Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Rick Schwartz broke his blogging silence of five weeks yesterday – much to my delight and that of others.

His subject of discussion – the dropping of iReport.com in favor of the subdomain iReport.cnn.com by the CNN Network – offered the opportunity for a stimulating discussion.

The sale of iReport.com for a reported $750,000 ranks amongst Rick’s top sales; it’s also apparently a sale that required dealing with the CNN Network executives in a manner that differs from most end-buyer deals.

So Rick is arguing that the future will be in subdomains; the switch of iReport to become a subdomain of CNN.com appears to be “proof”, due to the apparent large monetary value iReport.com carries.

And yet, several other sales of domains, some in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, were silently changed into subdomains of the brand they represent.

The reason this is happening is simple: a corporation with an established brand, such as CNN.com will use the full domain such as iReport.com to establish a trend and thus get visitors accustomed to it, while remaining in the background as the primary destination.

Ideally, a product or service needs its own namespace independently of the corporate identity. Products and services come and go, some fail and some succeed. Domains as assets usually maintain their branding long after a domain is removed from existence.

Thus, the notion that subdomains are the future isn’t accurate in itself, in my opinion. Subdomains have been around forever, since communities and active web sites offered this kind of access in the early days of the commercial Internet. Using subdomains for products isn’t new and isn’t the focus of everyday domaining, or we would be all registering free .tc domains or other exotic TLDs.

For the purpose it serves, iReport.cnn.com is a fine transition from a standalone domain into the integrated news network of the brand it spawned from. Rick’s ability to sell an eventual brand to a major news network is admirable; the decision by CNN to transition to a CNN.com subdomain, four years later, is a classic case of the board of directors moving to condense all services under the CNN brand. It makes perfect sense from a marketing standpoint as well.

And that’s not bad at all, as it shows that it’s important to establish, maintain and expand on one’s brand and products, utilizing generics or brandable domains; not all of them will eventually be dropped and not all of them will be turned into entities under the corporate umbrella.

What matters is that Rick Schwartz had a grand sale with the domain iReport.com and that its current use as a redirect makes perfect sense in the world of branding and asset integration.

A few days ago I reported on how the domain name SOPA.com is in good hands.

To show my support of Vincent’s efforts against this hideous SOPA bill, I’ve donated my time and created the SOPA.com logo.

The SOPA bill must fail because it’s not only unconstitutional but it also threatens to destroy the Internet functionality and unity.

Visit SOPA.com – have a wonderful Friday.

One of my single word dot .com domains received an offer a few days ago. The person contacted me via the WHOIS info and asked me what is my asking price for this “unused domain”, which he said he’d use for a business he’s launching.

The domain is not only a short generic and 18 years old but it’s not parked. It hosts a web site containing information related to the keyword.

When I receive such inquiries that show intent to “force” a sale, I respond that the domain is developed or slated for development; subject to an offer that would be analogous to my past and current costs for registration, development and true market value.

The gentleman, who was logging on from Asia, became increasingly annoyed when I explained that his offer of $200 was in no way in touch with reality. His response was that of the “sour grapes” kind: if you kept it for 18 years, you’ll never going to sell it.

I’ve heard that argument several times before; it’s when one lacks the capabilities to make an offer because their budget is non-existent.

At that point I wished him happy new year, best of luck with his ventures and bid farewell.

The following day, my server firewall went crazy with reports of blocked attacks on the web site of that domain. Using dozens of rogue IPs, the attacker was attempting to log into the control panel – what for, I have no idea.

It seems that the rejection caused some …dejection and our failed bidder decided to annoy me a little.

Right on its 4th “birthday”, my primary hard disk hit the digital Purgatory on New Year’s Eve. It also took a secondary drive hostage, as if lightning had hit twice.

I spent several hours wondering why would two admittedly “ripe” Western Digital drives fail on me, then I decided to go get a brand new Barracuda drive and re-install Windows and worry about getting my data back later.

I back up data regularly but not that on my main drive. Getting overly confident is a bad state of mind when it comes down to keeping data safe.

So it happened, and my primary drive made whirring noises, refusing to boot. The other drive showed up as “dynamic” and Windows asked me repeatedly to format it.

Lots of data was at stake at losing, so with Windows Vista back on the new drive, I searched for software to reclaim it. My last resort would be to send the drives off to a data recovery company and risk paying up to $1,000.

It’d be a very costly mistake but thankfully, two pieces of software – one free and one priced at $29.99 saved my digital ass.

First, my primary drive was drilled down by TestDisk, a brilliant piece of software that is “designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table).”

In my case, the drive was clearly dying, judging from the metronome clicking sounds it made. The TestDisk software, however, pulled through like a champ and helped me locate my lost partition and reclaim and copy all 95 Gb of data into safety. All this, for free.

My other drive was salvaged using the Dynamic Disk Converter for $29.95. After running the demo version and confirming that my data was intact, I purchased the full version and in five seconds my drive was once again recognizable by Windows and ready to use. Needless to say, that I copied over all the data to a new drive.

Moral of the story: Back up all your data regularly and don’t rely on the alleged reliability of hardware brands; get a new drive every two years max, as technology improves as well (had no idea most drives now come with 32 Gb cache as a standard!)

Aged “just” 74 years and six months, senator Jay “John” Rockefeller is still keeping America safe from its natural enemies.

In a letter published at the Talk Radio News Service, senator Rockefeller made this statement:

“I’m concerned that this expansion of generic, top-level domains, if it proceeds as planned, will have adverse consequences for the millions of American consumers, companies, and non-profit organizations that use the Internet on a daily basis,” Rockefeller wrote in a letter to Commerce Secretary John Bryson and NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling.

Senator Rockefeller is unique, in the sense that he’s the only Democrat in a long family line of Republicans, including his great-grandfather, self-made oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller.

And that’s where the party ends, I’m afraid.

There is no way to stop progress and the Internet will have to expand, despite the narrow minds of some. New gTLDs will be introduced and new methods of accessing and sharing data and information. The river cannot reverse its flow, as they say.

With the involvement of aged politicians, being lobbied by corporate conglomerates to implement satanic instruments, such as the SOPA bill, we should realize that having our grandfathers run the show isn’t a smart idea after all.