Many of you have complained that over past 4-5 days your friends/colleagues were not getting the voting confirmation emails. We read all your posts, got your emails, calls and worked round the clock to diagnose the issue. Our tech team has gotten to the bottom of the problem and now have a fix!

As I have mentioned in one of my earlier posts, all the ‘attempts’ at voting were captured, and the IDs logged on our database; so now our system has now started re-sending the verification emails, over the past 24 hours - some of you have already called in to report that they have already got the missing emails/votes. The second batch (comprising the missing votes over past 2 days) is going out today.

A whopping 125,000+ votes have been cast in total, with the daily rate now crossing 20,000+. Several thousand votes still remain unverified on our database; so we do plan to run a second round of reminder emails, starting Monday. What is shocking is that over 10% of these mails have bounced, as people put in wrong email IDs - shame on those who tried to cheat! A much smaller percentage of emails failed to deliver, as they were trapped by corporate spam filters.

Starting today, we have duplicated our mail server, added a fatter data pipe and a 3rd server to better prepare for increasing traffic. Does this mean we have eliminated the email problem? The answer is - No. In spite of our best efforts, 2-3% of emails may still drop, but our systems will keep trying to deliver within 24 hours.

Moving forward voters will certainly get the confirmation email, unless (a) they make an error entering the ID or (b) they are using corporate email and their server does not like GDC. We got a stinker from a leading media company, stating that their servers are being spammed by GDC emails; and we could count a whopping total of 14!

Thou shalt get your votes. We will keep trying to remind your friends, even if they have forgotten - so you don’t have to bug them anymore.

Hope this puts to rest all your e-mail related anxiety pangs. Please feel free to write in, if you still have problems next week.