Facebook is offering a virtual gift product that revolves around credits that you toss to your ‘friends’ in lieu of simply liking something they do. Kind of a pay for performance model of friendship. Talk about taking relationships to a new low. For just $1 you can purchase 100 credits that you can give to your ‘friends’ when they do something you like. I don’t know about you but I think that throwing money at my ‘friends’ when they do something I like is not something I consider regularly. I guess my ‘friends’ would like it but it seems pretty ridiculous to me. It’s like treating your ‘friends’ like performing seals. When they honk the horn on the stage by the pool you can throw them a fish and a sincere “Nice job. Atta boy!”

Well, it’s no more ridiculous when done on Facebook. In a not so transparent play to generate some revenue it looks as if the folks at “the ‘book” are thinking that if just a small percentage of their 200 million users are empty headed enough to spend a buck a month to throw credits at their buddies then they can generate some dollars. As TechCrunch put it

And it’s far better than having to return to the capital markets to raise money at what’s likely to be an embarrassing large discount from that ridiculous $15 billion valuation that Microsoft gave them in 2007. Maybe if enough users buy credits that can never be redeemed back for cash they can stretch their runway a little farther.

From a business perspective these are the kind of ideas that makes one wonder if Facebook’s management hasn’t jumped the shark. There has to be another way to pry a dollar out of the pockets of their users. I don’t have one personally but you have to figure that if a few smart people sat in a room over lunch they can come up with something that doesn’t require giving your ‘friends’ the equivalent of an online tip for their efforts.

Hey, if you comment here I’ll give you some credit. Doesn’t that feel good?

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The guide (in PDF format) costs $39.00 and if it can save you an hour or two of setup time, isn’t it well worth the price??

The Google Analytics Setup Guide is geared towards small businesses who can’t afford hefty professional service fees but understand the impact that a successful web analytics initiative can have,” said Dave Winslow, President of EpikOne, Inc. “The guide would also benefit businesses who don’t have the technical staff to configure Google Analytics themselves, but are competent enough to do so given the right resources.”

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“I’m running Windows XP SP-2 and have been happily running the public beta for Office 2007 (which I love). A minor problem has occurred whenever Microsoft releases an update. I have to repair the Office 2007 installation in order to get it working again. After this past week’s update, though, bigger problems occurred. I cannot get into Outlook, so I started a repair but got a message telling me the Office 2007 installation was corrupt and that I should reinstall. So I tried reinstalling, but that only got about 20% through the process before it gave me an error (2711, I believe). I tried uninstalling Office 2007 but got the same corrupt installation error. And reinstalling Office 2003 did no good at all-I cannot launch Outlook 2003 because of a mismatched .dll file.

So I have no Outlook and, effectively, no Office installation.

So…any Microsofties out there with a clue what I should do?”

This triggered the thought: instead of this being a process where a customer puts a note in a bottle and throws it into the blogosphere, what if this were a pre-meditated process? Here’s how it would work:

• When an organization puts out a product, the organization defines and publishes a particular tag that they will listen for in the blogosphere when there are customer questions (for example, “office2007question” would have been a good tag the MS could promote with its Office 2007 product)
• If a customer has a question with a product, he posts the issue (just like Shel has done) with the tag(s) of the associated product(s)
• The vendor organization, which is theoretically listening for posts tagged with its “support tags” takes notice, and addresses the issue on the customer’s turf.

I believe we’ve just (re-)entered the era of the customer support “house call.”

Further reading: A Customer Support Barn-Raising

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Social Customer Manifesto weblog, and has been occasionally told that he drives and snowboards just a little too quickly.

From the latest DoJ status report:

Plaintiffs, with the assistance of the TC and Mr. Hunt, continue to monitor developments regarding Windows Vista, Microsoft’s successor to the Windows XP operating system, and Internet Explorer 7, to assure compliance with the Final Judgments. This includes extensive testing by the TC of developmental builds of these products.

Plaintiffs have received a complaint regarding the ability of OEM’s to customize the first-boot experience in Vista, and in particular concerning the Welcome Center, a new interface that presents the user with various setup options and commercial offers (presented by Microsoft and OEMs) at the end of the initial out-of-the-box experience. Plaintiffs are also talking with several industry members who have expressed additional concerns regarding aspects of Windows Vista. While we have not reached any conclusion as to the merits of these complaints, Plaintiffs continue to gather information and monitor the situation. Plaintiffs will report to Microsoft and the Court if they determine that these issues raise concerns under the Final Judgments.

Ars says:

OEMs would like to see a first-time setup process that allows them to customize screens in order to promote brand image and sell additional products such as anti-virus subscriptions, support contracts, and more. Microsoft is expected to use the setup process to promote services such as Windows OneCare.

Okay, its one thing for Microsoft to force its own products on new installations. Its another thing about marketing them. To suggest that Microsoft cannot brand its own products and market its other products anywhere is beyond the scope of the antitrust ruling. This isn’t Europe, right?

HP should shelve its complaint and try to work with Microsoft.

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

(Okay, more than occasionally!) One such term is “reverse telnet”. As a Cisco certification candidate, you know that telnet is simply a protocol that allows you to remotely connect to a networking device such as a router or switch. But what is “reverse telnet”, and why is it so important to a Cisco CCNA / CCNP home lab setup?

Where a telnet session is started by a remote user who wants to remotely control a router or switch, a reverse telnet session is started when the host device itself imitates the telnet session.

In a CCNA / CCNP home lab, reverse telnet is configured and used on the access server. The access server isnt a white box server like most of us are used to; an access server is a Cisco router that allows you to connect to multiple routers and switches with one session without having to move a rollover cable from device to device.

Your access server will use an octal cable to connect to the other routers and switches in your home lab. The octal cable has one large serial connector that will connect to the access server, and eight rj-45 connectors that will connect to your other home lab devices. Your access server then needs an IP Host table in order to perform reverse telnet.

An IP Host table is easy to put together (and you better know how to write one to pass the CCNA!). The IP Host table is used for local name resolution, taking the place of a DNS server. A typical access server IP Host table looks like this:

ip host FRS 2007 100.1.1.1

ip host R3 2003 100.1.1.1

ip host R1 2001 100.1.1.1

ip host R2 2002 100.1.1.1

ip host R4 2004 100.1.1.1

ip host R5 2005 100.1.1.1

ip host SW1 2006 100.1.1.1

interface Loopback0

ip address 100.1.1.1 255.255.255.255

no ip directed-broadcast

This configuration will allow you to use your access server to connect to five routers, a frame relay switch, and a switch without ever moving a cable. When you type “R1″ at the console line, for example, youll be connected to R1 via reverse telnet. If you have a smaller lab, an access server is still a real timesaver and an excellent investment. And by getting a static IP address to put on your access server, you can even connect to your home lab from remote locations!

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage (www.thebryantadvantage.com), home of FREE CCNA and CCNP tutorials and daily exam questions, as well as The Ultimate CCNA and CCNP Study Packages.

For a FREE copy of his latest e-books, “How To Pass The CCNA” or “How To Pass The CCNP”, and for free daily exam question, visit the website and download your copies!

By now, everyone’s heard how Google stepped in at the last minute on September 30 to respond to San Francisco’s request for proposals for citywide wireless access. While competitive offerings came with a price tag attached, Google made the offer to put 300 kbps Wi-Fi throughout the area at no cost to the city.

One little bit of information that may have been overlooked is how Google plans to compensate the city for access to places where its antennas need to be placed. The Mercury News mentioned this in passing (emphasis added):

Not only would the city have its Wi-Fi provided for free, but it would make money by accepting Google’s proposal. It’s tough to see Gavin Newsom and the city council turning down the Googleplex in this scenario.

Another target affected collaterally by Google’s proposal could be search engine competitor Yahoo. SBC Communications has partnered with Yahoo to offer DSL in several states. SBC’s proposal to the city could easily have incorporated a partnership with Yahoo. Shunting SBC aside would give Google a little victory over its biggest search advertising competitor, a situation that may have people in Sunnyvale kicking themselves this morning.

Digital Divide offers an interesting view on the whole issue. Tim Karr’s post includes a note on how a former SBC executive may have been giving his former company a bit of a boost via the legislative route in Congress:

The legislation in question, H.R.2726, would prevent the city or any other municipality from offering “telecommunications, information, or cable services” except where private enterprises had not provided such services. Currently the ironically-named “Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act” of 2005 has been languishing in a House subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.

Introduction and scope

Almost Everyone who knows about the internet knows what a domain name is. It is what identifies a unique website or email server. When you send an email to someone@domain.com, the domain.com forms the domain name. When you type in http://domain.com in the address bar of your browser, the domain.com is the domain name of the website you are going to see.

But how does the computer know which page to show when there are almost infinite number of domain names possible ? How does it know where to fetch the webpage from ? This article answers these question and explains what you need to do to register and setup your domain and tell all the computers in the world that yourdomain.com should show your web page.

How to choose a domain name ?

There are many top level domains (TLDs) the most popular are the .com, .net and .org – Countries have their own like .us, .in, .ca, .au etc and then there is the new breed of domains like .tv, .info, .ws and so on but the most powerful king of all is the .com Why ? Because it came first ? In the domain market, single word domains sell for thousands of dollars and .com costs around 10 times more than the others and is as difficult to get a new name. There is a myth that domains with hypnens (dashes) are better for search engine rankings, I think there may be some truth in that myth, but domains without dashes always seem to cost more than the ones with dashes. The best way to register a domain is to determine the keywords you are going to target by using the free trial of keyword popularity and competition analysis from wordtracker.com and get a domain with those keywords in it. Another school of thought abandons this approach and advocates brand name domains like yahoo.com instead of everything-portal.com google.com instead of the-only-search-engine.com and ebay.com instead of online-junk-acutions.com – you get the picture.

Name Servers Explained

Every computer connected to the internet has an ip address that looks like 123.234.123.234

An ip address consists of 4 numbers separated by dots, each number ranging from 1 to 255. What this numbers mean is not important for us, all we need to understand is that each computer on the internet has a unique ip address and if the GoldenRobot wants to talk to R2D2 on the internet, it has to know the IP address of R2D2 (name borrowed from the movie Star Wars).

But Wait a minute, does that mean that there are only 256*256*256*256 number of computers that can connect to the internet, technically yes. But that number is large enough for now until they start connecting ever microwave and freezer to the internet (imagine your freezer automatically placing an order for 2 liters of milk to the grocery store when it detects that your milk stock is diminishing!)

OK, now you must be thinking all the ip address stuff is fine, but how does it relate to domain names ? Remember that I said “if the GoldenRobot wants to talk to R2D2, it has to know the IP address of R2D2 ” – but all you give to your computer is the Domain Name of the website you want to visit, so how can it get the ip address ? Enter the NameServer.

The job of a nameserver is to resolve a domain name to an ip address. Simple.

A nameserver is similar to a telephone directory except that instead of mapping person names to phone numbers, it maps domain names to ip addresses.

Imagine having just one telephone directory for all the people in the world ! In the same way, if they had just one nameserver for all domains, it would be unmanageably huge and all the computers would have to contact that one nameserver to get the domains resolved to ip addresses ! Even a super-duper-mega-monster-computer would not be able to handle such a load !

So we have many nameservers. When you register a domain, you specify which name server to use.

Now lets take our example

GoldenRobot wants to talk to R2D2

It will have to follow these steps

1> Look at the registrar entry for R2D2 to determine which nameserver to use

2> Connect to that nameserver and ask it for the ip address of R2D2

3> Connect to R2D2 using this IP address

In reality it is a bit more complicated due nameserver cacheing, and chained recursive lookups leading to authoritative and non authoritative responses but our example illustrates the basic concept and is sufficient knowledge to setup your domain.

One misconception that I would like to clarify, some people think that each domain name maps to a unique ip address, not true. Just as many people in a house can share a single telephone number, many domain names can share a single ip address. The NameServer will return the same ip address for all of these domains and when the browser connects to that ip address, it says I am trying to reach suchandsuch.com domain, the webserver then returns the correct page for the domain requested. Obtaining a unique ip address (known as dedicated ip) for your website is usually more expensive than sharing the ip address.

How to setup your domain name

Form the discussion we just had, you would be able to appreciate that in order for you to get your domain to point to your webpage, you need to do the following in theory

1> Obtain the ip address for the web host where your WebPages reside – this is the webserver ip

2> Make an entry (Called as DNS Entry) in a Nameserver to resolve your domain name to this ip address.

3> Configure your domain to use this nameserver

Most of the time, step 2 will be transparent to you as most webservers provide nameservers in which they make the DNS entry for you when you purchase webspace from them. Also, many good domain registrars provide their own nameservers that you can use.

While registering a domain or after registering a domain, you will need to set it up to use two or more nameservers. It is common to use multiple nameservers so that if one of them is down the others may be used.

You have three options to set the nameservers

Your webhost will usually have their own nameservers. In their documentation they may say you need to use something like ns1.yourwebhost.com and ns2.yourwebhost.com – If you use these, you need not bother about the webserver ip address or any other settings, just configure your domain to use these and you are all set.

If you use this option, you will need to know the ip address of your webserver (provided by your webhost). As you will be using the nameserver provided by your registrar, you will need to set it up to point to the correct ip address for your website by creating a DNS entry. The ip address for your webserver is called as the A record and the ip address for your mail server is called as the MX record, CNAME records are used if one domain needs to be similar to another domain, but you do not need to understand these options for a basic setup. Many top notch domain registrars in the industry provide advanced DNS management like forwarding your domain to another site, subdomains, email id management, wildcard dns etc

This is an option that very advanced domain managers prefer when they wish to have more features and greater control over their DNS records which may not be provided by the registrar or the webhost.
Now a days, the line between the web hosts and the domain registrars is fading as most domain registrars are providing web hosting and most web hosts are providing domain registration. If you purchase your domain registration and web hosting from the same company, chances are that you may never need to do any setup at all.

What to look for in a registrar

It is always a good idea to register your domain with a domain registration site rather than with your webhost so you can be able to shift your webhost in case you need to without loosing your domain.
A good domain registrar should provide you the following features

I use http://value-name.com for all my domain needs, they provide 1 year registration for $8.75 and $7.75 for a domain transfer including one year extension. They also have special prizing for bulk registrations.

Trouble Shooting Domain Name Problems

What can you do if you have trouble setting up your domain? First of all, remember that it may take up to 48 hours for your domain changes to propagate across the internet. If you wish to verify the settings on any domain, you can use our recommended whois tool

The whois report on any domain will tell you about the current nameservers attached to that domain in addition to the contact addresses, the registration date, expiry date and the date when the last modifications were made to that domain record. If the nameservers are not correct then you know you have to change them by logging into your domain name control panel or by contacting your registrar support. If the name servers that are shown are correct, then you can use the nslookup tool (Advanced DNS Lookup) from the same page to determine the ip address being returned for your domain by any nameserver. Here you should enter one of the nameserver that you find in the whois output and see what ip address it returns for your domain name.

If it does not return an ip address then the nameserver has to be configured to point your domain to the correct ip address, or you may be using the wrong nameserver.

If it returns an ip address, You can try typing the ip address directly into the address bar of your web browser, if it gives a 404 page not found error, then either the ip address is wrong or the webserver is down. If it returns some generic page but not your webpage, that is all right, this is to be expected unless you are using a dedicated ip address. Make sure that the IP address returned is the correct one that your web host is providing to you. If you are sure that the ip address is correct and still your website does not show when you type in your domain name in the address bar of your browser, then it may be that other people are able to access your site and only you are not able to access it because your local nameserver does not resolve your domain or resolves it wrongly. In that case, if you can find out the nameserver your local machine is using, you can enter that nameserver in the nslookup tool at and see what ip address it is returning. If your local nameserver is returning the wrong ip address all you need to do is wait till the dns changes propagate to your local nameserver, If your local nameserver is returning the right ip address, then you must contact your web host to inform them that their webserver is not configured to handle your domain.

Conclusion

We have covered a lot of ground here, from registering a domain to setting and trouble shooting it. Even if you never need to configure a domain, understanding the concepts behind what goes on behind the scenes when you type a domain name in your browser should make you feel good about yourself. And if you are one of those people who eat domains for breakfast, this article should give you a head start into the advanced configuration options available and with a little practice, you will be well on your way to become a Jedi Knight of domain management. May the force be with you, always.

Mufad
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http://biz-whiz.com

Because of the large amount of focus the big search engines put into desktop search, blinkx turned their attention and voice-recognition technology towards finding and indexing videos, podcasts and other audio files. With today’s launch, blinkx now offers the ability for users to subscribe to their own personal queries, receiving updates every time the query result changes.

In order to set-up a SmartFeed, users conduct a keyword query, select the appropriate channels they wish to receive content from and click the “Create SmartFeed” button. By doing so, readers are subscribing to the particular query, and will be notified of updates by an RSS feed, which sends a link to the user, informing them the content related to their query has updated.

According to Suranga Chandratillake, blinkx founder and CTO, “The Internet has evolved into a vast media network, with more and more multimedia content becoming available every day.”

Because a large majority of the content on the web is in a rich format, Suranga feels blinkx’s technology gives them a leg-up in providing rich, relevant content related to a users defined interest. Suranga indicates as much when he says, “blinkx’s unique automatic transcription technology and SmartFeed service help users navigate the increasing and diverse range of rich media that’s available to them.”

Users have 30 channels in which to choose from when they are establishing and creating their SmartFeeds. These channels help provide users with a more robust rich media search experience. The blinkx SmartFeed technology also supports podcasting, or in the words of Bill Gates, blogcasting (apparently, podcasting is a forbidden word in Redmond), which many believe is one of the faster growing forms of media on the Internet.

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

The Google Blog and the Yahoo Search Blog have posted, as well as Steve Rubel, Andy Beal, Danny Sullivan, and Search Engine Roundtable. Advertisements were bought on Google and Yahoo, and almost $7000 was raised to hire a private detective.

What was known, according to the page setup by ThreadWatch to aggregate all information and aid in the search, is that Ian was last seen checking out of the Park Plaza hotel, saying he was transferring to the Monaco. It was also known that Ian’s plane ticket to Atlanta was used, but it did not seem like the connecting flight to London was used.

Dave Naylor reported on ThreadWatch twenty minutes ago (while I was writing this post) that Ian has been found, and is on the ground in Atlanta. There has been no additional information. While it may have nothing to do with it, I would not be surprised if the outpouring of support and effort from the blogosphere played a role in locating him. As Nick said earlier on the page, “we look after our own”.

A new thread has been opened to detail his finding, with his disposition described as “inconvenienced”, which is as good as anyone could have hoped for. The blogosphere breathes a deep sigh of relief, and I hope Ian is back with his wife as quickly as possible.

Reader Comments…

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

But, that’s not the news you came here for, is it?

I tell ya, EVERYONE is talking about what the Apple change means. I turn on Skype and MSN and folks around the world are IM’ing me.

Wanna watch the keynote details pretty much in livetime? MacRumors.com has setup a site to bring you the latest.

In other news, just met Ian Dixon, the guy who does the Podcast Network’s Media Center podcast. Nice guy and he asked me about what the Apple change means too.

Links: Watching for news from Microsoft’s home in London

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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

Go to Scobleizer …