Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Sometimes one needs a lexicon to decipher the perfectly massaged texts presented by corporations on their web sites. This is the case with the FAQ section on the .tel Registry’s web site, TelNIC.org

I will attempt to explain what each grand statement means, in plain “domainese”:

All existing Top Level Domains (e.g. .com, .net, .org, .fr, .mobi…) serve the same purpose: they map domain names to web sites. Google, etc. must read .com, etc. and try to find the contact information as each website is different. This guessing by search engines misses contact information and/or does not find the right contact information.

The “right contact information” exists on active web sites, if their owner chooses to set it up on a web page. Which they might decide not to do, for reasons of their own. Search engines don’t “guess” contact information. There is a separate space, WHOIS, for domain ownership information and it’s widely accessible by free tools.

.tel maps domain names to contact information and keywords stored directly in the DNS, enabling companies to use the DNS as a data store.

Essentially, you surrender your contact info to a glorified Yellow Pages database and you allow the .tel Registry to do as they please with it.

.tel offers you an entry into the first global directory, allowing you to own and control all your contact information and update it in real-time whenever you wish. By contrast to existing directory services that are highly fragmented and very expensive, the .tel provides worldwide coverage, full control and real-time updating for only a fraction of the cost.

People use the following free services to publish, control and share their contact information: MySpace, Facebook, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN Live, LinkedIn, Skype, Twitter. There is no fragmentation and there is certainly no registration fees. Furthermore, on these free services people can share images, video, music, files and can collaborate, present and update all their contact info.

The .tel enables you to create a fully interactive and live communications hub to take control over how and where customers communicate with you. Using YourCompany.tel, you can publish all your means of communication, for example: phone, mobile, fax, premium numbers, VoIP and IM handles and email addresses. You can also store web links, geo-location data and keywords describing your business.

You can have a free page on MySpace that does all that and more. You can also have a full-fledged website that contains your up-to-date contact information and you can format it the exact way you want it. It’s accessible from all over the world.

What is .tel? The .tel is a service that allows individuals and businesses alike to store and manage all their contact information and keywords directly in the DNS without the need to build, host or manage a website.

That would have been interesting in 1994. Fifteen years later, there are plenty of free services and free tools to do exactly that – and more.

Why is .tel different than other Top Level Domains (TLDs)? The value of a .tel domain lies with the ability to host personal (or corporate) contact information directly in the DNS, which can then be universally accessible. This stands in contrast to the typical use of the DNS for other TLDs, in which the DNS only provides a mapping between domain names and IP addresses.

By submitting your information to the .tel Registry you become part of a Yellow Pages book that offers no benefits over a typical web site page. When the paradigm works, why change it?

Can I protect my private data? The .tel enables you to protect your private data, allowing it to be seen only by people you authorize. For more information, please see How do I protect my Private Data.

That’s exactly what you can do on Facebook and other social networking sites and you don’t have to pay a dime.

I remember the day I got my first phone number and was listed in the White Pages. Then thirty days later, the bill arrived in the mail and I realized it was not as much fun. In the early 90′s I got an email address and in the mid-90s an ICQ number. That’s all I needed so that my friends could reach me electronically.

Fast forward to 2009. The .tel TLD is a month away from “general avaialbility”, having gone through the sunrise and landrush periods. To those uneducated souls that spent $200+ for three years of registration fees during landrush, I will say “poor suckers”.

Do people ever RTFM ?

My combined status as a web developer and domainer allows me to speak with twice the authority. I would not touch the .tel with the proverbial 10-foot pole, unless the .tel Registry changed their functionality plan.

What were they thinking?

The .tel TLD is not your average new domain TLD. You can’t point it to a web page, you cannot park it. All you can do is enter your contact info into a system database / form and it will be displayed as a pretty web page, beautiful icons and all. That’s right. Pay up, “poor sucker” to have a page with 1% the capabilities of a free MySpace page so that you can give that address to friends, family and business contacts.

Did I forget to mention you can’t add any images to it? You want an mp3 playing in the background? Sorry .tel was designed with Spartans in mind. It’s black soup again for supper, Leonidas.

The .tel Registry plays down on all these “concerns” of ours and plays up various reports and press releases from around the world about how .tel is about to change the Internet. Meanwhile, the “poor suckers” that rushed to buy .tel domains en masse now realize that their expensive booty is worthless. It’s all fool’s gold and not a single .tel doubloon can pass the biting test.

Meanwhile, I can still type http://icq.com/11802590 and my ICQ contact info comes up. And it’s all free to keep.

Read more domain news at DNGator.com – your domain news aggregator.

When I bought Acro.net on eBay for about $180 – a bargain for a 4-letter, 12 year old domain with a 4-million Google keyword – I hadn’t thought of using it as my blogging site. In fact, I hadn’t thought of the blogging process as much more than a platform to vent off. A year and more than 50 posts later, I can honestly say that it was a great decision to “sacrifice” a quality name and share with the world my thoughts, experiences and ideas about technology, social issues and doing business in the domain industry.

Other than being a shortened version of my business name, Acroplex.com, “Acro” serves as my nickname on various technology forums I frequent, such as DNForum.com and it allows me to express my viewpoints using my distinct discussion style – sometimes outspoken or sarcastic.

For the most part, my blogging subjects are not related to news; I am not blogging about recent sales or happenings. There are plenty of blogs out there to track and report on these. I’m here to analyze today’s world and society and to offer insight on subjects that I have personally lived through or that I have established an opinion or philosophy about. I want to offer substance and information that can be of value. This way, I keep things interesting and hopefully my readers do not get bored!

Read more domain news at DNGator.com – your domain news aggregator.

Every once in a while, a neat web application shows up and then you scratch your head wondering – “Now, why didn’t I think of that first?” Without much debating on the issue of one’s dying braincells, I’d like to introduce ZFBot and its creator, Ken Greenwood. In this quick, impromptu interview Ken talks about his product that he offers for free at http://www.ZFBot.com

So Ken, what exactly is ZFBot.com and what does it do?

ZFBot.com is a web application that gives anyone the ability to easily and quickly find .com domain names that are actively registered. I like to refer to it as an encyclopedia of all registered .com’s. The Z is for Zone and the F is for file… so it’s the Zone File Robot. And the domain sounds like your saying “The F Bot” in German. The application also keeps track of the count of registered .com’s in total and broken down by letter combinations. Currently, there are approximately 80 million registered .com domain names.

Can you outline the process steps in not too technical terms?

Sure. I’ll try not to get too technical. At a high level, there are 3 key layers, so to speak, that make up the ZFbot.com application.

1. The data. The data file, which contains every registered .com on the internet, is retrieved from Verisign – the primary directory provider of all .com domains. The file is around 7 gigabyte in size and contains roughly 185 million records – multiple records per domain due to the fact that there can be multiple name servers associated with each domain.
2. The data crunch. The downloaded Verisign file is automatically bulk loaded daily into a MySQL database table via a script that I wrote. The script then starts “crunching” through the records on that one massive table and splits the data off in to roughly 750 tables – one for each two letter/digit combination (For example: aa, ab, ac, ad, etc… and 1a, 1b, etc). You may ask “Why would you split the data out in to several hundred tables?” The answer to that question is Performance. It was critical that the results were presented to the user of the application as quickly as possible and querying a table with 185 million records would take an unacceptable amount of time. Yes, I could have used one of several built in database techniques to assist with the performance (ie. building indexes, partitioning the table, etc) but all of them would have added significant overhead and time to rebuilding the data on a daily basis. The live status of the data crunch is displayed and scrolled directly on the ZFBot.com application.
3. The user interface/website. Although the core of the application is highly technical, I am also a stickler about aesthetics and usability… and I wanted the application to be aesthetically pleasing, relevant and very easy to use. I chose to use Adobe’s Flex as the tool to build the user interface because it satisfied those requirements (and because I do a lot of work in Flex!)

Is there a market for such a tool – how would one use it?

Well, aside from building web applications like ZFBot.com, I’ve been buying/selling/developing domain names since the mid 1990’s. And in opinion, in order for a domainer to be as successful as he or she can possibly be in regards to selling domain names, they need to exhaust every research avenue available to them to learn about the domain names within their portfolio. Yes, there are major website forums (ie dnforum.com) that a domainer can visit to post their domain for sale. But those sales are to resellers for the most part… not end users. And anyone in the domain name business knows that end users pay a lot more for a domain that they want and that means a higher profit for the domainer. And the avenue that the ZFBot.com application provides to the domainer is the ability to very easily and quickly find potential customers for their domains.

Let me explain – before I buy a domain name (typically in an auction), I do plenty of research on that domain. And one critical step in that research process is to find out if there are any individuals or companies (preferably big companies) using a domain similar to the one that I’m about to try to acquire. If I find out that there are – I’m willing to pay more for that domain because there is a good chance that the company or individual, if contacted properly, is willing to pay (sometimes handsomely) for the domain. I’ll give you a specific example… A few months ago I saw that a domain was going to drop – I’ll protect the privacy of the company and let’s say it was companyname.com. Well, a quick Google search revealed that there was a company in the UK operating their business under the domain name companynameinternational.com. I ended up picking the domain companyname.com up in auction for around $300 bucks, contacted the company in the UK in a professional and courteous manner asking them if they were interested in the domain and if so, to make me a reasonable offer. I received an email two days later and we negotiated a price of $3000 USD for the domain. Not bad – a profit of $2700 in 3 days.

Here’s where the beauty of the ZFBot.com application comes in – you don’t need to manually figure out what to search for on Google… the ZFBot.com application will show you ALL of the .com domains that are currently registered that match the domain you may currently own or are thinking of acquiring. After I first built the application and tested it out, I was enlightened by the number of actively registered .com’s that matched domains within my portfolio. These are all potential customers of mine and can be contacted by retrieving the WHOIS info or accessing the actual website – both of which be done directly from the ZFBot.com application. ZFBot.com search results can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet so that you can do your contact leg work at a later time and not have to worry about forgetting what domains you had found.

I’m currently working on further functionality to the ZFBot.com application that will give users the ability to see expiration dates on all domains and a list of domains that are going to drop or go to auction within the next few days.

What is your opinion about current technology available to domainers?

I believe that pretty much all the technology and information that a domainer needs (or individuals in any other business for that matter) already exists on the internet. The solutions are just scattered all over the place, are sometimes antiquated and in general take a lot of time to find and sift through. Heck – I seriously don’t know what I would do without the awesome power of Google. You can find the answer to any question you might have – however technical or obscure the question/answer may be… with a few minutes of research on Google.

I remember the days where an individual would have to go to the library or to a class at a university to learn how to do something. An intelligent, eager and creative individual need not always take that old school approach any longer. The main reasons I built the ZFBot.com application were curiosity, a sense of challenge and a need of my own to trim down on domain research time. Plus it’s a fun to use application.

I’ve also built a few applications for domainers to both manage and showcase their domains – those can be found at Domainerport.com and Domainerport.com/showcase respectively.

Ken, thank you very much for all this detailed and very interesting information!
Is there any personal info or a short bio you’d like to share?

Ken Greenwood, One World Media
Website/Web Application Design and Development since the mid 1990’s
Facebook profile – LinkedIn profile

DNGator.com will be featured on tonight’s Domain Masters radio program, broadcast LIVE from Webmasterradio.fm tonight at 7:00pm Eastern.

Theo Develegas, general manager of Acroplex LLC will be discussing the DNGator “Domain News Aggregator” project, offering analysis on the current domain market conditions and other interesting items – LIVE on the web.

Don’t forget to tune in!

Over at DomainNameWire, Andrew is optimistic about the state of domain economics. While I agree overall, I think that a fuller picture is needed in order to accurately define the state of the domain economy. As I mentioned, commenting at his post:

For those of us that are now in the business for several years, the industry is buzzing along nicely. For the newcomers, the expectations are higher. Five years ago, there was one domain conference every year, now there are almost a dozen. The overall economy is erratic and does not provide with the necessary excitement that sustained us during the up-and-coming years of domaining. There are opportunities, for sure, there is inherent risk as a side-dish. I don’t view sales figures as a pure indicator of the industry’s health, I consider the overall volume and the monthly trends to be a more accurate gauge of the state of the economy.

There are several additional factors that would determine the direction of the domain economics: end-user sales, volume of online advertising and outwards growth in the industry.

Nowadays, it’s not sufficient to quote sales that completed at various domain conferences and venues; it’s important to scrutinize the end-user sales as they define the health indicators of the economy. Purchases and acquisitions of intellectual property, including that of domains, show that corporations value the important role of domain names and invest in them for a variety of strategic purposes.

Online advertising is another indicator of how well the economy is doing; the usual suspects – Google, Yahoo & MSN – are determined to survive the drop in online spending, from the consumer standpoint and that of the advertising agencies. In the first months since the change of guard at the White House, the financial scandals and the corporate greed that defined the previous years are getting under the microscope. So companies end up spending less for online advertising because their budgets are tighter until a raise in productivity is justified by increased consumer spending.

The domain industry itself has lost its momentum and we are witnessing job losses and cuts in spending across the board; perhaps in the coming months acquisitions of some companies might lead to odd strategic mergers that we didn’t think of as possible. The flow of money right now is within the corporate core; the need for an outwards growth and investment is needed, in order to sustain the goals set forth in the previous years, when the economy appeared to be healthier overall.

And that’s the challenge of the coming months: to keep a cool head and plan for a prosperous and rewarding domain year.

DNGator.com is a domain news aggregator that brings in one place, for your convenience, a number of informative blogs related to the domain industry.

There are no accounts to create, no logins, no recording of personal information. Just by visiting DNGator.com you are able to view the most up to date posts from domain related blogs.

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