Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

It was in late September, 2005 that I heard of MillionDollarHomepage.com – an odd project of a financially-strapped college freshman from England, Alex Tew.

The Million Dollar Homepage project started on this day five years ago – August 26, 2005 – with the intent of collecting one million dollars from an ingenious method of online advertising.

The beginning wasn’t smooth but within 30 days the news spread like fire on dried crops. By collecting $1 per pixel, Alex Tew discovered that people’s budgets can be stretched in order to obtain more visibility; the larger the image one placed on the Million Dollar Homepage, the more it cost.

When I realized the short term & long term potential, I spent $900 on a 30 x 30 pixel block that to this day resides at the top right side of the Million Dollar Homepage. I was lucky being able to reserve a premium spot right against the top; you can’t miss the white capital “A” against a black background with a bold red outline

It generated thousands of clicks and the generation of several business leads. Not to mention, that $900 spent on advertising was yet another business expense when tax time arrived. Therefore, my cost was zero.

Five years later, we have reached the exact point in time that Alex promised to keep the web site alive. In fact, according to Alex this would be the *least* amount of time that the Million Dollar Homepage will be live for; his intention is to keep it going “forever”.

Regardless of whether the web site vanishes or not, Alex Tew proved that small ideas possess the quality of genius and that one can make lots of money, even if the individual amounts are small when there is volume involved.

So Happy 5th Anniversary, MillionDollarHomepage.com – thanks for being a part of Internet history and legend.

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.

The overall state of the economy might be bad but only to those that have not been careful with their investments.

Another thing to consider is the management of credit. If you’ve been negligent in the past, you probably noticed a series of changes in your line of credit.

Most credit card issuers in the US have decreased the line of credit of long-term customers. Visa, MasterCard, Discover – they are playing a game of numbers in lieu of the new, improved protection for American consumers.

Of course, that’s not always the case. If you have a stellar, perfect, outstanding credit record with no late payments whatsoever on it – then you receive some hefty, automatic credit limit increases in the mail. I just got one emailed and it’s odd seeing that six-figure number on my screen.

Do I plan to use it? Absolutely not. A line of credit should be there as a safety mechanism in case of extreme emergency. It’s good to have, it’s prudent not to use. Also, what matters with regards to your credit score is the percentage of your credit limit used. The less of it that you use, the better.

So while the economy is still in the red, certain things are improving, including the amount of trust returned from the banks to the consumer. But as someone who believes in the motto “once bitten, twice shy” I would say frame that email or letter and cut your credit card in half with a pair of scissors.

You won’t regret it!

Some rumor about Owen Frager leaving blogging and domaining behind made me worry for a while. After all, Owen is an “old timer” that precedes the digital era that many current entrepreneurs and developers were born into.

In fact, Owen isn’t going anywhere and the whole thing was an apparent misunderstanding and a misquote of his intention to leave the social media.

However, apparently speculation grew as Owen’s popular blog, FragerFactor.com was temporarily down earlier tonight.

Owen has already issued an explanation that he’s not leaving domaining or blogging; in fact, he’s back with no fewer than three posts in a row, some of which will be leap-frogging other people’s posts in the am.

But it is what it is.

I like Owen Frager and because he doesn’t take any shit from anyone, including myself, I respect his way of sticking to his guns and speaking from experience. Nothing can be more aggravating than blatant disrespect from new players; that, I realized myself on several occasions.

The Frager Factor brings a lot of character to the domain blogosphere and I’m certain that a lot of non-domainers read it, especially people in marketing and creative. So after this short hiccup, I’m glad to see Owen “back”.

Speaking of speculation and rumors, the type that I thrive on rebutting is the malicious kind. But more on that later

Yesterday I witnessed an example of Sedo’s efficiency in completing domain transactions on their marketplace, at Sedo.com

With $23 million in domain sales during the first quarter of 2010, Sedo remains the #1 place to buy and sell domains in the secondary market.

But back to the sale of a two-word compound .com

The $x,xxx offer was made at 2:49pm and a few minutes later I accepted it. Apparently, the transaction manager was checking his email quite often. By now Sedo knows that when I purchase domains, I pay swiftly; when I sell, I have the same high expectations from the buyer

The buyer paid promptly and Sedo informed me to push the domain to their escrow account. Minutes later I did just that and also created the invoice that the buyer had requested.  Sedo confirmed the domain was in their account and created a credit note.

Sale completed – easy like 1-2-3.

Total time from placing the accepted offer to payment to my account: 23 minutes.

Once again, I’m very impressed by Sedo and looking forward to the SedoPRO conference in Boston at the end of the month!

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.