A few minutes ago, I just had a business partner contact me that when they searched their name on Google, a report from Toutapp appeared in the results. Sure enough, I tested it and there was the report in all its glory! This particular business partner’s industry is severely restricted by regulations. The fact that his name could be associated with our business could raise questions and, now, impact whether or not we continue to do business with them.

I didn’t expect this. When I read the FAQs and Privacy Page, it was quite clear that the data was only available through a private URL that I could share with others.

Well, that’s obviously not the case. My guess is that I may have shared the link via social media and now the page is being indexed by Google. In viewing the page contents, there is not a NOINDEX meta tag… and worse, the Robots.txt file appears to be totally commented out. As a result, Google has full permission to index the site and pages… your data… and the data of your email recipients.

A simple search of the site shows a number of the Year in Review pages have already been indexed by Google. Worse yet, there’s no way for me to unpublish my report. I’ve contacted Toutapp through their website to immediately remove the report.

Was it my fault that the data got published? I suppose it could have been… but ToutApp needs to make it very clear in their instructions if this information AND the information about your email recipients is going to be published. Also interesting is that they’re publishing email addresses out there unobfuscated… great for SPAMMERS to pick up and run with.

Toutapp needs to immediately offer a means of deleting a report. Otherwise, this may be a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Tonight I got home and received a FedEx addressed to my blog from Grasshopper. Curiously, I opened the package and actually found a package of real chocolate covered grasshoppers – now that’s a marketing campaign!

Read the fine print! The package then references a message from Grasshopper to Entrepreneurs:

Grasshopper may not be what you think! It’s actually an integrated virtual phone system (virtual pbx) for your company that includes toll free numbers, forwarding capabilities to home, mobile, office… and even online voicemail to email capabilities. Costs range depending on the package you would like – but they start at $9.95 per month and range up to $199 per month.

I’m a sucker for a marketing campaign that sticks out from the crowd and this is one of them! I’d like to learn more about how Grasshopper determined that entrepreneurs were a prime target audience for this campaign. I also look forward to finding out how the campaign works out. If it doesn’t result in direct revenue, it’s surely going to bring awareness to Grasshopper!

It will be interesting to see how the service will compete and hold up to Google Voice when it goes live. It appears that Grasshopper has some robust functionality, but the price and minute ranges could be constraining to some small businesses.

As for the chocolate covered grasshoppers, I tried one and so did a friend of the family. It tasted like chocolate… with a bit of a crunch. My son and daughter refused to try one.

One of the projects I’ve been working on this week has been a WordPress Plugin that allows direct SMS integration with Connective Mobile. The plugin is quite robust, with both an administrative interface and an author interface. The admin interface allows you to manage the integration’s features. The author interface allows you to add subscribers and send out messages to your text club subscribers.

Connective Mobile Administrative Interface:

Features:

• Administrator level access only
• API Authentication
• Subscribe to comments (for the blog’s owner). Automatically filters out Akismet designated spam!
• Blog post alerts (to notify your subscribers when a post is published, compatible with WordPress 2.6.1+)
• A form to manually add a subscriber.
• Get a count of subscribers.

Connective Mobile Author Interface:

Features:

• Author level or higher access
• Send a broadcast text message to your subscribers
• Shorten a URL (using is.gd) that you want to put in your text message
• Manually add a subscriber.
• Get a count of subscribers.

Connective Mobile has quite a robust API and I’ve been working with Adam there to both fine-tune the plugin and develop a great integration. WordPress has grown quite a bit over the last year and is being used for a number of uses, including ecommerce, client support notifications, event management, etc. Adding the ability to subscribe by SMS is a pretty cool feature.

We’re going to test it on my blog and at The Bean Cup, a local coffee shop. The Bean Cup can use it for sending out lunch special alerts, new blog posts, and band announcements… and much more! If you’re interested in the plugin and the service, you can connect with Adam through their website. Be sure to mention my blog post, we’re working on coming up with a discount for my readers. We’d also like to add a few more test bloggers (service is limited to the US for now) that will give the service a workout.

The service is fully compliant with all carriers, requiring a double opt-in and opt-out options. You can opt-in by texting MTBLOG to 71813. You can opt-out by texting STOP MTBLOG to 71813.

NOTE: We’re not responsible for charges that your carrier may charge you for the text messages or data charges associated with them! This is totally beta right now (you should have been subscribed when it was alerting for all the SPAM comments!).

If your form element has the id=emailaddress and you add a form onSubmit=”return checkEmail();”, this is a Javascript function that you can utilize to return an alert if the email address has a valid structure or not:
<script language="javascript">
function checkEmail() {
var email = document.getElementById('emailaddress');
var filter = /^([a-zA-Z0-9_\.\-])+\@(([a-zA-Z0-9\-])+\.)+([a-zA-Z0-9]{2,4})+$/;
if (!filter.test(email.value)) {
alert('Please provide a valid email address');
email.focus;
return false;
}
}
</script>

The function also returns the focus back to the email address field!

Watch the video. You have to love Markku, especially the attempt at discus-style throwing! Thanks to Phil Schwarzmann at Nokia for letting me know about their wacky viral video!