*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

You and I need to chat.  Sure Twitter and blogging is great but we really can’t have a conversation there.  More times than not I find myself wanting to discuss something with someone in more detail but I don’t want to do it via Twitter or Email, it just doesn’t feel natural. 

I’m a huge fan of Instant Messaging.  I’ve been using it for years and still to this day find it one of the most valuable tools in my arsenal of communication.  The problem is I don’t have everyone’s instant message handles.  This makes it tough.  It is weird that most people give out their email address but most people don’t give out their instant message.  I’m here to say INSTANT MESSAGE ME.  This is the preferred way I like to communicate.  Seriously, add me to your instant messenger.  Here’s my handle:

I Hereby Ban Direct Messaging on Twitter

I don’t like direct messaging on Twitter.  It annoys the heck out of me that someone wants to send me a quick message, yet the ONLY way they can send me something is through Twitter which then generates an Email to me letting me know I have a message which then I have to click back to the Twitter web site to send a message back to them which generates another email to them and back and forth.  It sucks!

Let’s just stop using it and use the better tool, INSTANT MESSAGING.

If you have sent me a direct message in the past know this is not directed at you.  You probably didn’t know we could communicate better, I blame Twitter, not you.

Order of Communication

Here is the order of communication preference I use when I need to communicate with someone.  I realize that everyone will not have the same order but this is about me not you 🙂

1. Phone – If I need something right now I need to discuss, I pickup the phone and just call.  It is quick and easy.
2. Text – If I have something to say right now and it can’t wait  but I don’t want to intrude with a phone call because of various reasons (meetings, traveling, etc)  I text.  Texting is a great way to get something to someone “under the radar” when I need them to get a message that doesn’t necessarily require a conversation.  In WCF terms, I think of it as a one way message mostly.  Example: “Hey I’m over here, come join me for lunch if you are able to.” 
3. Instant Message – If there is no emergency and I’m at a computer, then I use IM as my default communication.  I like this for a lot of reasons.  One I can see if the person is available, away, busy, etc.  If I miss their message, I have a log of it.  And I have a log of the things we’ve discussed previously for reference.
4. Email – If information is lengthy and it is something I need someone to take action on, then I email it.  It is also something that isn’t time sensitive that can sit in a mailbox for days.
5. Twitter Direct Message – I use this ONLY because I don’t have someone on IM.  Stop the madness and let’s communicate via IM!

Seriously let’s start using the right tool for the right job and get back to a baked technology that everyone has been using for years.  Seriously, it is ok, add me to your IM and message me.  Please don’t feel that you can’t or shouldn’t message, let’s have a conversation.  If I’m busy and can’t chat, that’s OK, I’ll let you know and get back with you.

Google Chrome just hit the press.  Here is a quick walk through of the installation on Windows.

Installing Google Chrome

The installer had a problem because it wasn’t run as an administrator. 

Once the install was restarted as an admin, things went much better.

 

Pressing customize settings brings up the ability to import settings from Firefox and Internet Explorer.

If Firefox is running it can’t import Firefox settings so I skipped this step.

First Google Chrome Launch

Like any blogger I had to pull up my own web site to see how it faired.  Pretty much looks the same as others.  That’s good.

The top of the browser appears to be the same as other browsers.  A navigation bar, back buttons, etc.  There was a little document drop down that caught my attention.  Note to self, hot key Ctrl+Shift+N for incognito mode.

Incognito mode has a sneaky icon at the top and some disclaimers about what it does or doesn’t do.

I decided to check out how it rendered source of a web page from the developer menu.  It put the source code into a new tab.  Syntax highlighting and line numbers make it nice.  I personally prefer any window that opens open into a tab.  That’s just me.

There is also a menu option when you right click that says “Inspect Element”.  Here’s what that produced.  Pretty nice.

Settings

Here is a quick tour of the settings windows.  Not hundreds of options but it seems to be fairly complete.

Imagine that, searchable history from a company that mainly does search (nothing new, just a different look to it).  My first thoughts were I liked having the history appear in a separate tab. 

For those curious, here is a Firefox comparison of history.

Acid 3 Test

For those web developers out there, here is the Acid3 test for Chrome. 

For fun I ran Firefox 3 through the Acid3 test as well.  Winner?  Chrome.

 

First Impression

Google Chrome appears to be a complete browser.  The initial download was 475KB.  I like the feature of being able to tear off a tab into a new window but I didn’t find a way to put the tab back to where it was to start with.  In the few other pages I visited with Chrome they appeared to render them all the same. 

There really isn’t much “chrome” to Chrome but it seems to provide a nice browsing experience and is snappy.  One question though, where is the Google Toolbar? 🙂

UPDATE
Tear Off Tabs:  I finally figured out that tabs can be placed back.  You have to click on the tab itself, not the window as I was trying to do initially.

Update to latest version of Witty Twitter here:

http://keithelder.net/software/witty/witty.application

A new version of Witty Twitter was just published this morning, version 0.1.8.6.

  There aren’t any major new features in this release but over the last several months there has been progress.  Here they are:

Witty supports Tourniquet which is a personal caching twitter proxy.  Tourniquet was written by the mad scientist Jason Follas.  Tourniquet solves a lot of the problems with Twitter being down and opens the door for a lot of other interesting things to happen.  Check out the project on Codeplex.

If you’ve ever been temporarily disconnected while Witty was it was running you’ve no doubt seen the error messages that Witty couldn’t update itself.  Witty checks every hour to see if there are any updates in the background if and there is it prompts you to do an update.  The error message was removed from Witty so you should no longer see this.

Pop up notifications now appear on the first display not the second (yeah!). 

If you need to use Witty through a proxy the UI was fixed so when the application starts for the first time this can be entered.

Additional exceptions that might occur when Twitter would be down are now accounted for along with several other changes.

In no particular order, the developers that contributed since the last update of Witty was published:

• Alan Le (project founder)
• Scott Koon
• Jon Galloway
• Keith Elder
• Paul White
• Jason Follas

Thanks to everyone that contributed, keep ‘em coming.

How To Update Witty

1. If Witty is running go into the options screen of Witty and click update.  It will download and restart Witty.
2. Click on the ClickOnce URL to install Witty if you’ve never installed it here:  http://keithelder.net/software/witty/witty.application
3. If you already have Witty installed and it isn’t running, simply launch it, it should update.

I’ve been using Google News for a long time.  There  are lots of news sites out there that allow one to keep up with lots of news.  News.Yahoo.Com, CNN, and others come to mind.  For some reason I like the simplicity of Google News and the ability to create alerts on news items so I use it quiet a bit.  I’m not sure when the feature “Add Section” was added but it is a welcomed feature to site but here is how it works.

First visit http://news.google.com and be sure you are logged into your Google account.  On the left side of the page you should see this:

Clicking “Add Section” will bring up an overlay screen that allows you to pick content. 

For my first test I chose keywords and took a stab at the dark to see what something like our podcast would look like.

Unfortunately it didn’t reveal any results.

I then tried a location and put in the zip code of my home town.

Within a second my home town appeared in the left navigation menu:

It is a pretty interesting feature but I have some problems with it.  If you add something to the site you appear to only have one chance at removing the item from your menu.  When you add a new item this shows up at the top of the page:

Once I clicked off this page, I have not been able to find any way to remove the news item I previously added.  That is a problem and can’t believe something so trivial is missing. 

I was curious to see if what I had added would show up on the mobile version of the news site.  It doesn’t.  Apparently they desktop version and mobile version do not tie into each other.

I like it when Google adds features to their product offerings, but they always seem to be half-baked, lacking features, and disconnected.  I just don’t get why something as simple as removing a news section is so hard and tying in what I did on the desktop doesn’t reflect on the mobile version.  For some reason Google can get away with lack of features yet other companies would be slammed for not having basic integration and basic features.  Google, just so you know, I’m not letting you off the hook.  I expect more from you.  Stop messing around and get your head on straight.

What’s the worst thing that could happen to you electronically speaking?  Maybe someone could steal your bank account information?  How about get your credit card information?  Someone stealing your identity?  Those are all the standard things we think of when we think about electronic security.  Or at least the first ones that come to mind.  Sunday morning I woke up and was drinking coffee at the computer.  I saw a tweet from someone on Twitter who asked a question that I had a perfect answer for on my blog.  I typed in my blog address in my web browser to find it and when I did I saw this:

First Reaction

My first reaction was I typed in my domain name incorrectly.  I was shocked but not worried or concerned.  Checking the domain name again I realized I had typed in the correct response.  Ok, not cool.  Freak out meter 10% at this point.

Second Reaction

My second reaction was my site had been hacked.  I opened up an FTP connection to the server and checked files.  Everything was in place.  Things were fine.  Not freaking out yet, but fearing the worst at this point.  Freak out meter 15%.

Third Reaction

My third reaction was Comcast messed up DNS and or cached some wrong information.  I opened up a command prompt and typed in:

ping keithelder.net

I got back an IP address that I didn’t recall.  Ok, what’s going on.  Freaking out meter was now at 65.43%.  Thinking quickly I asked myself, how could someone change my IP address of my domain.  Answer, they are in control of my DNS!  Ok, freak out meter just went to 85%.

Fourth Reaction

I pulled up http://samspade.org which is an online site that allows a WHOIS query to be run.  I checked my DNS records and everything appeared to be fine.  But then I noticed something at the bottom of the page that sent chills down my spine:

Today was August 10th!  For reasons I still cannot explain, my domain had expired!  Ok, freak out meter was now at 100%.

My Worse Fear

The worst fear imaginable hit me.  Do you remember the things I brought up at the beginning about bank information, identity etc?  Every bit of that could be very well underway if someone took over my domain.  There are people or companies out there that make a living buying domains after they expire.  To get a domain back from these people is almost virtually impossible without hiring a lawyer and taking action or spending a large sum of money.  For the domain snatcher, these domains can be a gold mine because of previous page rankings and previous built traffic.

Think about it, if someone controls the domain, they control the email accounts.   If they control the email accounts they can reset passwords to accounts you use online (which is why I hate systems that verify identity via email).  This is about the point I started to freak out and hit 100%.

Restoring Logical Order

I pulled up my registrar and logged in.  I didn’t see my domain.  Thinking under immense pressure I thought I had completely screwed up.  I quickly picked up the phone and made a call to tech support and got someone.  I explained the situation in just a few words and the representative pulled up my account.  He then gave me a HUGE sign of relief and said, “Your domain is listed under the expired section.  If you go there, you can renew it.”

Whew, no one had taken control over it (my worst fear).  I started to verbally abuse myself for letting my domain expire.  I thought the domain was set on auto renew but it wasn’t.  After getting over my worst fear of someone hijacking my domain, logical order started to return to my brain. 

How Domain Expirations Work

After logical order was restored to my brain I realized that technically it takes longer than one day to snatch a domain after it expires.  As a matter of fact it takes about 75 days after a domain expires to be fully removed from the ICANN database.  For those that don’t know there is 40 days after a domain expires that is considered a grace period.  Then there is a redemption period and then there are 5 days of a deletion period.  Thus technically I had about 74 days left to re-buy my domain.  But for those days my web site would be showing the web site you saw above, NOT COOL.

I’m Not The Only One

Before you start pointing fingers and laughing at my situation note that I’m not the only one that’s had this happen.  Probably the most famous story I remember is a story from 1999 when Microsoft forgot to re-register their Hotmail.Com domain.  You read the correctly, Hotmail!  A Hotmail subscriber re-registered the domain to restore their email services just so he could get his email.

http://news.cnet.com/Good-Samaritan-squashes-Hotmail-lapse/2100-1023_3-234907.html

There are others, and probably a lot we don’t even know about.

Lessons Learned

If you own your own domain(s) there are some huge lessons that can be learned from this.

1. Make sure you can get emails from your registrar.  Double and triple check spam filters and email inbox rules to make sure if they send you something it gets into your Inbox.
2. If your registrar offers the option to set your domains to auto renew, do it.  The registrar I use has this option.  For some reason I forgot to set it though.
3. Use a credit card like American Express that you pay off every month and don’t have to worry about being over balance on.  AMEX is great for re-occurring charges and bills you pay off at the end of the month.  This will ensure when it comes time for the domain to be renewed it will be.  Or at least give you a better shot at it. 
4. Schedule the expiration date of your domain(s) in your calendars.  Notice I said plural.  Put this everywhere you can.  In most cases registrars email the owner of a domain when it is about to expire, but just in case their email gets trapped by a spam filter or something and there is a problem you’ll be reminded to double check it. 

Everything turned out fine in the end but the feeling I had of potentially having my main domain taken away is a feeling I do not wish to repeat for the foreseeable future.  If you own a personal domain (as I know many of you do) you maybe should think twice about letting that domain expire if you have email accounts tied to that domain, even if you don’t use that domain anymore.  At least make sure you have no ties to it whatsoever before letting it expire.  Whatever you are doing right now, stop and check if your domain is about to expire and follow my tips above.  Don’t be like me and suddenly start selling real estate on a Sunday morning.  🙂