Tech Forward:

There’s nothing worse than having some clueless person clog up your inbox with a multi-MB file attachment.

If you ever need to send a large file to someone and FTP’ing is not an option, burning a CD and sending it overnight just seems like a huge waste of resources, and you don’t want to create an account with some clunky online file sharing website, you might want to do what I do and send the file via YouSendIt.

What I like about YouSendIt is that you don’t even have to create an account to send a file.

1. Just fill in the recipient’s e-mail address.
2. Fill in your e-mail address.
3. Add an optional small note (100 characters or less).
4. Attach the file and hit “send.”

The recipient gets an email from YouSendIt (not from you) that he or she has a file waiting and can click the handly link in the e-mail to download the file. Recipients have seven days to download the file; otherwise it’s toast. It’s virus free and totally secure.

With the free account, you can send files up to 100MB, and if you want to pay YouSendIt has convenient monthly plans that will allow you to increase your file size permissions.

I’ll be the first to admit that e-mail communication doesn’t always do a good job of getting your point across.

E-mail is great for sending files and communicating simple ideas, but e-mail unfortunately doesn’t afford the recipient the benefit of tone and inflection, and sometimes no amount of emoticons will do it.

Here’s when to pick up the phone and speak to a person live:

• You have something of a sensitive nature to discuss with someone. I remember when a guy broke up with Carrie on Sex in the City via a Post-it note. Such poor form that she avoided getting arrested for smoking pot on a public street in NYC. Well, that’s never happened to me, but a client with whom I had not only had a close working relationship but also a close personal relationship ended our working relationship via e-mail. She said she just wanted to let me know as soon as possible, but it said volumes about her inability to have hard conversations.
• You and the recipient have tried to communicate your points via email at least three times, it’s two days later and you’re still not on the same page. Sometimes e-mail can make even the simplest things so complicated. If you’re not getting what the other person is saying–or vice versa–simply pick up the phone. Many times leaving a simple voice mail for the person has worked to clear up confusion. Again, it’s all in the tone of voice.
• You’re thanking them. People don’t say thank you nowadays. Perhaps I’m old fashioned or just haven’t gotten with the times, but a handwritten thank you sent by snail mail is always best. Barring that, a sincere telephone conversation can convey what an e-mail never can. Once, a company wanted me to write about it on this blog. I thought it had a cool concept, but there wasn’t a fit and it didn’t feel authentic, so I didn’t write about it right away. Then one day, there was a fit and I did. I sent the CEO a link to let him know that I finally wrote about his company. No response ever. No comment on the blog post. No quick voice mail. Nada. So very not cool.

So, just pick up the phone, will ya?

That was the subject line of a piece of unwanted e-mail (i.e., spam) that I received recently. Although the subject line was a bit nutty, even I have to admit that it was creative.

And that’s what I’m noticing . . . that spammers and phishers are getting more and more creative in their subject lines and targeting. Thousands of people fall prey to these e-mails every day. They enter their sensitive information on what appears to be a legitimate website–even some confusingly similar to their own banking institutions–and, before you know it, someone either tries to remove money from their bank accounts or, worse yet, assume their identity.

It’s getting bad out there. Really bad.

Here’s how we help stem spam at xynoMedia. I hope it will give you a few ideas:

1. Don’t use filters. Filters give too many false positives. How many times have you sent an e-mail to someone who tells you he or she didn’t receive it, only to have that person find your e-mail crowded among obscene enlargement and international dating offers?

2. Use challenge-response systems instead. You’ve seen this system at work, I’m sure. You send an e-mail to someone and, right away, that person’s system e-mails you back asking you to click a link to confirm that a real person with good intentions sent the e-mail.

The idea is that many of the robots used to send spam out won’t have enough “sense” to open the e-mail and click the link. What’s more, many of the reply e-mail addresses for spam are non-operational anyway, so the challenge e-mail won’t even be received.

Many people think this puts a barrier between you and someone who is trying to communicate with you. Not so. Many people are used to these systems by now, and since you only have to click once, it’s not really a bother. The reality is, people who really want to be in touch with you will take the time to click a link; those who don’t, won’t. Simple.

An example of a good challenge-response e-mail service is Spam Arrest. (BIG Hint: If you’re not a technical person, have someone walk you through the setup. The software is great, but setup is not exactly intuitive and the e-mail support stinks. You can purchase priority support for 10 bucks . . . which puts you at the front of the e-mail queue. Yes, I’m serious.)

3) Use first name-initial, full surname e-mail address conventions. It’s much easier to spot spam that’s addressed to “Dear LWest” than it is to “Dear Lena.” So rather than using lena.west@somecompany.com as your e-mail address convention, use LWest@somecompany.com and whenever you receive e-mail addressed to LWest, you know you can toss it because people who know you–or even people who don’t–would never refer to a real person that way . . . they would use your first name.

4) Never, ever, ever reply to spam. Not even to bail off their list(s). One reason for those seemingly genuine unsubscribe links is to get you to reply or click. The spammers then know that your e-mail address is a “live” e-mail account (meaning actually working, because they really don’t know whether an account is operational when they send the e-mail). They then take your name and e-mail address, move it to a “live” e-mail address list and sell your information to other, more advanced spammers for money. Sick, I know.

And . . .

5) If you’re ever unsure about a link, type it yourself. If you think that your bank has sent you an e-mail, take the time to pick up the phone and call to ask or open a new browser window and type in the website address yourself to log into your account to see if there’s a problem. Never click a link contained in an e-mail you don’t know. Not only can it lead you to a phishing website, but it can also possibly invisibly launch/install viruses and trojans onto your system. Not a good look.

Remember, spam is a business designed to put you out of business. You and your employees are your company’s best defense.

People are overloaded and completely innundated with e-mail. I’m one of those people, and I’m getting to the point where I’m seeking out solutions to the madness.

One of the things I’m trying is a new product called Email Center Pro, from the good folks at Palo Alto Software.

They say it’s supposed to be great for companies that have multiple e-mail accounts to check, but I’m finding that it’s great for any super-busy person.

It lets you delegate e-mail, add notes to each e-mail and do other stuff that you’ve always wanted to be able to do with e-mail. The interface is easy to use, so the learning curve is looooow.

If you want to try it with me for 90 days for free, I’ve only got 30 invites. First come, first served. Click here to try it. The form should automatically add “LenaMedia” in the promo code section.

Drop back to comment and let me know what you think…

A few months ago, I was the Co-Editor of a blog on a popular blogging network. Boy, was that short-lived and thankfully so.

The blog started with four of us, dropped to three of us, after I left dwindled to two people and now there’s just one person editing that blog. That one person that’s left is who I call the ‘Always On’.

You know the type: everytime you send an e-mail, they always answer right away - no matter what time of day or night.   They’re always the first to respond to any group e-mail or listserv.  They’re the modern day equivalent of a goodie-two-shoes.

Here’s the deal:

It’s great to be responsive. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s infinitely better than being unresponsive. However, when you always respond right away to any request (aside from responding to the media), it sends the following messages:

- to your colleagues that you are trying to ‘one up’ them;

- to potential clients that you have no other projects that you’re working on;

- to exisiting clients that they have unlimited access to you (which has a way of setting unrealistic client expectations).

In short using technology (e-mail, Blackberries, etc.) to be available is a good thing just don’t overdo it and send the wrong message.

It’s safe to say that we all get way too much unwanted email (spam) nowadays.  Although we try to cloak our email addresses on our websites (more on this in a minute) and we may even go so far as using ‘throw away’ email addresses, we somehow always seem to end up with inboxes filled with spam.

If you identify with the above scenario, you might want to try these steps to help improve the situation:

1) Give up trying to control spam. This is an exercise in futility. You’ll never not get spam (unless you use step 4) so, face the fact that it’s here, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon and in the interim you need to adopt a healthy attitude towards it.  It is what it is.

2) Don’t cloak your email address - too much. Many people are used to seeing LWest at xynoMedia dot com but, LWest [at] xynoMedia [dot] c o m is total overkill.  Yes, e-mail address cloaking makes it hard for spambots (mini-programs designed to harvest e-mail addresses from websites) to grab your e-mail address but it also makes it that much harder for potential clients and the media to contact you.

3) Sort first. When you open your inbox for the day, go through all your new e-mail and weed out the spam all in one run. This way you can spend the rest of your time focusing on the email that really requires your attention as opposed to sorting through spam the whole time you’re processing your inbox.

4) Use challenge/response software.  This is really the only foolproof way to eliminate spam. You’ve seen it…you send an email to someone and right away you get an email asking you to click or type something in order for your email to be delivered. The idea being that spambots aren’t smart enough (yet) to do this. The sender only has to do this once and you can set up the software so that anyone who’s currently in your address book doesn’t have to go through the challenge/response process. Everyone I know who has used this loves it to the max.

5) Don’t use e-mail filters. Some e-mail filters are good, some are not but largely all of them depend on how well they’re set up. I have yet to see a filter that has not inadvertently filtered out a ‘good’ email under the assumption that it was spam. That ‘good’ email could be an email from a friend - not a big deal. But, it could be from a potential client or a media source looking for an interview - very big deal.  And, no matter how often we think we’ll check our filters, I can’t tell you how many times people get busy and forget. Why leave such an important piece of your business’ communication to an inanimate sorting system?

Try these ideas and let me know what works for you.