Purity Consulting » Blog ~ Purity Consulting

Interested in Beta Testing the 2013 Service Update for Email Protection Services?

George Roberts — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:39:51 +0000

As I mentioned in my previous post, we’re in the middle of some massive changes in our Email Protection Services. We’re shooting for a June launch of the changes and are calling them our “2013 Service Update”. We will, of course, be doing our own extensive testing of the new services. When we get close to launch, however, we’ll be looking for a few customers to switch over early to be part of a beta program.

If you’re interested in helping us test our new service and getting early access to the new functionality, please let us know by submitting a Beta Program Request (select Email Protection Services – 2013 Service Update).

Big Changes Coming To Email Protection Services Soon

George Roberts — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 04:26:48 +0000

I’m happy to announce that we’ll be making some changes in the next couple of months to how our Email Protection Services work. I’ll be providing more details in the coming weeks, but I’d like to share a couple of bullet points about what’s coming:

Redesigned Account Manager
Redesigned Quarantine Management
Multiple, redundant, geographically disperse edge servers (i.e. MX records for you)
Updated antispam technologies

I’ll be posting more details as we go along, but feel free to let me know if you have any questions. I’ll answer those I can!

Update on Spam Levels

George Roberts — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 19:42:06 +0000

We’ve heard from MailFoundry that the problems they experienced with their update servers appear to be corrected. Looking at our statistics it appears that levels have returned to normal. If you’re still experiencing higher than normal levels of spam slipping through, please contact support.

Reports of Increased Spam This Morning

George Roberts — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:44:37 +0000

We’ve been receiving a few reports of increased levels of spam slipping through the gateways this morning. We’ve opened a ticket with MailFoundry to look into this.

As a quick refresher, our blocking technology has two levels … the first is based upon IP reputation and message header checks like reverse path checks, sender domain check, RFC checks, etc. This level of checking continues to function normally and continues to block about 80% of all spam.

The second level is based upon the content of the message. This check uses spam definitions that are updated from MailFoundry every few minutes. This check typically blocks the remaining 20% of the spam that we receive. Starting earlier this morning our statistics show that the amount of mail blocked by this level significantly decreased.

MailFoundry is researching but early indications are that the update servers may have been behind in delivering updates. Because spam changes so frequently if we don’t get updates in a timely manner it can cause spam to slip through.

I apologize for the frustration I’m sure this has caused due to the increased levels of spam in your inbox this morning. Rest assured we’re looking into it! I’ll post an update when I hear more.

Book: User-Centered Design: A Developer’s Guide to Building User-Friendly Applications by Travis Lowdermilk

George Roberts — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 04:56:51 +0000

My friend Travis Lowdermilk from the Windows Developer Show has a great book out: User-Centered Design: A Developer’s Guide to Building User-Friendly Applications. This is a great book for developers who are trying to get a handle on user-centered design and I highly recommend it! Use promo code DEVSHOW to save $10!

Welcome to the new Purity Consulting web site!

George Roberts — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 03:33:37 +0000

Welcome to the new Purity Consulting web site! We’re still adding new content and tweaking things, but we imagine we will be doing so for quite a while. We’ll be using this blog for announcements of Purity Consulting products and services as well as general software development posts. If there’s something you want to see us discuss here, please let us know!

The Purity Networks site now redirects here as well, so if you were looking for Purity Networks, please see our Email Protection Services area of the website.

Ford Sync, Windows Phone and Phone Book Syncing

George Roberts — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:06:04 +0000

Are you having trouble syncing your contacts from Windows Phone to your Ford Sync phone book?

There is a situation on both Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 where Ford Sync will only sync a small portion of a phone’s contacts to the phone book and will refuse to sync the rest, no matter how many times you erase the phone book and tell it to sync again.

The issue, I believe, is that contacts from Twitter in Windows Phone seem to cause the sync process to fail. Fortunately, there is a workaround.

On your phone, go to Settings. Swipe over to the applications pivot and go to the people settings. Click the filter my contact list button.

On the filter screen, I unchecked Twitter and LinkedIn … I think that Twitter accounts are actually the problem, but I didn’t care about syncing my LinkedIn accounts to my Ford Sync, so I unchecked that one too.

Now, if your phone book on Ford Sync isn’t empty, erase it. This option is found in the settings in Ford Sync. On that same screen there is a button for downloading the phone book. It will take a little while, but you should get your contacts now.

If you like, you can go back and re-check Twitter so that those contacts show up in your People hub now. Note, though, that new contacts may not sync to your Ford Sync phone book if you do.

If anyone has any more information on why this problem occurs, please let me know and I’ll update the post. But hopefully this will help someone work around the issue.

Seeking Beta Testers for Network Dashboard for Windows Phone 8

George Roberts — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 18:15:16 +0000

If you’re interested in beta testing Network Dashboard for Windows Phone 8, please let us know by submitting your Microsoft Account address to our request form. We’ll email you when you’ve been added!

APN Settings for Build Lumia 920s on AT&T — Plus Internet Sharing Workaround

George Roberts — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 04:48:49 +0000

The Nokia Lumia 920 developer phones that were given out at Build 2012 are unlocked GSM phones, specially created for attendees of Build. As such, they are not AT&T branded and come with a special “access point” settings app to select (and create/edit custom) APNs for mobile networks.

Unfortunately, the LTE APNs that are pre-loaded seem to have a problem … as of this past Friday, MMS messaging has been failing for some (all?) AT&T users. I believe I have found the proper settings to get LTE working as well as MMS.

To set up, go to Settings -> Access Point and add a new APN, give it a name and give it the following settings:

Internet APN -> Access Point Name: pta

MMS APN -> MMS Access Point Name: pta

MMS APN -> Proxy address: proxy.mobile.att.net

MMS APN -> Proxy port: 80

MMS APN -> MMSC address: http://mmsc.mobile.att.net

All other fields should be left blank.

Save the new APN and then tap the new APN to activate it. I’m n0t sure if it’s necessary, but some people recommend rebooting your phone after changing the APN.

This new APN should support LTE and MMS with no problems.

As a bonus, there seems to be a workaround to enable Internet Sharing (so long as it’s enabled in your plan). After the new APN setup (above), go into Settings -> Keyboard and add a new keyboard language that requires a download (such as Spanish). The download will force an update, which will enable you to turn on Internet Sharing (not sure why, but it does!).

Invoice Email Notification Error – Corrected

George Roberts — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 06:46:55 +0000

Tonight’s invoice generated email notifications contained an error that caused invoice item details to be included that were not related to the invoice generated. Please disregard the erroneous invoice items, as you can verify by logging into the Account Manager and viewing the invoice that the invoices are correct.

We have corrected the problem in our notification system and this issue will not happen again. We apologize for the inconvenience!