2009 August | The Gremlins Umbrella Authority

The Support Game: GoDaddy

August 31, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (1)

I came up with a new game to entertain myself, and help others: The Support Game.

Essentially what happens is I phone up a support service, and ask ‘unusual’ questions. How well are support staff trained, and can they deal with a difficult customer?

Today I phoned up Godaddy, and was aided by Damien. The first thing to note is that he did not tell me his name until the end of the conversation when I asked. How impersonal !

I begun by disputing their ‘All conversations will be recorded’ process, asking if there was a secure line where such was not true. I did not want my conversation, and details of my domain names to be heard by anyone except Damien. His response was ‘No’. I pushed for an explanation, and was given ‘Training, and Security’. I stated that my request was in the interest of the security of my (made up) portfolio of 30,000 domain names. Nothing.

I went on to question what kind of manager was provided for such large portfolios, and was given a vague description of the portfolio manager that everyone gets. I felt no un-exclusive.

I probed as to whether Godaddy support staff were given a line to tell potential customers, as to why they should choose Godaddy over anyone else. Godaddys’ line is “24 hour support including holidays, free hosting deals, and bulk prices”. I made the point that near all registrars have that, but apparently they do not.. not many do. Damien has spoken.

Question 4 inquired about the ridiculous ‘Administrative Fees’ Godaddy like to charge for absolutely nothing. I for one was charged $200 in 2006. 4 of my Godaddy names were listed at tdnam. I then renewed them, Godaddy didnt remove the names, they sold. I was charged $200 in fees for non-sales of domains which GODADDY listed !
Another similar case, was one whereby a user had a UDRP filed against him, and was charged $29 without his permission for the honor.

The response to this was that Godaddy do not charge administrative fees without reason, and that fees are only charged for WIPO claims after GoDaddy have done an investigation. I.E Godaddy gives themselves a right they do not have to charge you based on their opinion. That is reason enough to avoid Godaddy.

He completely avoided my question about the seclists.org fiasco.

Fortunately for me, If I were to move my 30,000 domains over, they ‘might’ be able to get me an account manager.. Oh dear oh dear.

Check out Nodaddy for more reasons to avoid Godaddy.

.CM Postponed Again

August 27, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Wow, I have an exclusive…

I am officially the first to blog about this.

The .CM Go Live period which was meant to begin at 00.01pm UTC tomorrow morning will NOT be happening.

The registry are still having dns difficulties. Given the amount of money, they could potentially make, you’d think they would have this sorted after a months delay already ! Apparently not.

The word came from Moniker. Apparently a very vague message was received.

I just sold 3 domains at a loss to free up a bit of cash for this, so it is a little annoying to say the least. None the less, at least Ill now have the time to do some proper research.

Cheers

‘boo hoo’ book review

August 20, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: Reviews | Comments (0)

I found an old book stashed on my bookshelf a week or so ago. I picked up the book many years ago because it was a book about an e-tailer which crashed after the dot com boom. Given that I was interested in online business at the time, I thought it would be an interesting, and informative read.

‘boo hoo’ is written by Ernst Malmsten, one of the founders of boo.com back in 1999/2000. The book outlines how the company began: the idea, the development, the situation, the investments, and then goes on to outline how it crashed and died under its own weight.
It is an interesting read, and well worth reading if you want to know what not to do.

The book outlines how hundred of millions of dollars of investment from some extremely infamous names were obtained.
This money was spent on developing the technology, and infrastructure to run an online fashion, and sportswear retailer, as well as for advertising, staff salaries, contractors etc

Some extremely interesting bits include:

The server which they bought from Sun Microsytems. It cost a measly $1.3 million dollars, and housed 64 processors. Amusingly the biggest worry was that it would crash through the floor of the data center under its own weight !

The fact that they spent millions of dollars on their website which I could have developed for a few thousand bucks !

The fact that they bought boo.com in 1999 for $3,500 !

What I found stunning about this book is the apparent ‘by-the-book’ attitude of companies within the corporate world. If you have an idea, you do not need to get significant investment from banks. boo hoo outlines how their first big trial was getting millions of dollars of investment based on an idea. In reality you do not need this. Some of the most well known start ups in the world started with nothing, and crucially flourished: see facebook !

The book essentially portrays a story of 3 somewhat naive businessmen/women who wanted to build a global brand the easy way. They got lucky with an early investment but failed because they wasted their money. Rather than develop their website in house for a small amount, they outsourced to Ericsson at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. What a waste.
Furthermore the attitude the book portrays is that when something small needed fixing, they would hire a new employee. After all they did have the money. Only once all the money was gone did they have to fire most of their staff, and concede defeat.

Success, and arrogance will never be found in the same sentence. Success, and easy will never be found in the same sentence. This book outlines this perfectly, and is well worth the read.

The best thing about this book is the fact that it was written by one of the founders, who in hindsight realized their mistakes. An honest, and informative insight into the logistics of running a business. 7/10

Only on the Internet

August 15, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (0)

I’ve never given real thought to this phenomenon until today.

There are some things which you can only buy on the Internet. The reasons are vast, and varied but certain products in certain niches simply cannot be bought on the high street.

When I see something I want/need, I often will go out and buy it from a shop simply because although the Internet may be a little cheaper.. it also takes a little longer. The problem is, that as happened today, I ended up wasting time looking for a product which now I will order online anyway

I have thus made it my prerogative to highlight products that I believe are only available online.

N.B I am English, I live in England, and these are my findings in my local area. I am sure if you look hard enough, and in the right places these products can be found offline BUT who wants to put effort in?! Feel free to let me know of any products you believe can only be bought on the net.

Body Fat Calipers: These things basically pinch your body fat, and give you a reading in mm. This can then be used to calculate your body fat percentage. I thought you could find these in any pharmacist, or sports shop. You cant ! I asked in JJB Sports, and the guy clearly had no idea what I was on about, yet pretended he did. “Any Idea where I could get them from?”… response “Yes, from the protein store” (I think he thought it was some sort of mass gaining supplement).

The logic behind such products is obvious… they don’t sell many, so it is not profitable. Why use storage space with something you are not going to sell.
This got be thinking: What happened if you wanted these before the Internet? Mail order catalog I guess.

If you know of any items which simply cannot be bought on the high street, then let me know. I will go an have a look, and If I cant… Ill give you absolutel nothing.

Addition One 15/08/2009 19:37
Thanks to Acroplex for this.. not sure how I missed it.

Domain Names
Domain Names cannot be bought in any way, shape, or form offline. It would however be extremely cool if you could: “I’d like a 20 pack of Malboro lights, and www.shopping.com please.” Response “That will be $100,005.99″.

Cheers

Domain Portfolio Manager, Domain Name History….. Domain Tools !

August 14, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Developments | Comments (0)

As you may have noticed GUA now has a spiffing new design. Awesome huh? Let me know your opinions via the comments here, via facebook, or via twitter.

Yup, thats right. That is one of of the new aspects of GUA, our Twitter, and our Facebook. Please go ahead and follow/befriend us so we can keep in touch with everyone.

In addition, every blogger wants to feel like they are wanted, and appreciated. If my writing interests you, please subscriber to our RSS feed, by clicking the icon below our header.

Without further delay, I am proud to re-release the updated GUA Domain name Tools. I say re-release, however in reality these tools have never been publicly available in such a form. So what do we have?

The main attraction is our Domain Portfolio Manager. This tool allows you to add your domain names. It then collects the whois data, and displays a variety of informative data. You can search, and sort your domain list by every criterion you could ever want, you can categorize your domains, and you can utilize our unique graphing suite to monitor changes in revenues, visitors, or any other such stat.

You can have 500 names in your portfolio. This is such that the system works at its most efficient. Any more than this number can cause load lag, and the various who is servers definitely will not appreciate excessive queries. If you feel you really do need to have more domains, please contact me.

Another main feature is our Domain Whois Lookup. Forget domaintools. They are extorting you. The Gremlins Umbrella Authority now allows whois queries, which highlight the crucial data, and perhaps more importantly we offer a free Domain Name History tool. This allows you to compare todays whois with archived data. This can be useful in checking domain name ownership for example.

Utilizing this data we can also provide two further tools: Who owns what, and Nameserver Check. These tools allow you to look up what domain names a particular email address owns, and what domains are set to particular name servers respectively. Once again… FREE !

In fact all our tools are free, and always will be free as long as they are not abused.

If you want to repay us, please subscribe to the blog, follow us on twitter, or befriend us on facebook !

We also have some smaller, but none-the-less useful features such as the Masspay File Generator (pretty self explanatory), and our Domain Name Extractor. For those complicated lists that need processing there is also the Advanced Lists.

As is displayed above, we are trying to corner a market, and provide everything that domainers may need. I am a domainer, and these tools have been developed by me, based on my needs. Want something else? Let us know.

Meanwhile head over to your settings page, and fill in your ‘Domainer Profile’ to be featured in our brand new Domainer Directory.

Hope you enjoy the tools, and the blog. If you do please spread the word.

Tom, and The Gremlins Umbrella Authority

Buy Domains : Spammers

August 12, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (0)

Admittedly I am quite easily annoyed, but you have to go a level beyond to make me post about you on my blog. Therefore kudos to Buy Domains.

Back in early 2008 I sent an inquiry to Buy Domains regarding a domain name which they owned. The domain in question was tomc.com

It is not the greatest domain in the world, and in retrospect I am not even sure as to why i inquired at all. Having checked my logs, I offered $450USD for the domain, an offer which I think exceeds the value of the domain.

Sadly Buy Domains did not agree, and responded with some ridiculous offer. $6,900 if I remember correctly. I politely responded, and said ‘No Thanks’.

Since then I receive an email from Buy Domains every two months, sometimes less. The emails always go the same: We are having a special sale, tomc.com is now only $STILL-EXTORTIONATE-PRICE USD.

First time I replied stating I was not interested, and to remove me from their list. Gradually my replies started getting more and more ‘flame-filled’.
Over the past year I have received over 25 emails offering me the same awful domain which I do NOT want !

Apparently Buy Domains tactic is to change the name at the bottom of the email, then it is not spam.

I have received the exact same template message from Jim Beltz, Jason Miner, and Neil Kavanaugh.
Their emails are always signed off with ‘Head of something really complicated, and important sounding’

In reality I think that Buy Domains employees work on a commission system, and spamming gives them more opportunity to sell domains.
Sad fact, I will never buy from them ever, and I hope others follow suit knowing their unlawful practices.

Traveling in Australia

August 9, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: Travelling | Comments (0)

Australia is a big country. If you intend to see it all, you will have to set aside some serious time, and save up some serious cash.

I took the easy route, and visited the lazy traveler destination: The East Coast.

I landed in Brisbane, and slowly got myself together (I was extremely tired having gotten no sleep). I hopped on a train into the center, and walked the short distance to the hostel I’d found info on in the airport. I was in for the shock of the century, when the bloke behind the desk asked for $34 for 1 nights accommodation.. for some reason I was still in ‘Thai mode’, and was expecting him to say $4. I soon got used to the price differences, I had no choice.

In Brisbane I met some cool people.. a hosteler who had just realized it was a waste of money to pay for a bed when you could (and he did) stay with his girlfriend for free, a slightly creepy Swiss guy, and an awesome Brit (not surprising).

Whilst in Brisbane I went on the Seacats (their ferry system), visited the outer city Botanical gardens, went to the infamous Powerhouse (where I saw some cracking Stand-up), visited the ‘XXXX’ brewery (where apparently 6 people on get 6 figure salaries to taste beer daily), visited Southbank, and saw various museums.

Something I really suggest you do is to take the bus up to Mt Coot-tha, and take a look at the amazing city panorama.

Another thing I really feel is worth a look is the Brisbane casino. I attempted to get in on three occasions. The first I could not because I was wearing shorts, the second time I was wearing flip flops, and then on the third occasion within 5 minutes I had lost $40. This was over the course of three days, because in principle although it is easy to go and buy shoes, trust my luck, it was Anzac day, and everywhere was closed.

Whilst in Brisbane I received an email from my mother. “Tom, whilst you are in Australia make sure you go to the ‘Great Barrier Reef’”. Oh Yeh ! I thought as I rushed to one of the tourist information shops. I then proceeded to ask how much a ticket to the reef was, to which the response was “The Great Barrier Reef is 2000km long !”
The other thing my mother mentioned was that my grandparents had based themselves with our relatives in Sydney, and gone to the GBR. In retrospect, I am not quite sure who is more retarded (with all due respect), my mother for… well… her idiocy, or me for being equally naive.

In the end, I did not go simply due to a lack of time and money. I did however book a trip to Moreton Island which is an awesome place. I met some really cool people, and did some amazing stuff. I caught a fish in my bare hands whilst snorkeling through wrecks, and I went sandboarding.

My next stop was Byron Bay. The beaches here were nice to say the least. Again I met some cool people, mainly Ben from LA, USA (Small world). He was an awesome guy, and put me in my place many a time with regards to my general attitude towards life.

During my time here, I saw an amazing fire show of which the finale accidentally involved a 15 year old girl setting her hair on fire (and not realizing), I visited the infamous Cheeky Monkies, and I saw grown men walking around only wearing cling film (unfortunately).

I also utilized Byron as a base for a trip to Nimbin. If you have not heard of Nimbin, I suggest you google it. The instant I got on the bus I realized that the driver was more than likely coked up. He was awesome, as well as all the people on the bus. At first everyone was extremely quiet on the bus, thus our driver stopped and forced us to buy alcohol.. you were not allowed back on the bus unless you had a minimum of 4 beers. Overall an awesome day of alcohol, waterfalls, BBQ, and ‘Tom Midgeley’. A must do if you are anywhere near the area.

Back on the greyhound I went, and off I went to Coffs Harbor. I had booked no accommodation in advance up until this point, but on a whim I borrowed a phone, and booked my accommodation here. It is a small place, and I was right. Had I not booked, I would have been sleeping on the streets. I met an awesome Brit (Tim), who had a freaky confidence with women, I went to a little market, went on a bike ride, explored the general area, and visited ‘The Big Banana’. Coffs Harbor is not the most exciting place in the world, but it is definitely chilled out.

My final Aussie stop was Sydney, where I ended up spending 10 days. I planned this as I had free accommodation with my great aunt, and uncle (who I had never met before). This is one of my trip regrets. If you travel do NOT stay with relatives.. yes it is free, and yes they were awesome people but I felt slightly hindered by it. I was out of the city.. I could not meet people.. I could not viably go out. Case and point. Furthermore had I not made this decision, I could have visited the Great Barrier Reef, because turns out Sydney is really boring. There is not 10 days worth of entertainment in Sydney.

The obvious plus side to staying with relatives was that they were awesome people, the gorgeous food, barbeques, and beers etc
Also given that my great aunt and uncle had lived in AUS for numerous years, their knowledge was awesome. I got to visit Cronulla, a small beachside town, where I went on a scenic boat ride (in the rain) amongst other things. This is also the place where I saw an extremely unique sight, rats on a beach.

In addition although I was on the other side of the world, yet given our British routes my great aunts daughter had gone to the effort of getting a video of the ‘Doctor Who’ easter special posted out… Dedication.

Syndey Harbor Bridge and the Opera House are worth seeing. The beaches are rubbish out of season. Bondi Beach was basically empty. Manley beach is by far the nicest beach in Sydney, and Manly is a great place in general. I did go and see a lot of museums to fill the time, but it was only at the end of my time in AUS that I realized how much I dislike museums. I took a trip into the Blue Mountains, which is really impressive. We visited a wildlife park, and fed some Koalas/Roos, then we saw the Three Sisters before we went on the steepest railway in the world (which is steep).

Again to demonstrate my naivety. Prior to landing in Australia, I was under the assumption that it was hot all year around. Do not make that mistake. Australia can, and does get very very cold.

Best Bits: Nimbin, and Tim getting rejected by two girls with the line: “We are actually only 15, and our parents our waiting for us”.

Regrets: Not seeing the Great Barrier Reef, or visiting Cairns.

Oh, and while you are there… taste Kangaroo !