Tag: internet

Categories
domains

Network Solution Saga Continues

After numerous confirmations of scam-like business practices, Network Solution is now looking into implementing a feature that will allow users to “lock” domain for 4 days, instead of doing this for them automatically. Ironically, this feature look just awfully familiar – just like “domain tasting”. With difference being that now anyone can lock the domain without even providing their contact info. Don’t even need to set up various fake registrars to grab and drop domains for tasting, just keep searching for it.

Another bad trick here is that since domain name would appear registered – there is a very good chance squatters may snipe it right the moment it will be released. And it is already very well known what it means. Some of my clients paid pretty large sums for their trademarked name – just to get it faster then through the lawsuit.

Interesting facts:

  • In 2000 Network Solutions was purchased by Verisign for $21 billion.
  • In 2007 they were purchased for $800 million.

My take? If you have domain names at Network Solutions – move them to someone not so dangerous. GoDaddy, Moniker or NameCheap (we use all three of them) look much better.

Categories
travel

Small business travel

Don’t know about the rest of the crowd, but my budget is really limited when it comes to travel – be it vacation or business travel. Unlike some big-name CEOs I can’t afford business class (let alone a private jet), so I travel just like most of the Americans – the cheapo way.While traveling to Chicago and back, I refreshed on usual travel things. Like purchasing tickets for early morning flight, avoiding weekends (I flew on Wednesday to Chicago and on Monday back) and packing lightly (you can have up to three luggage pieces for free, but each must be less then 50 lbs. For me it would have been easier to pack one large suitcase then two small, but…

Another thing I figured out is how NOT to rent a car. On the spot, even if you have a reservation, agent will try to upsell you stating that they don’t have the car you reserved. In my case instead of Dodge Charger the company’s (Dollar Car if you’re interested) representative stated that the only car they have in the same class would be Dodge Caravan. How are they in the same class beats me, but I ended up renting Chrysler 300 which was good enough for my purposes. Next time I’ll skip online reservation altogether and just show up at their desk inquiring as to what they have. If I don’t like the selection – I’ll just move on to the next desk. In Chicago Midway airport (another saver on ticket price) all rentals’ desks conveniently form a single line, so it won’t be a big deal with two bags under 50 lbs each.

Hotels are finally catching up to the 21st century. Last year, when I was in Arizona, Hilton hotel wanted $25/day for high-speed broadband. One year later, on this trip to Chicago, I stayed in two hotels (how that happened – long story) – La Quinta in Arlington Heights and Holiday Inn. Both feature free wireless internet, no problems and no strings. Of course you have to jump through couple of screens and maybe enter the access code (listed on a special note in your room), but other then that everything worked smoothly. I even didn’t have to pull out my cell phones (I brought both AT&T and Verizon devices, just in case) to use as a cellular modem.

On the road I used my Garmin nuvi 360 GPS unit with firmware updated to version 3.90 (was actual as of the first day when I arrived in Chicago). Except for one total failure to deliver me to Olive Garden somewhere close to airport (almost ended up in someone’s backyard) the thing worked fine, much better and faster then Google Maps on my HTC Advantage.

Last thing I’d like to mention is the airlines (again). If the current trend is any indication – in next several years seat space will decrease even more (I guess we all be standing on short flights), the weight of allowed luggage will also decrease and there will be almost no room for carry-ons in cabin, so we will only be allowed one personal item (like laptop). But they will be banned for security reasons.

Categories
software

Everybody Else Is Doing It…

… so why can’t we do?

Firefox LogoWhile porting Firefox settings and bookmarks over to replacement laptop I realized that I am using a whole bunch of quite useful plug-ins. So here’s short run-down, in case someone missed any of these very useful things.

  • FEBE – simply must-have. Transfers all your extensions, themes, bookmarks, settings and God knows what else. Unavoidable if you don’t want to spend couple of hours figuring how to do this on your own.
  • AdBlock Plus – blocks everything and their cousins – all known advertising (banners, text ads, even Google ads). Another must-have extension. Personally, I was VERY surprised to see how messy, overstuffed with ads and unreadable some pages appear in IE/Opera/Safari. Ads are being blocked by the list to which you subscribe when you install the plug-in, so you may not even know something was blocked unless you see the page in different browser.
  • AI Roboform Toolbar – actually, I don’t have the toolbar running, but I use “Fill Form” feature almost all the time. The software itself quite useful, especially with so many passwords to remember.
  • ColorZilla – useful, especially during conversations with clients, when the phrase “I like the color I’ve seen on such-and-such web site” gets tossed around. You can actually go and pick that color (unless it’s a part of Flash movie).
  • Download StatuBar – saves you the annoyance of watching that Download Window. Personally, I believe this is the plug-in that deserves to be included in the next release of Firefox. Version 2.0.0.7 would be just perfect for it.
  • IE Tab – for lazy people who don’t like to fire up Internet Explorer to see how it looks. As far as I know it uses Internet Explorer’s engine, so the only two real benefits of this extension is that a) you get to see pages rendered in IE when you miss that “Open in New Tab” in right-click menu (I do sometimes) and b) you can get rid of IE icon on your desktop/quick launch panel.
  • lori – Life of Request Info. Shows times from click to first received byte (can be treated as a server response time), from click to complete page display, loaded page size and number of requests. Very useful web developer tool, we at Zealus use it quite often to see how responsive client’s web site is.
  • MeasureIt – allows you to draw and measure any rectangular area on the screen. Useful when you need to fit content (usually it’s Flash movie) in a already defined environment.
  • NoScript – kills all the scripts (JavaScript, Java and so on) on a page if you want to. Very useful when some script-anxious webmaster puts that no-right-click JavaScript on the page you just happen to visit.
  • S3 Firefox Organizer – if you are using Amazon’s Simple Storage Service you may find this one quite useful, although it does have a very big drawback – if you have a transfer in progress in inactive tab and are trying to close the Firefox it will not warn you.
  • Save As Image – saves the area on the page as image. Very useful when we need to show a client certain area of the web site he may want to pay more attention to.
  • SearchStatus – displays Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Compete Rank and a bunch of very useful SEO data, like keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and other.

Obviously there are many more useful plug-in, we had (at some point) had them installed and tested but turns out that these above are the ones that get really used around.