Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

The economy might be bad but there is one piece of the industry that remains solid and healthy in its revenue: the gaming industry.

I won’t bore you with the usual news about gaming domains acquired by domain investors to build gaming portals – we all know that Bill Karamouzis is the #1 player in the game

For a while now I held onto a LLL .com that started with the letter “X” – apparently not the best of letters according to some domainers that believe in the Easter Bunny as well.

The fact is, not only is “X” popular in China and several Hispanic countries, it’s also a very “Xtreme” letter in the gamer’s lingo.

And that’s exactly why a gaming company from Canada acquired my domain via Sedo, paying a fair price in the low $xx,xxx range that by far exceeded my acquisition cost. The buyer has created some very successful “augmented reality” gaming apps for the phone market and they’ve been on my radar for a while now, as a potential buyer.

Bear in mind that the same gaming corporation applied recently for the trademark for the acronym; instead of going the usual route of bullying and attempting to wrestle away an aged LLL .com they did the right thing and placed an offer via Sedo. After very little negotiation on my part, the deal was closed and I’m very satisfied with the sale.

Thanks, Canada – time to set up my gaming gear and get fragging!

That quote from the 1998 movie, The Big Lebowski always cracks me up. Perhaps, because it’s one of the funniest movies of the late 20th century.

Also, because the quote is perfectly usable when one expects a large amount of money and it doesn’t arrive regardless of any inquiries and attempts to locate it.

I’ve been muttering this quote – where’s the money, Lebowski – since a sale was finalized on Sedo. The amount involved did not justify waiting for a check in the mail, so I changed the payment method to “wire” instead.

Sedo is very prompt with delivering the funds, no question about that. But normally, it takes 2 days maximum for domestic wires to hit one’s bank account.

In this case, I was muttering “where’s the money, Lebowski” for the better part of the week.

Finally, I decided to call my bank and I was told that the routing number for “ACH” wires is different from that of regular wires. In fact, without that proper routing number money will never hit your account.

So next time, before you start mumbling to yourself and others “where’s the money, Lebowski” – pick up the phone and call your bank.

Apparently, domain sales at TRAFFIC Dublin weren’t that great. Objectively speaking, compared to DomainFest’s recent record sales, the TRAFFIC Dublin auction results were pitiful.

But really, who cares?

While it’s important for the conference organizers to make money from auctioning domains, TRAFFIC – or any other conference big or small – isn’t all about the auction sales.

TRAFFIC is my favorite conference due to both the style and the type of its attendants.

I witnessed the organizational style of the two Ricks, and they are doing a great job gathering the important members of the domain community, allowing them to share a physical common ground to establish new business relationships.

A domain that can be sold outside of an auction does not make or break a conference’s quality or status. The afterhours meetings, the brain-storming, the sudden formation of business alliances – all these are elements that in my book are more important than the total number of domains auctioned.

TRAFFIC Dublin is an opportunity to forge alliances, especially between American and European domainers; there is a lot of potential in that convergence of talent, regardless of the auction totals that seem to be occupying the minds of some domainers to the point of obsession.

Without doubt, the biggest event of the year will be held in Miami in October. TRAFFIC is the domain conference paradigm and it will prove itself once again, in less than 2 months from now.

Since the introduction of the so-called “social media” Internet users are spending increasingly higher amounts of time being “social” online.

Which translates, of course, to less real-life socializing.

Regardless of whether your friends, buddies, followers or readers share that same feeling of connection to you, there is a certain danger lurking in the shadows.

Trojans and viruses.

Although on very rare occasions there are incidents of malware existing directly on the social media platforms themselves – e.g. Facebook or Twitter – the real problem is email.

Email is still the #1 source of computer infection from trojans, viruses and other malware, delivered in the form of an attachment or as a URL forward to web sites that contain code which in turn infects the unsuspected visitors.

With social media being a daily source of communication, there is a huge increase in the number of fake emails that appear to be coming from Twitter, Facebook, Myspace etc. These emails mimic the notifications sent by the respective social media web sites, and more often they are carrying the little germs that will attempt to take over your computer.

With subject lines such as “You have a new message on Twitter” or “John Doe has sent you a message on Facebook” these emails are relying on a user’s instinctive reaction to a message that they are familiar with receiving many times a day.

Be careful with these messages – ensure you have a quality antivirus installed and active at all times and preferably never open such emails. Instead, just go to Facebook or Twitter or Myspace directly and check to see if indeed a message is waiting for you.

I’ll be darned, I am in total shock.

It seems that both Beyonce Knowles and Nicole Kidman died today. That’s what the emails said.

What emails? The ones I got earlier.

Wait a second, what do you mean by “spam”? You don’t believe everything that’s being discussed on the Internet? The headlines and the descriptions of events – it can’t be! It’s on the Internet so it has to be true!

Unfortunately, there’s a misconception that most people’s intentions are good. That every bit of information shared or released on good old “Information Superhighway” is accurate, true and correct.

So how do you deal with every bit of misinformation, particularly the malicious type? How do you handle the rumor, the false news, the alleged truth that is in fact a lie?

They say it’s hard to prove that you’re not a dog on the Internet – but at least, you can be a dog that bites back.

Bite back with facts.

That’s the only way that works. When bullshit is piling up, get your screenshots, your numbers and your arguments ready for the debate that would ensue.

And then, bite down on those other dogs, really hard.

Those of you that had the patience to read through my exceptionally long post about the stolen domain names jis.com, leading.net, southeast.net and jaxnet.com – should be delighted with the news.

The domains have been returned to their rightful owner, Karl Renaut and are now in his possession and control, as Karl confirmed this to me earlier today.

After directly contacting the winner of FloridaDigital.net to inform him that his wrongful actions would have serious consequences, that gentleman did the right thing and contacted Karl Renaut at Windstream and handed over the domains.

In the process, the advice of expert IP attorney Marc Randazza was utilized and I’m glad this is a case where justice and logic prevailed.

Many discounted Sylvester Stallone when he produced ‘Rocky’ – the 3 Oscars it received in 1976 was perhaps a lucky strike, as the release of blockbuster ‘Star Wars’ had been delayed by 6 months. And yet, that was four years before the 70′s ended – which included the release of Rocky II.

In the 80′s, Stallone’s movies included Rocky III and IV – perhaps the most memorable one – and a set of action packed movies, including Rambo, Rambo II, Nighthawks, Cobra and Tango & Cash.

The 80′s was the time that teenagers of my era partied, listened to pop music and wore their hair in a series of crazy styles. We smoked cigarettes behind our parents’ backs and kissed inside movie theaters while eating popcorn.

We also played videogames – using our choice of 8-bit computers: the ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64, the Amstrad and their 16-bit counterparts, the ATARI ST and Commodore Amiga. Videogames were for the most part horizontal scrolling platform games, with villains yielding knives and chains, or rocket launchers and AK47 assault rifles. The movies of that era came with a matching videogame, and every videogame felt as if it could become a movie.

The gummy-keyed Speccy fans fought the Commie “lamers” every weekend when we played videogames, but during the summer we hardly touched our computers and we’d go to the beach – friends again – to swim and flirt with foreign girls. Those were also the times that we lifted weights wanting to become like Stallone, and few of us liked Schwarzenegger – even fewer could write down his name correctly; to this day I use a spell-checker for that.

With The Expendables at the movie theaters, it’s like the 80′s are here all over again, in a strange time-warp of 30 years that has created a condensed display of the past. The music, the gunfire violence, the familiar faces of actor idols from the 80′s have become one huge Atlas all of a sudden; a giant that carries our teenage and childhood earth on his shoulders.

Living through the 80′s as a teenager is the best advantage one has when watching Stallone’s new movie; the action is mindless and the one-liners are longer than ever; in the past, Sly used to grunt a maximum of two words per scene.

And yet, it’s this exact mindless fun that reminds us that our teenage years was time well-spent, so that we can write about it now and pretend – once again – that life is one big action movie, or an 8-bit videogame.