Structured Thought . ORG

Since I’m a sucker for free hits, and @UStreamTV asked, here are some thoughts on live video, specifically, live video on the web.

I think the idea of being able to connect with people face to face (in a manner) instantly, from almost anywhere, is achieving a level of world-shrinking that hasn’t been seen since the early days of the telegraph and telephones. Before the telephone, realtime communication with someone more than a few feet away from you was pretty much unheard of. There was the telegraph, but morse code is slow, and sending messages was generally pretty expensive. When the telephone came along, suddenly people could communicate over astoundingly large distances, several thousand miles in some cases (New York to Los Angeles is almost 2,500 miles), instantly. Suddenly, your favorite cousin that moved to Texas a few years ago, was merely a few turns of the rotary dial (or a few plug changes by the switchboard operator) away.

The Internet itself has done much to accelerate this world-shrinking, but (in my own opinion) has not participated directly in the process, as it was originally built upon the infrastructure of the phone system in the first place.

Enter Internet video: Now, with about $30 of equipment, and a reasonably fast internet connection, anyone can create a video that is able to be distributed to the entire world in an instant. Video sharing sites like YouTube allow anyone to create a short video that is viewable by anyone in the world.

The next step, live video, has truly shrunk the world to the point that the only thing separating many of us is a time zone. Now, with that same $30 of equipment and internet connection, people can have live, realtime, face-to-face conversations, anytime, regardless of physical location. This new experience is the closest we have been able to come to actually being in the same room with someone so far away.

After thinking about it, I honestly think that there will not be any real world-shrinking technologies developed that will do what the telephone and live video have been able to do until we’re able to transport ourselves instantly from place to place.

I started blogging over at Lockergnome today. I’ll probably link back to my posts over there, and vice-versa, so you won’t need to fear for missing anything from me.

With that, here is my first real Lockergnome blog post. You like that really long link text, don’t you? I thought so.

I own quite a few domains. Many times, when I have an idea, I’ll snatch up the domain name, just because they’re cheap, and in case I decide to run with it. Many times, I end up doing nothing with the domain and just let it expire quietly.

How the Expiration System Works

When you register a domain name, the records for that DNS entry are locked so that you have complete control over where the various records for that domain name send requests. At the time of registration, you pay a fee that guarantees your control over this record for a specified amount of time. Typical registration is 1 year, but many registrars will allow you to purchase up to 10 years on a domain name.

After the registration period is up, there is a period where the domain goes into limited availability. Many registrars will count the first 30 days as a ‘grace period’, where you can renew the expired domain without incurring any extra costs, or with minimal additional cost. After that period, a couple of different things can happen:

1. The registrar can release the domain back into the public pool, making it available for anyone to register.

2. The registrar can set up a ‘redemption period’, where the domain goes for sale at an elevated price, but the original registrant has first option to buy.

3. The registrar can put the domain up for auction (the most common option), allowing the market to dictate the registration price.

If the domain is not registered within the periods defined by #2 and #3, the domain falls back into the public pool, available for anyone to register at any registrar.

The ‘Tasting Period’

Before the ‘tasting’ period was developed, one had to be extremely careful when registering a domain. Domain purchases were non-refundable, and simple typographical errors during the registration process could be costly. To help alleviate the pain of mistyping a desired domain name, the ‘tasting’ period was developed.

Tasting a domain entails registering it just as before, but now customers have a five-day grace period in which to ‘return’ the domain name for a full refund. This allows someone that mistyped a name to get their money back and register the correct domain name. It also allows for people to follow through with buyers remorse. If the five-day period expires, the domain can not be returned, and the registrant may no longer apply for a refund.

The five-day grace period applies for all domain purchases, even those at auction or during registrar redemption periods. So, anyone with enough credit can purchase any expired domain within their limits and get the money back within 5 days.

How Scammers Abuse the System

Unfortunately, scammers have found a way to abuse this system as well. There are now people that troll the expiration records, snapping up expired domains the moment they come available. They then take the original contact information from the registrant and spam them with an offer to ‘reclaim’ their domain at an extremely elevated price. I have seen these ‘offers’ as high as $300 for a simple .com that has no intrinsic value except to the original owner. If the original registrant is not gullible enough to be hooked in by the scam within the first five days, the scammer simply cancels the registration for a full refund.

What Can be Done?

Unfortunately, this type of scam is perfectly legal, and there is currently no real way to stop them. One can discourage tasters from abusing the system  by informing others, and making sure to NEVER buy a domain from a taster, ever. Just like spam, the very few people that do bite are enough to fund the operation, and make all of the failed attempts worth it.

I hope that some day we will see a logical solution to the tasting scam problem. Possibly, it may come down to disallowing tasting of domains purchased at auction. This would be an inconvenience for some, but it would keep the tasters away, and possibly help keep prices down so that the person that REALLY wants the domain can purchase it at a reasonable price.

I have seen this question come up quite a bit in Twitter discussions, so I thought I’d detail what’s happening, and why spammers have decided to attempt to use Twitter to forward their mission.

Background:

Anyone who knows me knows my opinion on spammers, scammers, and other generally nefarious characters. I find it the lowest of the low to make one’s living at the expense of the innocence, trust, or ignorance of others. I have gone on record saying that the world would be a better place without these individuals, and I’m really not opposed to any methods that might bring about their removal from the planet.

Anyway, spammers will attach themselves to any form of media that they believe MIGHT give them the slightest edge, and possibly bring them a couple of bucks. What spammers don’t realize (partly because they’re just plain greedy, and partly because they’re just dumb), is that abusing the systems that they latch on to (much like lampreys onto sharks), will only stay afloat as long as the system is usable (just like any other parasite). Too much abuse of the system makes it unusable, and therefore unfit for spamming. Because of this, any time a new service, even one that people think might be un-spammable, like Twitter, spammers flock to new services in droves, all looking for that one click that might increase the CPM for their ‘customer’.

How the Spammers are Using Twitter:

As I said above, spammers are not abusing Twitter because they make money off of it. Why or how, then, you ask, do spammers use Twitter? Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?

Indexing is the Key:

The largest search engine on the Internet is Google. Google uses webcrawling robots both to build its database, and help with developing rankings for pages. The best way to have your page increase its page rank is to get it linked from a lot of different places. Each time the Google crawler comes across a link to your page, one part of your page rank increases. As the page rank goes up, the higher your page shows up in search results of topics related to your content.

Spammers Abuse Indexing, Not Twitter:

So, Google’s webcrawler comes across someone’s Twitter page. I’ll link mine, for an example. When it arrives on the page, it takes a catalog of every link it sees. Next, it follows each of those links to see where they go, adding to the database every step of the way. Here’s the key: Every person’s Twitter page has a link to their list of followers. When the crawler hits that link, it sees a list of every person following that user, even those that the user doesn’t follow back. The crawler then goes and hits each of those Twitter pages, following every link, and indexing everything on those pages as well.

This is the key. If a spammer is following 12,000 people, Google’s crawler will eventually hit their Twitter page 12,000 times, artificially inflating that Twitter page’s popularity. Consequently, the spam pages that the Twitter page links to also has its popularity artificially inflated, temporarily raising that page’s position in search results. Since a spammer’s ultimate goal is to have its ‘clients’ pages show up in the organic search results, these artificial bursts of popularity are a quick and easy way to make a buck.

I hope this has helped shed some light on the seemingly useless abuse of Twitter by spammers. It’s not just people that post undesirable content, it’s people abusing a useful tool at the expense of legitimate users. The very small idealistic side of me believes that some day, the Internet will be a good place again, where people can share ideas freely, without the threat of useless wastes of flesh that try to make a few bucks at the expense of others.

I’m not sure what’s going on in the Twitterverse, but I’ve been getting a lot of followers without notification lately. I can only imagine two possibilities:

1. Twitter’s email notification is not working at 100%, and messages are being dropped (they’re not showing up in my spam box, either) or not sent at all.
2. Spammers have found a way to game the system by following people without them being notified.

I hope it’s number 1, but I’m pretty sure it’s number 2. Every stealth follower I’ve had, with the exception of 2 or 3 has been a spam account. I have also gotten notification messages from legitemate followers in between getting followed by spammers, which leads me to lean more toward the first.

I’m posting this here, because I don’t want to send it to just @ev and @biz.

Please, Twitter, investigate this. I’m betting I’m not nearly the only person seeing this, and many people just may not be noticing. Keeping the spammers away from this system is the only way to continue to keep it a viable service.

So, iPhone developers have put out a fantastic little application called Twinkle, which is a native iPhone application that interfaces with Twitter. I’ve decided to work on developing a Twitter application for Windows Mobile. Partly because I think it would do well, but mostly because I have a Windows Mobile phone, and using the Google Talk gateway to Twitter just isn’t that practical for me.

I put up a site for the development that is slowly taking shape. Check it out, subscribe, and if you have a WinMo phone, let me know. I’m going to need testers, so I’ll probably be sending out early releases to lucky individuals.

So, I finally got tired of the banner every time I logged in to Word Press, telling me that I needed to update.

Impressed so far. The new admin theme is really nice, and the real-time text editing is greatly improved.

Looks like it will take a little time to get used to things, but apparently, it will be worth it.

Got my approval for this site on Woopra today. If you’re not familiar with what Woopra is, here’s a quick overview:

Woopra is a site-tracking system that gives you real-time monitoring capabilities. At the user end, you simply put a small snippet of JavaScript on any page you want to track, and install a small application on the computer(s) you wish to monitor from. It’s that simple. Once everything is in place, you will see statistics for your site in nearly real-time. At this point, I’m seeing hits within 15 seconds of visiting this site, which is a pretty good turnaround.

So far, I’m very impressed. Now I just need to start driving more traffic to this site. Partially because I like traffic, and partially because I think it’s really cool to watch the traffic come in.

Unfortunately, it’s still in beta, so the waiting period is quite long. I think I put in my application about 2 months ago, and that’s just for this tiny little site that doesn’t get more than 1,000 uniques/month. I imagine, until they go fully live, they won’t be taking on too many large or high-traffic sites, as they will require a lot of resources on Woopra’s end.

Check it out, try it out. If you’ve been using it for a while, leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Abstract

The concept of e-mail as a useful tool for communication has passed. The advent of UBE (Unsolicited Bulk Email) or, colloquially, ’spam’, has completely changed the e-mail experience. Sophos now estimates that 92.3% of the e-mail traffic on the internet is spam¹. The time has come for an asynchronous communication system to replace e-mail. I will detail what I believe to be the requirements, challenges, and possibilities for a system of this nature, and how it can prevent, or eliminate the possibility of corruption from the same types of individuals that have ruined the current system.

Read the rest of this entry »

So, here it is. I thought this would be fun.

Grand Central is a free web-based virtual phone service that allows you to coordinate all of your phone numbers into one. I use it, myself, for my domain contact information and other things where I don’t want people to know my actual phone number(s).

So, here’s the challenge. I thought it would be fun to have people call my GC number and leave me voice messages. I won’t pick up, and I won’t screen the message (one of the great features of GC). Leave your name, and a cool message, and we’ll see what we get. If I get some really good ones, I’ll post the audio files (with the sender’s permission, of course) for everyone to enjoy.

My Grand Central number is: +1 (734) 961-4826