Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Nowadays, an increasing number of Americans become sexually active in college, instead of at a younger age.

Universities set the paradigm with regards to research, life, personal relationships and technology, which includes the Internet and domain names.

It’s not strange that the Washington University and the University of Missouri invested $200 per domain, securing their domain names in .xxx from the ICM Registry.

After all, universities have huge budgets for technology and research.

According to an article in the St. Louis Today, the pro-active move was made to protect the University’s name and trademarks from being used for pornography.

The article also uses the mild term “domain prospectors” to describe domain investors. That’s a step up from “cybersquatter” – a term that’s been used left and right by those outside of the domain industry.

It’s great seeing that universities understand how domains and the Internet works, for a change. Now onto the Main Street and Wall Street markets!

It’s refreshing to see that Greek Orthodoxy in America is going strong; with 6 million Orthodox Christians in the US, young and old Americans of Greek heritage support their community through their local churches.

In Orlando, the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox church of greater Orlando offers a variety of information through its web site.

Having attended several Greek festivals through the years, I can say that they get better and better. The food is home-made and delicious, giving that of restaurants a real run for the money. Orlando Greek Fest 2011 was definitely a success.

But not everything is authentic by Greek standards. Many things deemed as Greek are tweaked outside of Greece. To a Greek transplant, this seems odd at first but I can only say that after a while one chooses to ignore the “oddities”.

No, dear friends; hummus is not Greek. But try melitzanosalata or taramosalata instead when ordering food at your favorite Greek restaurant.

The concept of  flambeed “saganaki” cheese is unknown in the Greek mainland; the same goes for the chanting of “Opa!” when serving such delicacies at various Greek tavernas and restaurants in the US.

When dancing, and we aren’t talking about the “Zorba dance” devised for the sake of the movie ‘Zorba the Greek” in 1964, it is appropriate to cry out “Opa!” to encourage a dancer who’s performing on the dance floor. Definitely not appropriate when serving your grandma’s stuffed grape leaves, also known as dolmades.

While some attempt to deliver the essence of the Greek psyche, you need to live in Greece – and not drop by as a tourist – in order to understand and appreciate the culture, the food and the joys of being Greek.

Matt Barrett is a prolific producer of one such guide, at GreeceFoods.com and provides authentic and factual information for English speakers.

In a nutshell, those that condemn Greece and the Greeks for living life and enjoying its moments need to take a deep breath, step away from their electronic world and smell the roses.

I will now close with “kalo brady” - for “good night” – thus saving the “opa!” for when I dance.

Developer Tia Wood is one of the few true developers with a focus on the domain industry. She’s hard working and possesses great development and programming skills.

While some domainers call ‘development‘ the mere installation of WordPress with cosmetic changes of a WP theme, Tia Wood actually churns out some serious PHP code and database development.

In today’s blog post, Tia Wood wrote an elaborate description of what constitutes effective lead capture on web sites under development.

I’d like to commend Tia Wood on her development work, an example of which can be seen at Milonga.com – a web site that runs a database-driven lead capture system that she programmed.

Got to love domainers and their opinionated one liners: Greece is finished! It’s Greece’s fault! Greece out!

As a Greek transplant in the US with family in Greece, I have the advantage of being more objective than those that rely on spectacular media photos and television mumbo-jumbo in order to form an opinion. Like a modern life Colossus of Rhodes, I actually have one foot planted in Greece and another in the US. I don’t rely on canned journalism to understand what is going on with Greece.

Allow me to elaborate.

A fine example of what happened with the so-called ‘Greek debt’ is this: someone registered the domain name GreekReferendum.com a couple of days ago. They did so based on the speculation that Greece would hold a public referendum of major importance.

Unfortunately, the same person – the Greek prime minister George Papandreou – who came up with this ‘brilliant’ idea, decided to retract it, citing reasons of national interest when in fact he succumbed to public outrage from Greeks and Europeans alike.

So our ‘investor’ who registered GreekReferendum.com just lost $10 or so, as the domain is with GoDaddy.

While this amount is miniscule, it represents the same notion that was followed by US banks such as Chase Manhattan and Golden Sachs with regards to Greece: by investing in national bonds of debt, they then turned around and lowered the credibility of Greece, creating the global financial chaos and social misery that Greece is now blamed for.

Investing $10 in a domain name that is based on sensationalist news is an example of bad investment.

On a larger scale, banks and institutions need to stop playing these speculation games on the backs of nations. As the Occupy Wall Street movement increases in momentum, it’s clear that the “suits” that attempt to unbalance the world from behind the Manhattan offices will soon face their own music.