Beta 3 Release

Release date Friday, December 11^th 2009.

This is the final major beta release before launch.

New Features

• Vastly improved accuracy! Our new "grey list" management module is now live. Please note that, due to the nature of handling grey listing mail servers, validation will be slower for email addresses on mail servers that implement grey listing spam protection.

Fixes

• More timeouts fixed. Please note that there may be a few issues with the "delete all" button still timing out. This will be fixed in the commercial version when launched.
  
• Emails that should be "blocked/rejected" were showing as "OK". Specifically , Yahoo email addresses (that cannot be validated due to Yahoo email server configuration) were showing as "OK" and now (correctly) show as "blocked/rejected"
  

Enhancements

• Increased storage. Now check up to 50,000 email addresses at one time
• Page size control is now scrollable (using up/down buttons)
  

Beta 2a Release

Release date Monday, November 30^th 2009.

Fixes

• None

Enhancements

• Improved performance. Changes to processing are now yielding faster validations.
• Storage limit increased to 50,000 emails (was 4,000).
  

Beta 2 Release

Release date Sunday, November 22^nd 2009.

Fixes

• Email checking service hanging (emails stuck in "Pending" state).
• Timeouts on import.
• Timeouts on filter / sort.
• Timeouts on delete.
  

Enhancements

• New hardware. Dedicated servers for email checking. Service is now faster and more reliable.
• Storage limit increased to 4,000 emails (was 2,000).
  
• "What's this" context help.
• "Filter" is now active by default. Click the "filter" button to hide filter options.
• Changing the page size now persists for your session.
• Right click (or CTRL+click for Mac) context menus for grid and campaign management.
• "Refresh" and "Delete Selected" buttons on grid header.

New Features

• File upload. Upload emails in text or CSV format. Recognises and extracts email addresses from text, Excel (save as .csv) and Outlook (save as .csv) formats.
• Campaign Management(keep track of different email lists) . Emails can be assigned to campaigns on import (file import only at the moment).
• Drag & Drop support. Easily manage campaigns by draging emails from list to campaign "tree".

New Video Product Tour

Video Created for Beta Launch

Blog comments: Now working ok

We've been made aware that there have been problems for some of you trying to post comments on the Beta test blog.

These have now been resolved.

Import Errors: Please read.

Several of you are getting errors on import.

This is a known problem that occurs on importing large lists.

As a temporary work around, please paste smaller numbers of email addresses. We've found that pasting around 500 email addresses at a time works well.

Longer term, we'll be providing a file upload capability that is far more scalable than copy/paste.

Day 1 Testing Observations

Firstly a big thank you to everyone that's been in touch today about their experience with trying out the new software. The response has been excellent so far.

Together with your feedback, we've been watching closely what's happening in the background. Already, we're building a picture of what needs fixing and enhancing.

Here are some of the common problems:

Emails stuck in "pending" state

Checking of the emails happens in the background using a server job. On several occasions today, the job has just stopped. We've kicked it off again so far at least 3 times so far today.

We know what's causing the job to stop unexpectedly and hope to have a fix in place in the next day or so.

Timeout on bulk import

We've seen this at least 5 times so far today for different testers. The problem is to do with the large numbers of email addresses being imported in one go.

As a work around, you can cut down the amount of addresses that you import in one go. We've found 500 to be a good number.

Longer term, we'll be putting in an "upload" function (rather than copy/paste) that will be far more scalable and able to handle larger numbers of addresses.

The dreaded - "Oops" error screen

We get alerts every time you see one of these! So far today, we've had a number of these. The good news is that we know exactly what's causing it. It's on the list to fix. Please bear with it.

Lack of documentation / instructions

Several of you have struggled with some aspects of the interface. I've done my best to respond individually to any queries. Hopefully, this got you up & running just for now.

We've outsourced documentation this to get it done. It will appear at some point.

There is some limited documentation here.

All in all, I'm quite pleased with how the first day has gone so far. Most of the issues that we are seeing are kind of expected in any software dealing with large amounts of data.

Beta test carnage? The morning after..

We wrapped up the beta deployment at around 2am this morning.

It's now 09:30 and after some much needed sleep for us all here, how do things look?

Actually, not that bad! It's great to see that many of you have already uploaded some emails to check. Thanks..

The good news for us is that the server is still running! There's always a risk with new stuff in a "live" environment that it can lock up the server. This didn't happen so good news here.

We've already found 2 issues thanks to the beta testing:

• Time-outs on importing emails (resulting in error page in your browser)
  
• Validation service stopped

We're not sure at this point why the validation service stopped but it's running again now.

More later..

Import Timeouts

We're noticing some timeout issues from the bulk import screen. We'll put this on the fix list.

If you get this problem, please reduce the number of email addresses that you paste into the form. We've had good success pasting around 500 addresses at a time.

It's 01:30am here in the UK and the coffee is running out so we're closing for some much needed rest.

Back tomorrow 0900 GMT.

Accuracy - Yahoo, Grey Listing etc

What's going on with accuracy?

Yahoo

Email Checker works by talking to email servers to check if a email addresses are valid. To do this, it uses a "standard" conversation protocol to "talk" to email servers. Yahoo mail servers use a non-standard sequence of "conversation" which makes it impossible for us to validate email addresses.

At this time, there is no known work around for this problem with Yahoo servers.In the next few days, we're going to flag all Yahoo email addresses as "Blocked/rejected" because there is simply no way to check email validity against their servers.

Grey Listing

The good news is that we'll be including features to handle mail server "Grey Listing". This will make validations much more accurate. As far as we are aware, no other email address checking products can handle grey listing mail servers.

Beta Launch Notes; Please read..

You asked for it and after months of development and in house testing, it's here!

Email Address Checker from Rolosoft.com goes into public beta testing on Tuesday, October 27^th 2009. If you are lucky enough to be on the beta testing team, welcome! Your participation is greatly appreciated.

The beta test will last around 3 weeks. During this time, you can perform unlimited email validations on up to 2,000 addresses at one time.

Introduction

We've tried to deliver a product that is easy and intuitive to use. Anyone who's used Microsoft Outlook should feel at home with our interface. Our intuitive interface means that there's no long documentation to read to get up and running! However, if you haven't used Outlook before, read on.

Quick Start

1. Logon using the details that we sent to you by email.
2. At the "Welcome" screen you have 2 options: "import" and "manage your lists".
3. I suggest that you start with the "import" option first. You can import up to 2,000 email addresses for checking.
4. Once the import is complete, you will be taken to the main "list management" view. This is the main area for most activities for email validation.

Bulk Validation

Email validation occurs in the background. In the "list management" window you will see each of your email addresses in a grid. Immediately following an import, new email addresses will have a status of "pending". After a while, the status will change to one of three possible values:

• Valid.
• Bad.
• Blocked/rejected - this means that the email addresses server has rejected our query and we can't be sure about this email address one way or the other. Rejection can be for many reasons such as email servers being offline or perhaps the user's email box is full.

Filtering, Sorting and Searching Results

The "list management" window has powerful features for sorting, searching and filtering validation results.

Sorting

Sort results by clicking on the grid headings.

Searching and Filtering

Click the filter (it looks like a funnel) button on the toolbar. This opens up filtering and searching capabilities for each column.

Exporting

You can export results to:

• Word
• Excel
• CSV
• PDF

Click the export button on the toolbar.

Before exporting, you can filter results for just the emails that you are looking for. For example, you can filter the results to "Valid" before exporting. See the previous section for an explanation of how to filter results.

Limitations and Knows Issues

Here are some things that we know about and will be working on before final launch.

• Accuracy.We are already matching the accuracy of our free email checker service (which is around 95% accurate). We want to do better! We are working on improving "grey listing" handling. More on this in another post.
• Campaign management (not working yet). The ability to create separate lists (or campaigns) of email addresses. The bare bones of the interface are in place including right click context menus. We're working on getting this finished.
• Documentation & guides. To follow.
• Other "fluff". Privacy policy, support options and Terms of Service are missing / need to be completed.

Bug Reports & Feature Requests

Please report any bugs or other comments by either:

• Clicking the "bug report" or "feature request" links in the footer of the application.
• Posting comments on the beta test blog.

I hope that you enjoy this beta test software.

Rowland O'Connor, CEO
rolosoft.com