Free .biz domains (seriously!)

I’m totally serious.

I got an e-mail not too long ago from 1&1 telling me of their free .biz domains offer.

Although I’m not sure whether this offer is also valid for new users, I’m extremely pleased with 1&1’s services, and have great confidence that they are absolutely honest and non-deceptive in this offer. I’ve registered “freddyware.biz” among others, all of which I plan on developing — there’s a requirement that you can only register .biz domains if you are going to use it for business/commercial purposes (which do not include selling or trading domains).

Anyhow, check it out. This is an offer webmasters cannot miss out on.

(No Ratings Yet)

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ICANN allows new domain extensions

Bad or good news?

How about seeing sites on the World Wide Web with domain names like “search.goog” or “live.msft”? ICANN voted unanimously to allow new domain extensions, each of which would cost a company hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up and maintain.

The high cost will also mean that you won’t be likely to see “frederick.ding” or “yourfirstname.somethingelse” on the Web anytime soon; however, if some reputable agency registers the “.ding” top-level domain, then ordinary people may be able to purchase a second-level domain from the company, as it becomes the registrar for that extension.

I wonder how long it’s going to take before the Internet crashes.

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Yahoo! Mail to be improved

Yahoo! is about to add two more domain names to the form when you register for a Yahoo! Mail account: “rocketmail.com” and “ymail.com” (the second of which also goes directly to the Yahoo! Mail interface). This is being done in hopes that people will use Yahoo! Mail — still the world’s leading free e-mail service, with 2 million more users than Hotmail/Windows Live Mail and more than double the number of Gmail users.

Get away from those pesky and immature usernames, and grab a more decent e-mail address from Yahoo! starting 4 PM today.

(No Ratings Yet)

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Privacy complaint filed in Canada

In keeping with the anti-Facebook series (see Facebook Privacy Concerns, 10 reasons Facebook is hated, Short stats about Facebook, and Facebook policy contradictions?), here’s a news update.

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (of the University of Ottawa) listed 22 violations of Canadian privacy laws. They have officially filed a complaint against Facebook for these violations.

Essentially, the claims revolve around users’ private information being shared beyond what they have given consent to share. Instances include third-party applications, in which too much information (most of which is unneeded) is being provided to the third parties.

If you’re not leaving Facebook already, take this as a sign that you might not want to keep using it: Leo Laporte expressed frustrations with Facebook on one of the TWiT podcasts, net@night, when he talked about Facebook’s undelivered promises that users will be able to add more than 5000 friends.

(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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More Interaction

I’ve been introduced to two great commenting systems: Disqus and Intense Debate. Thanks to net@night for introducing this dilemma.

Essentially, these services replace a blog’s built-in commenting system with something far more interactive. Both are great Web 2.0 services, and I feel that both would encourage more interaction from the readers and visitors of this blog.

Disqus:

Intense Debate (as implemented on Feld Thoughts):

Help me choose a comment system. Disqus or Intense Debate?

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Jott

Make a phone call, record a message, and have it automatically transcribed for you and sent to your contacts (via e-mail), to your Twitter page or blog.

Sound futuristic? Far-fetched?

Not so. Jott does exactly that, for free.

Set up your account today with Jott, and start sending e-mails, posting to your blog, and making reminders for yourself with your voice. I started using this a few hours ago, after having learned about it from a recent episode of net@night, a TWiT podcast. Jott isn’t really for people that sit behind a keyboard and monitor all day, but rather for on-the-go use, such as with a mobile phone.

One problem is that importing contacts isn’t as seamless as possible, due to the fact that I’m using Geekie.org Apps (powered by Google) rather than the standard Gmail. I had to go through the process of exporting my contacts to a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file and uploading that to Jott.

Jott isn’t perfect. Sometimes, it can misspell words; for instance, “poll” was spelt as “pole”, a homonym. Subtle things like the D at the end of “noticed” might not be detected.

Try it out anyways; visit Jott.

If you’re a North American user (US or Canada), there’s a toll-free number that you can use once you’ve set up your account - 1-866-JOTT-123 (1-866-5688-123). Local numbers for a number of cities exist as well.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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