Archive for August, 2006

All of us here in Lexington are shaken by what transpired in our city Sunday morning. A small jet carrying 50 people crashed into the same fields we all admire when we fly in or out - taking all but one of their lives. Even in a community this large, we are a community that is tightly knit, and today the cafes and coffee shops are abuzz with those who knew someone. I can’t imagine.

A fund has been established to assist the families of victims of Comair Flight 5191. United Way of the Bluegrass and Central Bank are accepting contributions to help families who lost family members and friends in the plane crash on August 27 in Lexington. Those interested in making a donation to the fund should contact or stop by any Central Kentucky Central Bank location.

If you would like to assist the families of the victims in a financial way, the 5191 Care Fund has been established through the United Way of the Bluegrass and Central Bank. Donations can be sent to:

United Way of the Bluegrass,
5191 Care Fund,
2480 Fortune Drive,
Lexington, KY, 40509.

Every week I see it, an individual and a company facing off - or one business toe-to-toe with another - over domain names. And it always happens when one or another of them are faced with pressures of site deadlines, launch dates, or other critical in-house problems. The pressures makes everyone grumpy, and what otherwise could have been handled with a simple conversation end up in the content of legal documents and ugly correspondence - even sometimes the courtroom. Some classic cases involving VW and Nissan are some of the most-told stories about the history of domain name law.

If companies would only take the time to build domain name monitoring into their property asset monitoring schemes, this issue would probably be reduced dramatically. Small companies are the ones that seem to be hurt the most. Just this week, our own beloved independent theatre was embroiled in a domain name dispute with a volunteer who’d been working on the site for a long time. It was a hand-adjusted job, and probably took hours to update each week.

If someone had taken the time to review the domain name using a tool such as whois.sc, they’d have seem trouble coming - it was registered to the volunteer - not the Theater. Now, with a new website about to be launched (not by my firm) they are unable to use what is undoubtedly the only name that makes sense - and the one with hundreds of incoming links and search engine rank. I wish them luck in resolving it amicably.

This has also affected some of my clients, and countless other businesses. I would propose that companies build domain name review into their calendars twice annually. Don’t assign this task to your web designer - have your CFO/CIO/COO do the check. If you’re a small firm, pick someone else to keep an eye on it. It’s sort of geeky, but a really nice little domain monitoring tool is over here.

The most important domain data is the registrant information and the expiration date. With the registrant information set to your corporate entity, you have a well defined course of action even with an uncooperative web host or designer squatting on your name. If the registrant is not set up properly, things get complicated. Of course, the expiration date is important, as an expired name is like a lost child - it can wander into some very dark places.

I think it’s usually best to ask your web host to set up an email alias for your domain name administrative and billing contacts - that is, something like domain@yoursite.com. This email alias should cause any message sent to it to send notes to your web designer, your CFO/CIO/COO, and your accountant. Everyone should know that a name is expiring or when something changes on the registration.

One last note about web development voluntarism. There is a deeper issue at work here, and something I will probably write more about. When website design and development is volunteered for charity, I recommend that the developer produce invoices for the work and have them signed off as contributions. Otherwise, I’ve found that the organization in question does not value the contribution.

In fact, VERY FEW companies realize how much work it is to maintain a website that changes all the time. I recommend to just about all non-profits that come to me that they use a content management system such as Joomla to do their site so they can operate in a self-managing autonomous fashion, or easily transfer the effort between volunteers. Having a custom-built, glass-house website that only one person knows how to tweak is asking for trouble. But this is the only thing many amateur web designers know how to do!

If you’ve bought an airline ticket in the past few years, you’ll find using this site a simple matter. RedRoller.com offers comparison shipping options for small business who aren’t married to one particular vendor. It’s slick - and may save folks thousands. Smart people and another great idea.

Small Business Shipping with RedRoller
Links and Article from Business Lexington.

I’m confused about why it is that Apple doesn’t release a version of iTunes with a built-in RSS feed generator and validator? (see below for a creaky one.) I’m fairly XML savvy and I still miss syntax issues sometimes - even using feedforall or other tools.

It would seem that Apple could make the iTunes envrironment at least create a “savable” RSS/XML file ready for uploading, even if they didn’t want to put a built in FTP client into iTunes.

At the very least, an iTunes feed validator would be a Godsend.

In the meantime, here is a list of good tutorials for RSS creation:

Fagan Finder : All About RSS – new to RSS - not technical

Lockergnome : RSS Quickstart Guide – for experienced users

O’Reilly Network : RSS DevCenter - web geeks.

XML.com : What is RSS? – technical introduction

And here are a bunch of geeky podcast creation links

• iTunes Specs
• Itunes Feed Checks (site sometimes down)
• How to create an Enhanced Podcast
• How-To: Podcasting
• Taping Phone Calls
• Recording Telephone Interviews
• ID3 Tag Editor

Oh yeah, I have this ridiculously popular podcast software list

If you want to fill up a disk or Ipod with the best collection of music and conversation ever - the miles will fly by if you listen to the Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour Podcast. The reviews on iTunes say it all, but it never gets boring - every artist has variety, and the artists vary widely. Nobody gabs too much, and the sound is awesome. The best sounding podcast I’ve ever heard. Check it out.