pelf-ism is contagious

Not too long ago I had an account with Hotmail, and that was before GMail came into existence But because Hotmail offered only a mere 2MB of storage space, I’ve had my INBOX emptied on a couple of occassions, without prior notice. And that was when I switched to using Yahoo Mail, which was providing, what, 10MB of storage?

But since switching over to GMail, I’ve never had problems with Google (or anybody else for that matter) emptying my mailbox because I’ve got plenty of storage space (2.8GB at the moment, and increasing). But that doesn’t mean that my emails will be safe, does it?

Now, if you store important emails in your local computer, that is if you use Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Outlook Express as your default email client, you may want to download them into your computer often to avoid losing them. Alternatively, you may want to try this software called backup e-mail.

The software works by recording every little detail about your e-mail client, and the settings you decide to keep, and saving it all in one useful file. When you decide to restore your archive, it analyzes this data and safely puts all the e-mail messages and settings back into your e-mail client. It’s secure, and easy, and it fully supports ALL recent versions of Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Outlook Express.

To back-up your emails, you select your back-up options, such as Account Settings, Mail Folders, Signatures and Address Books and you’re good to go. You can also schedule your back-ups!

The FREE trial version of back-up email (available for download at http://www.backup-email.com/) simply allows you to back-up your emails and settings, BUT it doesn’t allow you to restore your email archive. To recover files, you will need to purchase the full version for $24.95.

Now, let’s get things straight first. I don’t know Keith of Techie-Buzz. I’m not paid to do this, and I don’t think I need another domain — I have 3 already, and I almost can’t handle them all — or webspace because, like I’ve mentioned, Claire is giving me some space, and I don’t see why I should be given MORE webspace. But I reckon some of you might be interested in this.

So yeah, if you’re interested, read on.

The simplified rules

• Review Techie-Buzz with the recommended keywords.
• Mark Techie-Buzz as your favourite in Technorati.
• Join Techie-Buzz’s MyBlogLog community.

The prize

• FREE domain hosting with 5-freaking-GB of webspace.
• 25-freaking-GB of bandwidth.

The good news..

.. is that there will be 5 winners each month, for the next 10 months. So there are actually plenty of chances to win the attractive prize!!

OK, so what I do need to do?

• Review Techie-Buzz on your blog.
• Email Keith the link to your site. His email is techie@techie-buzz.com.
• Wait for him to announce the winners.

For more information on this contest, visit this page.

OK, let’s get this straight. My Bloglines tells me that I have 12 subscribers, but my Feedburner says otherwise. In fact, there was once Feedburner told me that I had, what, 84 readers? I thought that was pretty inaccurate because the number of people who leave me a comment here on my blog rarely amount to 10, hahhah..

I have an explanation for that, I think.. Perhaps some of my readers have not been exposed to feed readers because I’ve never blogged about them? Or perhaps a lot of my readers visit my blog in their office hence it’s not convenient to leave “any trails” in case their bosses spy on them? Or perhaps my readers are all busy people on-the-go who do not have time time to check whether there’s any updated content in my blog (because there are times I that I don’t blog for a day or two)?

So what have I found?

Zookoda is an email marketing application designed specifically for bloggers. It is a a tool that can act as a reminder to your readers in form of a blog email. It enables you to send a daily, weekly or monthly summary of your latest blog posts directly into your readers’ inbox. Yea, for FREE. It isn’t meant to replace RSS feeds and feed readers, but merely providing an alternative to people who are too busy to read blogs via a feed reader. Isn’t this brilliant?

Zookoda? Do I get to see animals?

No, you don’t. But there is a whole list of other things that you can do, for example:

• promote your blog by keeping your blog readers informed in the form of an email newsletter (and yes, you have complete control over all your email marketing;
• build a visitor base either by uploading email addresses into custom mailing lists or by creating dynamic blog subscription forms;
• manage email newsletter subscribers;
• enhance your blog with custom newsletter subscription forms;
• design eye-catching newsletters to match your blog design;
• schedule recurring broadcasts for each day, week or month. You can also promote your blog by sending one-off promotional emails (I’m going to try this function in a while);
• view real-time open, bounce, click and unsubscribe reports (aren’t we all obsessed with our blog stats?!); and
• access mobile users by emailing blog content in text format (ooo la la).

Perhaps I should run a little test to see whether the number of readers who leave a comment increases after using Zookoda *winks*

Addendum: Before you can send an email announcing your newest blog posts, your “sender details” must be verified by Zookoda as part of their anti-spam commitment.