October 2007 Archives

At the ICANN meeting this afternoon in LA IPv6 is a hot topic.

The SSAC open meeting's agenda includes both a study of hardware support for ipv6 and the roundtable I'm currently sitting in at. The roundtable includes Vint Cerf and representatives from a very wide range of backgrounds.

The kind of questions being asked are fundamental.

How can promoted v6?

How can they promote it?

How can you get content providers to use it?

I don't expect any answers, but the discussion should be interesting

Vint Cerf addressing us all at the gala event which honours his role in ICANN and the 'net.

In a few short hours the IE domain registry will receive the first batch of applications for "personal" IE domains.

As I'm on the other side of the globe at the moment (in LA) I won't be around to see what happens. I'm hoping that everything runs smoothly and that our team will do a good job. I've every confidence in them, but I've also got to be realistic - issues will arise and problems will occur. No matter how much you try to plan around these things it's impossible to avoid every issue!

In the meantime I'll be keeping track of what's going on at the ICANN meeting here in Los Angeles, California.

IP addresses aren't very exciting.

Trying to communicate with people about IP addresses is far from easy, so it's nice to see that ICANN have published a guide to IPv6 for human beings!

On the way into Santa Monica you can stop off for a coffee and legal advice

I spent most of yesterday out at Universal Studios, which lies above Burbank, where WB is based.

It's much more of a theme park than a studio, but it's still good fun.

Wandering around I came across a bunch of cars that had featured in The Fast and The Furious and its sequels.

Paul sent me a link to this earlier this morning (I'm in LA, so 8 hours behind):

It's now 6am. I've been up since 4am. I think I got some sleep, but I woke up several times.

I'm waiting to board a flight from Dublin to London, and then onto LA.

Since my neck / back give me trouble in the best of circumstances I've decided to try one of those travel pillow things

I've no idea if it will work on the flight from London to LA, but I'm willing to give it a try!


It doesn't take up much space in my laptop bag which is handy!

It's better to be fashionably late, than to simply not turn up!

Some time back Damien mentioned that Sublime Wines were interested in getting people to review their wines. In return for a bottle all you had to do was write a review.

So what happened?

Well I got the wine, but then I got sidetracked with stuff and things and never got round to writing the review.

As for the wine... Well, I've always liked a drop of wine.

A nice fruity wine might be sold as a perfect companion for a meal, however there's nothing wrong with settling into a bottle while relaxing and watching a DVD in the comfort of your home. That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it!

The wine on offer was a 2004 Alaia

I don't think I'd ever tried Alaia previously, as I tend to stick with much stronger wines, such as Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon.

I did enjoy it, but I'm not sure if I'd go out of my way to grab a bottle again. However that is no reflection on the wine itself, but more a reflection of my taste buds!

I was very humbled last night when I got the latest copy of the Movable Type newsletter. SixApart’s team choose a member of the community each issue and this time it was my turn!

To say that I wasn't expecting that mention is to put it mildly!

I get hit with "useful" error messages on a regular basis.

Today's little chestnut, that was driving me mad, came courtesy of the PayPal API. Paypal have a "charming" habit of modifying things on your account if you make the slightest change to ANYTHING. Of course they don't tell you this explicitly, so I spent a good part of the day trying to add funds to our eNom account to be met with a totally useless error message. I spoke to eNom, who were very helpful, but couldn't tell me what the issue was as it was coming from Paypal. Grr!

The other one I had was with envy. What is the point of telling me to read an error log when the error log only repeats the message "read the log" ie. doesn't actually include the error?

Now that I've got that off my chest I can relax and spend the rest of the evening ripping CDs for my iRiver :)

I don't mind spending money if I feel like I'm getting value.

Unfortunately a lot of events being run in this country seem to be completely overpriced.

IT@Cork are running a conference in November. Although they seem to have sponsors to cover pretty much everything they're still overcharging people 400 euro a head to get in!

That's nuts!

Earlier this year I was at a 3 day event in LA which included a talk by Michael Arrington and it cost me less than that!

We're offering .eu domains for a fiver a pop - see the company blog for details or head straight over to our site to order!

I use email a lot. I guess everyone does these days!

One of the things that drives me mad is auto-responders. While they can be used very effectively  they're usually not.

A good use of an autoresponder would be a specific email address that you send a blank mail to in order to get back information.

Unfortunately most people who setup autoresponders don't seem to think it through.

So far today I've received several autoresponders and none of them have been anyway useful.

Do I really want to know that someone is going to get in touch with me? I'd prefer if they actually answered my query!

We use autoresponders on our support desk, but that's a ticketing system. It's expected!

If we were to do it with our sales email address people would get really annoyed and I'd be one of them!

So if you're going to use an autoresponder stop for a minute and think.

Do you really need to use it?

Who is likely to send mail to that address?

Is the response you're sending of any use to them?

Is there a better way of handling it?

And please don't get me started on "out of office" replies!!!

The Department of Environment is currently seeking feedback and input from citizens on the National Sustainable Strategy.

Feedback is open until November 9th.

On a sidenote, can anyone explain to me why they're using environ.ie while environment.ie seems to go nowhere, even though it's own by the state?

Big multinational companies run marketing campaigns that affect popular culture.

It doesn't matter whether the captions or catchy songs are telling the truth or not. It doesn't matter if the marketing message is cliched or based on out of date stereotypes or old technology.

George gave me a link to this really cool and amusing Kodak video.

It's a breath of fresh air!

Enjoy!

When is a link not a link?

When you can't actually click on it.

Someone started a thread over on CI the other day about NetVisionary nominee Panthius

The footer of the site contains a set of "links" which DO NOT work if you are using a normal browser:


It transpires that the links do work if you use Internet Explorer, which shows how "popular" a browser that is with Irish creative and web professionals!

Regardless of what browser I may or may not be using I'm amazed that someone managed to put together a business website so badly that the links don't work. That takes effort!

I recently upgraded my TV and surround sound system, so I've now got a battery of remote controls!

It's kind of annoying, as I've now got to battle with:

• TV remote
• DVD / Surround sound remote
• Sky box
• Stereo

To switch from a DVD to watching a flick on Sky involves messing about with three of them.. And that can get mighty confusing.

So what's the solution?

It seems that universal remote controls have come along way over the last couple of years and Logitech have produced a very funky solution: LOGITECH Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote Control

It seems to be able to do just about everything short of making you coffee in the morning!


The device boasts a 8.9" touchscreen display, so it's not exactly small, but it's meant to be able to handle 15 devices at once.. I don't think I've even got that many, so it might be overkill



The technical specs are quite scary:

The Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote symbolises a move in the right direction for audio and video equipment control.
With its 8.9" touchscreen design, the Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote lets you control up to 15 external devices.
Thanks to a user friendly graphic menu, the Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote gives you access to numerous configurations.
Once connected to your computer, its configuration wizard guides you through step by step.
The Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote can take control of more than 5,000 brands and more than 175,000 devices.
In case of a configuration problem, its help section provides all the troubleshooting information you need.
Finally, its rechargeable lithium-ion battery guarantees maximum availability for equipment control.
The Harmony 1000 Advanced Universal Remote is the ultimate control solution for all your audio and video devices.

It would want to be, considering it costs over 300 euro!

Additional information:

Compatible with: Windows 2000, XP / Mac OS X 10.3 or later version (so it should be able to handle Leopard when it's released)

Content:
- Logitech Harmony 1000 Remote Control
- Charging base
- USB Cable
- Mains adapter
- Lithium-ion Battery (no need to spend money on batteries at least!)
- Installation CD

I was chatting to a couple of industry people yesterday when it suddenly struck me that I was off to Los Angeles next week for the ICANN meeting
How quickly time flies!

For once I am reasonably well organised... I booked the hotel months ago and the flights a couple of weeks back. I'm now getting not so helpful update emails from BA!

Since I'm arriving a couple of days before the meeting starts I shouldn't be suffering from too much jetlag and I'll also have a bit of time to do other things. I still haven't decided what I'm going to do, but another trip to Warner Brothers is extremely tempting and Wicked is also playing, so maybe I could do something "cultural".

I was hoping to get to see a Lakers' game, but it looks like they're playing away again, so maybe next time (January possibly?)

If anyone is planning on being at ICANN in LA and wants to meetup for coffee / beer / food or whatever let me know

Getting a high quality website designed and developed is not cheap. If you want it done properly you will need to deal with professionals and professionals do not come cheap.

A lot of people may find the competition being run by a multi-million euro shopping centre an insult. Blanchardstown Shopping Centre (on the outskirts of Dublin city, Ireland) are running a competition to get their site revamped.

A couple of things about the way they're running it strike me as odd:

1. The prize money is only 1000 euro. You wouldn't expect to get a small brochure site designed for that money these days
2. The competition is sponsored by Bank of Ireland. So they're only paying out 1000 euro and they're too cheap to even pay that themselves?

Maybe I'm missing something, but it strikes me as yet another instance of Irish business not "getting" the 'net

Just testing a little extension for MT4 that hooks into the Jaiku API

Nothing much to see here :)

I don't like Cadbury's chocolate that much, apart from Wispas, but their latest tv advert is very good:

Brilliant and funny post by Grandad - Computers are a Curse

I'm heading off to Co. Clare later this morning to see relatives.

I'm dreading the traffic in Limerick, but I'm looking forward to not being online for 24 hours!

If you don't like what people have been saying about you, then you simply delete all the blog entries!

Now why didn't I think of that?

Vodafone have relaunched their Irish site.

The new design is clean and fresh.

The only quibble I have is that the shop is much harder to access, as you now have to lie to gain access to pricing ie. if you don't lie you get caught up in an intricate loop of questions before they'll let you near the products.

While I can understand the need to guide people to the right product package this is taking it too far as people who already know can no longer gain access to simple pricing!

For the last few years we've been using a .ie domain to promote our business. Since we are now looking at overseas markets a bit more actively we've started using  the .eu

We didn't have the .com until yesterday....

So now that we have the .com I'm left in a bit of a quandry

Should we market based on the .eu or the .com?

Absolutely brilliant!


Xkcd is addictive!

Sunday afternoon exploring ruins

EDIT: I originally posted this photo from my Nokia N95 while standing beside the ruins of Dunamase castle. One of the limitations of using "life blog" is that you can't specify categories or tags (if you can I can't see the option!), so I have to do an edit afterwards. It also shoves the uploaded image directly into the web root, which isn't exactly desirable, as I like keeping images and other content in separate directories so that I can have more control

I love the internet. I love the online and offline communities that I've become involved with since I first went online.

However some people's use of the internet makes me very sad.

I first went online in 1994 when I was in first year in UL. Back then the internet was a very different place.
To start with it was a hell of a lot "smaller".
It was also a lot safer.
Spam wasn't an issue.
Phishing wasn't an issue.
Cybercrime wasn't an issue.
Of course all of those "wonderful advances" came along and grew as the internet grew.

It is in everyone's interest to stop spam, phishing and other forms of internet abuse. If we all had to spend our days wading through thousands of spams etc., nothing would ever get done and it would be really hard to introduce people to the internet.

Unfortunately one of the biggest internet companies in the world is actually helping criminals.
Google's Gmail may have a nice frontend, but it allows criminals to hide their identities.

If you post a comment on this site or on a forum the administrator can see your public IP. Public IPs are unique. They maybe shared by many users eg. when you have a number of people sharing the same internet connection, but you can still learn a lot about who was connected to a site from their IP address. In some cases it's very easy for someone to see which company that person works for, or which educational institution's connection they are using, while in other cases you might have to get a court order to gain access to their ISP's records. However, no matter which method you use it is always possible to trace the IP back to a person. It might take work, but it is possible. You will probably have to contact your local law enforcement agency to get assistance, but you can still do it.

GMail facilitates this.

Whereas Hotmail and Yahoo! are responsible 'net citizens and include the sender's "real" IP in the email headers, Gmail does not. In layman's terms Gmail helps to anonymise your email.

Want to delve in a little extortion? Use Gmail
Want to send threats? Use Gmail
Want to spam? Gmail makes it easy!

Sure, they might argue that they take abuse seriously etc., etc., but any mention of Google's abuse team in antispam circles is of how unresponsive they are.

If you use Google Apps for your domain you are sending mail anonymously.

Privacy advocates might find this attractive, but what of the downside?

If you receive a threatening email from someone hiding behind gmail what are your options?

If someone tries to extort you using a gmail address where can you go?

In case you think I'm some kind of nut job that makes this kind of stuff up:
Gmail, End User Privacy, and Harassment
Gmail is too creepy

Golden Spiders have sent out yet another email this morning.

Of course the links in the email might be more useful if the site was actually up and running ....

I got this:

I picked up modrewrite.co.uk a while back, but wasn't 100% sure what to do with it.
It's now been launched with Niall also providing content, so we'll see where it goes....

As some of you may know a lot of Irish IT professionals, including myself, received a spam from Monster earlier this week.
Anyone who reads me on a regular basis would know that I am probably one of the last people you would want to spam.

In any case the story grew legs yesterday, as I received legal threats from the Monster employee, as I had published his email.
It is important that people realise that Monster did not send me legal threats - one of their employees did using a Monster email address. There's a subtle but important difference.

Yes I did publish his email. It wasn't an email sent to me directly in confidence, so I didn't see any reason why I wouldn't share it.
I've shared phishing emails in the past, so why wouldn't I shared a spam email?
I could have shared his email address and more than one person would have liked me to do so, but I couldn't stoop that low. I could have shared his mobile number, but I didn't for the same reasons.

 I naturally spoke to the company's solicitor who is also my solicitor (why pay two legal eagles?) about the posts etc., and made sure that I wasn't going to run afoul of any laws.

Yesterday afternoon I had a nice chat with Monster's PR person and then this morning I had a very long talk with the head honcho for Ireland, James Mailley.

Mr Mailley was terribly apologetic for all the hassle that this situation caused, but as I pointed out to him a simple apology would have gone a long way as opposed to the attitude that people got and of course the comments etc., here.

For an online company that deals in such a competitive market this kind of negative PR is terrible. While it may not have a longterm effect some people maybe very slow to recommend Monster in the future. Email marketing is tricky. If you do it right you will reap the benefits. Do it wrong and it can hurt!

And last night, in the midst of all the legal threats etc., my original post made it onto the frontpage of Digg!

James has given me permission to publish his email to me. I was considering just putting up a few of the key parts, but decided it would be simpler to put up the entire email:

Hi Michele
 
I appreciate you taking time to speak with me this morning on the events of the last few days.
 
As I said on the phone and wish to reiterate, I apologise for the original e-mail being sent to you and also for the amount of your time being spent dealing with this situation. Having thoroughly investigated all the aspects of the original mail, I have discovered that this was an error that occurred through the enthusiasm of a brand new recruit who did not understand the policies and practices of the company.
 
Monster has a strict policy regarding unsolicited emails, and all Monster employees are forbidden from sending such emails unless the individuals or companies in question have specifically opted in to
receive group emails of this nature.   I reiterate that the email in
question was sent by an individual in contravention of Monster's policy on unsolicited emails, and that Monster in no way authorised or condoned this behaviour. 
 
On behalf of Monster please be assured that we will do everything we can to avoid incidents of this nature occurring again in the future.
 
Kind regards
 
James

James Mailley
Sales Director
www.monster.ie

Moral of the story? Spamming is evil...

For the funnier side of things read Head Rambles' take on the story:

The Black Knight and the Monster

I think it's one of the funniest bits of writing I've seen this year! (you can digg it here)

The Monster employee who spammed a large number of Irish companies yesterday is now attempting to remove evidence of his crime.

I've just received a "recall" email from him.

Of course "recall" emails only work on Microsoft Exchange and even then have limitations. We don't use Exchange, so he can send recalls all day and all night. It won't make any difference

Sorry about the post title :)

Pete's being spammed by Golden Spiders. He's been trying to get off their mailing list, but they're not having any of it.

Eircom's wireless DSL routers are insecure. I posted a link to my delicio.us account a few days ago that I got from someone and now the story's been picked up by just about everyone.... There's a lot of discussion over on the IIU list and the story's been picked up by most of the papers. Eircom of course are promising to warn all their clients of the potential issues

Joost seem to have launched today (or was it last night?)

Earlier today I posted about three Irish spams I'd received in the morning. I didn't go into any detail, as I was busy with other things and also wanted to see how Monster would handle the situation.

The email that they sent to several hundred people included a lot of email addresses that I recognised for one reason or another. Hardly surprising as all the businesses in question belong to IT@Cork.

The email carries the "imaginative" subject line - "For the attention of your HR department!!", which is never a good sign. Of course it's even worse when you consider we actually have a page on our site dedicated to careers etc., Of course it doesn't say "please send HR spam here", so maybe it wasn't obvious enough ... Who knows?

The email itself is really pathetic:

Good Morning,
 
Firstly, I would like to clarify that we are not a recruitment agency.
 
I have just come across your company information and I wanted to introduce my self to you.  My name is John Burns and I am the business development manager for Monster in Ireland North and South.
 
Monster is the biggest online recruitment website in the World and we have a large portfolio of solutions to make your recruitment more cost affective, quicker, and easier to manage.
Click here to see our portfolio of solutions
 
Are you tired of waiting on the right candidates to respond to your advertisements? If so our unique Monster CV Database may be just what you are looking for.  Our Database gives you the freedom to search for your ideal candidates and download their CV or contact details immediately.  With over 250,000 CV’s in our Irish Database and an average of 6,600 new CV’s added every month your chances of finding the “right candidates” is exceptionally high.
 
In addition to our CV Database we have Job postings where you can post your vacancies on Monster and start receiving top candidates almost immediately, again with our average daily job views of 29,000 your vacancy is sure to be noticed and replied to.
 
I would love to make an appointment with you where I can take you through our website and show you all the different features and functions that are on offer and I can leave you with a day’s trial of our CV Database where you can try it out for your self and you never now, you may find a candidate or two that could be potential employees!
 
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
 
PS: Please accept my apologies if you recieved this Email in error.
 
 
Kind Regards,
 
John Burns
Business Development Manager
www.monster.ie
15d Gilford Road
Sandymount
Dublin 4
Tel:      +353 (0)1 xxxxxxxxxxxx
Fax:     +353 (0)1 xxxxxxxxx
Mobile: +353 (86)  xxxxxxxxxxx
 
Monthly visits average 350,000 in 2007
Over 6,700 new CVs added to the CV Database in July 2007
Best online Recruitment & Training Website in Ireland - Golden Spider Award Winners
Monster Worldwide Limited. Registeredin Ireland with number 337700.  Registered office: Hillview House, 15D Gilford Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4
 
Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message, (or responsible for delivery of the message to such person), you may not copy or deliver this message to anyone. In such case, you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email. Please advise immediately if you or your employer does not consent to email for messages of this kind. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of the Monster Worldwide Limited shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it. For more information on our business ethical standards please refer to our website

Note carefully that the email is not addressed to anyone in particular.

It's a general email that has been sent en masse, or in other words it's unsolicited bulk (commercial) email.

So the apology in the PS is even odder. Why would you send a bulk email spam and then try to get out of it by apologising?
And of course he has included the standard disclaimer. The fact that he can't spell doesn't help either....
His usage of capitalisation and general writing style is worryingly bad...

So what to do?

Well the obvious thing would be to contact the person who sent it, so I did. I rang him this afternoon. He didn't want to hear about my complaints and was totally unrepentant. Seemingly scraping addresses from websites and using them for marketing purposes (ie. spamming) is perfectly acceptable for Monster's staff.

That's a serious issue for any company. It's even more serious when you consider the issues they've had recently with security.

In the first instance this is unsolicited. I don't want it. My staff don't want it.
It was sent to a business email address, so unless they keep abusing our email addresses I can't do much about it legally. Under current Irish legislation they can get away with sending the first spam, but once you tell them to stop they have to. If they don't stop they're breaking the law.

However there are other things that I can do.

First off I can submit the offending email to several DNS blacklists (they're used by mail admins to block unwanted mails from entering their systems). Any other IT@Cork members who got hit by this junk need to submit the mail to spamcop et al as soon as possible (it has to be reported within 48 hours)

I could also instruct our technical staff to block all mail emanating from Monster from reaching any domains on our network, as we are perfectly entitled to block abuse of our network and email abuse is abuse whether Monster are willing to accept or not. I don't want to take that measure as yet, but it's an option I am considering.

Online recruitment is a highly competitive, but obviously lucrative, market. Can Monster afford to spam?

Maybe they need to get a hard lesson in the effects of having their smtp blocked by a major blacklist.

I've always considered spammers to be lazy, but I never thought I'd see a big company like Monster stooping this low.

Today is fast becoming "spam Monday"

So far this morning I have received unsolicited bulk email from three Irish companies:

• Fota Island resort
  
• Monster's Irish office
• Golden Spiders

Are these people aware of the amount of damage they are doing their companies by using this kind of marketing methodology?

The Monster email was particularly bad, as the person who sent it obviously doesn't know how to send mass email properly and included all the recipients in the CC field

I'm submitting the lot to Spamcop and any other blacklist I can think of

Has anyone else been getting this junk today?

Pete spotted an interesting issue with the Golden Spiders site this morning

It looks like whoever designed the site uploaded the site's template and replaced the content ....

Their frontpage looks a bit odd at the moment, as does the claim:

Due to huge demand, nominations have been extended until 5th October at 4.30pm.

So they're playing shift the goalposts again this year?

Let's look at the logic behind that statement.

If your awards are getting lots of nominations why would you need to extend the deadline? Wouldn't you extend the deadline if you weren't getting enough entries?