Category Archives: Technology

The Blog is Dead, Long Live the Blog!

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Over the weekend, The New York Times proclaimed that blogging is dead.  I guess with their vast experience working with dead and dying media, they’d probably be able to recognize a fellow dinosaur headed for an early grave…

All kidding aside, they’ve hit on something.  The days when everyone and their brother gets into blogging are probably over.  A year or two ago many “blogging gurus” would tell us that “we’re all media now”.  The truth of the thing is that most of us don’t have that stuff in us.  It’s one thing to configure wordpress and throw up a few posts, and quite another to update the thing on a regular basis.

I’d know, I’ve been doing this since 1995 or so.  I’ve been through a few cycles where I lost steam, and the post volume slowed to a crawl.  I’ve also setup hundreds of blogs for other people, and honestly, I will tell you right now, I cannot tell at the outset of any project who will be part of the magic 25% that are still updating their blog 6 months later.  And in that other 75% a good portion never update after the first week.

The important thing here is that blogging has gone from being ultra-kewl to being one more electronic communication means with it’s own pros and cons. Very useful for somethings and utterly useless for others.

The days of blogging to be cool are over.  Time for all the gurus and SMDBs to check out and head onto the next big thing, whatever that is.

Yes, comments have virtually dried up over the past year or so on many blogs.  Yes, most of the discussion about my posts now goes on in my Facebook account, away from the mainstream.

It makes blogging no less important.  Think of the blog as your personal long tail.  It is the bit of you that is indexed in Google, that unique bit that is both an opening of yourself to the world at large, as well as a living record of your life online.

Think of the blog as what it was when we invented the thing, a simple online journal. Forget what the gurus tell you, you don’t have to “be the expert.” Being yourself is good enough…and often that’s the part of your blog we like the most.

How to Buy a Domain Name for Your Business

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<Disclosure: I work for Namemedia, as Senior Engineer for Afternic.com, the premier marketplace for the secondary domain name market in the world.  As such, I tend to recommend Afternic and other Namemedia services.>

The Business Owners Lament: “All the good domain names are already registered.”

Yes, indeed, the initial land grab in the domain name market has been over for some time.  Most of the really good names are, indeed, already registered.  That doesn’t mean that they aren’t available, though.  You need to look on the secondary market.

Before we go any further, I should define a couple terms:

  • Primary Market - names that currently are not registered.  These are available via the traditional registrars like GoDaddy, Network Solutions, Register.com, eNom, etc.  Search these guys first, in case the name you need for your business is available.
  • Secondary Market – names that are already registered but available for sale are often listed through the secondary market at sites like Buydomains.com. These “premium domains” are held by either domain investors, or currently owned by one of the registrars may have re-registered the name when the initial registration expired.
  • Domainer, or Domain Investor -  a person or company who buys and sells domain names, treating them as investment properties.  Domain names are analogous to real estate investments…but the real estate is on the Internet.
  • SEO - Search engine optimization – specific coding, content and onsite tactics designed to ensure that your site is visible in Google’s “natural search” rankings (in contrast to Google Adwords, which are paid placements).
  • Organic Traffic – traffic that comes because someone typed a specific search term into a search engine such as Google or Bing.  Type in “candy” as a search term…the results that you see in the middle of the page are “organic results”
  • Direct Traffic—traffic that comes from someone typing your domain name directly into the search bar—that is typing “candy.com” versus doing a search for candy
  • TLD – top level domain, for example .com, .edu or .org are all TLDs, in fact they are three of the originals.
  • ccTLD – a country code TLD – such as .co.uk or .it *(Italy).

As I note above, search the primary market first, and if the name you need is available, buy it.  Domain names do not get any cheaper than this…if it’s there, pat yourself on the back, because you just got a bargain.

What’s a good Domain Name for my business?

Ah, the age old question.  It really depends what you expect your site to do for your business.  We may want a site name that fits with our companies brand or name, such as “SmithSeptic.com” or perhaps we want something that is more descriptive of the service we provide, such as “SepticPumping.com”.  For local businesses, I often recommend they go with something that is both descriptive of their service as well as their location, like “WalthamSepticPumping.com” which will give them a lot of help in terms of SEO.

Increasingly it is the case that savvy businesses are pursuing a “multi-domain strategy” to ensure that they are found by prospective customers. So, in the example above, a smart business owner might opt to purchase “SmithSeptic.com”, “SepticPumping.com”, “WalthamSepticPumping.com” and other, related, terms such as “AffordableSepticPumping.com”  It is also a good idea to purchase multiple TLDs: e.g. buy the “.net” along with the “.com” and other variations of your desired names.

Things to consider:

  • Don’t limit yourself, you can (and in some businesses, should) have more than one domain name.
  • Short domain names are easier to remember than longer domain names.
  • Some names are just too long to be worth discussing.  Last week we had a request for “AdamsRoofingandConstructionRepairinMelbourne.com”.  The guy gets points for trying to hit all the relevant keywords, but the chance of anyone, ever, typing that into the address bar of a browser correctly is minimal. Not to mention the extra paint he’d need to get it put on his truck.
  • Some domain names are too broad.  If you are a lawyer and your work is almost exclusively done in Waltham, buying Lawyer.com would be a waste.  Think more along the lines of “WalthamLawyer.com”.

The Secondary Domain Name Market

So you didn’t find a decent domain name in the primary market.  Not to fear, there are still plenty of great domains available; you just need to look on the secondary market.

The first reaction I usually here from business owners about the secondary domain market is that “the prices are so much higher!”  Indeed, versus a primary registration,  “aftermarket” names will be priced higher.  The reason is simple: good domain names have value.  Great domain names have even greater value.

Consider how you acquire customers, and what you currently pay to acquire the customers. If you typically spend $50-100 per new customer acquired in direct mail, advertising, or radio, for example, an investment of $5,000 that yields you just 20 customers per month, just 5 per week, will cost you about $20 for the first year and likely much less in subsequent years.  Quite a bargain—and since research indicates that nearly half of all smaller businesses are not online—your presence may also help you to win customers away from your competitors who are not online.

In business, we’re always after great value.  If the right domain name is important to your business, then paying for the best is going to be worth it.

To get started, you’ll want to go to Afternic.com (the site I work with) and start searching.  Don’t buy the first name you see, really do your homework and see what’s available for sale and try to find the perfect domain.  We’re currently listing 3,596,444 domain names and it’s a pretty good bet there’s a one (and likely a whole lot) that will meet your needs in there.  You’ll see that there are filters on the left hand side of the site; you likely want to add some filters to your search to cut down on the list of names displayed.

Once you distill your list of names down and you’re ready to buy, you’ve got a couple of options.  Most of our domains have a “Buy Now” price – that’s a price that the buyer has agreed to sell the domain for immediately.  No haggling, no problems.  You just click the button and the domain purchase process begins.

We also support auctions and often you won’t see a “Buy Now” button so you’ll be able to make an offer.  You can also participate in closing soon auctions of domain names, etc.

Personally, if I want a domain name, I buy it then and there if I can.

You may also want to pick up the phone and call the account managers for assistance; they’ve helped thousands of business owners find suitable online monikers over the years and they can also offer you advice about “next steps” once you’ve secured the perfect domain name.

What’s This Domain Really Worth

Before you make on offer on an Auction you might want an assessment of what the domain name is really worth.  We offer a team of domain appraisal experts who will give you a nuts and bolts assessment of the domain’s real market value.

As with many of our other services, this is also available as a separate service, even if you are looking at a domain we don’t have listed.

I Want a Specific Domain and It’s Not Listed

I think this is one of the coolest features of Afternic.  We offer “Afternic Agent Service” which means that we will locate the owner of any domain and make an offer on your behalf.  This is tremendous for a couple reasons:

  • The service can be anonymous, which we sometime need in business
  • Our experienced agents know how to find the owners
  • They are highly experienced in negotiating domain sales
  • They make deals happen

Purchasing Your Domain

When you’ve clicked that “buy now” button or you have won your domain auction, the domain name escrow process begins.  Afternic’s secure process protects both buyer and seller—ensuring that no money, nor any domains change hands until the transaction is verified. The secure transfer is included with any purchases made through Afternic.com or BuyDomains.com, but you can also utilize Afternic’s secure escrow service for any domain transaction.

Thoughts on Joining the World of Android

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Over the weekend I made the switch to the HTC Evo 4g on the Sprint network.  I still have the iPhone, but will be using it as a glorified iPod Touch after a serious run in with AT&T’s much Byzantine labyrinth of customer support.

The good:

  • Both front and back facing cameras
  • It seems like a more serious piece of technology
  • The screen is better than the iPhone
  • The camera is 8 megapixels, with built in flash
  • Turn by turn navigation
  • Tremendous integration with Google apps
  • Speech recognition that works – I can actually do things by voice now
  • Wireless hotspot – now my old iPhone and iPad can work in wireless mode
  • This seems like a much more serious piece of gear than the iPhone

The bad:

  • Lots of apps, but missing some of the ones I liked best on the iPhone, like Concert Vault
  • The battery life is incredibly short – seriously, an add on battery pack is needed here
  • I see a lot of error messages from the background
  • On error messages the buttons say “force close” which is a term that will be foreign to most users

For the record, the AT&T Customer Disservice guy I was talking to went the extra mile to make sure I’d have an extra hard time transferring my line.  Luckily, after my Twitter tirade,  the ATT social media crew helped to get me fixed.   This all on the same day that the WSJ reported Verizon was days away from having the iPhone.

For the record, AT&T should learn a few newspaper terms: “Churn”, “Retention” and “Honkin’ Big Loss of Revenue”.

Twitter Just Became Relevant

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I’ve got a long and storied history with Twitter.  At first, hated it.  Then loved it…and recently have been somewhat ambivalent.

Personally I think the short form blog, which is what Twitter is, appeals to some of the very things that are wrong with modern society.  It’s designed for the ADHD generation, feeds the growing cults of personality, and in general, is a prime expediter of the dumbing down process.  The whole thing was designed to be scanned, not read, a very fact against which the writer in me is compelled to rebel.  Beyond that, I attribute it to the ongoing decline of blogs and blog commenting.

That was until I saw a new app for the iPad called Flipboards (free).  This app takes your twitter and facebook feeds, as well as just about anything else RSS and on the fly retrieves the summary data from the links which are embedded and constructs an online newspaper format for you to read it in.

So now, instead of reading a limited 140 character post, with an unintelligible shortened url, the app pulls down all the content, pictures and all and creates a very user friendly representation of the data.

That’s the point at which the world changed…

Now instead of this:

I get this:

(Sorry for the blurry photo – it’s actually visually stunning, but I had to take the pic with my iPhone in my dark cubicle and with my hand tremor in full force today, that’s as good as it gets)

Overnight, that makes Twitter (and Facebook) a crowd-sourced news clipping service which brings me all the news that’s fit to link.

Oh, and by the way, RSS is dead as a reading format.  It’s now a cross-site content transfer language.

Try it, I think you’ll be as blown away as I am.

Initial Impression – the iPad

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I’m now one of the kewl kids again…I have an iPad.

While I’ll admit a fascination with the concept of the thing, it wasn’t on my acquisition list. You see, between my iPhone or one of my many computers, I’m almost always online. Even my TV gets Twitter, Google, etc. Lack of internet access really isn’t an issue for me.

Now I have a 16gb iPad, the wireless version, and its trying hard to find its place in my life.

The Good

  • Most of my existing iPhone apps work full screen with the iPad.
  • Battery life – praise the Lord, something from Apple that uses a battery which doesn’t measure battery life in nanoseconds.
  • Images are visually stunning in many cases.
  • Newspapers make a lot more sense to me.
  • The form factor here is much better for the bifocal set. I definitely default to reading email here if possible, rather than the iPhone.

The Bad

  • Some of my key iPhone apps don’t transition full screen to the iPad. Notably:
    • Navionics – every navigational chart for the East Coast of the US. Too bad, this would be one of the best on the big screen.
    • Facebook – luckily I can just go to the site.
    • Most of the apps are long on promise and short on delivery. Other than newspapers, I haven’t found much that truly excites me.
    • The games are essentially recoded flash games. My daughters may like farming mangoes for the citizens of Virtual Villagers, but I’m yet to be enamoured of the gaming experience.
    • Greasy screen – the girls use it and tweenagers aren’t the best at keeping the screen clean. I may have to hire a homeless squeegee guy to keep it scrubbed down, or at least non-encrusted.
    • The thing is heavy. Holding it up to read actually gets tiring.
    • I reject the idea of paying for an app for every little thing.
    • I REALLY reject the idea of installing an app only to find:
      • It wants me to pay for the content. The modern day equivalent of getting a “batteries not included ” gift on Christmas and not having the batteries to go with it.
      • It’s a “lite” version with the functionality neutered.
      • They’re charging for an app with functionality I can easily get by going to any one of 30 existing websites that do it better.

    This week I have been doing one thing I haven’t done in several years. I am actually getting up, getting a cup of coffee and reading several of my favorite newspapers. Other than that, I’m pretty much on one of my computers.

    Share the wisdom in the comments, what am I missing?

Fighter Pilots vs. Bomber Pilots

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A while back, a friend mentioned his frustration with a coworker who seemed to be eternally breaking the site.  No matter how good things were, there was always just one more tweak he wanted to try, and in doing so, he’d inevitably take the site down.

I was reminded of the story my father, Jack Cahill, used to tell me.  One I’m sure any of you who met him will remember

There are two kinds of people in this world, fighter pilots and bomber pilots.  The bomber pilot likes to wrap himself up in a nice warm jacket, climb into the cockpit of the bomber with a nice cup of hot coffee in the cup holder, and take off gently, ease on up to altitude, then have a nice flat level flight into the target, where he drops the payload, then turns back for a slow trip back the the field.  A good day is an uneventful day.

On the other side of it, you have the fighter pilot, who lives to strap himself tight into the cockpit, pull on his gloves, and takeoff, going from the runway to near verticle as quickly as possible.  He can’t wait to get over the target and mix it up.  The best days are the ones where he limps back to the landing strip, his plane full of holes, the ammo gone, the fuel nearly gone, and with plenty of stories to tell.

There are some jobs that are utterly suited for the bomber pilot.  QA, maintenance engineer, etc…any place you need a steady hand that gets the job done every single time.  The Fighter pilot is the kind of person who’s probably best in a troubleshooting roll, or maybe something innovative.

Take a good look at your team: do you have fighter pilots who are doing the work of bomber pilots? How about the opposite?

How about you?  Which one are you?

WordPress on Windows…Why Would You?

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Over the past two months I’ve had a look at two different sites running on WordPress that were running on Windows Servers.  In both cases, the sites were having issues, and in both cases, they could not get simple functionality they wanted to work on the servers and ended up moving to Linux hosting.

Does WordPress run on Windows?  Yes, most definitely.  I can attest that I’ve run serveral installations going back to the old 1.x days.  The problem is this: even though you can get a core installation of WP running, there are alot of plugins that simply will not work on a Windows server.

The big thing that comes to mind is this: why even bother messing with a Windows Server?  The WordPress package is built to run on Linux, and even if you don’t want to setup your own server, you can certainly get a competently hosted account in the $3.99 a month range.  There we know the plugins we want will run.

My feeling is this: yes, it runs on Windows, but I have yet to see a situation where I didn’t have some strange problem that took time to diagnose which was related the use of that platform.  If you like chasing phantoms around a server, then maybe this is a project for you.  I personally have better things to do.

So in the future, my general rule is this: no Windows servers for WordPress.  If you want my help, it’s going to move to Linux first.

How Google Will Ruin the Cloud

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I really enjoy having access to my stuff in the cloud.  Docs I can pull down anywhere, anytime, mail that isn’t tied down to a single machine, etc.

Unfortunately, there are problems with the cloud, and with handing off services to companies like Google, which most of us aren’t thinking of.

Over the past couple months I have had 4 major problems big cloud based services.  In each case, save one, it was impossible to get actual customer service from the company to resolve the issue.  Not only could I not get a person on the phone to fix my problem, there wasn’t an email, or in fact, any way whatsoever to contact the people responsible for the service.

Now I am not talking about Joe’s Web Service and Tattoo Palor.  I am talking about Google and Yahoo, and their services FeedBurner, Picasa and Flickr.  It wasn’t like I was asking the world, simply to get access to my content, account, etc. and in each case I was unsuccessful at getting any level of response.

None…zip…nadda.

So ask yourself, how will you feel when you go to fire up your big presentation at ToolCamp 2014 and you find you can’t access, then to compound the problem, you find that you cannot even get email support, much less someone on the phone.

Its widely known in technology circles that Google hates people.  They don’t want to interact with us on a personal level at all, preferring to let us talk to each other in Google Groups.  This is all fine and dandy, right up until the point that they have something wrong in their system that needs to be corrected.

The model cannot work.  We shouldn’t accept it, and we certainly shouldn’t count on it.  The cloud is powerful, but its doomed if we’re expected to fly without a customer support net.  No matter how good your system is, its going to have problems and at that point you (Mr. Google) need to actually talk to the customers you just screwed, so you can fix their problems.

Don’t hold your breath.

Updated to WordPress 3.0

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Nothing major, just did a quick backup then hit the upgrade button.  While things may have changed significantly in the backend code, there really isn’t much to show you here.

  • WordPress MU (the multiblog variant of WordPress that is used on WordPress.com) is now built into the maintstream code.  Thus endeth the tyranny of MU, a code branch I personally despised.
  • Custom menus make it really easy to create a special nav menu.  I’ve already used this, and it’s a nice feature.
  • They finally let you pick your own username and password for the admin user during installation.  Seems like a little thing, but it’s been a system issue since day one with legions of users forgetting to either change the admin user password or to write it down.
  • Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies – I haven’t used either, but I suspect that I will soon.  Both of these are hardcore CMS functions.
  • Scads of new hooks and functions for plugin and theme developers.