Is it me or is everyone else stupid?

I promised you guys some news last week which sounded important at the time, well here it is.

From a reliable source Im told that Google has had enough of domain parking, though not all elements of it it seems. [the recent class action filing by Boston attorney Hal Levitte not being relevant at this point]. Google apparently have gotten fed up of policing their AFD program and are about to become proactive with a new domain parking algorithm.

This new algo will assess all domains calling their parking feed and immediately give domains either a “pass” or a “fail” score. Meaning that if Google decide your domain has little chance of type-in traffic or if it scores low on conversions, it wont serve you a parking feed. Simple as that. The details on what percentage of parked domains this will negatively affect is sketchy at best, but you can bet your bottom dollar the numbers will be significant.

Obviously the pass/fail measuring stick is an interesting development in the domaining industry;  it shows that the balance of measuring income vs value for money for advertisers has shifted, it also reveals that Google has all the knowledge it now needs about every domain name to make this call and it will overnight either devalue your domain or allow domain owners to add an extra zero to the value. It also means that Google isnt policing domain parking at the domainer level anymore (for heaven knows it must be a nightmare chasing all those Chinese folk pretending to be Americans), instead managing domain parking at the domain level.

Now ive had a chance to think about this, overall I think its positive news. For domains given the green light it can only mean higher payouts and a better relationship with advertisers. For recently registered domain names and / or new extensions and / or scammers ruining it for the rest of us, it’s adios.

Occassionally, I’ll republish someone elses work if i feel it important enough. Ive been tracking this news for several weeks now and, whilst initially I thought it was some sort of scam/prank/hot air, as more information has emerged, the more Ive realised the seriousness of what Dan Kaminsky discovered about the DNS infrastructure and how, more importantly, it cannot be fixed.

If you’re a hard-core IT security wonk, you already know about this. If not, go to Doxpara.com right now and click on the button that says “Check my DNS.” That will run a simple test to tell you whether your name server appears to be vulnerable to DNS cache poisoning.

No, really — right away. Doxpara.com. Go. Now. We’ll wait.

Did the test say that you’re vulnerable? Then you’ve got work to do.

Did it say that you’re not? You’ve still got work to do.

Here’s why: Early this year, security researcher Dan Kaminsky discovered a design flaw in the Internet’s Domain Name System, which translates names like Computerworld.com into IP addresses such as 65.221.110.98.

Kaminsky didn’t find a bug in one DNS implementation. He found a vulnerability that’s designed into every DNS server. That’s right — they’re all broken. Microsoft’s version. And Cisco’s. And BIND, which is widely used on Unix and Linux servers.

The design flaw allows an attacker to hijack domain names. Put simply, a victim would never know where the Internet was taking him. E-mail could be redirected. Web sites could be spoofed. Everything on the Internet is at risk if an attacker takes over the DNS.

How do you fix a fundamental design flaw that affects the entire Internet? Answer: You can’t. So you don’t. Instead, you find a way to make the design flaw much, much harder to exploit.

Kaminsky contacted Paul Vixie, who has been responsible for the BIND DNS server since 1988. Vixie called together the top DNS experts. In March, they secretly started work on the job of patching every major DNS implementation. Not with a fix — that would be impossible — but with a work-around.

On July 8, they all rolled out their patches at the same time. Microsoft. Cisco. AT&T. Sun. Red Hat. The BIND guys. Everybody.

This is not “a patch” to fix “a bug.” This is a wake-up call for virtually the whole IT industry. The entire Internet needs fixing. Yes, right now. And that includes every corporate network and every ISP.

Here’s the good news: Because the flaw Kaminsky discovered is so baked into DNS, because it literally can’t be fixed, the only good way to block it is to make it really hard for attackers to do anything bad to a DNS server. That’s what last week’s patches do.

As a result, those patches protect you not only from the design flaw Kaminsky discovered, but also from lots of other bugs that have been found over the years — and from bugs that haven’t yet been discovered. It’s the biggest and most effective Internet security fix ever.

You want these patches on your DNS servers. You need them. If you’re a CIO or an IT manager and you failed that test at Doxpara.com, you should start asking your networking guys when you’ll no longer be vulnerable.

If you didn’t fail the test, don’t get cocky. Sure, the DNS server you’re using is good. But are all of your network’s DNS servers safe? What about the DNS servers of ISPs that your users connect to when they’re on the road or working from home? What about business partners who connect to your systems across the Internet? They all need fixing.

And it won’t all be as simple as testing and installing patches. Some older DNS servers haven’t been patched. They’ll need upgrades. Yahoo, for example, uses BIND Version 8. There’s no patch for that, so Yahoo is upgrading its entire infrastructure.

See? There’s work to do. Get to it. Now. Don’t wait for the bad guys to figure out how to exploit this DNS flaw.

Because once they do, they won’t wait for you.

Article source - Computer World

Today is Sunday and, unusually for me, I’m looking forward to next week. Cant say too much at the moment but there are a few snippets of news that have come my way since Friday that I will share with you the moment I get them officially verified, or more like as soon as i get them ‘unofficially verified’ (as is usual for news that I get).

Anyway, being that its the day of rest Im finding myself procrastinating the day away. And how easy is that to do? For the past 7 hours I have done nothing but randomly surf about the internet - with no actual purpose or reasoning as to why im doing it. This is a bit of a rarity for me as, in my day job, im happy to report that i regard myself as being conscientious and real work occupies most of my time. In the rest of my office however things are vastly different. Almost everyone has a permanent facebook window open, the guys spend literally hours surfing the sports sites, playing the freebie online games, chatting on MSN messenger and laughing about something on youtube.

The same is to be said for a lot of the domainers I consider to be friends, the majority of whom Ive never met. Some of these guys seem to spend what seems like an eternity lurking about the discussion forums and, with the greatest respect to these folk, Im yet to see anyone who spends an excessive amount of time chatting and posting on discussion forums go on to achieve the success they seek. It sounds obvious - doing no work equals no reward - but i guess its hard sometimes to achieve that level of self actualization where you realise that your new online behavior has gotten to such a level that it has now has become detrimental to your success.

There are lots of top-10-style sites giving out advice on how to stop your online procrastination but you might want to check out a cool new internet start up that i found recently which does this job for you. 8aweek.com shames, reminds and restricts your internet use and even grades you on your behavior. Its all set by preferences so you can make it as annoying or as helpful as you want. Personally, I dont tend to use the restriction feature as im simply interested in how and where my time on the internet is spent, but it can do this job for you nonetheless.

Go check it out for yourself, 8aweek.com. Its free and, as far as i know, contains no spyware. This is also not an affiliation link and I have no connection with these guys.

Another thing thats really annoying me at the moment are internet start up’s that attempt to give the impression they are a large organization… I cant for the life of me understand why they do this. But it annoys me nonetheless.

First up you see the guy punting about the forums his idea or service that he intends to build. Then, before you know it, this “ideas person” (now calling himself the CEO), has various departments, teams of programmers, designers and support staff. Any prospective new client who poses a question to the organization gets the same guy replying (obviously as someone else) with a “i’ll check with our accounts/support/technical department”.. Grrr.

Domain parking companies are the worst. I wont go into details, but there is a new parking company that has all of the elements mentioned above and, of course, the requisite multiple pseudo people from the company posting on all the forums - when the truth of the matter is that its a new start up, probably run from his house, the guy that runs it makes all the posts [durrr, he could at least change his style of writing when pretending to be someone else and not mis-spell the same words] and there are clearly no staff and/or departments.

Then there’s the people that build a reasonable platform and then make false claims as to the size of the business already, creating their own seemingly 3rd party press coverage together with made up testimonies.. Why, why, why..!?!? What happened to being truthful - does telling the truth about where your business is at mean you get no clients and your company fails?

5 minutes of research by any learned internet person can quickly expose the fact that most of which these start ups must consider as being “viral marketing” is completely made up. Which still begs the question - why do it..?

The serious side to this is two fold. Firstly, I personally wont even consider doing business with any company that makes even the slightest exaggeration, let alone stating complete untruths. They require me to hand over my personal details and trust to them and, in return, I expect to receive (in similar proportions) confidence, transparency and integrity. None of which i can guarantee with companies run by people who lie.

Secondly, the domain industry and internet entrepreneurs in general still get a bad rap and continue to be frowned upon by the rest of the digital media community (i know, theyve told me :p ). So, if we embrace companies that are, for want of a better word, “slippery” only serves to confirm to those looking in that nothing has changed in our industry - and when i say nothing has changed - fraud, crime and charlatan’like behavior.

Just a short post to say congratulations to namepros.com for achieving 100,000 registered members.

For a forum of just 5 years old, i think its fair to say that namepros.com is by far the most renowned, premier and most dynamic of domain owners forums. The first forum to achieve the 100,000 members benchmark is a feat that shouldnt be sneezed at.

My heartfelt goodwishes go out to the owners, moderators and members of this good community.

As the ceremony and reception is being mapped out in the Sunnyvale / Mountain View marriage, the prenuptials have some interesting connotations for the domain industry.

Seems Yahoo search, their content and search partners will all be welcome into the Google house - all, it seems, except the Yahoo domain partners!

Word out today is that Google are happy to monetize all of the Yahoo network except parked domain names. Im not sure what this is implying or what effect this will have, but to me it all reeks of yet more evidence of  Google distancing itself from domain parking.. Gather ye rose buds while ye may people!

Last night, over at namepros.com, they held their usual bi-monthly live domain auction.

An audience of over 100 bidders kept the room electric and the mods and staff ran through the names in a bright and progressive manner. Ok, so there werent the sort of names that bring in gazillions of dollars but, for a small $7 listing fee, mid to tail end domainers bought and sold their domains on the cheap and from what I saw had a bloody good time to boot.

And that, to me, is what the bulk of being a domainer is all about.

Names such as PresidentObama.net went for a snap at $140. Dollarpoker.com/net went for $4600. Yemo.com for $2850.. Even 25 LLL.mobi’s went for $940.. :p Great sales. And all for a $7 listing fee. Incredible.

On the night, the total amount of bids from about 70 lots amounted to nearly $35k. If you take into account its held twice monthly, the names aren’t filtered in anyway, you have yourself a wholesome, open and genuinely pleasant domaining experience.

Im told that Namepros has its summer party in 2 weeks - a date that will probably coincide close to the date that marks their 100,000th registered member [so the next auction is delayed]. But with parties and $7 auctions, its no wonder namepros maintains its popularity.

namepros.com
Auction List

Ok folks, forget all the flowering up that the two companies involved in this deal are giving out and how every thing will be rosy in both gardens, Yahoo serving Google ads has only one result.. A bad news bears result for everyone. Especially those in the domain channel. Believe me, I know, Ive been there!

This is only going to be short post for Im not going to simply give out the news thats already there.

Yahoo simply syndicating Google ads together with their own advertiser results has led me to understand why they called RSS “really simple syndication” in the first place. It was for this moment alone. For Yahoo to enter into this deal is really simple syndication, ie a syndication deal seemingly made by a bunch of real simpletons..

Durr, what effect do they think this will have? Completely alienate all of Yahoo’s tail search advertisers who were getting value for money previously and send a message to their head advertisers who will now only have to advertise through one outlet in order to achieve the same result - thats what affect this has! What will be the point of advertising through Yahoo if there is no distribution or if your results turn up on page 200?

What are they thinking over there in Sunnyvale…

Ok, they have had a tumultuous time over recent months heading off a MS takeover, but this latest move reeks of desperation. In this humble bloggers opinion, they have just committed commercial suicide and handed world domination to the already big headed, arrogant and impossible Google.

Why?

Well, as i’ve discussed previously in this blog, Google’s modus operandi in this scenario is simple. Hold hands with their so called top level partner for a period of time and then, once their partner’s core advertiser base is all but gone, give them the old strong arm treatment. For Yahoo it will end up as a “do it or else” directive (similar to that which occurred with ASK) and will involve them being made to drop all their publishers, sub-syndicators and parking companies - leading to even more heavy handed treatment by Google. Thats “if”, in fact, Google want to even hand out ANY treatment to these guys at all. Chances are Google wont want them and for the ones they do want they can now begin paying even less revenue share because, for the publishers and sub-syndicators, there will be nowhere else to go!

By the time the Yahoo share price collapses to a level where Jerry Yang is forcibly removed from the building it will be too late and the Yahoo position will be irrecoverable. Display may be the future of online advertising but not for Yahoo if their bread and butter revenue stream is taken away before they obtain any serious traction.

I’m off down the pub now to drink some hard liquor and to contemplate more on what will transpire as a result of this calamity. Tomorrow I will begin working out the numbers now that my ad revenue is sure to go down and my ad costs go up.

I think we just witnessed the beginning of the end of Yahoo folks ..

Well, come on… It is isn’t it??

Is it me or is the whole business of being a domainer just become the most boring occupation / hobby on the planet?

For the past “i dont know when” I spin by all the boards everyday, spin by domaining.com (and all the blogs), spin by my parking revenue stats, spin through Google news using a few select domain-like keywords and yet, despite my efforts, there’s nothing going on apart from the same old bloggers regurgitation something theyve read on Google news or another blog, the same whining about parking revenues and the same people talking the same BS as they have for the past few years. Yawn central!.. A few years back id make a dozen posts on the forums each day, read something i didn’t know about and look to pick up a few domains.. Nowadays, nothing could be further from the truth.

DomainerMeeting is next week in Paris and, despite the fact that the city is beautiful (aside from the smell and the French [did i just say that]), I just cant be bothered to go. Normally, Id be looking forward to such an event - as I have done with TRAFFIC, domainfest (despite my controversial comments I made previously about the event in January) and Domain Roundtable et al in the past… Nowadays and maybe its because i’ve gotten too long in the preverbial tooth or, its the fact that I will be there talking to the same old people about the same old stuff (a mere month or so ago albeit on the other side of the world..) this time, I really just cant be bothered. No offense to anyone intended.

With all these conferences coming around and coming around so quickly, its become groundhog day in the extreme. Ive read the format for DomainerMeeting and its the same old crap. Parking companies talking about monetizing your domains, networking parties and an auction.. Why bother..

Ive nothing against domainsponsor or eurodns for that matter but I think what with this credit crunch and the current global network economy as it is, regular old domainers (such as I) cant afford to spend a couple of days and several thousand dollars attending these events as frequent as they now come around.. Just look at latest TRAFFIC conference recently.. Despite all the pontificating by Rick and co as to how there was some serious players at his latest gig, the fact remains that it was highly undersubscribed and this, i believe, was due to the fact that the number of domain conferences have now tipped the balance in the overkill stakes..

Fact remains, domaining isnt that an interesting a subject to have so many conferences per annum and I think people have gotten tired of yet another shin dig with the same old faces. Here’s Ron Sheridan in a photo with Ammar Kubba, here’s what Frank Schilling had to say about the price of milk and here’s Kevin Ham shaking hands with president of Oman where hes just gotten the license to resolve the wildcard searches of the .om domains to his Yahoo fed parking page.

It’s become like the bubble of all bubbles. Supply exceeds demand and its full steam ahead with no regard for the icebergs.

In an age where Google are working towards the day when they can drop the domain channel, Yahoo are doing their best to self implode and domainers havent even thought about drawing up any contingency plan, we fly about the world merrily talking the same talk as we did in ‘03.

Were doomed I tell ya, doomed…

/rant

Back in the day, a UK company based in London, bought, caught, snapped and built a stunning portfolio of generic .co.uk domain names. However, a couple of months ago, domainers began licking their lips as nearly 80 prime LLL.co.uks and many other single word generic terms owned by this company all of a sudden showed up in suspended status. As the drop date grew nearer all of the backordering companies had the names booked… Obviously…. But who was this company?? And surely these domains wouldnt actually drop…??

One domainer (who shall remain nameless) was more than a little intrigued and thus tried to find out a little more about this intriguing company (i’m sure with a view of doing a deal). Their contact telephone simply rung out and e-mails to their contact address bounced back. Nearly a day of research later and a telephone number of one of the directors was finally uncovered.

Sadly, on speaking with this director revealed that the main driving force of the company was infact this man’s son who had died of cancer at an extremely tender young age a couple of years previously. Unaware that the companies assets were about to vanish into thin air, this director revealed that his son’s widow had inherited the running of the company and that she was probably unaware of the pending disaster - if, in fact, she was even bothered about it at all (his words).

Sufficed to say, at the 11th hour I am pleased to report that all of the domains were renewed. Im pleased, despite the fact that I had nearly all of them backordered myself.

This draws up an important lesson for most domainers. In the past few days Ive discussed this company with a few domainers and all to a man made the comment along the lines of “I really must tell my wife/husband/girlfriend more about my business”… And it’s true. Most significant others know that we do this and heaven knows many a relationship is put on strain whilst we merrily type away until the early hours whilst they’ve already gone to bed. But how many actually know where we have domains registered, where we have accounts, who owes us money, deals, development, hosting - the list is endless… I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say that It’s hard enough even for us to remember sometimes.

In an industry where the average age is pretty young maybe it’s worth just making a shared doc of all your contacts, assets and commitments and share this with your significant other. Actually, maybe you shouldn’t share this info with your partner if you’re married - it may just come back and bite you!