That’s right, on The Farm, my developer blog — the blog I’m paid to write — I posted one dozen articles. Click the link below to read them all!
Category: Geek
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Semi-regular Reminder About "The Farm"
For those of you who are into programming, don’t forget that there’s a blog I’m paid to write: The Farm: The Tucows Developers’ Hangout!
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The First Browser War, Acted Out By Cats
Although this video’s title is Why Judo is Better Than Karate, I think that an equally apt title would be How Microsoft Won the First Browser War.
I remember reading a zillion articles about how small, agile companies
like Netscape were going to put lumbering corporate dinosaurs like M$
out of business; this video makes an excellent counter-metaphor.
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Tucows’ Expiring Domain Name Auction Service
I’m a little too busy to explain it right now (working on a big new
project here) so, I’m going to point you to the words of others.
First, Cory’s quick summary on Boing Boing:
Tucows is starting a service to auction off expired domain names, but
with an escape hatch to ensure that the former holders of the expired
domains don’t get scr0d.
(Yes, Cory is a customer of ours and a buddy and former boss of mine. But he liked Tucows long before I joined the company.)
He points to a CanadaIT.com article on our new service and quotes:
Yet, Tucows plans to protect the previous registrant’s existing rights
because even if a URL enters the auction, the old registrant still has
a window of opportunity to retain the name under the system. Noss said
Tucows plans to “hold the name in escrow for another 30 days” on top of
a period of “anywhere from one to 45 days” that a former registrant has
to reclaim their domain name after expiry, depending on which registrar
they’re dealing with.
…Tucows is the kind
of company that would enter the lapsed-domain business in a way that
shows particular respect for the former owners of domain names. As any
number of sordid stories will attest — many of them associated with Verisign — lapsed domains offer a perfect situation for sleazy opportunism.
I tend to be skeptical and suspicious about large corporations; in
fact, some readers will scornfully characterize my attitude with even
less flattering words (less flattering both to me and to the
corporations I mistrust). All the more reason, then, to repeat that I
have for years been deeply impressed with the probity and business
style of the folks at Tucows.
I try to stay on Reverend AKMA’s good side. His boss can smite my boss’ ass.
Speaking of my boss, here’s are pointers to Boss Ross’ articles on the new service.
-
Perfect Information: Involving Registrants in the Expiring Names Market
- More Perfect Information: Tucows announces Expiring Names Auction Service
- Perfect Information: The Global And The Local
I’ll explain the whole thing in even more layperson-friendly terms — with cartoons even! — if there’s a demand for it.
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The Regular Plug for "The Farm"
Don’t forget, I’ve got a blog for which I’m paid to write: The Farm, the Tucows Developer’s Hangout.
Whether you develop in-house enterprise applications for a Fortune 500
Company in Visual Basic or are writing a haX0r-friendly version control
system in Ruby, there’s something for you at The Farm!
Isaac’s computers may not have been groovy,
but his sideburns sure were!
Remember, that’s http://farm.tucows.com.
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CTV Appearance
Yesterday morning, David Akin in his CTV News guise (he’s also with the Globe and Mail) asked if he could drop by Tucows along with intrepid camerman Lucien and interview both Boss Ross and me about Google as part of a piece on their IPO. We said “come on down!” and an hour later, he was here conducting interviews.
Here’s Boss Ross in his office.
And
here I am. While “Technical Community Development Coordinator” is my
actual title, it’s just too hard to explain and wouldn’t fit on the
screen anyway.
“Carpenters need hammers, internet guys need Google.” Hah! I slay me! I am the Soundbite King!
Ross has posted the video in his latest entry — you can either get the video there or download it from me [1.9 MB Windows Media]. Take your pick!
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Even More Reading Material — on Spectrum!
[ via Slashdot, Shirky ] The Economist has an article titled On the same wavelength,
which “argues that overcautious control of electromagnetic spectrum, on
the part of regulatory agencies, has resulted in the sheer waste of up
to 95% of available spectrum.” Clay Shirky has just posted an article
titled The Possibility of Spectrum as a Public Good, which puts forth the notion that if the FCC “manages its proposed transmutation of small slices of
spectrum away from property rights and towards a model that regulates
spectrum as a public good”, you’ll get more innovation, citing the example of WiFi.