never thought I'd go with them either) and from then on checked my emails through Thundbird.  AOL offers IMAP(S), POP(S), and SMTP, so they really do have the basics for me.  They don't have many basic features such as mail rules or mail forwarding (which I'm praying for), but luckily I never was reliant on these.  There are many other providers that offer domain email hosting for free, but usually only the paid accounts are given POP/IMAP access, which is why I outsourced in the first place.

If you know anything about me, you know that I don't like paying for anything.  I've therefore compiled a list of free backup MX services and domain email hosts.

Secondary MX - tries to deliver to main mail server

• rollernet.us
• editdns.net

Secondary MX - forwards to another email address

• zoneedit.net
• ulmb.com
• most webhosting accounts

Domain email hosting

• AOL
• Google Apps
• Bluetie
• Gawab