The blog of Steve Root

  • How to get noticed on LinkedIn (before LinkedIn existed)

    What a pleasant surprise!  I had a contact through LinkedIn (which, to be honest, I don’t really use very much) from Hannah Skerritt of Qube Recruitment Ltd saying

    Hi Steve
    you just popped up on my “people you my know” screen and for the first time I think I do!! I think we studied together for a very short while many many years ago… Did you study software engineering at Mid Kent?

    Whilst I didn’t study Software engineering, I did do a business studies course there as part of a training scheme with GEC Avionics in Rochester.  So a short email conversation with Hannah later she explained she remember me from the induction training week we both did there.  There were about 40 of us starting different training schemes that week.  So having met me for that short period of time she remembered me because of the way I introduced myself.  She says that I said:

    I’m Steve Root, that’s Steve with a V and Root like a tree

    Wow! I remember using that in the past but didn’t realise it had such an effect. It’s impressive and humbling to be remembered for that long simply because of a few words of introduction. Maybe I’ll need to start future presentations with that phrase.

    Also worth noting is how lucky it was that LinkedIn made the connection. I’ve not put on linked in that I worked at GEC or that I studied at Mid Kent College so I think the only connection it could have had to work on was that I’m also in the ME postcode area. We have no other links in common.

  • Email from a new business that want's to supply my business

    Hoorah! Matthew actually took the time to visit our web site, read the page about supplying to us and use the special email address.  Sure, the video wasn’t really just for our company but effort was there.  So, we don’t need a video right now but maybe if I share this here google will notice him quicker and help this new business become an established business.

    Hi my name is Matthew Jones, I have started a new business called Blue Dot Media offering promotional videos as well as graphic design, since this is my first week in business I have made a video for your company please find below. The reason for this email is I am offering you a promotional video with your own photos for only £65.00.

    Click to view the video on Youtube

    • A professionally designed video adds value to your website and credibility to your business, you can put it right on your homepage to be viewed as soon as a visitor hits your site.
    •  Another bonus is YouTube videos have a habit of coming close to page one faster than your website does sometimes.
    • You’re also able to submit the video to the top video sharing websites, creating a network of back links and potential traffic sources to your business. You can post it on your Facebook page, it gives you something to Tweet about, send out to your mailing list etc.

    Thanks Matthew Jones
    Blue Dot Media My Website

  • Caught in my spam trap – cloud-mailer.co.uk / brainycat.co.uk

    I’ve decided to start naming and shaming the people who spam me. I have an email address hidden in the code of one of my web sites. It doesn’t display to visitors but robots will read it.  To give the spammers a sporting chance, the email address is nospam@….mydomain… I then email them to ask where they got the address from.

    Their response to asking where they got the email address from?

    hello@cloud-mailer.co.uk – no response

    Observations

    Appear to be a couple of web developers. They seem quite nice on their web site. A shame then they are not only sending spam to my spam trap, but offering a service of sending spam for others too.

    Headers

    Delivered-To: nospam@....
Received: by 10.76.80.100 with SMTP id q4csp157962oax;
        Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:00:10 -0800 (PST)
X-Received: by 10.194.89.167 with SMTP id bp7mr33008343wjb.0.1360695609612;
        Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:00:09 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path: <cmail@server.brainycat.co.uk>
Received: from server.brainycat.co.uk (server.brainycat.co.uk. [5.77.38.165])
        by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id d2si4372759wix.36.2013.02.12.11.00.09
        (version=TLSv1 cipher=RC4-SHA bits=128/128);
        Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:00:09 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of cmail@server.brainycat.co.uk designates 5.77.38.165 as permitted sender) client-ip=5.77.38.165;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
       spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of cmail@server.brainycat.co.uk designates 5.77.38.165 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=cmail@server.brainycat.co.uk
Received: from cmail by server.brainycat.co.uk with local (Exim 4.80)
	(envelope-from <cmail@server.brainycat.co.uk>)
	id 1U5L5M-0002E6-7b
	for nospam@....; Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:00:08 +0000
To: nospam@....
Subject: Marketing
From: hello@cloud-mailer.co.uk
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Message-Id: <E1U5L5M-0002E6-7b@server.brainycat.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:00:08 +0000
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - server.brainycat.co.uk
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - ....
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [521 32007] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - server.brainycat.co.uk
X-Get-Message-Sender-Via: server.brainycat.co.uk: authenticated_id: cmail/from_h
X-Source: /usr/local/bin/php
X-Source-Args: /usr/local/bin/php /home/cmail/public_html/cron/hourly_marketing.php
X-Source-Dir: /home/cmail

<html>
  <head>

    <meta http-equiv='content-type' content='text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1'>
  </head>
  <body bgcolor='#FFFFFF' text='#000000'>

  <p style='color: #125474; font-size: 22px;'><strong>Reach Thousands Of People This Evening</strong></p>

<p>We'd like to take the opportunity to introduce href='https://www.cloud-mailer.co.uk/'><strong>Cloud Mailer</strong> - a revolutionary new email-networking platform that provides millions of UK business email addresses for you to use in your email marketing campaigns. </p>
    Delivered-To: nospam@....
Received: by 10.76.83.136 with SMTP id q8csp93204oay;
        Fri, 1 Mar 2013 14:45:19 -0800 (PST)
X-Received: by 10.194.89.169 with SMTP id bp9mr20366076wjb.57.1362177919027;
        Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:45:19 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path: <cmail@server.brainycat.co.uk>
Received: from server.brainycat.co.uk (server.brainycat.co.uk. [5.77.38.165])
        by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id ua5si6017960wjc.61.2013.03.01.14.45.18
        (version=TLSv1 cipher=RC4-SHA bits=128/128);
        Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:45:19 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of cmail@server.brainycat.co.uk designates 5.77.38.165 as permitted sender) client-ip=5.77.38.165;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
       spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of cmail@server.brainycat.co.uk designates 5.77.38.165 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=cmail@server.brainycat.co.uk
Received: from cmail by server.brainycat.co.uk with local (Exim 4.80)
	(envelope-from <cmail@server.brainycat.co.uk>)
	id 1UBYha-0006qM-67
	for nospam@....; Fri, 01 Mar 2013 22:45:18 +0000
To: nospam@....
Subject: E-mail Marketing
From: team@cloud-mailer.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Message-Id: <E1UBYha-0006qM-67@server.brainycat.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 01 Mar 2013 22:45:18 +0000
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - server.brainycat.co.uk
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - ....
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [521 32007] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - server.brainycat.co.uk
X-Get-Message-Sender-Via: server.brainycat.co.uk: authenticated_id: cmail/only user confirmed/virtual account not confirmed
X-Source: /usr/local/bin/php
X-Source-Args: /usr/local/bin/php /home/cmail/public_html/cron/hourly_marketing.php
X-Source-Dir: /home/cmail

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Cloud Mailer - Revolutionary Email Marketing</title>

<style type="text/css">
body { color: #000; line-height: 140%; font-family: Georgia, 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans'; font-size: 16px;}
h1 { background-color: #f4f4f4; padding: 12px 8px 12px 8px; font-size: 25px; margin: 0; width: 100%; height: auto; font-family: Helvetica, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial; color: #124b66; }
h3 { background-color: #f4f4f4; font-size: 18px; padding: 8px; width: 100%; height: auto;font-family: Helvetica, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial; color: #124b66; }
p { padding: 8px; margin: 0; }
ol li { line-height: 140%; margin-bottom: 10px; }
a { color: #124b66; }
a:hover { color: blue; }
strong { color: #124b66; }
hr { background-color: #e9e9e9; height: 1px; border: none; }

.normaltxt {
	font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
	font-size: 13px;
	text-align: left;
	line-height: 16px;
	color: #000000;
	font-style: normal;
	}
.normaltxt a:link, .normaltxt a:visited {
	text-align: left;
	color:#000000;
	font-weight: bold;
	text-decoration:none;
	}
.normaltxt a:hover {
	text-align: left;
	color:#000000;
	font-weight: bold;
	text-decoration:underline;
	}

.nametxt {
	font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
	font-size: 16px;
	text-align: left;
	line-height: 18px;
	color: #000000;
	font-weight: bold;
	}

.subtitletxt {
	font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
	font-size: 13px;
	text-align: left;
	line-height: 13px;
	color: #84888b;
	}

.jobtitletxt {
	font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
	font-size: 11px;
	text-align: left;
	color: #84888b;
	line-height: 13px;
	}

.blackaddresstxt {
	font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
	font-size: 12px;
	text-align: left;
	line-height: 17px;
	color: #000000;
	font-weight: bold;
	}

.addresstxt {
	font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
	font-size: 12px;
	text-align: left;
	line-height: 17px;
	color: #000000;
	}
.addresstxt a:link, .addresstxt a:visited {
	text-align: left;
	color:#000000;
	text-decoration:none;
	}
.addresstxt a:active, .addresstxt a:hover {
	text-align: left;
	color:#000000;
	text-decoration:underline;
	}

.verticalsplittxt {
	font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
	font-size: 12px;
	text-align: left;
	line-height: 17px;
	color: #84888b;
	font-weight: bold;
	}

.nametxt {
	font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
	font-size: 16px;
	text-align: left;
	line-height: 18px;
	color: #000000;
	font-weight: bold;
	}

.footertxt {
	font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
	font-size: 11px;
	text-align: left;
	color: #969696;
	line-height: 12px;
	}

.unsubscribe_text{
	font-family:Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
	font-size:11px;
	color:#ccc;
}

.footertxt a:link, .footertxt a:visited {
	text-align: left;
	color:#969696;
	text-decoration:none;
	}
.footertxt a:active, .footertxt a:hover {
	text-align: left;
	color:#969696;
	text-decoration:underline;
	}
	-->
</style>
</style>

</head>

<body>
<h1>Thanks for your interest in Cloud Mailer</h1>

<p>With many returning customers, href="http://www.cloud-mailer.co.uk/">Cloud Mailer has changed the way people make new business contacts and leads.</p>

<p><strong>If it still isn't clear what we do - </strong>We send your email to an <em>up-to-date</em> database of UK based companies in industries and locations of your choice. All you need to do is choose who you want to send your email out to, write your email and then choose when you want to send it out. <strong>We do the rest</strong>.</p>

     

Search this site

Free apps

  • birthday.sroot.eu – Your birthday or other celebration date based on [years on other planets] / [how many seconds/days] / [how far you’ve travelled around the sun]
  • stampulator.sroot.eu – Calculates the combination and how many 1st, 2nd, large 1st and large 2nd class Royal Mail stamps you need on large envelopes and packets

Recent posts

Archives

Categories