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By: James Koole on April 28th, 2009
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: SSL Service
Comments: 1

GeoTrust, thawte, VeriSign brands and Extended Validation and Code-signing certs added

Starting today, OpenSRS Resellers can now sell 16 different SSL certificates from three of the world’s leading SSL certificate providers. We’ve added a range of products from both thawte and VeriSign in addition to the GeoTrust-branded products you could sell through us until now.

On top of the new brands, we’re also adding some new types of SSL certificates, including Extended Validation (EV) and code-signing certs to the mix. Full details and pricing is available on our website. As with our GeoTrust products, Resellers can take advantage of the super pricing we’ve negotiated with these certificate providers.

Are you Selling SSL Certificates?

If you aren’t yet selling SSL certificates, now is a great time to add them to your product lineup. These days security is top of mind with businesses and consumers alike, and SSL certificates bring that peace of mind to consumers, allowing them to complete transactions and share personal information with confidence.

A long-standing misconception around SSL certificates is that they are only really needed where financial information is being passed between computer and webserver. But the reality is that an SSL certificate is a must in any application where valuable data is being passed. That includes everything from forum logins, to email servers, to ecommerce and control panels. If the data on the other side of the login has value (and it probably does, or it wouldn’t be protected by a login), then that data should be encrypted and protected by an SSL connection.

Reseller Webinar

We’re planning a webinar for our Resellers in the next month or two with our friends at VeriSign. They’ll be bringing you some great information on how you can integrate SSL certificates into your product lineup and how you can maximize your sales. Expect to hear more about that shortly.

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By: James Koole on April 24th, 2009
Posted in: Industry News
Tags: .TEL
Comments: 0

Telnic has just released two new free apps that allow mobile users to use and manage .tel domains. There’s one app for the iPhone and one for Blackberry users as well.

Telnic says, “My.tel, the iPhone application, allows a user to log into their TelHosting account directly from their iPhone and update or manage all their .tel contact information and details, making it simple and easy to update their .tel on the go.”

Over on the Blackberry side, the .TEL application goes further, according to Telnic, “allowing users to easily lookup .tel domains and save the data in their Blackberry address books. It also enables them to switch profiles, accept friend requests for private data and synchronize their contacts with live .tel data so their address book is always up to date.”

There is more information on both apps at: http://telnic.org/community-applications.html.

Downloading these applications to you iPhone or BlackBerry is easy. Just head to http://apps.telnic.tel in the browser on your Blackberry or grab the iPhone app from the link below.

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By: James Koole on April 24th, 2009
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: Email Service
Comments: 0

As mentioned last week, we’re ready to roll out the latest version of our webmail application to Resellers. Webmail 5.5 is now available in the Test environment. We encourage email resellers to login to the Test environment, enable it on your test account and take it for a spin.

Webmail 5.5 is part of the continuing evolution of our webmail application. The overall look and feel is very similar to what users are accustomed to and the transition should be relatively seamless for most.

Here’s what’s changing in Webmail 5.5:

Features:

• Added a Calendar: The calendar features a full “drag-and-drop” interface and is available in both the standard and basic interfaces. Calendars can be shared within the same domain if the end-user chooses to do so. Users can import calendar data from standard ical/.ics format calendar files or from a public ical/.ics format URL. Calendars can be exported to a standard ical/.ics format file. Resellers can choose whether to offer the calendar to their users using the Branding Tool.
• Added RSS Feed Reader: Users can now subscribe to and read RSS feeds within webmail. Users can enter their own RSS feeds or select from a predefined catalog of popular feed sources. The ability for Resellers to choose the feeds within the catalog is planned for a future release, but for now, the contents of the catalog is determined by OpenSRS and contains a broad range of different sources. The RSS Feed Reader is currently only available in the standard interface. As with the Calendar, the RSS Feed Reader can be enabled or disabled by Resellers via the Branding Tool.
• Improved “Basic” interface: The Basic Interface has been upgraded to support all features of the Standard Interface with the exception of the RSS Feed Reader feature. The Basic Interface also now includes a rich text editor and spell checker in the email compose area.

Performance:

• Improved overall speed and responsiveness: Much work was done to optimize webmail across different browsers and for users on slower connections. The result is a dramatic improvement in speed and performance. The improvement is felt across all browsers, but is most noticeable on Internet Explorer and for users with large mailboxes.

Usability:

• Added Dashboard hiding: A new “Dashboard” double-arrow button allows the left-hand folder pane area to be hidden and restored.
• Improved folder icons: Core folders now have custom icons to make them easier to identify.v
• Added/reorganized message list columns: We’ve added Reply-to/Forward Flags, the ability to mark a message as flagged/unflagged. Block/Safe Sender functions have been moved to the “More Options” drop-down. A Message-ID column heading and sort option has also been added. The “Attachment” column has been moved to the right side of the message index display.
• Improved Search: Users can now choose to search by sender, subject, message headers or message bodies. The default continues to be search within the message headers.
• Added a full message source viewer: Users can view the full, raw source of a message.
• Improved email composition: We added the ability to request a “read receipt” when sending a message. Users can now also set message priority when composing and sending email. An auto-save feature has been added that automatically saves composed messages as a draft periodically. Spell-check has been added to the basic webmail interface. The rich text editor has been improved to include more formatting options.
• Improved the Address Book: Added the ability to import from Mozilla Thunderbird address book files.
• Improved the General Settings area: The Interface Preferences and Display Preferences have been combined under a single tab called “Display Preferences.”
• Added Secure POP3 Mail retrieval: POP3 external mail fetching now supports SSL connections.

OpenSRS is “Reseller Friendly” and that motto is something we think about every day when making decisions about new products and features on existing products, like OpenSRS Email Service. While we’re excited to get this new webmail out to users, we understand that this kind of upgrade can have an impact on your support departments, and that email resellers will want to provide some warning to their users to help them get up to speed on the new version. With that in mind, we’re rolling out Webmail 5.5 in a preview program for the first little while.

Here’s how the preview program works:

• Participation in the preview is recommended, but optional, and the default is to not show the preview to end-users. Resellers can enable the preview through the branding tool in the Mail Administration Center (MAC).
• When the preview is enabled, users are offered a choice between the new webmail interface or the current webmail on the login screen.
• At the end of the preview period (which will run for at least eight weeks), the preview option will be removed, and all users will automatically use the new webmail.

Throughout the preview period we’re very interested in hearing from you about the new webmail application and how your customers are responding to it. There is a feedback form that is integrated into the login screen for webmail where users can share their thoughts.

Webmail 5.5 was promoted to the Production Test Environment on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009. We suggest that all of our OpenSRS Email resellers to log into the Test environment to see both how to enable the preview for your users, and also to see the improved webmail interface.

Right now, we’re on track to make the preview available on the Live servers for both Cluster A and Cluster B beginning on Thursday, April 30th, 2009. At that time, you’ll be able to login to the MAC and enable the preview for your users. As mentioned, the preview is disabled by default; it is up to you to determine when you are ready to begin the preview.

Here’s a short screencast that shows how to enable the webmail preview using the Branding Tool within the Mail Adminstration Center.

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By: OpenSRS Team on April 23rd, 2009
Posted in: Events
Tags: WHIR Networking Events
Comments: 0

The WHIR continue their incredible series of networking events all over North America with a stop in New York City on Wednesday May 6th at The Park. Dave Woroch, VP of Sales, and Steve Barnes, Business Development Manager will be there, so make sure you find them and say Hi. The events are free, but you must RSVP and there is a limited number of spots available, so act fast.

Image courtesy of Web Host Industry Review

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By: OpenSRS Team on April 17th, 2009
Posted in: Inside OpenSRS
Tags:
Comments: 0

We often talk about OpenSRS staff as folks who live and breathe the Internet. We support and build services which you resell. But, what does that mean and how do we do it? You have told us that you want to know more about us. You put your reseller business in our hands and we take this responsibility very seriously. We hire technical experts and are constantly working to make your reseller experience seamless. This way you can focus on building your business with our services.

This blog series will introduce you to the technical teams, their managers, and the people who hold our corner of the Internet together. We use a modified version of ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) called ITSM (Information Technology Service Management) to manage our IT services. It is a framework of processes and policies which we have tailored to meet our needs as an agile Internet company. We will discuss our technical response including our handling of your support tickets, escalation and change management processes. We will talk about how our monitoring system works. We also plan on giving you an overview of our infrastructure. The series will include discussions with our Technical Support, NOC (Network Operations Center), Ops (Operations), Abuse/Security, Quality Assurance and Development teams.

Our Support and NOC teams work closely together and are managed by one person: Kevin Rueckert. Kevin has over a decade of experience at OpenSRS and knows your businesses from this side of a server to that side of your support call. Aj Mirani (Manager of Operations) has posted before about Operations and provided Technical FAQs for your information. Aj has been hard at work building a flexible change management process. Aj, Kevin and I work very closely to provide you with incident communications on status.opensrs.com and about maintenance windows. Garrick Lau (Manager of IT Security and Compliance) and I will talk about the great work that his team does to protect our networks and your services. Jody Stocks (Director of Software Development) will talk about his Email and Domain Development teams, including Quality Assurance. Earlier this year he wrote about our use of the Agile development process. Throughout this series we will walk you through the work that each of these teams contribute.

If you have subjects you would like us to address, you can post here, visit us on the forums or you can email me: heatherATopensrsDOTcom.

(picture by Frank Lemire, Team Lead, OpenSRS Technical Support)