i@m.fm

As Netcraft reports this morning, it seems that www.georgewbush.com is trying to reject requests from Non-US visitors to their site:

Netcraft: Bush Campaign Web Site Rejects Non-US Visitors

Netcraft monitors web site response times from seven locations,
including four within the United States and three in other countries.
Since Monday morning, requests to GeorgeWBush.com
from stations in London, Amsterdam and Sydney, Australia have failed,
while the four U.S. monitoring stations show no performance problems.

When I just tried to go to the site from the Tucows office, it worked
fine, however I could not get there from a European network. Is he
trying to hide something?

[Update]: Now what about US citizens that live in foreign countries?
Are they not allowed to inform themselves about the program of their
presidential candidate?

[Update^2]: A colleague was just suggesting that the block was maybe
put in place by a few non-supporting ISPs. Would be a possibility, too

If you live in Bell-land, you have
probably also grown tired of their “Let Bell notify you if this line
becomes free” message if you call someone who’s line is busy. Well,
here is how to turn this off:

Simply pick up your phone dial “*02″. This is a toggle switch, so you
just have permanently turned it off for this line, until you dial “*02″
again. “*03″ is also available but will only disable it for the current
call.

More information on this type of telephone codes can be found at: Nanpa: Vertical Services Codes.

I knew that Canada Post is very particular about getting addresses right, however I did not know this:

Here’s the full article saying that the US will already enforce the rules for mail to Canada on their end: Newsday.com – AP Washington .

How much man power is this whole verification going to cost (think:
unreadable hand-writing)? And when are we going to have to insert an ID
card when we drop off mail at a new electronic mailbox?

(via Newsday.com)

I am actually in the process of selecting an OpenSource CMS to run
www.degap.com (I have decided to switch to using .COM as the main
domain at the same time). So far I have been looking at Mambo,
but it doesn’t really seem to be doing what I need either. The main
requirement I have is to have a website in multiple languages without
setting up several instances of the site. It seems that this is somehow
possible with a lot of CMS, however most of the time it’s something
custom that needs to be set up

I will keep on posting the information about my progress here, but eventually I will probably set up a separate company blog.

Just thought I’d let you know that there’s something new from our weekend online on the other blog:

FranKim :: New pictures from Orillia

I just got into the office. Late. Well, I should have guessed after I was spared of being caught in the Go Train problems of the past weeks, that it was my turn….

<rant>
While the train was stopped at Mimico, which is one stop before my
destination and one stop after the train yard, the power went out. The
lights went and the heating (it was plus 2 degrees Celsius outside)
stopped. After a couple of “non-updates” (we are stopped and are having
a problem, but we have no idea what is causing it), they finally
decided to bring in some technicians from the nearby train yard.
Meanwhile on the opposing track four empty trains passed going back
into the yard. Surprise, surprise – none of the Go Transit people ever came up with the idea of transferring people to another train. Or how about offering free TTC tickets.

After 15 minutes the person doing the announcements had finally found
the page in the dictionary that contained the word ‘apologize’. He used
it sparingly (three times during over ten announcements). During one
announcement nobody was able to hear a thing, because everybody was on
their cell phones to their offices, telling their bosses that they
would be in late. Instead of quieting down during the announcement,
people actually got louder

Then they decided to take care of the smokers by opening a door in each
car to allow people to go outside to smoke. It also allowed people on
the inside to get colder, since the heating was still not going. After
5 minutes – just enough time for a hasty cigarette – the power came
back on and shortly after we starting going again. Of course only to
come to a stop after maybe 500 meters, to let an empty Via Rail
train pass. The conductor made another apology and announcement,
probably because he was afraid that someone might inflict bodily harm
to him. While we were pulling out of the station, I could see the
technicians (3 of them) looking very proud and satisfied of having
‘saved’ us.

As my colleague said on the following walk to the office – whenever you get in the Go Train
and have a chance to grab a seat – go ahead and do so, you never know
for how long you will be on the train. There was even a kid complaining
loudly about wanting to sit down after we started going again.
</rant>

And this got me thinking: Now this is only the beginning of the cold
season. And while we were slowly continuing to drive, I noticed that
quite a few switches still seem not to be heated, so the ‘frozen switch
excuse’ will come in handy soon again. Who knew that it gold cold here
during the winter…

Here’s where I came across the story: Netcraft: Sipence Grabs 1 Million .info Domains, Sparking Controversy .

Some forum posts
first lead me to believe, that could be a free gift to the registants
done as part of an Afilias promotion. But why would Enom be registering
those names under a different tag, if they are planning to give those
domains to their registrants for free?

There’s also another problem. In order to register a domain name, you
have to agree to a registration agreement. It seems Enom has agreed to
that contract on behalf of their registrants, who did not know anything
about this until now.

To really find out what their plan is, I was trying to locate some of
those domains and check the whois information vs. the .COM counterpart
of the domain. However I have not yet been able to find at least one of
those .INFO domains registered under the Sipence tag. No luck so far, I
will keep my eyes open an post updates here.

The Germany Regulation Authority for Telephony has just decided that
VoIP numbers need to be assigned within area codes directly related to
the address of the business/person that is using them. They also want
to introduce a new area code (032) for VoIP numbers.

The full information on these new regulations can be found on their (German) website:

http://www.regtp.de/aktuelles/pm/03094/

http://www.regtp.de/reg_tele/03093/

This is a direct ruling regarding five companies that have disregarded
the physical location of their customers when assigning VoIP PSTN
gateway numbers to them. The ruling is said to be passed in order to
ensure fair competition.

So what does this mean:

- Calling VoIP numbers will not be a local call any more?
- If the provider is offering the VoIP numbers with the help of
extensions, they will have to figure to be assigned a separate number
block in the new area code “032″?
- How much will the other phone companies charge to access the new area
code? Will this make VoIP more expensive again, and possibly unusable -
comparable to the introduction of 0700 numbers a while ago?
- VoIP providers will have to verify the addresses of their customers? Check it once a year?
- How does this compare to the companies that offer local cell phone numbers(*, for example o2/genion) in Germany?
- Will there be a boom for mail forwarding services/virtual addresses in the major cities?

These questions will have to be answered rather quickly. It doesn’t
really seem to make sense if you consider that most VoIP numbers in
Germany are virtual numbers/extensions in a bigger system anyways, so
the actual operator of the system does have an address in the
corresponding area code. Why do all the users need an address there as
well? For example sipgate states in their terms and conditions that
they are not assigning a phone number, but only an extension.

What about forwarding a phone line to another number? Let’s say I live
in Cologne, but I have a phone line in Berlin, which is forwarded? How
about someone who’s got DSL in one of the cities where there is no VoIP
offered, does this mean he cannot get VoIP at all, or only for outgoing
calls?

Is this really the proper way to deal with globalization or just another interim solution?

It is also going to be interesting to see if any other countries
subscribe to this point of view – to me it does not seem like an
acceptable solution.

* = Normally cell phone numbers have
special area codes in Germany depending on their provider. Cell phones
owners in Germany are hardly ever billed by air time, but only per
outgoing call instead. The caller pays extra when calling a cell phone.

Have you seen the TV ad by TD Canada Trust? The one where they are using the Fine Young Cannibal‘s Good Thing?

Well, it’s a good thing, that they did not play the full lyrics of the song… Because you probably know how the chorus goes:

Now I am not quite sure if this was a clever choice of a song, because
in the ad, they mention how many customers have joined them in the last
year… And the question they want to ask along with this information is “good thing, where have you gone“?

I am really a fan of the way the ‘attach’ the text lines to people’s
heads, that was really an original idea, even though it is starting to
wear out a little, now that other companies are starting to copy this
effect.

But there’s another thing about the TD ads that I have been wondering
about. The green leather chair in the end. “Banking can be this
comfortable”. Now, I am not sure about you, but I am not a big fan of
leather chairs, even more so if they are green

In general I am not really a big fan of the Canadian banking landscape,
since I’ve had my share of bad experiences with some of the banks.

PS: I really need to re-organize the structure of this blog.

Long time no posts. I am back home from vacation and will hopefully
also be back to posting here, once I’ve caught up with everything.
Please hang in here….