Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Using eNom as a registrar these days is a leftover from around 2002; that’s when I acquired a reseller account and managed to keep my domain renewal costs low.

An incident that occurred on Sunday made me change my strategy with regards to eNom; instead of keeping my remaining domains there – mostly TLDs that Fabulous.com won’t handle – I am moving them all out immediately.

Why the sudden change of heart?

Earlier yesterday my email stopped working and my web site at Acroplex.com displayed the notorious eNom chick page instead.

Initially I thought it’s an issue with my account but since my domain is with Fabulous I soon realized that the issue was related to the domain used by my web host to manage DNS.

Just 8 hours past its expiration date, the domain was already being pointed by eNom to their notorious “backpack chick” – that’s the phrase they used when I called support to inquire how this could be fixed in a manner matching the status of a self-professed leader in domain registrations.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to renew the domain of my host – even though I’ve displayed similar generosity in the past – and the eNom support would not switch the DNS back temporarily for – say – 24 hours until my host renewed their domain. They were very pedantic, of course, teaching me a “lesson” about how people or businesses should be careful with their domain renewals and how contact email should not be on a domain that can be allowed to lapse.

The bottom line: my host responded to my ticket in less than an hour, they renewed the domain apologizing profusely; in fact, I never have had any problems with them in several years. It was one of those human errors that can happen to everyone.

I definitely didn’t like eNom’s lack of flexibility, particularly to an old customer. I am packing all my stuff inside the eNom chick’s backpack and moving the remaining domains to Name.com

Google‘s new instant search might be an opportunity to weigh the element of speed. Not search speed, but the speed of how fast memories fade.

Remembering an event such as the September 11, 2001 loss of life is something that should not be hidden, tucked away underneath a tiny ribbon at the bottom of the search engine’s homepage.

And yet, on this day of infamy, Google does just that; all while Bing.com honors the victims of 9/11 with a special homepage.

Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves) offers a refreshing departure from Google’s shameful inaction, by displaying a beautiful page in memoriam of the victims of the September 11 attack.

Infoseek, Lycos and Altavista are all so 1999, and thus time has stopped in that era for them. No visuals, no reference to 9/11 at all. Yahoo is also barely dedicating anything remotely special to 9th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attack.

In this era of political correctness, promoting the speed of searching seems to be fine – as long as we forget equally fast the crushed towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in flames.

I hear this all the time: I need a cheap logo.

“How cheap” is only the beginning of the argument. The real question should be, does the client want a logo or some stylized text plus clipart?

These two things are different.

A logo must convey a message through a combination of symbols, icons and text. The latter isn’t always necessary, but when it’s present, the typeface used and its morphing essentially defines the brand.

Very few domainers want to invest in a logo that represents a brand, simply because their mindset is focused on one thing: minimizing upfront cost.

However, you can’t expect your web site to look “developed” when you use a slap-up job of text plus clipart, with not much intuition invested in that design.

And that separates logos and branding from stylized text paired with clipart.

If, however, you’re ok with the latter, here’s an excellent tool that will do it for you – for free. That’s the ultimate freebie when you don’t want to go all the way.

Just remember the formula: TEXT + CLIPART != LOGO

Since it’s now after 8:00 pm Eastern on the closing day of voting for the TRAFFIC South Beach awards, I can disclose who I voted for – and most importantly, why.

The domain industry seems to perpetually rotate itself around the same axis; thankfully, in recent years fresh additions to the field have brought fresh ideas and a brand new perspective on things.

For example, worthwhile achievements such as ZFBot seem to get buried due to the domain industry lacking an understanding of its own needs.

Without further ado, here are my votes:

Sponsor of the year
.CO – for giving a new meaning to the term “domain registry” and for creating a dynamic marketing campaign that excelled in every way.

Domainer of the year
Morgan Linton – for introducing a series of refreshing, independent multimedia productions related to domains and for covering most events through video blogging.

Best Overall Domain Solution
Sedo – for keeping up with the times and playing a game of fair numbers, all while extending and expanding the b2b relationships.

Best New Monetizing Solution
WhyPark – for offering a meaningful and versatile alternative to “old school” parking, without bullsh*t and without fanfare. It simply works well.

Developer of the year
Tia Wood – for being the only true independent developer on the list; for being effective and yet keeping a low profile; because hours of PHP coding and MySQL structuring are matched by quality work and good support.

The “We Get It” Award
Bodog and Slots.com – these guys got it and invested – without gambling their future; can’t go wrong with generics.

Best domain news blog
Elliot Silver – for being a quality source of hands-on, experience-based content; for explaining what he tried, how he did it and admitting failure if that occurs. Elliot provides a balanced source of daily information on domains.

Domain Hall of Fame
Michael Mann – for being himself, unlike most others in the industry.
Rick Latona – for trying to be the best even under the most challenging circumstances.

The new Google search changes have created plenty of noise worldwide – as it was to be expected.

While it remains to be seen how much of this technology will be adopted by the daily searchers (the feature can be turned off, by the way) the technology itself is hardly new.

In terms of an early adopter of a live search, the feature was used with the DomainTools subtool, PsychicWHOIS.

It’s a great tool that utilizes ajax technology to display results as they are being typed. One can quickly tap parts of a domain name and view a drop down list of existing names that match that partial search and then you can view the WHOIS information. Really fast and efficient.

Regardless of technology, Google seems to have created a storm in a bottle; Elliot Silver has already pointed out the pitfalls of searching with the new live tool.