Random Bytes...by Ross Rader

Friday, July 11

[10:04PM EDT]

Attack of the Photoshopped Missiles: "Iran's propagandists aren't only ones who can photoshop a missile launch. We know how to do that on the intertubes, too"

(Via Wired.)

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Thursday, July 10

[03:48PM EDT]

As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles...

(Via The Lede)

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Wednesday, July 9

[05:20PM EDT] Andrew over at Domain Name Wire discusses something very near and dear to me - domain name services usability.

He suggests, as I have been for years, that the domain services industry has their collective heads up their collective asses when it comes to creating a decent experience for their customers.

I'm guilty - Domain Direct, NetIdentity, IYD - all suffer in the usability department. Domain Direct is probably the worst of the bunch - very confusing, unclear and not very welcoming, but NI and IYD aren't much better.

The good news is that we're working on it. More on that soon. C | T (15) | #

[02:21PM EDT]

I was in Paris for the ICANN Nominating Committee meeting last week and while I didn't get much of a chance to see the city (that's twice now) I did finally get a chance to check out their bicycle rental program first-hand. While I didn't actually rent a bike, I did like what I saw in terms of convenience and access.

These bike stands are all over the place, and to rent one, all you need to do is swipe your credit card and your bike is unlocked. You can ride it all over the city, and when you return it, your credit card is charged for the amount of time you had the bike. Very slick.

Toronto needs something like this. C | T (43) | #

Tuesday, July 8

[06:16PM EDT] Not really news, but definitely a worthwhile reminder.

Read Meat Consumption Linked Yet Again to Increased Cancer Risk: "Researchers found that people who consumed the most red meat had a 25 percent higher risk of developing colorectal cancer in the study period compared with those who ate the least, and a 20 percent higher risk of developing lung cancer. The risk of esophageal and liver cancer was increased by between 20 and 60 percent.
"

(Via NaturalNews.com.)

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[05:48PM EDT] This is a pretty neat prank.

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Friday, July 4

[11:39AM EDT] An awesome insight about cycling from BKW:

"Cycling gives us the ability to achieve more than we could without it. Our relationship to cycling is a sort of marriage. But it’s married to more than us—we’ve wedded it to our lives. When it works, it can teach us not the value of sticking with something, but how walking away from anything robs us of more than the thing itself."

- Belgium Knee Warmers

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Thursday, July 3

[11:27PM EDT] 37 years ago today, Jim Morrison died. How do I remember this every year?

He had the good taste to kick off the day I was born :) C | T (16) | #

Wednesday, July 2

[09:17PM EDT] I like looking commonplace things up on Wikipedia. Sometimes I'm surprised by the gap between what I think I know and what I don't know. Sometimes, I'm just surprised. For instance, take this excerpt from the Wikipedia entry about "watermelon".

The watermelon fruit, loosely considered a type of melon (although not in the genus Cucumis), has a smooth exterior rind (green and yellow) and a juicy, sweet, usually pink, red, or yellow, but sometimes orange, interior flesh. The flesh consists of highly developed placental tissue within the fruit.

I may never eat watermelon again. C | T (8) | #

[04:08PM EDT] My interview ran for four minutes @ 1:40pm EST. I don't have a link yet, but if you come across one, please send it my way.

I have done a fair amount of TV in the past, but I've always done it with the interviewer in the room. In this case, we did a remote, so I was in a small room with two operators, a camera guy and Ivan (a remote producer?) It was a bit weird - sort of like a cross between radio and camera. I had to really try hard to remember that even though my brain said "this is just a radio interview" because no one else was in the room, that I had to avoid doing radio things like picking my nose because everyone could see me because of the camera.

I think it went okay - I always have a tendency to keep talking until I get a cue from the interviewer that I should shut up. In this case, I wasn't able to rely on non-verbals, so a couple of times I was talking over him. I hope the answers were insightful and useful for his viewers.

Here are the prep notes that I made in advance of the interview in order to help me think through some of the possible questions in advance of the actual asking of those questions. Leona was really helpful in preparing some potential questions, which left me only to have to think about pithy answers. Maybe this might turn into a longer blog post at some point...

This interview is about the ICANN decision to expand top-level domain names.

They will be interested in exploring the business impact.

- does this devalue your quality domain name?
Domain names are a little bit like real estate. Quality names will always be quality names. Short, memorable, easy to spell. All hallmarks of a great name. Great names with great extensions, like fox.com will always be great. But, for specific purposes, perhaps fox.news is a better name? It all depends on what you want to use the name for and how strong your existing brand is. Eliminating the artificial scarcity in domain names will lead to more choice and better services for internet users, and can only benefit business owners over the long term.

- What does this mean for folks trying to create an identity?
Deregulation of the namespace will create more choice in the market. This can only help people that are trying to create a name for themselves. This move by ICANN will create a wave of innovation in the domain industry that will not only lead to new top-level domains being created, but also exciting new services that will only make it easier for consumers to create an online identity. We are already seeing this in a limited way under the highly restrictive rules that are already in place - .mobi, .aero, .museum - each have created interesting services to support their top-level domain name and all are successful in a limited sense, but shackled by ICANN's highly onerous rules. As we move forward, they will be able to accelerate their business plans and and be a lot more aggressive in a much more competitive marketplace.

- For business wanting to protect their trademarks?
This is a huge opportunity for trademark owners - they will see a lot of benefit from being able to create their own branded TLDs - .nike, .mac, ..fox that they will be able to tie into their existing online efforts, in addition to building out new programs. In addition to that, ICANN has implemented very strong protections for trademark holders to ensure that intellectual property rightsholders receive appropriate protection as these new names are rolled out.

- Does this reduce the cache of a .com?
Not at all. We're talking about a bigger, juicier and tastier pie. The ..com slice should at least stay the same size, if not grow slightly, but the size of the overall market will get a lot bigger as newer, more exciting and mainstream applications for domain names grow out of this new market-based approach. We will see a lot of new competition and with that, some failures, but most certainly some huge successes. Could one of these successes overtake .com as the preferred TLD? Most certainly - especially if the registry keeps raising their prices as they have in the past few years. But in the process of trying to dethrone .com, consumers are really going to benefit from the enhanced competition.

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[01:10PM EDT] I guess I overplanned in terms of arriving on time. I have a really bad habit of trying to show up exactly on time. Which means when I get lost or run into obstacles, I'm late. Trying to avoid this today, I left a bit early. Unfortunately everything went smoothly, and now I'm sitting here in "the green room" with 40 minutes to burn.

When I arrived, they initially thought that I was here for "off the record" - a sports talk show. I thought for a split second about bluffing, but decided against it, knowing nothing about sports ;)

There's no food in the green room, but there is a makeup person on a break talking to someone on the phone. C | T (15) | #