Work :: Lavoro ::: July 2005 Archives

Eircom are RFC compliant in that they accept regarding abuse complaints sent to abuse@eircom.net HOWEVER they do not seem to process input to that address

I've noticed that quite a few bloggers have started putting Creative Commons licenses on their blogs. Considering the nature of blogs, with their links both in and out and cross-fertilisation I can understand why the CC license is attractive, but why do people make a conscious decision to include it? Do you think it makes any difference?

The launch of the 2005 Netvisionary Awards is this Wednesday evening in Clontarf Castle, Dublin. Free for IIA members. EUR25 for non-members. I'd love to meet up with people who are going :)

There may have been a certain amount of talk of late with regard to business blogging faux pas, but what of personal blogs? Mel drew my attention to a very interesting article which shows how job candidates' blogs ensured their failure in the job hunting process. As an employer I found it quite revealing to read some of the anecdotes and, to be frank, I probably would react in a very similar way. What never ceases to amaze me is the things that some people post in their blogs. Most of the blogs I read on a regular basis would contain a mixed back of technical, business or political commentary. Some may contain personal references, but even those would not reveal anything too embarassing about the author or their employers. However, if you dip into some of the blogs being aggregated by POTB or any of the other blog collections, you will find some very revealing thoughts. One example that springs to mind is of someone villifying a close relative on their blog. Surely something that personal should be kept private?

The recent changes to adsense naturally broke a number of applications that were interfacing with it, including the Allen G Hollman's Adsense notifier for firefox. Fortunately a new version has already been released that resolves any issues. Thank you!

It's almost amusing to see so many bloggers talking about the latest Google updates. We all remember the famous "Florida" update. I posted about it at the time, as I'm sure did many others. Prior to November 2003 there was almost a predictable factor in SEO. If you played by the rules and did certain things you knew more or less where you stood. Page rank (PR) was important, but more importantly you could rely on your position in the search results. With the Florida update all that changed. In the case of our company site it was pretty catastrophic, but we were not alone. Not by a long shot. Clients who had had good rankings saw their sites vanish almost overnight. A lot of theories were put forward as to what was happening, why and how to overcome it (this site contains a summary of some of the more popular theories). It didn't matter. The theories were simply that, theories. What was extremely frustrating was that the quality of the search results after the update seemed to have regressed. If Google had been trying to combat the SEO experts who used dubious methods to boost their clients' rankings, then a lot of innocent bystanders were caught in the crossfire. Almost 2 years later the updates still excite the online community and we all wait to see what will happen. Will our PR increase? Will our search terms drop? Will we still be on the first page for that search query that we cherish so much? In some ways none of this matters as much as before. A lot of us have resorted to using Google's contextual advertising to boost our presence. We still want to appear in the search results, but even if we don't we know that we can hope to catch people's eyes in other ways. Unfortunately the reality is this. Google is still king. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it's not. You cannot avoid the facts though. If I look at the referrer logs for any site that I manage I can expect to see the bulk of referrals coming from Google. What does that mean? Does it mean that Google is the most popular search engine? Or does it mean that the people who are most likely to want the kind of information on those websites are more likely to use Google to find the information? It's a hard one to call. Back in the early days of the web there was no Google. There was no MSN. Do you remember the virtual tourist? Can you recall the early days of Yahoo? Anybody remember Altavista (mk. 1)? Or webcrawler? Most of these sites are still around in some form or another, but the way we use them has changed dramatically, as has the face of those who choose to use them. Even the most technically inept 'net user ends up using Google these days, either directly or through one of the many sites that relies on their search technology. Of course I still use Yahoo, but not for searching. I might go to Yahoo for news or other information, but not to actually search.

A lot has been written about how Google Adwords have changed the way advertisers interact with their market online. A lot has been written about how to use and abuse the system to make money for your business, either as an advertiser or as a publisher of the ads. Harold Davis puts it into simple terms which should help you see if your ads are paying or not. He does raise an interesting point about the tracking of the ads. As he rightly points out, most ad publishers track invisibly, whereas Google is more overt:

An interesting, and somewhat controversial, feature of Google AdWords conversion tracking is that as part of the tracking, Google notifies users that they are being tracked. This notification is produced by the Google-supplied code you add to the results page. A tracked user sees a message titled Google Site Stats with a “send feedback” link when the results page is opened.

Although this is possible, it is not always going to be visible. We use the Google tracking code as an integral part of our billing system, but users do not see any graphics or other content to indicate that we are using the code to track them, as our billing system allows us to embed the code invisibly in the pages. If cookies are involved and the user is prompted about them, then the visibility will be lost. I'm still not convinced by the stats for the CPM campaigns though. Edit: Harold Davis' email this morning prompted me to run a couple of tests, as he rightly pointed out that hiding the tracker completely would have been an infringement of the Google TOS. Yes Harold, you are right. I am wrong! There is a very small image visible on the checkout page. I must have missed it!

Market research is an important exercise. You should know:

• What people have
• What people would like to have
• What people need (not the same as above)
• What is on offer (in the market)
• How it is offered

There's probably a more scientific way of presenting those ideas, but you should get the general idea. In the hosting market it is not uncommon to contact competitors to seek quotes for various services simply to see how other people are presenting their services and products. After all, when it boils down to it, a domain is still a domain. You can call it what you like, but it's not going to change what it is. I was rather amused, but slightly bemused, when we received two almost identical RFPs in the space of 12 hours. One arrived. I read it and was dealing with it. When the second one arrived I was hit with a sense of deja vu. Hadn't I read the same request only a couple of hours earlier? Maybe I was imagining things. No. I wasn't. Putting them side by side the only differences were minor punctuation and stylistic differences (3 or 4 elements to be precise). Smelling a rat I checked the headers, as did a couple of our technical staff. You would think that they'd have at least tried to hide their origin. Nope. The IP in the header was the competitor's office mail server, with customised SMTP flag and all!! Moral of the story. Don't send emails to competitors from your office IP.

Over the course of the last few years I have dealt with a wide range of ICANN registrars and their resellers.
Some experiences have been good, some fantastic and some excruciatingly painful.

Which ones stick out?

The bad ones of course!

It is a well known fact that people remember bad service and, more importantly, talk about it more than they do about good service.

About a year ago we were given the opportunity to signup with Directi and get cheap domains.

There was a full API and all the other "gizmos" and the price was almost too good to be true (especially if you look at the ICANN rates).

I should have known better.

I've always been a strong believer in the "you pay for what you get" philosophy, and with DirectI you will get cheap domains - definitely.

Just try actually managing them!

And please oh please, do not even try to open a support query.

You stand a 10% chance of getting a relevant reply on a good day.

The web interface is obviously your main point of contact to manage your domains. You'd expect it to be accessible, or is that too much to ask?

Problems:

• API - the slightest typo throws it out and certain fields that shouldn't be compulsory are
• Transfers - they have a tendency of vanishing
• Support - non-existent or simply irrelevant replies to queries
• Management - impossible to actually manage all domains in your account
• Buggy - we've ended up with domains being split between multiple accounts ie. ours and that of a competitor. Directi cannot explain these discrepancies
• Gateway support - they added 2checkout but ONLY for US dollar! The 2checkout API works with multiple currencies, why exclude clients?
• Uptime - Both the web interface and the gateway "vanish" from time to time. Haven't they heard of load-balancing?

When we initially moved our billing over to using Modernbill one of the things that bothered me was the lack of support for Directi. Now I am really happy that they do not support it.

The number of issues we have had with their interface and API, without even mentioning issues sub-resellers ran into, far outweigh any price advantage.

Domain registration can and should be an automated process for CNOIB domains.

Each manual intervention has a direct impact on margins.

Each manual edit takes time, so costs you money.

If you have the choice between a system that "just works" and gives you real technical support when you need it and a system that malfunctions but "saves" you a few cents, which one would you choose? I know my answer.

According to Netcraft a number of hosting companies are banning the use of phpbb. Considering the number of security issues that the open source bulletin board software has had in the last 8 months, this move is not particularly surprising. However, as a spokesperson for the developers rightly pointed out:

While phpBB has and no doubt will continue to suffer from exploits (show me a piece of software that doesn't!) we have consistently addressed such issues very quickly

Although this may be true it is also an obvious source of headaches for hosting companies. Some control panel software, such as cpanel is capable of upgrading existing installs on servers automatically, however this will only work if:

• You have configured it to do so
• The install has not been customised beyond recognition
• The script was installed via cpanel and not manually

In the world of shared hosting it is impossible to maintain complete control over every single script that users install. To do so would add an unwieldy administrative overhead. So what can hosts do? Banning phpbb is an option in some cases, but it's hardly a viable one. It is far too popular to simply turn off. Unlike form to mail scripts, phpbb is not easily replaced with an alternative, as so many users would rely on hacks and tweaks that only work with it. Interestingly enough both Netcraft and the phpbb team fail to cite any examples of hosts banning the scripts usage, so you could consider the headline almost anecdotal

Bob Parson's latest blog entry caught my attention. Bob talks about how he did not "make it" the first time, or even the second. He lost fortunes before he finally made it. It may not teach you how he became a success, but it will show you that:

• You probably won't succeed the first time
• You are not alone
• You might succeed - he did

Edit: Thanks to John for pointing out the typo

There seems to be a cottage industry in domain scams. Every few months these scams come to the fore and we hear about them either directly from our clients or from other industry sources.