The SEO Automatic URL Review for Android is finally available, and it covers all the same ranking factors that the web version does.

Just like the iPhone app, the only difference between the free version and the paid version is that you can e-mail reports from the paid version.

I wouldn’t call this breaking news since the app has been out most of the summer, but what IS breaking news is the fact that for the first time, I can SAY it’s available, because I can actually find the application on an Android phone.

The SEO App for Android Was Invisible

Ever since the app came out this summer, I’ve been unable to find it from a phone, any chance have ever had to get my hands on one, which admittedly, wasn’t often.

If I searched for Android SEO app on Google, I could find it listed in a few places, including AndroLib and at AndroidZoom but if I tried to find it from anybody’s phone, searching for it by “SEO”, or by the exact name, or even the exact file name, returned zero results, and it was pretty frustrating.

I couldn’t tweet about it , I couldn’t blog it, and I couldn’t really SAY anything about it because it was basically invisible.  In fact, I pretty much kept my mouth shut about it altogether, trying to avoid the embarrassment of having an SEO App that couldn’t be found!

Last night though, that changed, as a friend of mine took out his brand-new Droid 2 phone to show me, and naturally the first thing I did was go to the Android market search for our URL review app.

I typed in SEO Automatic and bingo, there were the two apps, both the free, and the paid versions!

At this point, theres only one review for the paid version, which apparently was on a day when things werewnt working, but I hope to change that soon as more people try it out.

Try the Free SEO App for Android

I hope you’ll tell others about it, and try our SEO App for Android here, or install the free version from this QR code -

Yesterday afternoon PDXTC had a report that a website we were hosting was down, but the server administrators said that it was up.

An hour later, we had a second report of another website down, and the admins claimed it was up as well, and that’s where I got involved.

I was working from home, and checking both websites came up blank – page not found – through my Comcast internet connection.

I looked up the users  FTP information, and I was unable to login top either account using FTP either, simply getting an “unable to connect” message.

One common connection between the two domains was that they happened to be on the same server, but other than that there was no reason why I shouldn’t be able to see these domains.

I went to a free proxy service and from there I was able to see both domains and verify that they were indeed up and running, so clearly this was a Comcast issue.

Was Comcast actually blocking my access to the web server? Had someone on this shared hosting server done something nefarious, and now Comcast was preventing me from accessing it through their servers?

I phoned Comcast, and of course had to sift through their ridiculous voicemail system, finally arriving at the tier 1 tech support where I had to fight my way past his insistence upon rebooting my router and checking my computer settings.

Finally after getting the guy to understand that the problem belonged to Comcast,  he transferred me to the “abuse” section, where he claimed they must be “blocking those websites”.

Blocking those websites?!? – I’d never heard of that before!

I waited my turn in the queue with Abuse department, and when the guy answered, he listened patiently, verified what I said was true,  and then had me run a trace route and email him the results.

As you can see, I didn’t get very far -

By that point it was after seven o’clock at night, and he told me he would have to escalate it to his next support level but that I shouldn’t expect it to be “fixed”until some time the next day.

At this point I asked if Comcast could be intentionally blocking my server IP address, and he assured me that no,   Comcast does not block access to web servers in the same way that they block mail servers and ports.

Under certain circumstances he says, where a website is known to be distributing Malware or viruses, they may issue a warning before the users arrival that “the site may be harmful…” , but they do not, as far as he knows, intentionally block access to a Web server.  As far as he knows… Huh.

Well, this morning, the sites are back up and I may never know what went wrong, so I guess I’ll just move on.

*** Update ***

I got a phone call back from comcast to tell me that all was resolved, and as it turns out,  Comcast HAD intentionally blocked all activity from that web server IP address!

Interestingly, sites hosted on that same web server that had been assigned a static IP address continud to work fine, but the shared hosting domains were all blocked, with no warning message to the user, and FTP, Trace Route, and even pings to the IP were blocked entirely.

The Comcast rep read me the notes he had gotten from engineering, and they sais that the IP was blocked because “Malicious data flows were detected over TCP port 80″.

That’s it – no indication of what domain caused it, nor, was there any reason given WHY they would UNblock it at my request, since presumably the malicious activity is still going on from whatever domain was causing the problem. Bizarre.

This was news to me, and news to the guy in security, who said he’s never heard of them blocking IP addresses like this before.

So, is the moral of the story that a shared hosting account may be risky to your visibility? It looks that way, doesn’t it?

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?

There’s been a nice addition to one of my favorite pieces of link building helper software with this morning’s update. It just keeps getting better and better to help your employees make their link building time actually count, and actually build a couple of links, instead of doing research.

1. Added: “Toggle Highlighting “NoFollow” Links” option.
2. Added: “Most Recent Post Date” column that shows the date of the most recent post on the blog. Some of the blogs most recent posts are over 2 years old. You can set a filter and remove blogs that haven’t had an entry since a selected date.

It’s all about the tools, and that’s why I endorse, support, and recommend Fast Blog Finder as an affiliate…

Wowpen
One of the few things I saw at the Consumer Electronics Show that really made me say “Wow” was this invention, that enables the user to write on a regular pad of paper with a wireless pen sized device, and have the words pictures and characters instantly displayed on the computer screen. I got to try it out and it worked flawlessly.

There were other similar items at the show that involved a cabled unit, which in retrospect might actually be better to prevent loss, but the cabled units that I saw also required purchasing special paper from the company. The Wowpen required no special paper, and the only thing cabled was a small “reader” unit that went into a USB ort and sat at the top of your desk to monitor hand position. Wow.
Website

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PowerAir – Zinc Energy Source
Until today I had never even heard of zinc as an alternative fuel source. I have a few affiliates in the alternative energy space, but this one really stood but, as I got to see the world’s first indoor generator. It was only about the size of two monster gaming PCs side-by-side, and it runs indoors, with re-cycleable fuel.

The fuel it runs on is a little bit smaller than a BB, but colored silver, and with a rough texture. When the fuel is spent, the owner can return the fuel for reprocessing, so there is literally no waste created.

The home size generator pictured above will not be around for a while yet, and vehicles powered by zinc are at least three years away according to Don Ceci, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing. However, they do have andheld units available now, that are about the size of an old palm pilot, and provide up to 40 hours of electricity for recharging your cell phones, iPods, and handheld electronic devices.

Once activated, the 40 hours of electricity can be accessed instantly for up to 90 days of use before the unit gets sent back to the company for a trade in.
Retail pricing on the handheld units is going to be $39.99 for the first purchase, and substantially less for the trade ins.
Website

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CallPod
This company had three very cool products that thet unveiled at CES. The first was a Bluetooth headset that would work from 300m away, which is more than a football field. I can barely get from my desk to the printer against the other wall of my office before I start hearing the signal fade when I’m on a conversation. The unit is pretty large, so not exactly unnoticeable. However, as technology improves it will undoubtedly shrink.

The second was a wireless charging device that acted as a pod in the center of your table for putting everything in all at the same time, eliminating the unsightly cable mass that plagues us all. Very useful, and well monetized, since every unit requires its own short cable be purchased from the factory.

The final item was a Bluetooth conference call system, enabling the extended range headsets to be, a conferencing system. Obviously this eliminates the need for people to be gathered around a table speaking into a center unit, and will enable people to have conference calls with their coworkers in the same building, without having to go to the conference room.
Website

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VieVu – No Hands Personal DVR
About the size of an old Motorola pager, this is a video camera that you wear on the front of your shirt or jacket, that only has two modes – on or off. There are not switches t ocontrol, and just sliding the lens cover open or closed with one hand is all it takes. It includes a microphone and you’ll see everything that you see recording up to four hours, at 640×480.

If you want to capture the details of an event you’re attending or perhaps protect yourself from liability in certain situations, without the need to go through the hassle of a handheld camera, this seems like it will fit the bill quite nicely.
Website

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Lumus – Electronic Eyewear
There were lots of manufacturers with glasses that you could hook up to your TV, video game or video iPod, while showing you what appears to be the equivalent of a 50 or 60 inch TV from about 10 feet away. Those are great, and the resolution on those glasses is pushing 1080i, getting better every year. Most hhave built in sound too. However, but all of them completely block your vision, and this company has added a new twist.

Instead of blocking your vision entirely, this one allows for an opaque control screen to come up and still allow you to look through it. The demo they had to try was hooked up to a handheld Windows mobile device and it really worked very well. The glasses themselves were heavy, but fairly stylish, and I could see wearing these in public, unlike any others I’ve seen. Remember the old IBM commercial with the guy waving his arms in the air while sho uting voice commands to his computer? We might not be quite there yet, but these glasses will definitely make it easier to drive down the freeway while you’re reading and sending e-mail
Website

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Data Locker
A simple idea, but one sorely needed. This company has a portable USB hard drive that includes a screen on the front requiring that a password be entered before data can be accessed. They offer it in several sizes and versions, including (I believe) one that’s just an encasement to use your own size drive. The password gets embedded to the drive, so there’s no way someone could just break open the case either. On occasion I have carried around a couple hundred gigs of information and I shudder to think what might happen if I were stupid enough to lose it, and for the additional $90 premium that this adds to the price of a drive, it’s peace of mind worth having.
Website

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NoahPad
A sub compact notebook computer, that folds, up, and allows the screen to flops over backward like a tablet pc, (but it’s not a tablet). The twis is that , rather than run the whole desktop on such a small screen, they have turned the keyboard into two large touchpads, allowing you to “one touch” pan around the screen as needed in any direction. Another “touch” and it’s right back in keyboard ode easily enough.

I used it for a few minutes, and the lack of tactile feedback on the keys made it seem a little funny, but I got used to it quickly. With it’s compact size, a 10 hour battery life and a sub $600 price tag, I can see these catching on big time.
Website

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Redfly
Why didn’t someone think of this one sooner? It’s simple, but brilliant, and worked perfectly. It’s just a compact laptop sized unit, with a screen, touchpad and keyboard for using your Windows Mobile device. Easy to use and instantly plug-in, this thing is very useful. An interesting thing to note is that if you’re using one, it actually ADDS power to your mobile device and will extend the life of the charge, even when the Redfly is running on batteries. If you had one of these, you could probably do just fine without your laptop on an extended trip.
Website

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S-Xgen by Seamless Internet
Holy cr*p, now THAT’s what I’m talkin’ about! I WANT one of these bad boys… Forget Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Palm, this is next gereration stuff baby – Woohoo!

This unit weighs in under a pound, comes with a 20 gig hard drive, TFT screen, 2 USB ports, a Webcam, speakers and microphone, connects with WiFi, Bluetooth and cellular access.

This thing has he power of a laptop, the portability of a PDA, and the connectivity of a cell phone, and promises t ocontinue to change the way we think of mobile computing. Very cool.

Website

Nothing from CES that I picture here will change the world, but it was stuff I found pretty cool all the same. Most of the pictures I took on the fly as I was going by, and I really have no other information about them, so I’m unable to provide a link. However, I’m sure that they’ll be show up in the search engines and in the stores soon… Well, most of them…

Ring Box Video
An engagement ring box w/ display screen lets you add your own still pictures or video to the screen which plays when she opens the box. They had handouts of an October Yahoo news story featuring Rand Fishkin, our keynote speaker for Portland’s upcoming Searchfest 2008.

Motion Simulator
This was a motion simulator designed for flight games and it won an innovation award at this years show. At a mere $2800, what kid wouldn’t want one of these hooked up to his PC? The pedals and the joystick and the three screen display are definitely a requirement for the true filght sim buff.

Tank Chair Robot
With this Tank Chair I found in the robotics area, rugged terrain is no longer going stop someone who’s disabled from going wherever they want to go. It reminded me of the old MechWarrior games, and it was actually operational. They wouldn’t let them demo it there because it would tear up the floor. When I asked the guy what they buiilt it for, he said”because we could”

Flash memory with meter
This 100 gigabyte stick of flash memory has a display screen right on the hardware itself showing how much space is left. Did you read this correctly? I said it’s 100 gigs, and has a built in display screen. The entire thing is not much bigger in surface area than a postage stamp, and even though it costs $1000, it should make you realize where things are headed, and maybe much faster than you think.

The Hand Dryer in the Bathroom
This unit was actually in use in one of the downstairs restrooms, and the line to try it was much longer than the line to grab a paper towel or use the old-fashioned air hand dryer.

I tried it, and followed directions, and it actually it worked pretty well. The air acted almost like a squeegee as I pulled my hands slowly upward. Still, the extra time it takes to dry your hands with air is something I’ve always hated, and although this is faster than the old air dryers, I still prefer paper.

Remote Cooler
This is a remote control beverage cooler that you can drive indoors or out, so you’re not bothered with the task of having to get up to get another beer. I don’t necessarily think it’s all that cool but I do think it’s amazing that someone actually conceived of this and actually brought it to market, so I threw it in here as one of the stupidest things I saw at the show.

Up to 30 users on one PC
Why? I’m not sure… New technology allows you to run up to 30 users on one PC, each with their own keyboard and screen. I know how poorly my computer runs with just one user, and I can’t imagine this could possibly be any good for applications other than instructive environments. Can you imagine multiple users running versions of Microsoft Office 2007 on the same computer?

USB Missle Launcher
Doesn’t every computer need one of these devices? Last year’s USB Missle launcher simply pales in comparison to this year’s where they’ve now included a video camera with a desktop display for targeting of your pets, or your co-workers cubicle. I plan to wait for one of these until they are heat seeking projectiles, or you can plot coordinates for guided missles.

USB Pole Dancer
What can you say about a device like this? At least it gives you something to do while you’re waiting for your beer to arrive from your friends remote control cooler… – That is, assuming you have any friends!

There’s an online community of search engine marketers called Gooruze that’s picking up steam, and I’ve been lurking there quietly for the past month or so.  The information available there is phenomenal, and I strongly recommend a visit, and signing up for this free community.

There are great areas for beginners to get a lot of advice, but I’ve read some pretty good tips from people sharing some seriously helpful information that’s far beyond what I’d call “basic”.

Members can do lots of things, like ask questions, answer questions,  write articles, rate, vote & comment on the articles of others, or even add their own blogs via RSS feed. I’ve now done to my Goorooze profile, and one of the requirements is that I place this text somewhere in my blog,  so here it is – shendison.gooruze.com.

With so many communities competing for my time, this is one I’m trying to make a few minutes for every day…

On my blog, the Blog Rush widget is showing links to those that do not have the widget installed, and I believe I’ve figured out why.

On the home page of blog Rush today, they address some of the issues people have been discussing in the blogosphere, and while they don’t address my issue specifically, they did say this:

While we’ve been busy optimizing our network, we were using some public RSS feeds to balance out activity so no widget would have any empty space.

Since I chose to put my blog in “technology” as opposed to “marketing”, I can only assume that the brand new service has very few (if any) technology blogs available yet. Admittedly, this is a guess, but I believe it’s a valid explanation. Otherwise, as I said in my other post, there would be no point.

In the meantime I’m continuing to use it, and you can see it in action over on the right side. I’m unable to think of a single reason why using Blog Rush is not perfectly fine, so I am continuing my affiliation for the time being. I continue to remain a skeptic of anything that seems too easy, but I’m certainly not stupid, and this seems like a good idea

In the best case scenario, you get relevant inbound links from related blogs that drive traffic and interested visitors. (Any search engine ranking benefit that Google may assign you for the thing that links is purely accidental and unintentional

Try out Blog Rush for yourself… In the worst-case scenario, you provide links to other blogs that are relevant to your own subject matter, giving your visitors more information and a better user experience.

With Blog Rush, you can easily give links to other people right on your blog, and you might get absolutely nothing in return. Wow, this is going to catch on like wildfire, isn’t it?

To be fair, I suspect (hope) it’s just a bug in the program that allows me to link to people that have signed up but are not playing fair… It must be, right? Otherwise, why would anyone need or want to use this thing?

If you’re involved in the Internet marketing world at all, it would have been hard to miss last week’s rollout of Blog Rush. I must have received ten different e-mail notices and invitations, some from some very well-respected marketers, and someone told me it was even mentioned on Shoemoney’s show.

Blog Rush is a method of displaying post titles with links from other associated subject matter blogs throughout the blogosphere on your blog, and they in turn do the same for you..

Participants get links on related blogs, sending visitors back and forth (and maybe even passing some PR?). Every time a new page refreshes, there are links to different associated blogs.

The really nice thing is that Blog Rush actually provides post-level links, and not just blog homepage links, so you’re getting very targeted keyword specific links right your deepest pages from other relevant blogs.

Is this a “linking scheme” as defined by Google? I don’t really think so because you’re actually providing links to other relevant sites and posts that may benefit your readers. The idea seemed sound to me, so I signed up.

Because I frequently write about more than just search marketing, I chose to add my blog to the “technology category”. Since my single most popular blog post last month was “How to reprogram your Comcast remote to skip commercials“on your DVR, this made the most sense to me.

At first I tried to place it in the page of specific posts, instead of using the widget, but had a couple of problems, so I went with the widget method instead, and it works fine.

You can (CURRENTLY) see the widget in action in the right sidebar of my blog, but here is a static image in case it’s gone by the time you read this -

The fact is, following those links in the widget do indeed take me to other relevant blog posts, but of the dozen or so links I just tested from my own blog, only one of the pages had the widget installed on their site. What’s that all about?

If you can add your blog to the network and get it displayed on some people’s sites without having the box appear on your own site, and then where’s the incentive to use it at all?

I would hope (expect, demand etc.) that there is going to be some mechanism in place to ensure that the only blogs appearing in the wake it are those which have the widget appearing on their blogs. Maybe that mechanism is alread in place, and just not functioning?

For now, I’ll leave the widget in place, and keep an eye on my logs to see if it brings me any traffic, but otherwise, what’s the story here, Blog Rush? (Referral link)

Thursday, August 23, 2007
A 17 year old kid named George Hotz, of New Jersey, successfully completes his summer project to hack (unlock) the iPhone, so that it can be run on any cellular service, not just AT&T.

He posted all 10 steps to his blog and by Friday,  made world and national news on all the stations.  The hack involves tinkering with the actual hardware, and is not merely a software hack, so most people will find this too difficult, but still,  a remarkable accomplishment.

Friday, August 24
George announces that he is going to sell the hacked phone on eBay on Saturday night, with the hopes of getting enough money to fix his car, which currently is missing the engine.  Later that day he updates his post to say that eBay is giving him a hard time about this, because there’s apparently some question as to the legality of his actions. in other words, AT& T it is ticked off because their monopoly may be over.

Later that same day, Engadget has announced  that they too have developed a successful hack For the iPhone,  this one a software hack that only takes a few seconds! The party seems to be over for AT&T

Saturday, August 25
EBay forces kid to end auction early, and kid says in his blog, “if you’re interested in buying this phone, E-mail me or comment here”.  Kid then promises to hand over the phone live on CNN to the winning bidder and receives 119 comments on his blog.

Later in the day, the winning bidder is announced,  and it turns out to be a trade, instead of an outright purchase.  Kid trades the hacked iPhone for a vehicle, (a Nissan 350 CE), and 3 brand new iPhones.

He announces his plan to unlock the three Iphones, and names who the the receivers of those three phones will be,  including one going to the person that donated the original iPhone for the project.

He also announces that he is “out of the iPhone project, and is departing for college on Sunday.  I ‘m sure this kid will have a brilliant career ahead of him…

You’re not alone…
Users all over the country are finding out daily that suddenly, for no apparent reason at all, they are unable to send mail if they want people to reply to their business or personal e-mail addressed other than one that is @comcast.net. This is because Comcast is blocking port 25 , which is your default port for sending email through your mail software.

The error message says (fill in your own X):
The connection to the server has failed. Account: ‘XXXX’, Server: ‘xxx.xxx.xxx.xx’, Protocol: SMTP, Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 10060, Error Number: 0x800CCC0E

Gee that’s helpful, isn’t it?
If you are using mail.yourdomain.com for your SMTP outgoing mail server, then you get an error saying “unable to connect to the mail server” even though it just successfully connected to the mail server to retrieve your incoming mail. After wasting time calling your web host, and going through various troubleshooting techniques, they tell you to call Comcast.

To make matters worse, users are finding out one at a time, because Comcast is slowly rolling out these changes user by user in individual markets around the country. This month, it’s apparently Portland Oregon’s turn, where I live.

To cut to the chase, here’s the solution:
Change the port your computer is using for SMTP outgoing mail, from Port 25 to one that your hosting provider will allow. In most cases, this seems to be port 587 for Portland providers.

To do this in Outlook -

• Go to tools – e-mail accounts – view or change existing account
• Sselect the appropriate mail account and hit the change button
• Go to the more settings button, and into the Advanced tab
• Change your default port 25, to port 587, and you should be back in business in most cases.

Still broken?

• Added note from comments below – Some people in the midwest for whom 487 didn’t work succesfully chaged to 465 and picked SSL under the “use the following type of encrypted connection” drop down. They did not check the “this server requires an encrypted connection” box.

In Outlook express -

• Go to tools – accounts – Mail tab
• Choose Properties box – Advanced Tab – and from there you can do the same

The reason Comcast claims to be doing this is in an effort to prevent spam being sent by zombie/spyware/virus laden computers using their bandwidth and their Internet connection.

I suspect they are really doing it to limit liability for any future potential lawsuits, and not really to save bandwidth, but I have no problem with that.

The problem with Comcast doing this is that they do not seem to be telling all of their support people, and do not be notifying their customers. This has been going on around the country for MONTHS.

Instead, it takes the end user hours of frustrating time on the phone spent with lower-level tech-support who have no idea that this change has even taken place.

One can only guess how many individual users are still frustrated at this very moment because they are being forced to do their business e-mail from home using their @comcast.net accounts, after uninformed Comcast agents are able to help them?

As a web host, we were forced to spend hours dealing with Comcast before we got an actual answer, and we still lost a couple of hosting customers over it, who were convinced that it must be our fault, since Comcast told them it was.

Great customer service. If there was any competing product in my market I would switch in a heartbeat. I tried once before in 2005 after nearly an entire summer of poor Comcast connectivity.

Thanks Comcast, for valuing our time so very little, in your quest to make mega millions.

As an avid listener of Internet radio in various forms, I’m proud to be a resident of Oregon, where two of our congressmen, Ron Wyden and Earl Blumenauer cosponsored a bill to preserve Internet radio.

Today, the courts denied an emergency stay requested on behalf of Internet radio broadcasters and their millions of listeners, and this media is in danger of practically becoming extinct, open only to those that can afford the outrageous royalty charges.

I just took less than five minutes to call all three of my congressmen about this issue, and the entire process was painless, with no hold time at any of their offices.

The staff was appreciative of my support an expression of my position.

Please read the short story at Boing Boing, and take action today, because by July 15th it may be too late. you can also go directly to Save Internet radio and enter your ZIP code, instantly getting contact information as well as short talking points for your phone calls.