XavierMedia.com

ICANN Approve International Domain Suffixes

2009-11-07T15:05:53Z

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has announced that they will start approving TLDs (Top Level Domains) using non-latin characters. This means that government can apply for country codes using characters like ÅÄÖ.

This is not something new, we've seen it before in Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) for .com, .net and several country code domains where you can register domains like www.åäö.com. In theory you should soon be able to register domains like www.åäö.åäö

According to Sitepoint there are three rules to follow when you apply for a new TLD:

Countries may only apply for one domain name suffix.
The suffix must represent the name of the country or an abbreviation.
Non-Latin versions of .com and .org will not be permitted yet, but ICANN is considering the implications further.

This may at first sound like a new col and useful feature, but imagine someone from China trying to access the web site of a Swedish company at one of these new TLDs. How easy is it for a Chinese person to type www.åäö.åäö? I can for sure say that I'm not going to be able to visit a web site with just Chinese characters . This little announcement may cause damage and confusion to the Internet community because of all variations that may occur.

There's also a greater risk of phishing web sites. It's already today hard to see if there's a ´ over one of the characters in a domain name you may see in an email you get. Already today there's a risk that if you get an email from what you may think is your bank or even Paypal you may end up at a scam web sites because the domain name was typed as www.páypal.com. Now we may see even more of this in the future….

One good think is that so far it looks like only governments can apply which may reduce the number of new TLDs.

What do you think about this?

You can read the full announcement from ICANN here.

ICANN Approve International Domain Suffixes from XavierMedia.com

Incident at Snapnames

2009-11-04T21:18:47Z

Snapnames recently discovered that an employee had setup an account for himself under false name to bid in auctions at Snapnames (something which is not allowed by Snapnames). This behavior is not allowed by Snapnames and luckily it only affected a small part of their auctions (approximately five percent of total SnapNames auctions since 2005 according to the email sent out by Snapnames).

This is from the email we got earlier today:

Though on some occasions the employee won the auction, in many instances the bidding caused the ultimate auction winner to pay more for a name than had the employee not participated in the auction.

SnapNames neither condones this conduct nor wants to be perceived as benefiting from the conduct. Accordingly, we have decided that regardless of the circumstance, in every auction where the employee’s fictitious account submitted a bid which resulted in a higher price being paid by the winning bidder, SnapNames will offer a rebate, with 5.22% interest (the highest applicable federal rate during the affected time period), to affected customers for the difference between the prices they actually paid and the prices they would have paid, had the employee not bid in the auctions. The rebate will be available in cash or in credit on the SnapNames platform, at your discretion.

The fact that Snapnames takes action against this, sends out an email informing their customers and also compensate the customers with interest shows that you can trust Snapnames. In the domain name auction business trust is an extremelly important factor and I think this really shows that you can continue to use Snapnames for your auctions.

Another good thing that indicate trust is that Snapnames will not handle the discounts themselves, instead they will let Rust Consulting, an independent third party, administer the rebate offer.

If you have used Snapnames some time after 2005 you may have a rebate available in your account.

Incident at Snapnames from XavierMedia.com

The end of Geocities

2009-10-26T17:06:09Z

Today is the last day of the history of Geocities since Yahoo has decided to close down the Geocities hosting.

Geocites started offering free homepages to the Internet community in 1994 as one of the first companies in that business sector. It pretty soon became one of the largest and most popular sites on the Internet thanks to it's innovative way of allowing people (and small companies) to create free home pages using a web based editor.It became possible for anyone without technical knowledge to create a simple site

In 1999 the company was acquired by Yahoo for $2.87 billions and the popularity began to disapper. In April this year Yahoo announced that it was no longer possible to create new accounts and the users should find new hosts for the web pages.

If you consider the amount Yahoo paid for Geocities it can't have been a good deal for Yahoo. They should have let Geocites operate more on it's own and should also have developed their services instead of just using their old platform from 1999 with just a face-lift. Since Geocities stopped developing they really lost the race compared to paid web hosting deals like for example our own eXavier.com where you can get a web site with tons of features not included in Geocities for only $3.95/month.

The lesson to learn here is that if you buy a site (small or big) you have to develop it even after the acqusition, otherwise you may lose your entire investment.

The end of Geocities from XavierMedia.com

Microsfot Security Essentials

2009-10-25T15:13:07Z

I just tried Microsoft Security Essentials for my Windows computers and I have to say that it's a fantastic antivirus software. McAfee and Symantec really need to watch out since this is going to make them lose customers.

We all know that the antivirus softwares from the big companies like McAfee and Symantec requires a lot of resources from your computer, they always pop-up when you're in a hurry to do something and asks you to restart your computer. They all claim they scan your computer "in the background without you noticing" and we all know that's just b*s because they take so much resources from your computer that you can almost not do anything while the scanning is taking place.

Now there's a fantastic solution from Microsoft and it's called Microsoft Security Essentials.

All you need to download Security Essentials is a valid (genuine) version of Windows (XP, Vista or Windows 7). The installation was done in a few minutes (including updating of the virus signature files needed to do an up-to-date scan).

I installed Security Essentials on two of my computers: One IBM running XP with 1 GB ram memory and the other one an ASUS running Vista with 4 Gb memory. A full scan on the IBM took a little bit longer then on the Vista machine, but the time difference was much smaller then I had expected. I have had Security Essentials installed on both computers for little bit more then a week now and I have never noticed it. So if you compare to the McAfee virus software I had before I'm never switching back, because McAfee tried to take over the computer all the time and especially if I was in a hurry to print or do something important before an important deadline.

As with most other antivirus softwares you can schedule scans and you can select between a full scan or a quick one. As a result of the scan I did Security Essentials found an old keylogger I had on my L drive (it was a full copy of the Ghost Keylogger we sold on behalf of Sureshot Software a couple of years ago). This keylogger had been there for several years and McAfee had missed it every scan……

Sorry McAfee, I'm not renewing my 3 licenses with you in January. I'm staying with a much better "life guard" called Security Essentials.

Microsfot Security Essentials from XavierMedia.com

Version 0.8.3 of WebPage Toolbar

2009-10-21T19:54:57Z

After almost a year the next version of WebPage Toolbar is finally available. The WebPage Toolbar is a toolbar where you can easily look up web pages you visit directly from your browser. Some of the supported sources for web page information are Compete.com, AboutUs.org and Alexa.

This version got support for Firefox 3.5.*! Another thing that's new in this version is that MSN search engine has been replaced by Bing.com.

You can download it directly from Mozilla at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7706/ and if you do please also review the toolbar. The more downloads we get of this toolbar the sooner we can leave the sandbox and have this toolbar as a public plugin for Firefox.

For more information on the supported search engine, please check out http://webpage.xaviermedia.com/features/

As of the release of this version we will no longer support older toolbars, so please upgrade before you ask for support

Version 0.8.3 of WebPage Toolbar from XavierMedia.com

Renewable Green Energy Web Hosting

2009-10-13T17:07:00Z

Today it's Blog Action Day and the idea with this day this year is to have as many blogs as possible to write about climate change today (you can read more about this at XavierMedia.org). We at Xavier Media is of course joining in and we we write a little bit about wind powered hosting to reduce the impact on the climate.

Most people don't realize that by surfing the web and using computers you consume a lot of electricity. As an example we found an article about how much energy needed to provide you search engine results:

While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g.

This is a lot of CO², and it also give you an indication that a normal web hosting server where most people host their web sites, blogs and forums must also consume a lot of energy too. This is of course not the case if your web server is using renewable green energy like for example wind power.

A couple of years ago this wasn't possible and even if you could find a web hosting company that offered servers using green electricity it would cost you a fortune to host your site. Luckily some web hosts have seen the increasing interest in renewable energy from their customers and started to offer this kind of services .

One example is for example Host Papa which have all their web servers powered by 100% renewable green energy sources . Their hosting plan is of course not more expensive then any of their competitors so there is no need to feel that you need to cut out of any features or pay more for your hosting then with "dirty" alternatives.

To make it easier for all of you to find hosting companies using green energy sources we've added a special category at 24/7 Webmaster.com where you can see reviews of hosts using just renewable green energy.

Renewable Green Energy Web Hosting from XavierMedia.com

Which Top Level Domain will be the most hyped one during 2010?

2009-10-11T19:18:45Z

Every now and then we see new or highly marketed Top Level Domains (TLDs) to get really hyped. The three big (.com, .net and .org) will always be the most popular TLDs, but which small TLD will become the most hyped one in 2010?

We've seen it before and we will see it many times before.

.NU

At the end of the 90's (ten years ago!!!) .NU became popular in the Scandinavian countries since the word "nu" means "now" in both Swedish and Danish. At that time the price of $25 was really cheap compared to a .COM domain name and .SE had too many restrictions on what could be registered so it was almost impossible to get a cool .SE domain. Since then the .NU has lost it's importance and Nunames are almost seen as a clown company by some people . Some domains still use it as domain for it's primary site, but it's not seen as the obvious choice for your primary domain.

.CC

About the same time as .NU (or at least shortly there after) the .CC TLD became heavily promoted by Verisign via it's subsidiary eNIC as "the next .com" domain. Verisign and eNIC did a good job since .CC TLD became the "second largest TLD registry in the United States second only to Verisign"[1] in 2001. Today I've seen the site used for "credit card" sites and maybe one or another Clickbank affiliate directory, but not any big web sites.

.WS

Some registrars started promoting .WS as a Web Site domain a couple of years ago while it's in fact the TLD for Samoa. I heard a lot of buzz about it, but never saw any big web sites using .WS as domain for it's primary web site. Today the site is a little bit like a big MLM program since all unregistered domains promote a "income for life" program.

.EU

In 2005 we got to see the new European TLD for the first time, but I guess only European Union and the registrars wanted this domain. A lot of people registered this domains anyway mainly to prevent cyber squatters to hijack their trademarks. Many new trademarks where registered before the release of this domain just to join the sunrise period. One example is the trademark #S#E#X# which would give the trademark owner a chance to register sex.eu…..

.ME

I guess this year has been all about .ME (the Montenegro TLD). This domain is great for domain hacks (domains where the full domain name spell out a word or a phrase), like for example find.me or havefunwith.me. Godaddy has promoted this TLD heavily, but I don' think it will be that popular next year.

So which TLD will become the hype during 2010? Maybe the new .ASIA, or something else. What do you think?

Which Top Level Domain will be the most hyped one during 2010? from XavierMedia.com

Satellite Internet Service

2009-10-12T16:39:58Z

Do you live in the country side where you don't have access to cable or other high speed Internet options? Then you should have a look at satellite Internet services as an option. You get the same speed and service as other options to connect to Internet.

One of the biggest satellite internet provider in US is HughesNet and they offer several plans where you can choose download speeds up to 1.2 Mbps and upload speeds up to 200 Kbps, which is comparable to any other type of connection. It's also much faster and the best thing is that you don't have to occupy your phone line like you do with dial-up connections.

HughesNet can be used anywhere in the contiguous US where you have a clear view of the southern sky.

How it's working

Your computer communicates with one of the satellites using a dish. Information is both sent and received the same way.

The satellite contact HughesNet Network Operation Centre (NOC) and asks for the web page you want to see (or the emails you want to read or whatever you're doing). The NOC then contacts the web server where the page is found and requests the web site for you. The page is then sent back the same way all the way to your computer.

This process is almost instantly so I would says that it took you much much longer to read this article then it would have taken you to surf to is using satellite Internet

You can read more about this type of connections at HughesNet's website.

Satellite Internet Service from XavierMedia.com

.YU no longer a Top Level Domain

2009-10-06T19:09:42Z

On the 30th of September the Yugoslavian Top Level Domain (TLD) .YU was retired for good. Since Yugoslavia was split into several new states in 2003, like Serbia and Montenegro, the TLD has been living on over-time.

The reason for not removing the TLD earlier has been to allow all active web sites to switch to other Top Level Domains like for example .RS (the Serbian TLD) or .ME (the Montenegro TLD), but still at the end there where about 4,000 active sites using .YU which by now is completely unreachable.

The TLDs .RS and .ME are extremely popular to create domain hacks (domain names where the domain name + the Top Level Domain together create a phrase or word). Some examples of domain hacks are webmaste.rs, find.me and blogge.rs, but virtually any TLD can be used for domain hacks. Just check out del.isio.us and Xavier Media's own blog adv.erti.se.

There are other examples of TLDs where the country they belong to don't exists any more, like .SU for the old Soviet Union. From what I know the .SU is still active and there are no plans of removing it in the near future which is weird since the Soviet Union stopped existing as a country in 1991. ICANN has expressed intentions to terminate the .SU TLD, and the IANA states that the domain is being phased out, but lobbyists claim that they have started negotiations with ICANN on retaining the domain and registrations of new domains under .SU is still possible. In the first quarter of 2008, .SU registrations increased by 45%, which may be in violation of the ICANN policies. But since ICANN have plans to allow new TLDs for anyone willing to pay for it, it shouldn't be any problems to keep .SU (right? ).

.YU no longer a Top Level Domain from XavierMedia.com

Expect more SQL injections

2009-10-05T18:59:00Z

The infamous bot network Asprox has been dormant for a couple for months now, but recently it started waking up again. The botnet is currently searching for vulnerable servers and websites to infect and the reason is to infect the visitors computers with harmful code. In May/June this botnet was able to infect more than 1,000 sites, and it could be as bad this time.

What will happen if your site, blog or server gets infected?

Evil code will be inserted in your pages and every visitor you get to your site will get infected by some kind of trojan. Exactly which trojan and how the infection is done varies a little bit from time to time, but it's basically an iframe or javascript code somewhere inside your own HTML code.

If Google and other security companies gets enough complaints that your site is spreading viruses or trojans they will blacklist your site. This means that most people will see a big warning sign instead of your site. They will also be recommended not to visit your site since you're a security risk.

If you don't stop spreading viruses and trojans your hosting company could close your account because you're a security risk and you could harm your web hosting company's reputation.

If you get your site infected this not only will cause you to lose a lot of credibility, but you will also lose revenue since most people will not be able to access your site at all. Also who wants to buy something (and hand over for example credit card numbers) to someone that can't secure their web site?

So, what should you do to avoid this?

Make sure all your software is up-to-date. Upgrade all your Wordpress, phpBB, vBulletin etc installations (especially if they use SQL as database since these botnets tend to focus on that).

Make daily backups of your site on a secure location (not on the same server as you have your site), so that you can switch back to a clean copy of your site just in case the unwanted happens.

Check your site daily for suspicious code, so you can correct any problems before your site is blacklisted. Look for Javascript and iframe code you don't recognise, especially if the domain name used in the code is funny looking or if the Javascript code is completely encrypted and unreadable.

Expect more SQL injections from XavierMedia.com