Two weeks ago, House Bill 2463 passed the Oregon House unanimously – 60 to zero to legally require computer workers to report any discovered child porn. Failure to do so can include a penalty of $6,250, up to a year in jail, or both.

Wow. Well it’s about time they all agreed on something – everybody claims to hate child porn, right? But wait – look at this closely – what does the law actually mean?

Much like many laws passed here in Oregon, I think this is a piece of poorly researched feel-good vote getting activity. It’s not that I’m a fan of child porn, but it should be MY right to make moral decisions about what I do, and the government has no business legislating this particular issue.

Back in 1999. I had a retail computer store and one of my computer techs found a cache of child porn, pretty sick stuff. I wrestled briefly with the morality of the issue but quickly realized it was none of my business.

To the best of my recollection, after (I think @jalbrecht2000 originally found it, and told @ckstanley) I got a quick legal consultation to make sure that some stupid law didn’t exist that could put me in jail for not turning him in, and we returned the computer unfixed, and I talked to him personally. In no uncertain terms I told him why we weren’t fixing it and that he was lucky I didn’t him in, and to never come back because he’ll always be “that kiddy porn guy” and he’ll be tormented.

That was how I chose to run my business, and other professionals should be free to run their business without this sort of government intrusion.

This short video is slightly technical at the beginning, but halfway through, I think its simplified enough that even a politician can understand why this bill needs MANY further revisions before it gets thrust upon the citizenship of Oregon.

Now what can you do about the issue? PLEASE SHARE this video with someone that you know, so maybe it will draw the attention of the Oregon Senate before it’s too late.

I’m proud to announce that we are one of the sponsors for Portland WordCamp 2010 that is taking place this weekend, although I’m very disappointed that I can’t go.

When I was first approached about sponsorship, I wasn’t really sure that it would be a huge value for me, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I just had to support the event and the community.

I do believe that WordPress has been the single greatest catalyst for my success as an Internet marketer, and it was certainly the inspiration that led me to launch SEO Automatic in the first place.

Last year I spoke on the SEO panel (here’s the video) at the end of the day with Amber Case, Dawn Foster, and Rick Turoczy – (but I guess I must’ve sucked, because I didn’t get invited back this year

Who Wants To Go To WordCamp for Free?

At any rate, this conference is great, and I REALLY want to go, but both of my sons have football games on Saturday, and my youngest is playing a fall league baseball game on Sunday, so I’m unable to use my own sponsorship ticket.

I’ve now checked with the organizers, and I’ve gotten the thumbs up to give my ticket away, so who wants it?

All you have to do is leave a comment here,  e-mail or Tweet at me, and you could attend…

Please note that the “judging criteria” is completely arbitrary and I will give it to whomever I wish.  It’s not necessarily “first-come first-served”, but I do need to make a decision today and get them the name for the ticket, so you should act now.

So… do you feel lucky?  Well do ya?

(Comments now closed)

I’ve had my share of issues with Comcast in the past, and this one is just as frustrating.

Just like many of my issues with them so far, it’s completely inconsistent from market to market, so their support department seems to know nothing about it.

Anyone hosting their own domain somewhere, yet having Comcast as an ISP is continually being forced to jump through new hoops in order to send mail from their own domain.

Until now these hoops have been to verify your outgoing mail settings and change your SMTP port to 587 (or another port for your local market).

Now there’s another inconsistent change that’s not affecting everyone.

As a Portland web host we have three mail servers that our clients use,  and for the past three days, all users that are on our #1 server are unable to send mail to other Comcast addresses.

To make matters worse, Comcast is then misreporting the problem, sending the end user a link, where their page says that their mail server is “blocked as spam”. (For the record, this mail server is not on any spam blacklists at this time).

So, now we are forced to explain to each complaining customer that this is some sort of problem or mistake on Comcasts end, AND we then have to explain that Comcast is also showing them incorrect information.

I have verified that even when you change to port 587 for your outgoing mail server, if the address you are sending to is another Comcast address, then the mail bounces back with this message -

<actualnameremoved@comcast.net>:
Connected to 76.96.62.116 but greeting failed.
Remote host said: 554 IMTA02.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast 208.70.160.19 Comcast block for spam. Please see http://help.comcast.net/content/faq/BL000000

This message says that our mail server (208.70.160.19) has contacted the Comcast mail server, who is blocking the message as spam. WRONG.

Visiting the help.comcast link is of no use to the end user, but as the server administrator I was able to follow the directions and submit our removal request at www.comcastsupport.com/rbl as directed.

Imagine my surprise when I got this e-mail back -

Thank you for contacting Comcast Customer Security Assurance. We have received and reviewed your RBL removal request.

Below each IP address you submitted in your request, we have included the result of our research. Please do not reply to this message.
208.70.160.19

Your request for IP block removal has been denied for the following reason:

- You have been blocked from emailing the Comcast network because we have determined that you are sending email from a dynamic/residential IP within the Comcast domain.

Comcast does not allow subscribers to send email from a mail server other than smtp.comcast.net. All mail should be sent through Comcast’s mail server.

For information on configuring your machine to use smtp.comcast.net, please follow the link below.

http://help.comcast.net/content/faq/BL002

If you need to run your own mail server, please contact our Commercial Services organization at support_biz@cable.comcast.com

Sincerely,
Comcast Customer Security Assurance

Did you note the bolded statement that “Comcast does not allow subscribers to send email from a mail server other than smtp.comcast.net” ?

If that’s really a policy, then why is only ONE of our mail servers affected, and then, only for mail which is sent to other Comcast email addresses?

Do you suppose this is just a mistake by a server administrator who misunderstood the direction he was given?

Or, do you think they were really told to block all outgoing mail from any servers other than their own, and that the change outbound port 25 to 597 fix will no longer work soon?

If you are suddenly having this problem here is a workaround to fix it:

Open your e-mail program and change your outgoing mail server from mail.yourdomain.com. (Screenshots are from Outlook 2007, another nightmare)

Change Outgoing SMTP – smtp.comcast.net and go to “Advanced”

Be sure to CHECK THE BOX (or leave checked) – My outgoing Server requires Authentication”

Then change to “Verify using” and type in your comcast username and pw

BUT WAIT – THERES MORE
In order to get this working, you MUST ALSO change your outgoing computer port to 587 – So I THINK they’ll be screwing this up too.

WTF is going on, Comcast?

I just finished my slides for an hour-long presentation that I’m giving on Wednesday, April 15 at a monthly meeting of the Corvallis Etailers Association.

The presentation is taking place at

• 420 NW 2nd St, Corvallis, OR 97330
• 12 noon to 1:30pm

I’ve prepared a presentation on a few essential SEO basics, but after gauging the room for SEO knowledge I plan to quickly shift to a more advanced presentation.

My hope is that most of the attendees will already “get” the SEO stuff, and we can do some real time site reviews,  maybe demonstrating the functionality and time-saving aspects of my SEO review tool.

Here’s a map to get there but I have no idea how someone might sign up to attend, or even to find out anything more about this group! If you’re interested in going, you’ll have to email me I guess!

I just did a search for Corvallis Etailers Association and find absolutely nothing other than a quick twitter post I made a few days ago.

Huh – sounds like they should have a presentation about marketing 101 next month

This morning, email and website access is sporadic (at best) on the PDXTC servers, and it is slowly being restored.

For what it’s worth, the problem was not actually on our end, but in the middle, with one of Portland’s primary bandwith providers making a stupid mistake. i know that’s of little consolation, but it’s the truth.

Tuesday afternoon about 4:45, our primary bandwith provider (Time Warner) made an unannounced and incorrect change to their system, causing not only web and mail servers to go down for PDXTC, but for nearly all of their Portland customers.

While we do have an alternative bandwidth provider for cases like this, they (apparently) have been unable to accommodate the traffic levels, since several local hosting companies have placed a huge load on them due to this Time Warner outage.

We realize the inconvenience this has caused, we apologize, and we are working diligently with Time Warner and yet another provider to achieve a speedy resolution, and prevent this from happening again.

Okay, catchy headline, I’m guilty. It won’t be the last, but may very well be the best you’ll ever see, if you look at it logically…

Regional conferences are showing up all over, dividing the time talent and energy of the conference speakers.

After the original SearchFest in 2005 did not return in 2006, SEMpdx was formed and revived the event for the following year.

In 2007, the volunteer board members of SEMpdx put together SearchFest at the Oregon zoo, and managed to fill a great batch of sessions, by speaking ourselves and leveraging our own Northwest relationships.

By any measure, (except perhaps financially) SearchFest 2007 was a huge success, got lots of national coverage in the search industry, and gained quite a bit of respect for Portland.

For SearchFest 2008, we had people requesting to speak, as well as more individual relationships ourselves, we were able to fill the entire day with world-class experts, and none of our board member was on a single panel other than as moderator.

For SearchFest 2009, we are following in the same tradition only this year is going to be the best ever, and in my opinion, may be better than next years? Why is that?

There are about 46 reasons why, starting with the fact that we have the godfather of search himself, Danny Sullivan, giving the keynote. Danny seldom speaks anywhere but his own SMX conference series, and for all we know he may never again.

Last year I asked Danny (half jokingly) if he would keynote our conference since he was moving back to the United States, and was thrilled when he agreed. This may be your only chance to see him in Portland.

In addition to our previous reputations, having Danny do the keynote made it even easier to accumulate our 45 other reasons - all of the SearchFest speakers, presenters and moderators.

This isn’t just some local conference. These are the BEST IN THE WORLD, and I’m honored, privileged and appreciative of each and flattered to hang in the company of these people

The fact that they are all spending their own time away from work and sharing as volunteers means a lot to the industry, and to the education of business owners, which is really what this is all about.

I personally go to quite a few, and just last week I paid half price – $2500 (as a returning attendee)- to an event where one of our SearchFest panelists was on the 5 person, 2 day panel.

Unless Matt Cutts himself agrees to the keynote next year, and eveyone else in the industry then begs to speak too, I think I can safely say that you’re never going to see a better line up here in Portland.

With two sessions for most of the day, it likely pays to get a second ticket for your webmaster or other key employee, and today is the last day to get advanced pricing

The discounted price ending today is $179 for members, $229 for Non-Members – register here

Finally, no matter when you register you can save a few more bucks with this coupon code
BOARD-SEMPDXSF0920

Next Tuesday night, you’ll have an opportunity to hear two usability experts talk about real-life examples and case studies, and perhaps even some live reviews, (if you’d like to submit your own  site) in the February SEMpdx event.

Instead of the usual Hot Seat panel focused on nothing but SEO, two new panelists will be showing their skills:

Matthew Brown, NY Times
As Director of Search Strategy for the New York Times Company since 2005, Matthew Brown continues to drive the research and technology side of the search marketing effort for the Times, the Boston Globe (Boston.com) and the International Herald Tribune.

Matthew is responsible for the architecture and execution of solutions that deliver a more engaged audience to these online properties.

Melissa Casburn, ISITE Design
With 12 years of experience as a web strategist, information architect, project manager, and instructional designer, Melissa can get a lot done in a day.

Comfortable in both corporate and agency environments, she helps much-loved companies bask in the glow by adding stickiness to their sites.

She’s good at spreading the love too, creating experiences that inform, connect, and empower users.

As the Director of User Experience for ISITE Design, she leads a team of web strategists, information architects and content strategists whose focus is helping clients create and protect their competitive advantage online.

Are you brave enough to have your site critiqued in front of others? Maybe you just like to see others squirm? Maybe you just want to enhance your own knowledge, and stop making the same mistakes on your own site.

Join members of  SEMpdx next Tuesday, February 10th, 2009, at Hotel DeLuxe for an eventful evening of SEO and user experience, and you can sign up to attend right here.

As I promised this morning, I have uploaded my East Portland Chamber of Commerce presentation here, including all of the links that I spoke about.

You may open it directly from this link, or just right click here and choose “save as” to get it onto your own computer.

For those that weren’t in attendance, it’s a basic presentation with a few site-usability tips, and links to what I believe are the best 12 places for listing your website for free in local directories.

I just spent nearly 2 1/2 hours on my 10 minute presentation for the East Portland Chamber of Commerce, tomorrow morning at Warner Pacific College.

If you’re already a search marketer you probably won’t learn much, but if you’re a small business owner, it should be enlightening.

My goal is merely to make the attending members aware of all of the changes that have taken place over the past 18 months in Google, and most of the presentation will be filled with screen shots from different types of search results that will appear when users search from the Google homepage.

I didn’t write much of a script, just took a bunch of notes, since I figure that if I can’t wing it for 10 minutes, then I really must not be very knowledgeable about my subject. At the end, I’ll likely be announcing my part in a full morning marketing presentation that I was asked to participate in before the end of the year.

If you happen to be in the area of Warner Pacific College tomorrow morning at 7:30, please do stop by and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and a muffin… Oops that reminds me, I have to get to Costco before they close…

Warner Pacific College
2219 SE 68th Avenue
Portland, OR 97215

Directions
I’m not sure of the name of the room, but it’s in the new building, right above the Cafeteria…

Next week is an SEM Hotseat event geared towards beginners. Have you come to search marketing events before and been overwhelmed?  Do you have some SEO questions that you think are too basic?  This is your chance to get that added level of detail and attention you may have been craving at other events.

Since the beginning of SEMpdx, several of us on the board have been operating under the assumption that people are no longer as interested in the basic fundamentals of search as they used to be, when we design our monthly programs.

Over recent events however, we’ve received feedback that there are a surprisingly large number of people that still don’t “get it” and would really like to have more basic information about the fundamentals of search engine optimization, and search engine marketing.

Next week’s event does exactly that, going “back to basics”, and there are still several spots left for attendance, and even a spot for a site review, I believe.

You can read more about the event and sign up directly here.

Next week’s SEMpdx presentation gets very specific regarding the local search ranking algorithm. SEMpdx is fortunate to have a new board member join us for 2009 who’s recently moved here from San Fransisco.

His name is David Mihm, he’s an expert in local search, and he’s agreed to give a similar presentation to the one he gave at SMX West in California couple of months ago.

If you’re with a local business and want to know some specific things you can do to rank your business better when your city name is used in the query, then this is one presentation you don’t want to miss.

Also at this event, I’m going to be on the 4 person panel for a mini – SEM Hot Seat event, along with David,  Todd Mintz and Lisa Williams and we’ll be critiquing three websites.

Check out more info here, and if you come, please do take the time to introduce yourself.

I’m looking forward to next Tuesday nights meeting of the Oregon Computer Consultants Association.  The subject is going to be using open source software on your desktop as a replacement for Windows, whether personal use, business use or both.

I’m so fed up with computer problems that I’ve actually considered buying a Mac, but I have a hard time believing that it would help me in the long run, and it certainly wouldn’t be economical.

I want to move to an open source environment where every problem has a solution – but just may not have been invented yet.  There already seem to be open source applications out there that do everything I could possibly want, and I’m hoping that this presentation will give me an up-to-date overview for 2008.

Here’s the Meetup group details
Here’s the OCCA website

and here are the full details of the meeting:

When:
August 26, 2008
6:00 – 7:00 Dinner/Networking
7:00 – 9:00 Meeting/Presentation

Where:
Rheinlander German Restaurant
5035 NE Sandy Blvd
Portland OR 97213

What:
Open Source Software On The Desktop

You’ve heard and read the Linux hype, you may even be running Firefox, but what’s the 4-1-1 on Linux and Open Source Software? Is it ready for the desktop? or the laptop? for Business? for Grandma?

This presentation will address those questions and more:

• What is Open Source Software? What is Linux? and why should I care?
• Are there any ready-to-use open source applications?
• How can I make money if the software is free?
• and more!

This presentation will be “only mildly technical” and audience questions and answers are welcome. Linux and open source applications will be demonstrated live.

Jesse Black, Yellow Crayon Computer Services Jesse Black is Chief Technologist at Yellow Crayon LLC, a Portland-area computer services firm serving individuals and small businesses. He is also co-host of TVLinux, the long-running community television series which promotes Linux and other open source applications. Jesse has used both Linux and Microsoft Windows on a daily basis for several years.