3rd party mail sending service [closed] - smtp

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Closed 9 years ago.
I'm currently running a web-app that will send emails to users when they sign-up, invite friends, and want to reset password. I also will be sending out general marketing email. I have a postfix server set up, but I don't have reverse DNS set up (due to hosting provider limitations). I'm afraid my emails to users will not be delivered. I've tested it and some mail go straight to the Spam box for Gmail.
Instead of this DIY approach, are there good emailing providers out there that can guarantee high deliverability of my emails? I'd rather not have to deal with this myself so I can concentrate on building my app. I looked into Mailchimp but they seem to be a service for bulk mailing and not for individualized emails (in the case of user sign up validation, friend invitation, and reset password). Or am I getting this wrong?

Mailchimp does have a service for transactional mail which they built on top of Amazon SES, you can check that out here.
You can also check out PostageApp, where I am the Product Manager. We specialize in transactional emails and we make it real easy to design, send, and manage all of your emails.
Happy to answer any questions you may have!

Ended up using SendGrid. They take care of all the deliverability issues and can do transactional email sending.

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What is the best approach to store a pdf file? [closed]

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Closed 9 years ago.
Good day all,
Please forgive me if this isn't the right forum to ask this question - but I couldn't think of a more resourceful community.
I handle IT stuff for a small firm where I built a PCI Compliant VB.net application to store credit card information. When a customer gives authorization to keep their card information on file, they are required to sign an Authorization Form. All has been successful thus far, but now they want to be able to store a pdf copy of this authorization form and make it accessible via the application.
I've been thinking of the following ways accomplish this task:
FTP (separate from the DB)
BLOB (directly in the DB)
What's the best approach to achieve this and how would I go about coding this in VB.net? I'm using a MySQL database.
//Kismet
Separate from the DB... just save the URL or file path in the database. In this case then you could split the PDF's up across multiple servers if needed. Also keeps the size of the DB smaller (which you want to backup more frequently).

HTML5 Websocket + Node.js Realtime Notification System [closed]

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Closed 10 years ago.
in the last weeks I have built a small notification system using HTML5 Websockets and node.js with socket.io.
There are still some things that I haven´t solved, yet.
I have read that realtime notification using node.js should be the best performance solution vs long polling etc because of non blocking i/o operations.
Now assume we have to notify friends of this user. Something like "I have bought a new iphone". How do I teach node.js to realtime notify specific user 1:n? Till know I have only got sending and receiving message 1-1 communication.
This means I have to go check against facebook api friendlist first and find out which facebook_id is connected with which socket_id somehow. Then check the users privacy settings, if he would like to receive notifications and then send and save it into the database.
So to me this somehow seems not to be the most effective solution...
At the moment I would use mongo-db native driver for node.js and have db operations done by serversided javascript.
I still need to implement facebooks javascript sdk to get the friendslist, but I would have trouble with the users privacy settings. Doesn´t this destroy all the advantages of non-blocking I/O?
How do you actually solve this. To me, it seems very complex.
Thank you very much.
You shouldn't go to Facebook to check friends list and such..
you should cache them, i assume the users are logged in if so the solution
seems to be very easy.
Get the user.
check if the sender is his friend
check if the recipient want to receive the message.
btw, redis is a lot faster.
Edit:
if you are worried that the user data won't be updated
and that's why you do not cache you should check Real-time Updates.

Windows8 Push Notifications in Metro Application using HTML5 [closed]

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Closed 10 years ago.
I have a metro application in which am trying to display notifications whenever my service get updated.I tried to read Metro App push notification concepts overview from microsoft website and I observed Push Notifications sample but I did not get proper idea to implement push-notifications in Metro-apps?
Can anyone give me a sample example to implement push notifications in metro apps using HTML5 & JavaScript,really it will helpful to me?
Thank you in advance.
For push notifications, you need a server side component to perform the actual push of the notification. This is performed by your server sending a request to a specific URL -- that URL is obtained from your application which registers with your service. Clearly doing this in a pre-canned way is marginally non-trivial, although the process itself is not.
Details on how to obtain the URL, and how to send a notification to it:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465412.aspx (Getting the URL)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465450.aspx (Sending a notification to the URI)
If, however, you just want to update the tile for your application when it does something when the user is using it:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465439.aspx is a good starting point.
The above links have snippets. There is a fully worked through sample for tiles/notifications on MSDN also:
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/Push-and-periodic-de225603 (Push)
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/App-tiles-and-badges-sample-5fc49148 (Local)
I'm also working on the same. Here I'm sharing few links below which might be useful to you.
Prior to this, once read the Guidelines and Checklist for implementing push notifications.
Go through this link for Implementing Windows 8 Push Notifications.
Hope it Helps.

Vb.NET Client Server Push Notification [closed]

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Closed 10 years ago.
I am a an amateur in Vb.NET programming, or in this case any programming language that needs push server notification.
I am currently making an application which requires the server to send a notification if Client A is making a task assigned to Client B.
I can only imagine to create another application on the server which up all the time and listens to any changes happening on the database, and then if there any changes send a notification to assigned user.
Is there any better approach?
Can someone point me to a good resource?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
This has been covered already here [asp.net http server push to client], which should give you some good info about adding a push service to your project.
On a related question, John Saunders, says:
"Unfortunately, that's just not the way the web is designed. Rather,
it's set up so that a user asks for a specific resource and the web
server provides it if it can. One request always returns exactly one
response.
This means that you need to simulate the push service by creating a
heartbeat between a rendered browser page and your server. The web
page will have javascript that tells the browser to periodically ask
the server, "Do you have any changes for me?" You can implement that
in ASP.Net AJAX using the timer control, but it can be tricky to get
it right. There are lots of little gotchas you need to watch out for."
Some other realted websites & questions:
http://www.strathweb.com/2012/05/native-html5-push-notifications-with-asp-net-web-api-and-knockout-js/
Instant notifications like Facebook
Server-Push Technology (aka. "COMET", "http server push", "websockets")
AJAX Server Push
One thing I know about push services, is that it uses a lot of resource. Also look at Reverse AJAX.

Wanted: suggestions on how to implement subscription / recurring billing [closed]

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Closed 10 years ago.
I would like to set up a premium subscription service for a PHP/MySQL based site. The site is Wordpress based, but highly customized and I'm not looking for a plugin solution necessarily. To oversimplify, I need to query the signed in user's subscription level (paid or free) and tailor the content that gets presented accordingly.
I'm looking for suggestions on how to implement the back end for billing/payments. I know one option is to use the paypal API, but I was wondering whether there are alternatives that I should also be considering. One thing I have noticed with many sites using paypal is that the experience is quite disjointed in the way one gets passed from the original site to the paypal site and back again. Is this just the way these sites have implemented the integration or are there better options than paypal from a UX point of view?
Also...
Have you used any tools / libraries / services that made this easier?
Do you have any advice on this topic in general? Gotchas, pointers, etc.
Finally, we're not a large corporation (yet), so a solution that could scale with us would be ideal.
UPDATE: After learning an enormous amount about the different options, we decided to use Braintree. Deciding factors were:
We could easily get full PCI
compliance and still control the
user experience completely with
their transparent redirect
They guarantee portability of your
customer data from their vault (very
few vendors do this)
They remove
the need to set up your own payment
gateway and merchant account
I wrote a detailed review here: http://expletiveinserted.com/2011/03/18/comparing-recurring-payment-solutions/
I also put the cost comparison list for our shortlist of solutions here: http://expletiveinserted.com/recurring-payment-cost-calculator/
Every payment gateway is different, and whichever one you decide to go with will provide complete instructions on how to integrate with the various features they offer.
PayPal is of course the only one that is not regulated by any governmental body, and coincidentally enough, the only one that makes their money by robbing people blind. Shouldn't be too hard to find thousands of horror stories if you look.