November 2005 Archives

Over the last few weeks Google Adsense has added a number of new features for publishers. Some are probably better than others.

In case you aren't familiar with it SourceForge is probably the most important online portal for open source software on the 'net.

One of the guys behind TCAL sent me a logo for IrishBlogs this evening, so I thought I'd put it to a vote.

I was chatting to a couple of people earlier today about the entire "online Christmas" thing. I know that some people will go to great lengths to "spruce up" their sites and blogs. If you are running wordpress you might find some of these themes useful. Via

ENN report on the "Business Start Up Barometer" from Bank of Ireland today.

What does the future hold for the IE namespace, the IEDR and their clients?

To link, or not to link, that is the question. Hyperlinks are one of the most important elements of a website. They help you move from page to page and from site to site.

Damien Mulley is interviewing several of the NetVisionary nominees. He interviewed me via email last week and it can be read online here: The accidental technologist - Interview with Michele Neylon from Blacknight Internet Solutions

Who actually controls the internet? Karl Auerbach's latest post may upset some people, but it does point out some very important facts ICANN would have us believe that the 'net is not controlled by the US, but is that really true? Look what happened with .xxx

When I think of suppliers and clients I often prefer to refer to the relationship as a partnership of sorts. Some people may view this as being merely a marketing ploy, however I would disagree.

I made a minor change to the "planet" earlier this morning

Do you actually own your domain name?

Does it really matter what you drive? Are we viewed differently depending on the size and model of our car?

I just got a nice envelope in the post from the IIA

I just viewed this blog in Internet Explorer 6 and noticed that the CSS in the template is making a lovely mess of the display. If one of you CSS gurus could suggest a fix I'd really appreciate it :)

E-commerce webmasters need to have basic knowledge about security.

Like a lot of people in the IT industry I get a lot of email. I'm subscribed to a lot of mailing lists covering a very wide range of topics, while I also receive quite a high volume of newsletters.

One of the most common issues faced by server admins is spam. If you are not concerned about protecting your users from receiving it, you are probably worried about your users sending it (intentionally or otherwise).

The Irish government will release the budget for the next 12 months shortly, so the journos are dedicating plenty of column inches to the preliminary figures.

A couple of days ago I posted about our experiences with Irish Broadband.

According to an article on RTE.ie the EU member states are in hot water again.

The online directory, goldenpages.ie, has been given a facelift

I've mentioned by intense dislike of reciprocal link spammers in the past.

The upcoming launch of .eu will attract more and more media attention over the coming months as we go through the various sunrise periods prior to the public launch.

I'd heard a lot of people complaining about IBB's services

Blog aggregators make keeping up with the latest posts a lot easier

For a lot of people the working week is a strictly defined period of time. It starts on a Monday and ends on a Friday. The working day is usually over by 6pm.

As most readers of this blog know, I was going to the Net Visionary Awards ceremony in Clontarf Castle the other evening.

Sometimes search engines cause confusion

I've always like vBulletin.

I'm getting geared up for tomorrow night's event in Clontarf.

Nice to see that the CRO online submissions really work. I submitted an RBN (registered business name) last week and it's already live.

Oxfam are currently running a draw to give away a year's worth of cd's - or one a week. To enter the competition follow the link on Student Cents UK You'll need to fill out a survey to be entered in the draw.

I mentioned the conversion from paid Urchin to free Google analytics yesterday.

Even though Urchin was only rebranded as Google Analytics within the last day or so the Wordpress plugin writers have been active.

Someone posted a link to the latest pro-Firefox site - Kill Bill's Browser on CLUG It's insincere, anti-Microsoft and very amusing.

Google told us all towards the end of last week that our Urchin accounts would be only semi-accessible over the weekend as they were converting to "Google accounts".

One area that has always fascinated me is language.

Blogo are organising a survey of the Italian blogosphere, both of bloggers and their readers.

I've added a polls plugin to my ever-growing arsenal

I made a couple of minor changes to IrishBlogs earlier this week, but forgot to mention them.

It seems like only yesterday that I first spoke to the then CEO of the IIA, Irene Gahan, about sponsoring the IIA NetVisionary Awards 2005.

Over the last few weeks my blogging pattern has changed quite dramatically.

I had heard about banner blindness and I probably "suffer" from it to a certain degree, however I had never really spoken to anyone about it until the other day.

The much awaited .eu will be launching very soon with Sunrise 1 taking place during the month of December. In common with the launch of other TLDs, the launch of .eu is being done in phases:

• Sunrise 1 - trademark holders
• Sunrise 2 - Prior rights - business names / company names etc
• Landrush - everything else

There is quite a bit of hype surrounding the entire thing, but there was plenty of hype with the .info launch also and that has proved to be a damp squid. If you are a trademark holder or wish to protect your brand's identity then the .eu launch is important. It's a lot cheaper to get your domain name now than have to litigate later, although Eurid have some procedures in place to help mitigate the possible problems with cybersquatting. Of course the big question is whether or not .eu will take off. I'm not 100% sure. It does open up certain channels that other TLDs do not offer - .eu is a regional TLD, which gives it a certain value that a gTLD or ccTLD currently does not offer. Will that work in the market? Will people react to it and understand what it represents? That is hard to say. Many small businesses still do not really understand the difference between a ccTLD and a gTLD. For many there can be only one domain extension - .com - everything else is just background noise. If you're involved in the domain / hosting business this kind of attitude is more than a little frustrating at times. It is perfectly understandable of course, but you'd really like to have clients who knew how important protecting their identity was, instead of coming to you later, when "their" name has been taken asking you how they can "fix" it. Enough of the day dreaming, however. In the Irish market there are two companies (or three if you ignore that one is simply a new face of an existing one) that are fully accredited Eurid registrars. Eurid had originally confused the market by stating that there could be no reselling of .eu domains, however this has since been clarified, so companies, such as mine, are now in a position to register .eu on behalf of our clientele. Oddly enough the pre-launch of .eu coincides with our signing of an agreement with Ascio to handle a very wide choice of ccTLDs, so not only are we taking orders for .eu, but also .se, .nl,.be etc. etc

I don't even own an iPod, but I still find the fascination and fixation that people have with them to be quite hard to avoid.

Everybody loves Google. Google can do no wrong.

According to Secunia there is a vulnerability in SpamAssassin 3.04 and may also affect older versions. Solution - upgrade to the latest version I wonder how this will affect companies using derived products .....

If you read my ramblings on a regular basis you may have noticed that spam filtering is an area that I take a particular interest in. Although I may dislike spammers I hold certain anti-spam "solutions" in equal disdain.

The Spanish domain registry opens up starting this morning:

The corporate public entity Red.es announces the gradual beginning of the registration operations of domain names under “.es”, according to the rules established by the New Plan of Domain Names under the country code corresponding to Spain “.es”, passed by the Order ITC/1542/2005 (Official Journal of May 31, 2005) for next November 8, at 7:00 according to the following calendar: * On November 8 it will be admitted applications of domain names under “.es” that begin with a number or any letter from “a” to “b” inclusively. * On November 9 it will be admitted applications of domain names under “.es” that begin with a number or any letter from “a” to “e” inclusively, since 7 A.M. of such day. * On November 10 it will be admitted applications of domain names under “.es” that begin with a number or any letter from “a” to “n” inclusively, since 7 A.M. of such day. * On November 11 it will be admitted any domain name under “.es” according to the National Plan of Domain Names since 7 A.M. of such day. * Any application that does not fulfil this planning will not be admitted to be processed. We also communicate that the Registry will be closed since 00:00 until 07:00 of November 8, with the purpose of doing the migration of the information services and doing the previous necessary actions for the opening of the Registry according to the new National Plan of Domain Names.

Taken from Esnic Under the new rules the .es namespace will be as open to the public as .it and other European ccTLDs.

Any service business relies on clients be it business to business or business to consumer. Unless you are the sole provider of a service and have a monopoly you need to make your clients happy. Or, if you want to be realistic about it, you need to go beyond happiness and delight them.

One of the things that has always caused confusion for people is domain usage.

The adult entertainment industry is always one of the first to pick up on new technologies.

The editorial to September's Computers in Business (the ICT supplement with the Sunday Business Post) was a disgrace, as I mentioned at the time.

I mentioned the Google referral program yesterday, as it seemed that referrals to adwords were on the cards. Maybe they still are, but the adsense referral program has launched. A sample advert can be seen on the right of this page. I'd be more interested in seeing the adwords referral program launch, but if the adsense one brings in revenue who am I to complain :)

One of the areas that Google has lacked has been in providing incentives to publishers (adsense) or advertisers (adwords) to promote the Google advertising programs.

Ireland the land of saints and scholars, but maybe for not much longer, as the Irish government is reviewing the tax exemption scheme for artists.

Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister (Taoiseach), has announced a €34 billion scheme to upgrade transport infrastructure in Ireland. The term "upgrade" is probably a misnomer if you consider that in many instances there is no infrastructure to upgrade. Problems: - the figure of 34 billion although high will probably end up being a lot higher. The Irish government has a frightening tendency to allow these kind of projects to take longer than expected and to run well over budget - the proposed Dublin metro will involve digging up large parts of the city and will disrupt business - connecting the Luas (tram) lines had originally been proposed - most of the other improvements were previously rejected - it will take years for this to be implemented - it will cost more than they project - Who will pay for it? Irish government amuses me at times. How can they expect any economy to survive in the longterm if there is little or no long term investment in infrastructure? So many of these projects seem to be years behind the rest of Europe.

My addiction to DVDs is documented. I know, as I was the one who documented it.

Business blogging is one of those strange concepts that seems to have "appeared" over the last year or so and seems to have captured the public's imagination.

The IEDR, as mentioned here in the past, has been making changes and improvements to their systems and services on an ongoing basis.