i@m.fm

Reason for lack of posts...

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:38:00 -0400

Yep, I know my blog hasn't been updated. Even though I actually have some full posts sitting around some place, that is if I haven't lost them by now.

The main reason is that I'm actually moving the blog to my own server, and the move is almost done, but just I got busy with other items before concluding it... things like

* SharedReviews
* DomainCocoon
* Domain Convergence (Domain Industry Conference)
* Moving some sites from one server to another
and the list goes on.

So remain patient, hopefully the move will be completed soon.

Disappearing Google Alerts

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 20:31:00 -0400

I used to use Google Alerts extensively in order to help me stay on top of certain companies and topics - amongst other reason to help me fuel my blogs. Well, I am not sure what is happening, but the alerts keep on disappearing. I have changed the email address (and Google) account I use to point to my Gmail account, to make sure that there are no bounces, but still keep on disappearing. I had re-added about 20 alerts and after 2 days I was down to 5 - 3 days later all of them were gone.

Since there's barely any chance that my support email to Google will be answered, I was wondering if anyone else has experienced anything similar. I wasn't able to find anything. Am I the only one encountering this problem?

Domain Name News

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:23:00 -0400

Shame on me, I forgot to let my readers here know that I started a new blog together with Adam Strong: Domain Name News. DomainEditorial will be integrated into that blog. So if you are only finding about this now, go and read, you have lots to catch up with ;-)

Germany, what have you done?

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 09:42:00 -0400

Germany, my country of birth. You have come a long way during my life-time. Berlin has finally developed to be the international metropolis I was longing for. So nice to see. But what the heck is happening the last years.

With horror I see the country is making everybody a suspect by default. Now their even discussing a database of fingerprints for all foreigners (German). Everyone is a threat, everyone is a suspect. I know that some within the country are very aware of those changes and are trying to work against what is happening. Unfortunately with little success.

I would be happy to say that it is only one paranoid Minister of the Interior, who's gone through attacks himself. Unfortunately this is not the case. During the G8-meeting in Germany, basic human rights disappeared with hesitant, but nevertheless with approval of the highest German court. The German military (by law only permitted to act in order to defend the country) has been used to spy on the people demonstrating against the G8 even with military planes.

Looking to sell dowloads? Try tradebit.com

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Tue, 15 May 2007 17:41:00 -0400

While my friends' site TradeBit has been around for a while, I just realized that I never wrote about his site before. It allows you to upload your own files and sell them as downloads. So if you are looking to sell downloads, take a look at his site. You can even set up your own affiliate program.

SharedReviews.com launches

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Tue, 15 May 2007 17:15:00 -0400

If you've been wondering what I've been up to, check out what we (Peter, the rest of the team, and I) have created, as the first part of our new site launched today: SharedReviews.com, a product review website that shares the revenue with the community. Also Peter posted a nice introduction to the site.

For those of you wondering about DomainEditorial.com

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 14:39:00 -0400

For those of you asking me about my DomainEditorial.com Blog - yes, it's down, I am aware of it and trying to get it back up as quickly as possible. On top of a move of the physical location of the server on Wednesday we are now facing some hardware issues on that server. Hopefully it will be back online today.

[Update]: It's back up - but it's running off one hard drive instead of two.

Got an ill? Pop a pill!

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 01:16:00 -0500

This seems to unfortunately still to be largely a sign of our times - whenver you have an ill, pop a pill. Just to make sure you can still function and work for society. You might get everyone else in your office sick as well, but hey ;-)

Check out Licensed To Pill, a flash animation about this topic, surprisingly this is one flash animation I like.

[Thanks LewR]

Leaving the herd - Auf Wiedersehen Tucows

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 10:49:00 -0500

Leaving the herd - my time has come. Life is full of change. Last year was full of change with the birth of my son - so why stop there? The era of change continues this year, with a big and important step for me.

I will be leaving Tucows as of March 1st, 2007. Leaving the herd was a difficult decision, especially after a full 5 years and 8 months of work with many wonderful people. I was the first Sales Engineer to be hired by Tucows and it was an amazing opportunity to help share and validate this position.

Thank you, Tucows, colleagues, ex-colleagues, suppliers, partners and resellers for the amazing time I've had. I am hoping to stay in touch with as many of you as possible.

But for me it is time to move on, time to move out of the barn.

Unfortunately at this point in time, I am not at liberty to reveal a whole lot of what I will be doing. I can however say, that I am looking forward to working a lot more with Peter, since he happens to be the founder of the startup that I am co-founder of.

Stay tuned for more...

PS: Happy Valentine's day!

Domainfest Diary discountinued

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 14:38:00 -0500

Yes yes, I know. I never got beyond the first part of my DomainFest Global diary... Well, it appears that there was just too much going on there for me to keep track, but let's just say that I had a great and successful time. More later...

DomainFest diary, part 1

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:49:00 -0500

Consider this the personal part of my diary of my trip to DomainFest in LA - I wrote this part on the plane yesterday.

A nightmare after Christmas, our trip home (part 1)

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:41:00 -0500

So here it finally is - the first part of our story of our trip back from Berlin to Oakville. A trip that should have taken a total of about 11 hours and turned into a trip of over 20 hours, wife, 10 month old son and myself included.

Stolen data. Yours?

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 11:24:00 -0500

The recent news about a lost harddrive for CIBC's brokerage company and the theft of data from TJX's computer systems (winners/homesense) just shows a glimpse of what is going to be common place crime in the future. Most likely it is already a lot more common place than we think, considering that there are probably many other companies that have experienced data theft but have decided not to talk about it.

So do we really trust companies to keep our data safe, when they say to us: "We are not telling you how we are storing the data and what we are doing with it, just trust us: We keep it safe." Security by obscurity is not a real way to ensure privacy.

Be selective about what data you share with home - why does Blinds To Go for example need your phone number in order to provide you a quote? And maybe we should even go back to using more cash to pay for what we buy - it also makes our purchases less trackable.

A nightmare after Christmas

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 08:01:00 -0500

Happy belated holidays and happy new year. We are now back home after a long vacation in Europe visiting family and friends - and the 20 hours trip back home (which normally is quite a bit shorter). More details to follow.

Hello Vonage? Goodbye Vonage!

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 13:03:00 -0500

A short affair with Vonage leads me to cancel my account before my telephone number is even transferred to them. I guess I should have done some research in advance (but this info is hard to find on their site):

You cannot use a Softphone with a regular Vonage account. It turns out that you need to add a seperate softphone number to your account, at an additional $12.99 per month. There go all the savings. I have not found an option that allows you to make your main line a softphone.

One of my main points in transferring one of my numbers to Vonage would have been the ability to access it from my laptop from anywhere. Something that I consider standard for a Voip-Service, not an additional feature.

[update]: I've decided to keep this line with Vonage (for now), mainly because it seemed I might be running a risk of losing my number if I canceled so close to the end of the trial period. I do think that the quality of the line is very good. I have also been looking at Inter.Net's voip service, which actually does allow you to use a softphone. However it took them too long to answer my email asking about the features and about transferability of my number. I'll keep them in mind though, as it appears that their offer is a little cheaper too.

Back from Traffic

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 18:16:00 -0500

I just got back from the Targeted Traffic Conference in Hollywood Florida last night. Peter has got some coverage at ClickToHit and my other blog DomainEditorial.com features some posts as well. What a great conference and great networking. Wow!

Check out my other blog!

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 03:25:00 -0400

Please also take a look at my blog about and for the Domain-Industry:
http://DomainEditorial.com/

Public Transit rebate and other rants

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 23:44:00 -0400

We received a letter from the MP for Halton, Garth Turner, P.C. Thank you, but you could have saved the paper and the postage. In any case, this gave me the inspiration to post about something I've been meaning to comment on before, so here's a quote from the letter:

We're giving GO and other transit riders a break. Keep your monthly receipts, because now you can get a tax credit for using public transit, which will let you ride free for two months a year - and your our irreplaceable environment.

(I am not even going to mention the amazing Universal Childcare Benefit and the huuuuuge GST cut he mentions in the beginning of the letter.)

Ok, first of all, the math seems a little off to me. It's a tax rebate, so you have to wait until the next year to get it, plus it only came into existence in mid-2006. But OK, let's keep that aside. Let's do the math:

I pay $214 dollars a month for my GO train pass. That's $2568 Dollars per year. WOW, that is expensive. The tax rebate appears to be 15.25% (please correct me if I got that wrong). So that would $391.62 as a rebate. Two months cost $428, so I am $36.38 short from "riding free for two months a year".

Interestingly enough, the tax rebate only applies to monthly passes. And while I did not find any statistics, from my personal experience I always see many riders using 10-ride passes on the GO train. Some of them work part time, some of them drive in from time to time, in some months (vacation etc) the monthly pass is more expensive and some cannot afford the huge upfront expense of a monthly pass. Now the tax rebate should of course especially help the latter, but they are not eligible.

And yes, all of this just to save our "irreplaceable environment". I know that the conservatives are very concerned about our environment. After all they quietly canceled some of the retro-fitting rebates for making houses more energy efficient before putting their "new and improved" programs in place.

While we are talking about the environment and Kyoto comes to mind: How the Liberals thought TV ads could convince everyone to save enough energy to fulfill the commitments in the international agreement we signed. Right, because we just need to watch an ad on TV in order to be convinced to cut our energy consumption. How about asking the big cooperations to curb their pollution a little as well?

Talking about pollution, politics and energy, I cannot afford to forget the mind-boggling ads of the Canadian Nuclear Association. Yes, Nuclear Energy is an "important part of Canada's Energy Mix". An important part that IMHO we should phase out ASAP. But hey, while we had plans all along to get rid of the dirty coal (which could have been a lot cleaner with the proper filters), the politicians just forgot(?) to make arrangements on how to replace the missing energy let alone considering any increased energy needs.

So Nuclear Energy is "clean - reliable - affordable". Actually the TV ad was without the word "clean" for a while, so I assumed someone had ordered them to stop this message. But no, it's back in the ad. So please explain to me how something that leaves waste that radiates it's surroundings for centuries to come, could possibly considered "clean"? I don't get it.

Ajax RSS generator

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 14:38:00 -0400

Now here's a tool that I have been waiting for a long time: Ponyfish.com. Since the name is anything but self-explanatory, here's a quick review.

Ponyfish is an RSS generator for sites that do not offer RSS-Feeds. But instead of writing complex regular expressions, Ponyfish uses Ajax in order to select what to place in a feed. I already tried it for one website where I miss a feed, and it worked fine with one small manual edit. Great idea, even better execution.The only downside is that it currently only works of the title/headline of the post actually is a link, but it's a great start.

[via Phlow.net]

Dear Charitable Organization

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 23:49:00 -0400

Dear Charitable Organization:

When I donated some money last year on your website, I did so because I wanted to help your cause, I could identify with some of your ideas. You disappointed me. You took my address information and added it to your mailing list, in order to solicit repeat donations from me. You are driving me away instead.

You ignored my letter to remove me off your mailing list. Who knows, maybe you even sold my address information to other charitable organizations.

Please leave me alone. I decide when I donate and to whom. I visit your website, subscribe to your newsletter if I want to. Do not try to decide for me.

Thank you,
/Frank

More disappointment with Blinds To Go

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 23:47:00 -0400

Since I once more received unsolicited addressed advertising from my "friends" at Blinds to Go (despite their reassurance that I had been removed from their mailing list), I was reminded of a reader comment that I had not yet posted.

I have just read your online blog with your blinds to go complaint. I have a similar complaint to make and now I understand the frustration you experienced as you tried to speak to an actual person when phoning their head office.

I recently purchased 13 set of blinds at Blinds to Go with the assurance that these blinds were being offered at the lowest price possible. Instead after paying 70% for my purchase, I found comparable quality for more than 50% less at Home Depot.

After contacting my BTG sale associate about my finding, he suddenly became too difficult to reach and began singing a different tune about their 200% store policy. In the papers that I signed, it clearly states that if you find "the same" blinds for cheaper within 90 days you will receive 200% of your money back. No other details given.

Of course, all of a sudden the policy details, which are not even disclosed in the purchase form or on the blinds to go website, would explain that the money back guarantee only applies to blinds sold at a store with the same fabric, design, colour, warranty guarantee, wait length for the blinds, and the list continues. The head office had "conveniently" forgot to add these details to their website and I am certain that these details will be included quite soon.

Not really a big surprise (actually they still advertise this guarantee today). Why it is going to be very hard to find an exact match? Because they apparently have their own factory. They do not sell any other manufacturers.

PS: I actually wonder why they are called Blinds To Go when you have to order the blinds in most cases and cannot take them home with you right away.

Trying to obtain an insurance quote, online (or: How companies do not get the Internet, part 3857)

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Sun, 28 May 2006 08:02:00 -0400

Our car insurance is up for renewal next month, so I figured it's time to get some quotes to compare. TD already gave me a quote (over the phone), which was far more expensive than our current insurance from Aviva Traders. Let's see what the other players in this market can offer me.

Should Bloggers know XHTML/CSS? They should not have to.

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Fri, 19 May 2006 01:21:00 -0400

Should Bloggers Know XHTML & CSS? ask Nick of Performancing.com? The answer is: They should not have to.

However I did notice that cutting and pasting from articles or posts on the web into a rich text editor can be quite challenging and can possibly produce a lot of garbage HTML. My current solution: I try to remember to paste the text into a pure text editor and re-copy it from there before actually pasting it into the rich text editor of the blog.

By no means a perfect solution, but it seems to work fine in most cases for now. In the future the Blogging System/CMS should take care of these formatting issues.

Dr. Warpjam's Feed Diet

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Fri, 19 May 2006 01:15:00 -0400

James is going on a Feed Diet (WarpJam). A great idea. He started out by reducing the amount of feeds he subscribes to to 15 and then added a couple of new blogs that he had not been reading before in order to broaden his mind.

I recently started using Google Reader, and I do notice that I barely make it through the new articles in a day. So a Feed Diet might indeed be what the Doctor ordered, after all I also see quite a bit of redundant information in my feeds.

By the way I just meet with James the other night, and you should keep an eye on his company Names@Work. They are up to no good many good things.

I never got your email, but I would like to use your service

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Thu, 18 May 2006 23:35:00 -0400

I tried today to sign up for an account with digg.com and world66.com. The problem? I never got the confirmation emails.

Since I have access to the mailserver logfiles, here's one of the corresponding entries:

2006-05-19 05:25:57 H=diggstage01.digg.com (d56.digg.internal) [64.191.203.34] sender verify fail for <www-data@digg.com>

2006-05-19 04:03:13 H=delta.oberon.nl [205.234.165.202] sender verify fail for <noreply@world66.com>: response to "RCPT TO:<noreply@world66.com>" from a.mx.zettai.net [205.234.241.186] was: 511 sorry, no mailbox here by that name (#5.1.1 - chkuser)

We try to reduce the amount of spam for the users of our non-profit box. One of the things we do, is to make sure that the sender address actually is likely to exist. So please, make sure it does exist, if you want us (and many other people employing this method) to receive your mail. Hey, nobody said it needs to be a real account or someone needs to read the mail there. Simply pipe it to /dev/null, but do set the address up. Thanks.

[Update: Digg activated my account manually after I emailed them]

Peer to patent reviews

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Mon, 15 May 2006 00:16:00 -0400

Now this is why I love the Internet, and I am very impressed by who seems to have now embraced the age of the participation web: The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has set up a Wiki on JotSpot for their The Peer to Patent Project. Maybe this is the first step in the much needed review of our patent laws, as the project is supposed to enable Community Peer reviews of Patents.

[via RecentChanges.info]

Baby made to order?

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Sun, 14 May 2006 19:16:00 -0400

Apparently British scientists have created a made-to-order embryo that does not inherit a possibly cancer causing gene:

With the aid of genetics specialists, a woman has been able to make sure that her baby does not inherit a gene that might trigger a form a eye cancer. The lass - who has requested anonymity - and her husband are the first to tap a change in the laws around embryo screening. Previous rules dictated that mothers-to-be could only screen for genes guaranteed to lead to disease. In the case of the eye cancer, close to 90 per cent of the people with the gene actually get cancer, the paper reported.

[via The Register]

Future of this blog and other cluttered things

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Fri, 12 May 2006 22:17:00 -0400

I feel torn. Torn between many different projects, and of course my newly expanded family enjoys the highest priority in my life. What is this blog about? What is the next project I should be working on? How can I work on as many projects as possible?

I think I am on the way. On the way of clearing the path, to use one of my employer's project name. I do think that "clearing the path" does not necessarily mean to get rid of things, even though it can be part of it. For me the most important meaning is to sort through the clutter. Organizing things makes things better and easier to follow.

This blog here for example. It's a personal blog. It will remain a personal blog. This probably means it will cover many topics of my interest. Then there is a neglected family blog, which is in need of a new name. Ah, and yes, it should not only be in English. Back to the i.m.fm blog... Some sub-topics (some of them quite popular amongst my visitors) should be moved to separate sites in order to unclutter this blog. I am mainly talking about some of my "consumer be aware" type of posts... And maybe the business stuff needs a new home as well? What do you think?

One day I will clear through (most of) the clutter, promise ;-) Unfortunately this blog here is not the highest cleanup priority on my list (my wife will confirm this, even though we probably still disagree on the top 5 rankings).

Coming Out: The Domainers Industry

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Wed, 03 May 2006 11:48:00 -0400

As the domain monetization and domain investing space gains more and more (negative and positive) attention, I think it's time for a reminder that I do have a separate blog about the domainer industry:

Domain Editorial: About and for Domainers

"But it's all worth it"

i@m.fm (Frank Michlick) — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 15:11:00 -0400

"But it's all worth it" is the sentence you normally hear uttered in form of a mantra by parents when it comes to the conversation about having children. Well, count me in ;-)