Black On Stuff

The Avangate sister website www.epayment.ro has a new look since yesterday. The old layout was unchanged since spring 2005. With the new layout comes a new website structure, suitable for the current content. The information can now be more easily found even from the start page. There were pages that were quite hidden in the old website, but with most accesses due to content. Also, all pages were optimized for search engines and the site navigation improved.

The website change is a move toward having a unified image both via Avangate and ePayment brands. Practically avangate.com and epayment.ro share the same general look, but with different color styles: red for Avangate and blue for ePayment.

The website is featuring content only in Romanian and it addresses only the Romanian market.

For months I was feeling the need to change something on my home computer. And not in terms of hardware but in terms of the operating system. I’m a Windows user for years; I loved Win2000 and only went to XP when I had to change my hard-drive. Doing some research, I decided that Ubuntu is a Linux flavor that might work for me, it had everything a Windows users should expect.

So I have installed it in a virtual machine first using VMWare. Smooth installation, it didn’t seem to take too much memory on my computer. I had only one problem: network connection, since I wanted to share my XP connection and not connecting directly to the router. Here is how it worked for me: start the “Set up a home or small office network”, follow the wizard and share the internet connection. Then go to Ubuntu to network settings and add the gateway the Win XP local IP address and DNS the DNS addresses already set up on Windows (from provider). Then configure the firewall on the Windows computer to accept remote connections from the virtual machine. That’s it. First time in my life when I played with the Win XP internet connection sharing.

Anyway, having internet connectivity on Ubuntu was a success, so I was able to download the appropriate codecs for playing mp3 and divx files. Office tools were already there (Open Office).

Finally, I have decided to go forward and install Ubuntu directly on my system and not in the virtual machine. So I partitioned my hard-drive, did it by the book with a separate 2GB swap partition. My friends recommended Kubuntu, so I went for this. The installation was pretty straight forward, I love especially the Live CD where you can “try before install” the basic OS features. I was amazed that after installation I even had my internet connection ready, without doing anything. That’s neat.

But, being used with XP, I was expecting the same font smoothness and at least the same speed. Activating features like transparency made the system work quite in re-run. Opening applications took more than on my XP. And I’m not talking about a slow system, it’s a P4 3GHz with 1GB RAM.

Using the software repositories (both Universe and Multiverse) is like having an indexed download portal at your fingertips. This is nice and Windows does not have that.

Trying to figure out how to use the second monitor made me switch back to Windows. From what I understood searching the web/forums, this is still a problem in Linux in general. Also, I wasn’t able to start my digital TV Tuner and I’m not willing to continue without having the same comfort as in XP.

My conclusion: it’s worth trying a Linux OS, you can clearly see the evolution in the last years. But for productivity reasons, if you’re used with another system you should stick there, otherwise you might end us searching for buttons or icons that you don’t have. It is for sure a step toward Microsoft-Independence that could take a time to make it. And a lot of patience. I wonder what the future will bring, now that Vista is out and MS went into the graphical and productivity zone.

Back in 1995, when I had my first contact with an email address and the Internet (I’ve created my first email address first with the university domain and then with yahoo.com, the email address that I still use it) I had no idea what the future will bring. Those days I had no worries, I was using a text terminal to access the email web interface on a VMS OS machine, I was in the first wave of those using ICQ (hey, I have a 8 digits ICQ ID) but I wasn’t bothered by what was happening on the Internet. Cause there was nothing happening. And never thought what is going to happen during next years.

Nowadays, after 12 years, nothing changed in terms of email technology: we’re still using a web interface to access yahoo email (yes, now it has Ajax technology, but it’s the same), we’re still accessing company email either by using IMAP or POP3 or Exchange protocols, we’re still sending emails via SMTP. Still, everything changed in terms of quantity of emails: I’m receiving tons of spam emails to increase my p…s using a magic V1@gr@ pill or surrogates, tons of emails to get a college degree in minutes or to get a huge discount by purchasing a Windows XP license or to buy a Symantec product. And nobody is doing nothing to put a stop on this. Oh, I have Mozilla Seamonkey with a good Junk email filter, I have an antispam filter directly on the email server, and this gets me through the day, but in the end, I still have to delete tons of emails daily and there might be a good one among those, so I have to take a brief look not to miss the good one. But still, this makes important emails that are marked as Junk to be answered only once or twice a day, which could hurt an online business. And it takes some time to do it, time that I’m not willing to spend on human-filtering spam emails. I have the same ritual each day, otherwise the number of spam messages will be quite high: delete, delete delete. All those meaningless V1@gr@ emails that keep on coming, hoping that one day I will be on their target.

I don’t think I’m the only one having this problem, and no one seem to do something real to stop this. I mean, don’t get me wrong, yahoo has the Bulk folder, hotmail has the Junk folder and google has the Spam folder, there are a lot of programs to help you filter the good from the bad, but it’s all the same. Everything is so relative. It’s only filtering a text they think it could be spam. But why not invest in something that could make the Internet world a better one? Is it that hard to change the current technology? Aren’t we prepared to do this? A few years ago there were rumors saying that yahoo will make you pay a cent for each sent email. This will not happened in the near future if there will not be a substantial change in the technology. Who’s gonna pay for this if it’s all the same? They started with the domain keys, but we’re not there yet. I haven’t seen any results yet.

Anyway, this topic came to me from one of my friend who’s good with names and titles. Hopefully it will not be treated as spam by any filtering rules on the Internet (cause now we have filters for everything: spam domains, spam snail mail etc.).

The general term we’re using the word “spam” today refers to … … … No, I cannot find a suitable definition, accepted by anyone. But in my opinion a spam email message is a repeated unsolicited commercial email, a message that tries to sell me something I might not be interested in, a message that tries to get me to a website that I don’t care about, a junk message that doesn’t interest me.

According to some EU reports, spam makes between 50 to 80 percent of all the emails we’re receiving in Europe and 2/3 of what we receive from outside EU. That’s huge and if you’re not on the net since yesterday, you might confirm that this could be true. I mean I have my daily sessions of deleting spam, but still taking a short look at the message so I will not delete any false positives (thanks to Mozilla spam filter!).

Getting back to my definition, how can you really define spam? I’m part of an online business that requires mostly communication via email and lots of cold calls to get in touch with your potential partners. What is the difference between a cold call and a spam message? Because in order to have a number of replies you need to send lots of emails (mass mailing?). There might be times when one potential client will be offended by your email and send you some “greetings” about his feelings. This will not happen if you’re making a phone call or send him a fax, but we all know many online businesses today do not have such information. So is it the message content that offends or is it just the fact that no one requested that email (duh!) ? Anyway, I personally do not consider this a spam (see my definition above). If I will get lucky and the message will be read by the intended recipient and not deleted by a secretary, my task will be almost done: we’ve made contact.

This topic came to me when I’ve found out a “story” about a so called spam message that degenerated into something really ugly. I have a friend that owns a software download portal. Any software author can submit their software and after a short review this can be listed in a directory. The software listing will then automatically updated if there’s a new version available. On each update, the software author can receive a short notification email with the direct product link and login information to update his settings on the portal. Even stop these update notifications. One author, having 4 products listed in this website felt offended by the message and without any comments went directly to the domain registrar (!?), in this case Go Daddy, reporting the email as spam. Go Daddy reacted immediately by sending one email requesting immediate answer (24 hours) about this issue, having quoted the terms of service in their online agreement.

The hostmaster replied immediately with more information, explaining what is that email notification, how it can be stopped, how it is generated etc. Go Daddy requested more information:

* Time/Date of opt-in/subscription/consent.
* IP address of the web server the complainant used to connect to your site.
* Referral URL.

Having this incident for the first time, the requested information was not available so it could not be provided. It seemed that they’ve not read the email content (the spam) but reacted only because someone report it as spam. After this, the following message came:

“Go Daddy has a strict anti-spam policy, as the registrant of DOMAIN.COM you are ultimately responsible for the use of your domain name, any email mail advertisement that is driving traffic to, or creating revenue for, your website or domain name is your responsibility. This also applies to the actions of any party generating this traffic or revenue on your behalf. This includes, but is not limited to, 3rd party marketers, business partners, mailing list providers and affiliates.

Please keep in mind that it is not our intention to cause anyone’s business to suffer and we do appreciate you cooperating with us on this matter. Because of your cooperation and willingness to resolve this issue thus far, your services have not been interrupted, but this situation remains unresolved.
We present to you the following solution to resolve this issue:
First, reply to abuse@godaddy.com with a statement that you (or your employees, affiliates, 3rd party marketers, etc.) will no longer send messages to individuals that did not ask to receive information specifically from your domain name. (Like being in school and writing on the black board: I will not miss school again, I will not miss school again, 1000 times)

Second, include in this statement authorization for GoDaddy.com to charge a $199 non-refundable administration fee to the credit card on file for your account (you may want to log into your Go Daddy account and confirm that the card on file is valid and has not expired).

Go Daddy believes this solution to be a fair one that will ensure that you will correct the problem on your end, and prevent any future violations of Go Daddy’s Anti-Spam policy. Additionally your services are not interrupted and your customers and affiliates are not inconvenienced. If you reply with this statement and agree to pay this fee, Go Daddy will accept this, in good faith, as proof of your commitment to correct this problem. If not, your domain name may be immediately redirected and your service suspended.

Please be aware that Go Daddy will continue to monitor this situation. If in the future it is determined that this problem persists, your domain name may be immediately redirected. We do realize additional complaints resulting from this mailing may come in and we will of course consider this, and contact you before taking any action.

Is this for real or what? The message is clear: we’re even but you owe me 199 bucks as a protection tax, like a crime syndicate. I can forgive you, but it will cost you. This message is quite unbelievable, coming from an respectable US company. How can they charge you for nothing? Is this legal? Because it seems that they are playing with my rights and speculating on my probable fear when I hear the word “spam”. I mean, we’re talking about a civilized world here, we’re talking about a honest business, no p0rn, no w@r3z. Even more, this is how they treat their own customer. Any spam notification from anyone could turn to be really costly. It’s the attitude: you’re small, I’m big, I have more rights than you do. But the message is good: it begins with “we love and respect you” then it hits you (in good faith) and then it hits you again: this tax is just for now, if we’ll catch you at a later time, your doomed again!

Crazy, I tell you! And I had my first post telling you from where I’ve purchased my domain. Shish! But probably this is the price you’re paying for purchasing a domain at a low price.

What happened next with this situation? I don’t know yet, but if interesting information will come up, I will surely share it.

I just read an article published by Avangate, How to Build the Semantic Web with Dublin Core and then went out to search the web about Dublin Core.

I consider myself to have web development skills, but I never used this standard so far. And none of my friends too. Then, is it really a success on the web as it says on the article, or it might have been if Google wouldn’t have been invented?

The name of the developer group (Dublic Core Metadata Initiative - DCMI) first sounded to me like Dharma Initiative from Lost TV Series. Then one of my friends pointed me that the guys that are behind this standard wear (all of them) glasses. What are the chances? Isn’t it that quite odd ?

Anyway, I have tried to find some websites that are using the DCMI tags in their head section. I had some problems finding them, because there aren’t too many. And probably the ones that have these tags are automatically generated from an WYSIWYG html editor.

Take the top 500 sites published by alexa.com. Found some? Nope. Ok, those websites probably won’t need these tags. Then go to your friends websites. Found one? Nope. But I got a nice Firefox plugin for this (like view source wasn’t enough). Ok, finally I’ve found one: www.concediu.com (concediu = holiday in romanian).

I don’t deny the possible success on close communities, corporate websites, government or public sector websites, and of course, if I were to make some sort of search engine that crawls some internal websites, probably this standard would be a saver. Meanwhile, I don’t think any web developer should think of adding these tags to a public website, because it’s a waste of space. Good to know that there is such a standard, might spare us some time re-inventing the wheel.

Something strange just hit me: the two logos of these “initiatives” look alike :-). Could this be for real?

Sure. Everything was easy. Finding a domain name that would make me happy was a very hard thing to do. Thanks to Paul for all suggestions (and for the blackonstuff stuff). I owe you a beer.

Domain bought for just 6.95 USD from godaddy.com, blog software uploaded in no time. Now the hard thing: posting stuff. This blog does not have a real topic, it is not related only to my work but to general things. It is my only oppinion at the time of posting (that might change in time) etc.