Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

I’ve seen this happen time and again: a seller, perhaps eager to promote their wares, tags the domains for sale as “premium”.

The sad truth is that very few domains would qualify as such. In plain speak, the term “premium domains” is being abused, left and right.

To be considered “premium”, a domain name must meet certain strict requirements. It doesn’t matter if it’s a dictionary word, it must be a common and non-obscure one.

Domains that are words which carry a lot of negativity fall outside the “premium” category as well. Excluding the factor of controversy, a buyer would rarely pay premium price for a domain that reeks of negativity.

Generally speaking, premium domains are .com, .net and .org domains of short, clear, brandable and positive character. They are words – preferably verbs or nouns – which cannot be misspelled; at least not by 8th graders.

Surprisingly, premium domains can contain a dash or be two-worders. An example of a premium domain is PremiumDomains.com – a domain marketplace by Domaining.com owner, French entrepreneur Francois Carrillo.

Visit PremiumDomains.com to view (and buy) some examples of premium domain names.

Apparently I’ve been spending some cash this year on PayPal, because they just upgraded me to an “Advantage” member. According to their email:

PayPal Advantage membership is complimentary, and given to customers who spend over $5,000 a year with PayPal.

Here’s what you get as an Advantage member:

• Priority customer support
• Invitations to exclusive events
• Members-only offers and savings

Your PayPal Advantage membership is valid through December 31, 2012. To re-qualify for membership in the following year, you’ll need to spend $5,000 with PayPal in 2012.

I’m not really sold on the premium nature of those features, which make it sound as if it’s an exclusive club of some sort. Since membership expires on an annual basis, there is a chance those very services will eventually be available for a fee; a smart way for PayPal to increase revenue from “advantage” memberships.

To paraphrase Andrew Lewis: if the service is free *you* are the product.

When I acquired Acro.net in 2007 I intended to use it as my personal blog. Since my business name is Acroplex.com, it made sense to use the short version for personal rants and raves. ‘Acro’ is my forum handle on DNForum.com

The domain Acro.net was miraculously listed for sale on eBay and that’s where I bought it from its owner. The price ended up being less than $200 – a great value for a domain registered in 1997. A year later, this very blog was born.

Today, I received a message from a gentleman that I had just followed on twitter. He reminded me that I bought Acro.net from him a while back and noted that I’ve put it to good use!

Claude Dauman leads Domains 90210 – a team of web developers, marketing consultants and domain name advisors with a large portfolio of generic and highly brandable domain names. Domains 90210 LLC is based in Beverly Hills, California.

I really like Claude’s domain blog for its writing style, content and views about domain names. I’ve added it to my list of daily reads, as it’s updated more often than mine!

Recently I had to change the CNAME records for several domains in order to point them to an online venue.

In the past I used eNom but as I moved the majority of my domains to Fabulous.com I wasn’t familiar with their bulk tools.

Fabulous offers a DNS Template feature, that allows you to apply a profile (“template”) against a number of domains.

I created the template, adding CNAME records for “www” and “@” and saved the template with a name of my choice.

To use these features, domains at Fabulous must use the myns1 and myns2 DNS pair. As it’s not a preset profile on Fabulous, I had to create a new nameserver profile, adding those two to it. It took me 1 minute, literally.

The next step was to bulk edit the DNS for the domains, so I pasted my list of domains into the relevant box and applied the new DNS profile to them.

Once this was done, the final step was to apply the DNS template to the domains. In 5 short minutes I was thus able to switch and point my domains in bulk to the venue of my choice.

Fabulous offers many more features, including a security fob that I reviewed in the past. Check it out!

“Organized as a Greek”. This is an oxymoron; for I know first hand that it applies to the majority of my compatriots, who expect to deliver miracles at the last minute without any preparation whatsoever.

Let’s take for example the latest announcement by the Greek ministry of Education (and Religious Affairs, I should add): there are no funds to print school books on time, with classes starting next week. Printing is an offset process that requires freshly printed books to be delivered to every student of the compulsory 12 year education system (6 years of grade school plus 6 years of high school).

The problem lies in the process: every year, students waste their school books, by tossing, ripping or burning them. They don’t have to pay a single euro for them and aren’t penalized for not returning them.

My father, whom I’d describe as a bibliophile beyond any logical measure, would throw a fit if as much as a book’s page were to be bent; many times I faced his wrath when a book was placed open, face down on the desk.

I can’t imagine what he’d do or say if he saw me defacing my school books or burning them at the end of the school year, and yet I did both – back in the day. Teenagers belong to the same species as lemmings as far as behavioral copying is concerned.

So the Greek ministry of education won’t deliver books on time this year. And yet, the solution is right in their hands, having produced the full range of the educational books – all beautiful and informational, I must add – as Adobe PDF files. Any student can view, download *and* print the school books for free.

The link for the Greek digital school is in Greek only: http://digitalschool-4.minedu.gov.gr