Arthur’s column

Renewing domain names is a commercial transaction heavily weighted in the seller’s favour. When your domain name expires you cannot reactivate it except through your exitsing registry for up to 4 months, and of course you stand the risk of losing the domain name.

I recently had some domain names come up for renewal at Eurodns. The domain names actually expire on 6 January (tomorrow), but I got a number of emails from Eurodns warning about expiry and soliciting my renewal fees stating that the renewal was due 31 December. As I was away I checked the actual expiry date (using whois at network solutions), saw that it expired 6 January and chose to renew on the 2 January when I was back in the office.

Eurodns then chose to charge me Euro 25 per domain name (there were a number of them) for “reactivation”. Their rationale is that they have a cost to reactivate a domain name. Given that the domain names had not yet expired I queried this from their support. Their response was “The expiration date at eurodns is not the same as the expiration date at the registry. The expiration date at eurondns is the one indicated in your domain list “renew before”. As already explained to you there is always a difference between the expiration date at eurodns and at the registry, which varies depending on the tld extension. This is necessary in order to make sure that we can renew the domain.”

I find this “explanation” to be simply bullshit. What they are doing is extorting “reactivation” fees from customers when they are left with no alternative. At this stage you have no alternative – its lose the domain name or be ripped off.

I have not had this treatment at any other registry. Shame on you Eurodns!

Online money transfer firm Money Bookers (note how the name actually pretty much tells what it does) is to rebrand itselff as Skrill.  This has to be the dumbest rebrand ever!

Read the story here - for some fresh quotes from some PR hack who must be on some sort of wonderful weird substance :

“Payments have changed as well. It’s not all about shops or even money. It’s about life online and how it’s extended to so many areas. Being safe while you do exactly what you want to do. Freedom from worrying. Being able to give and receive more without having to try harder. Meeting needs in a new way. A way that does more than just meet them. A way that can only be called Skrill.”

Err ….  I wonder.

1. In my life payments pretty much remain about shops and money
2. All the cute bits about not worrying etc are what you expect in a wallet – whether its paypal, moneybookers, click and buy or any other one – hardly a reason to name yourself after a rare antartic tern
3. And no – its not really a rare bird – its apparently the only name they could think of for this online wallet

Britain went through some monumentally silly name changes, from British Steel to the Royal Mail, but I really think this one takes the cake.  And the irony of it all is, in these troubled times, some idiot management consultant/branding expert got paid loads of money to produce this result!

If Moneybookers wants to become cool perhaps they should rather focus on what they do as apposed to what they are called.  If they are so cool then why is there no facebook app (such as Coin jars)?

A simple rebrand doesn’t cut the mustard.  And, no, there will not become a new term “skrilling” for moving money, like googling for searching.  Nice try, but it aint gonna happen.

Footnote:

Thanks to Bob Rains who points out that Skrilla is urban slang for money.  Too bad the wise guys forgot the extra A at the end.  I still think it sucks as a name.

Too funny!  Take a bunch of the world’s best SEO  (Search Engine Optimisation) guys, put them in Munich at the time of the Oktoberfest, throw way too much money at the party and this is what you get!

SEOktoberfest 2009 – The Movie from Mike Rübesam on Vimeo.

An interesting piece appeared in the Sunday Times on the weekend – you can read it here.  It talks about Apple’s culture of secrecy and Steve Jobs’ illness.  Some very interesting bits and pieces.

It seems that Apple has such a strong culture of secrecy that they still (after 4 years) wont stock any books in their stores published by Wiley (who do the “.. for Dummies” series) because of  book written in 2005 – “iCon: Steve Jobs – The Greatest Second Act in The History of Business” which they tried to suppress publication of.

The secrecy extends beyond suppressing stories and draconian employee secrecy rules, to what migh well be regarded as deliberately misleading shareholders. Should Jobs (who, as far as the world is concerned, is Apple) have been allowed to conceal the seriousness of his illness? Warren Buffett, the greatest investor alive, doesn’t think so. “Whether [Steve Jobs] is facing serious surgery or not is a material fact.”

Another sign of secrecy gone too far might be the death of Sun Danyong, a 25-year-old employee of Foxconn, a Chinese manufacturer of Apple machines. He was given 16 prototypes of new iPhones. One disappeared. Facts beyond that get hazy, but what is clear is that Sun committed suicide by jumping from a 12th-storey apartment. Some say he killed himself because of the vanished prototype and, therefore, because of Apple’s obsessive secrecy.

Discussing the future of Apple without Jobs there is a feeling that it will not be as strong. “Apple will keep executing its current business plan,” says Philip Elmer-DeWitt, “which could go on for years. But it will be different in one key respect: with Jobs there was a guy at the beginning and end of every project who had the authority to say, ‘This sucks. Start over.’ Whoever replaces him may share his vision and job title, but he or she will not be the co-founder of Apple and won’t have the same authority.” I would have to agree with this.  Every technology project, in order to be successful, needs to have ultimate authorities to take the hard decisions.

The Times article goes on to speculate that Google and Apple could merge – a view that is not hard to share.  They are rapidly converging in a number of spaces. The key areas of convergence are, first, mobile phones. There is Apple’s iPhone and there is Google’s Android, not a phone in itself, but an operating system that can be used by other companies. Google also produce a web browser called Chrome, which competes with Apple’s Safari. And, most importantly, Google is working on a computer operating system, also called Chrome, which may well be a very serious competitor for Mac OS X.

Anyway – the article is well worth a read.

In a few words that’s my new toy.  And what a cool thing it is too!  Start with the size.  Fits nicely into a full overnight (overweek) bag.  Light.  Big enough to type documents and email on (sorry – the iPhone route wasnt going to cut it for me).

Really cool small netbook - all you need for on the road

Please  take a trip to el Reg to read the full review.  I read it and wandered off on Tuesday to Tottenham Court Roadwith a fairly open mind.  I have used a Sony Vaio laptop as my only machine for years, but it has been getting slow and now the fan doesnt work so it is useless to travel with (ok at home on an external fan).  As a solution, given the credit crunch, I rescuscitated a PC that I had under my desk as my main machine and then sought a suitable travelling companion.

I liked a number of the Netbook type machines.  They all have small screens which is an issue – 10 inch is theoretically the largest although I did like the Acer 12 inch model.  After checking out the review on el Reg, however, I was less sold – particularly in view of the difficulty that I was having reading the review on the machine in the shop!  I liked the added screen real estate, but unfortunately the resolution we too ambitious for the screen size and my eyes complained.

Small and light

A note on shopping on Tott court road for these things.  Dont feel shy to get the reviews up on the screen while in the shop.  Most of the assistants are failry moronic, so dont expect sensible answers from them (I heard  a few classics on Tuesday).  Watch out for special deals – one shop offered me the 1008 $15 cheaper but then to sweeten the deal offered the bag at £10 instead of £20 – the thing comes with a bag anyway.  Also, when they say they dont take Amex, walk for the door.  You would be amazed how fast they find a way

Anyway – the machine is fantastic.  160G hard drive is twice the size of my “full size” laptop, and the machine runs significantly faster than it!  So, a stripped down “low performance” netbook is in fact faster than a 3 year old top of the range laptop, and at £400 is a lot cheaper.