Email blogging from the Holiday Inn Express in New York City

I was bummed out that I could not trivially post to this blog via email from my room at the Holiday Inn Express on West 29th Street in New York City on their free Wi-Fi service. The issue was that due to the implementation of "Port 25 blocking" by many ISPs, my outbound email has had to go through my ISP's SMTP email server, but that doesn't work from the HIE Wi-Fi network. It simply times out. I tried to revert to "normal" email sending through my web domain host email servers, but that appeared to be blocked as well (as could be expected). I poked around on my web domain hosting service web site (Fatcow) and after about 45 minutes of trying this and that I finally found an alternate port to use for email that might not be blocked. Bingo. Port 587 for outbound email SMTP traffic is not blocked by the local network and does get through to Fatcow's SMTP email server.

So, this post was sent to this blog directly from Outlook Express running on my notebook computer in my hotel room at the Holiday Inn Express.

Note: Other domain host email servers may use different alternate ports for SMTP.

Incidentally, Fatcow has a very short-term introductory special of 25% off for the first year of full web site hosting. The normal price, that I pay, is $99 per year, so the introductory special that expires tomorrow, Friday, December 22, 2006 is $74 for the first year. I have four domains hosted with Fatcow and am quite satisfied with the service, reliability, and price. I've been using them for about six years now. Please be sure to give them my domain as your "referral": Opixia.com, Agtivity.com, Finaxyz.com, or BaseTechnology.com.

Note: If you read this after 12/22, call them to try to get the deal anyway. I suspect that they will give you the deal anyway, as long as you are nice about it. Even if you don't get the deal, the service and reliability is worth $99 per year. You may save a few bucks elsewhere, but is the potential hassle really worth it?

-- Jack Krupansky