Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Oprah Winfrey is a network television icon. For more than 25 years she has worked hard to create a name for herself and her popular tv show, providing inspiration to millions of Americans. Her charity record is outstanding; she is the richest African-American female in America and the world.

On January 1st, 2011 her own television channel will be launched: OWN – Oprah Winfrey Network – will premiere as an expanded series of shows that will explore the issues that matter to Oprah’s viewers, regarding health, home, family and relationships.

The colorful “OWN” logo attempts to be a bold and apparently multi-colored approach to the diversity of Oprah’s viewers. However, it seems that it’s the exact opposite of the Gap’s failed attempt to become minimalistic; the OWN logo is screaming with every color of the rainbow.

One would expect the boldness that’d emphasize the ratings of the Oprah show in network television, however the choice of such a cornucopia of colors was perceived by many as “arrogant”, “confusing” or flat out “failure”.

Creative branding can often fail at two levels; being unable to cross the recognition threshold or going way overboard with brand recognition. Either way, the branding suffers in terms of acceptance; after all, Gap knew better when it changed back to the old colors and lettering.

A little over a month ago, once the voting round closed for the TRAFFIC South Beach Awards, I made sure I announced my votes.

I did this for a couple of reasons: first, to keep track of who I voted for and also to be able to return to the votes after the results came in.

Secondly, I wanted to justify my votes instead of simply voting; this way I’d explain the reasoning behind my choices.

According to Domain News Wire, the winners were announced earlier today, so now it’s time to debate the results and compare them to my votes.

Sponsor of the year
Check – Voted for .CO which also won the award. The .CO registry had one of the best campaigns around, and not just for the domain industry. Well-deserved!

Domainer of the year
Gregg McNair – I voted for Morgan Linton. I thought that they’d give the “kid” a chance because he’s not part of the “hard core” circle of domainers and he introduced a lot of potential to the domain industry. Sadly, the veteran beat the rookie in this one.

Best Overall Domain Solution
Check – Voted for Sedo which won the award without as much as breaking a sweat.

Best New Monetizing Solution
Check – Voted for WhyPark which won the award because they are indeed the best new monetizing solution.

Developer of the year
Rob Monster / Epik won it. Seriously, people need to check the definition of “developer” in the dictionary. If you need to know my thoughts on this one, here’s a lengthy post that you should be reading. My vote was for established domain developer, Tia Wood.

The “We Get It” Award
National A-1 won it – My vote for Bodog and Slots.com was of equal importance, in my opinion.

Best domain news blog
Check – Voted for Elliot Silver who won the award, due to his relentless and crafty methodology of delivering daily news related to the industry and presenting several different perspectives in the process.

Domain Hall of Fame
One half of a check mark – Monte Cahn and Rick Latona won it – My votes were for Mike Mann and Rick Latona. I believe Rick Latona deserved it and since Monte is the auction money-maker he deserved it also. I’d still want to see Mike Mann win a special award; after all he is a controversial figure but in a good way.

Regardless of votes and opinions, congratulations to all winners at TRAFFIC.

Currently, there are several active threads over at DNForum, related to spam sent to domainers.

According to Wikipedia, spam is the use of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.

With regards to domainers, we all get excited when domain offers arrive in the email; but several such offers aren’t true but simply “pings” to gauge one’s selling price.

When these emails arrive without any indication of a legitimate attempt to contact us, they are borderline spam. Most bulk emailers out there harvest email addresses from the WHOIS information of domains. Since the WHOIS contact information needs to be current and active, there is no real way to avoid receiving such emails along with individual inquiries or system-generated emails from the Registrar.

The type of bulk email that targets domainers and which deserves to be classified as spam, is that which resembles a dictionary attack. Having created a list of A to Z words or compounds, spammers query the domain and email its owner. Sequential emailing means that if you own a domain that starts with A and another that starts with B, you will receive an email from the spammer for A, first.

How soon you will be receiving that second email for domain B depends on the pacing of the spammer, which can be slowed down on purpose, in order to avoid detection and banning by the ISP or email/hosting provider. Sometimes it could be minutes or hours, other times it could be days.

The only difference in such sequential spam emails sent out to domainers seems to be the domain listed, sometimes the offer price also – but the wording is essentially the same; often times, it’s grammatically incorrect and contains obscure phrases: Google “Best gards” and see what I mean.

An example spam email targeting domain owners is below. While most such spam emails come from Gmail accounts, due to the easy method of creating new email accounts, some serial spammers register a new domain with WHOIS shield on and use a free hosting package – usually with GoDaddy – to send out their boilerplate spam without any discrimination.

I’ve been using Fabulous.com as my primary domain registrar for two years now; it was a choice that was made despite having had a long term commitment to eNom.

As I’ve reviewed the features of domainer-grade registrars in the past and presented the extensive level of security Fabulous.com provides, I shall add nothing more of my own.

Fabulous just sent out this email which further indicates the strong commitment to security that they have been providing in their 10+ years of existence:

In light of recent security/fraud issues amongst the domain community, I feel it is important to remind you of the additional levels of security Fabulous.com offer to help protect your domain assets. We provide both domain and account level security to minimize the risk of losing domains through fraud and/or hijacking.

Account Security

Fabulous.com offers two forms of Account Security to protect sensitive areas within your account; the Fabulous Security Key or Challenge/Response Security Questions. Both provide an additional layer of security across certain sections of the account including:

• Transfers
• Name Servers
• Pushes
• Finance
• Domain Edits
• E-mail Forwarding

If an account password happened to be compromised, having access to these specific functions would put your domains at risk of hijacking. By taking advantage of either the Fabulous Security Key or Challenge/Response Security Questions, access to these areas of your account are given only if authentication is successful.

Domain Protection

For over 8 years Fabulous.com has allowed domain owners to apply an Executive Lock (E-lock), which provides even greater protection on a domain level.

The E-lock effectively freezes a domain’s registry settings and can only be removed by Fabulous.com management after a special condition(s), specified by the client, has been fulfilled. A domain under E-lock cannot be transferred, pushed or have the name servers modified.

I strongly urge you to apply E-locks to your most premium names and also use one of the Account Level Security options. In doing so, you can feel confident that your domain assets will remain secure.

If you have any questions or need assistance with your account, please don’t hesitate in contacting your Account Manager, Support, or myself.

For those that are attending TRAFFIC Miami, I look forward to seeing you there.

Cheers,

Mike Robertson
Fabulous.com
Business Development Manager

One of my favorite industry blogs is that of DomainAnimal.

Having spent several hours on the phone with Mike, I can attest that he’s a serious individual with some very interesting thoughts and ideas about domains and marketing, that can be located several degrees outside of the proverbial box.

In today’s post over at his blog, Mike discusses whether one should quit their day job in order to pursue a full time career in domaining.

Instead of simply philosophizing, Mike’s throwing in some very compelling figures and charts, that will help you decide for yourself which way to go:

Exactly how hard is it to make a livable income off selling domains? Whether or not you’ve just been bitten by the domain bug, or for those who are already on their way but struggling to hammer out a decent living from selling domains, this post is worth the next 5 minutes of your life.

Onto Mike’s post.