Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

With the week almost at midpoint, I had a fun one-hour session on twitter, with regards to humoring the fears of swine flu epidemic. Consider this to be my first (and hopefully not last) session of twitter stand-up comedy.

All the jokes below are mine. If you don’t like them, I will gladly refund your ticket price. But considering how Francois of Domaining.com actually laughed and DM’ed me about compiling them in a post, I think that I’ve at least won France over.

But then again, who hasn’t!

First place to be hurt by swine flu: hot-dog stands in NYC. People will be asking for a chicken taco instead.

Please don’t RT swine flu comments, we don’t need to be infected via twitter !

If I sneeze and snort at the same time, is it swine flu?

The more I post about swine flu, the more followers I get. That’s how flu is spread in the first place.

If you’re ultra-orthodox Jewish, you’re safe against swine flu. It’s not kosher.

Disney HQ bans “Three Little Pigs” movie as a precaution against the swine flu.

Big Bad Wolf now sports a surgical face mask to protect himself against the swine flu.

Women calling ogling men “swine” now feel more empowered.

Porky Pig on FBI’s Most Wanted list!

If the deli person sneezes on my porkchops, is this a swine flu outbreak?

Side-effects of swine flu: having as much mucus as a pig ejaculates. And that’s a *lot*.

Feel free to RT my swine flu jokes. Or not. Spreading swine flu via twitter can be dangerous.

“Stop eating like a pig!”, said my wife. I said, “I have the swine flu, I can’t help it.”

I asked the NYC hot-dog vendor for a pork sandwich. “Are you crazy?”, he said. “Chicken or beef only, orders of mayor Bloomberg.”

I realized I have http://HitPig.com . Should I drop it or risk infecting my other domains?

I knew fried porkchops were unhealthy, now they are lethal. Swine flu is no joke.

Ladies, avoid Cancun in Mexico – on spring break, men act like pigs. You may catch swine flu.

Airplane meals: Would you like the e-coli pasta or the swine flu pork?

“Porky’s” movie banned as a precaution against spreading the swine flu virus.

Swine flu symptom: stuttering like p-p-p-p-p-porky p-p-p-p-ig.

Attempted robbery with a lethal weapon: robber sneezed on the bank teller and asked for money.

Major domain conferences to face fewer crowds due to swine flu. That, and sucky domains on auction.

I registered a “swine flu” domain. “Are you crazy?” said my wife. “You’ll get your portfolio infected”. So I let it drop.

ICANN to allow .flu TLD in order to register the ultimate swine.flu domain.

After I started this “swine flu” joke session, I lost two twitter followers. Hopefully, not to swine flu.

Thanks to “swine flu”, Susan Boyle’s popularity dropped. A virus with good taste?

A guy sneezed on his wife – gets arrested for attempted murder. Can’t do that when swine flu is around the corner.

To be treated for swine flu, apparently you need some oinkment.

Three men walk into a bar…wait, no more swine flu jokes?

Careful when registering .MX domains. Make sure they are screened for swine flu.

ICANN to quarantine the entire .MX Registry for fear of a global swine flu epidemic.

I like social gatherings. Parties, conferences, meetings, galas. It’s part of my personality and nature, as I am eager to communicate, to reach out to others and exchange ideas and share information. Plus, the drinks, food and further “opportunities” are there, especially when one is single.

A while back, I considered attending the GeoDomains domain conference in San Diego. It’d be an interesting change from the non-themed domain conferences, such as TRAFFIC, that tend to “steal” the majority of the industry’s limelight.

Then I realized it’d be an expensive party to attend, for an East Coast guy like me. Investing time, effort and money to temporarily interact with the same industry entrepreneurs that I interact daily via email, phone and social media didn’t sound like a good idea, for the overall cost. So I decided against it, and seeing the results of the auction as it was relayed yesterday from DNN I should add that I am glad I did not submit any domains to the auction.

Exactly one year ago, I had my biggest domain sale to this date: Constantinople.com left my domain fleet as the main battleship and into the hands of a fellow Greek investor, for the sum of $38,000. Considering how the city is no longer named Constantinople but Istanbul, it was a geo-domain that in the eyes of many would have triggered little interest; in fact, initially Sedo refused to list it. It was subsequently sold outside of Sedo, using Moniker’s escrow and  left me with the sensation that domainers can sell their soul, if needed. I’m just glad I didn’t sell mine to the devil.

So yesterday’s GeoDomains auction results show that 29 domains were sold, for a total of $101,089 and the biggest sale being SierraMadre.com for $15,000. That’s a shocking departure from the hype and expectations of such a well-publicized event. In fact, the total selling amount of the first 15 domains, barely matched my single geodomain sale of last year!

Why’s that, you may ask. Simple: selling ice to the Eskimos does not work. They have their own tools to cut it up from the glaciers. You need to sell them something exotic, or better still, find a market far away from the icy lands of North Pole. The domain circle of trust has become too close-knit, too overly saturated and too controlled in order to maintain a constant flow of high figure sales.The people that attend domain auctions are not the type of investors that you should be targeting, in order to maximize your ROI.

Chasing end-user sales is the key to survival in the well-understood low economy that we’re going through. That is, sales that are promoted and achieved outside of the known channels of the domain industry. Want to *buy* domains at low prices? Then by all means – based on the paltry results of recent domain auctions – use these venues to get the best domains for your buck. But if you’re looking to *sell*, start thinking like a combination of a private investigator, a used car salesman and a pimp.

It’s time to take care of your own matters, as auctions won’t take care of them for you. And that’s the single best advice I can give – without charging for my services. But hey, you can always follow me on twitter.

Things get too serious sometimes. In order to instill some fun into the serious business of domains, I’m starting the “Friday Funnies” section.

Each Friday, a cartoonized photo will attempt to deliver some humor without – hopefully – hurting the feelings of those it depicts.

Today’s “Friday Funny” is about social media “wars” and two well-known personalities, Frank Schilling and Rick Schwartz.

Original picture link from DNJournal.com

I read a very informative and full of substance blog post today, from fellow domainer and web developer, Tia Wood. It offers a concise analysis of a strategy often overlooked by domainers, who opt to park their domains: Lead capture.

Tia explains what the two basic categories of lead capture, incoming and outgoing, are about. Remarkably, it appears that PPC companies are acting simply as middle men to large advertising feeds, such as Google and Yahoo, without taking advantage of the sheer amount of traffic that passes daily through these channels.

Imagine that you went to a fish-rich bay with a huge fishing net that has holes sized for large fish: you’d let the majority of the fish pass through. In a similar manner, your daily traffic passing through the parking pages offered by PPC companies has little chances of being captured – either for analysis or for generating sales leads.

I have found that the simple insertion of a contact link at parked pages, e.g. at a domain parked via Parked.com can both capture and generate leads: you can track visits, clicks and offer a contact form for further inquiries from non-domainer visitors.

But read on, at Tia’s blog.

What is wrong, America? You think your children can play safe at the park, right outside their homes. You think your sons and daughters – on break from school – can do what children are expected to do: play, not having to worry about life.

But God-damn it. A little girl takes off to do just that, enjoy her day – just like any other day in her short life of eight years – and she’s terminated, killed, murdered – by a person of trust, no less.

Sandra Cantu is not the first child to be murdered by the hands of a sick adult who plays God and ends their lifeline. Unfortunately, it’s only the most recent such incident that makes national news. For almost every child that walks outside to play there is a sick mind that lurks, preying on their natural innocence and trust.

Melissa Huckaby is a Sunday school teacher, a person that was entrusted by her church to guide, educate and entertain little children, to shape their lives in ways that would benefit them way into adulthood. She is also a mother, her daughter was a playmate of Sandra’s. So she killed Sandra, stuffed her body in a luggage bag – then tossed the luggage into a lake.

What’s wrong America? Has our society strayed away from the ways that separate right from wrong? Have humans become so desensitized, that death becomes trivial and murder is another natural cause of death?

In the heart of Christianity’s celebration of Easter, one cannot but pause and ponder – what is the purpose of the sacrifice of Jesus and why has the true meaning of Easter been diluted by imagery of “Easter” bunnies and egg hunting. The Son of God dying on the cross, among thieves and murderers and forgiving those who spat and beat him, seeking forgiveness for their sins – that’s what Easter is about.

But can we forgive the murderer of an eight year old girl that harmed no-one? That’s up to the parents to say. I know I wouldn’t.

* This is another non-domain/technology related post; so I have no expectations that it’ll survive the Domaining.com axe.

On occasion, I stray away from domains and technology, to comment on society and politics. And the recent gathering of world leaders in London for the G20 summit is one such occasion that I’d like to comment on.

The other day, I was reading random historic facts on Wikipedia. It’s fascinating to follow link upon link of events that occurred hundreds of years ago, following not a linear time-line, but a relationship of events amongst nations: wars, truces, invasions, occupations, abandonment of lands and strongholds.

And then, I take a look at the group photos of world leaders at the G20 summit – among them German, French, Italian, British, American, Turkish and Greek – all smiling at the cameras and at each other, cracking jokes and sharing lunch – like schoolkids at recess.

I can’t help it, and I wonder – what on earth is wrong with the human race?

We slit each other’s throats, we bombard each other’s homes, we leave the children orphaned and we destroy the hard-earned life of our fellow humans. And yet, as if nothing had happened, we can negotiate, we can discuss, we can party, we can touch, hug and kiss one another.

It’s this sensation of pseudo-euphoria that concerns me the most, as it’s almost always a prelude to major social and political unrest and eventually to war.

And those that do not learn from history, tend to repeat it.

The news floated since just two days ago but it has just been confirmed: Flair Polos – a New Jersey manufacturing corporation with embroidery factories in Taiwan, China and North Korea, purchased MassDevelopment.com for the sum of $6.75 million dollars, in what appears to be the largest sale of 2009.

In a recent article in DNJournal, mass development companies were reviewed by editor Ron Jackson; after reading the news, Flair Polos assessed that none of these companies made the cut when it came down to picking a brand name for mass development. MassDevelopment.com was the sensible choice: keyword relevancy without resorting to black hat SEO – the price was a hefty one, but definitely worth it.

Flair Polos has an annual gross revenue of $2.3 billion dollars, one of the biggest textile exporters to the US from East Asia. The company intends to capitalize on the hot market for mass domain development, which has recently exploded and mass develop web sites for its range of men’s, women’s and children’s clothing lines.