GoDaddy suffering from .me deluge

Registrar GoDaddy began offering the .me domains from registration, but the process overwhelmed the company with issues.

Failed registrations and multiple registrations of the same .me domain name cast a pall over GoDaddy's .me debut. The new domain, being sold for $19.99 per year with a required two-year purchase (privacy option extra), should end up a profitable venture for the company.

However it will be a bit of a joyless slog getting there. Mashable cited the problems with .me registrations, and one account arriving by Twitter looks like it won't be fun to resolve.
Several posts on Twitter report multiple registrations for the domain aweso.me. At least eight people may possess receipts for the desired domain.

"It appears GoDaddy is buckling under the pressure and is about to have an ugly mess on its hands," Adam Ostrow wrote of the .me problems. Meanwhile, the GoDaddy complaints from frustrated would-be registrants continue to hit the net.

Email Marketing Messages: How to Promote a Program

Email marketing messages are challenging. Everybody gets too much email, and each time you broadcast you get people who unsubscribe because they aren't interested or are annoyed. But you must send out enough messages to remind people to sign up, especially at the last minute. Otherwise you're leaving money on the table. It's a balancing act of risking so many unsubscribe requests and so many last minute registrations.

You need your email recipients to:

1. Open and read your message
2. Discover something important they can benefit from
3. Convince them they need to learn more about this
4. Trigger their desire to click over to the sales page to read details and register
5. Realize the some sort of urgency so they won't put it off and forget to take action

One of the best ways to make sure your email messages get opened and read is to deliver a tip at the same time you deliver the marketing message.

There's no better way to learn how to write great email marketing messages except to (you're not going to like this suggestion!) sign up for a lot of Internet marketing materials and start studying the email messages you get.

Good Luck :)

You(r)Tube Privacy at Risk

Yes, we know what you watched last summer, or at least Viacom's attorneys soon will.

The owners of Comedy Central and VH1 are attempting to prove that more people watch pirated clips of John Stewart and Behind The Music than, say, the Wii Fit Girl. In the aggregate, maybe more people are watching clips of The Daily Show on them Internets. But a viral video will still draw more eyeballs than any single thing the mainstream media can belch out, regardless of how clever Stewart is. Partly that's because most people who'd want to see it already have, for free, over the airwaves.

Trouble is, our video viewing habits are supposed to be protected by federal law. After a reporter went dumpster diving on Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987 and came up with Blockbuster rental receipts (he was looking for porn, but mostly he found Hitchcock and Fellini) Congress passed a law explicitly protecting the privacy of movie rentals. The judge in the Viacom case, Louis Stanton, decided that watching a YouTube video somehow qualified as less worthy of protection than Bork's VCR.

The usual answer from people who claim to be perfectly happy having attorneys rooting around their private lives like squirrels in a nuthouse is that they've "got nothing to hide." To which I usually say, "terrific, now drop your pants." Everybody's got something to hide, even if it probably isn't what they watched on YouTube.

The right to keep one's thoughts and interests private -- and by extension, things that indicate thoughts and interests, like books and movies -- is one of the keys to democracy. Nobody can demand to know what's going on between my ears (and trust me, you don't want to know). That's the way I like it.

The real problem here is the obsession with data collection that infects Google, Microsoft, and other major service providers. If there's a reason to keep a running record of every YouTube video I've watched or Web search I've run over the last 18 months, I can't see it -- and Google has done a p*** poor job of explaining why they need it. Because if a record is out there, you're almost guaranteed that some day a lawyer with a subpoena may come looking for it.

Do you YouTube?

Online Shopping Getting and Keeping the Customer

There's good news and bad news…

The good news is there's a lot of opportunity for satisfying customers, even making them very, very happy. The bad news is three-quarters of online shoppers surveyed said website content is insufficient to complete research or purchase a product online most, or some of the time. Nearly 80 percent rarely or never purchase a product without complete information, and 72 percent will take off to a competitor that does supply that information.

It seems that consumers really want to buy online, but retailers aren't making it easy for them. Sometimes, it seems like retailers go out of their way to lose customers. In fact, it seems many sites are severely lacking in the customer service department. If customers don't prefer online shopping to brick-and-mortar shopping, it's because retail sites haven't done enough to make the online shopping experience a good one.

Here are some tips to help yourself to a satisfied on-line customer:

• The landing page is crucial. You should have a landing page relevant to the search term. Yes, this is going to take some time to develop. But it doesn't take any time for a potential customer to abandon you. Remember that information seekers scan from left o right, top to bottom, so keep those keywords to the left and not buried in chunks of text. Make sure it's clear where links lead, especially if navigating a customer away from a landing page.
• Product information should be complete, answering all the customer's questions. A survey found 77 percent said "buying from a particular merchant is 'very to somewhat' influenced by the quality of content (descriptions, copy, images and tools) on a particular website.
• Search is fundamental. Be there at every entry point possible.

The e-tailing group reports these ten features and functionalities as the most important to customers, according to a survey.

1. Product overview
2. Merchant's guarantee
3. Stock status/availability
4. Customer service links
5. Product specific information
6. Long description
7. Quality of image
8. Size chart
9. Toll-free number
10. Ratings and reviews

Take some time and review your companies website. Are the 10 most important things being offered? Are any of them? It is far easier to keep an existing customer than get a new customer.

Wi-Fi VoIp?

The Wi-Fi Alliance wants to make voice a part of Wi-Fi networks, and has introduced a program to certify products, it announced on Monday.

The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Personal stamp of approval means a product is capable of making or handling good-quality voice calls in the home or a small office environment, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance. Access points, wireless routers, handsets (which are growing at a steady rate) and laptops can all be tested and certified.

The push is a way for Wi-Fi Alliance to keep femtocells and upcoming technologies such as WiMax, HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) and LTE (Long Term Evolution) -- which lately have overshadowed Wi-Fi -- out of the home, according to Richard Webb, directing analyst at Infonetics. Webb thinks Wi-Fi, helped by a low cost and a large installed base, will be able to stay dominant.

"Wi-Fi performance has been continually improved, and this is another step along that road," said Webb.

In a departure from interoperability testing, which has always been Wi-Fi Alliance's bread and butter, it instead looks at performance. To be certified, products have to deliver packet loss of less than 1 percent with no burst losses, as well as latency and maximum jitter of less than 50 milliseconds, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance.

The first round of certified products include Intel's PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (an embedded 802.11a, b and g PCIe Mini Card), Cisco Systems' Aironet 1250 and 1200 Series Access Points, and Meru's access point AP200.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Personal is only an option for vendors, so users will need to double check a special Wi-Fi product database to see whether a particular product has passed the testing.

Wi-Fi Alliance also has plans to introduce a program for enterprise environments, called Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Enterprise, early next year. It will be based on the Voice-Personal Program, and add support for bandwidth management, hand-offs between access points, enterprise-class security, network management and other features that are necessary in larger environments, according to Wi-Fi Alliance.

Enterprise adoption of IP (Internet Protocol) telephony over WLANs is growing, and vendors have put a lot of effort to improve performance, but many companies are still reticent about putting voice on it, according to Webb.

"Certification gives it a stamp of approval," he said.

Quotes to Inspire

I recently read a quote that inspired me and thought, "Why not share it with others?" I've also collected a list of quotes from entrepreneurs and other quotes that are relevant to entrepreneurship. I hope one of these quotes inspires you as well.

• I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work - Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist
• The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary - Vidal Sassoon, entrepreneur
• Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't. - Anonymous
• The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning - to create a product or service to make the world a better place - Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur, investor, author
• Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle and a victory - Mahatma Gandhi, political and spiritual leader
• Failure defeats losers, failure inspires winners - Robert T. Kiyosaki, author, entrepreneur, investor
• Entrepreneurs average 3.8 failures before final success. What sets the successful ones apart is their amazing persistence - Lisa M. Amos
• Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life - John F. Kennedy, U.S. President
• In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable - Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. President
• The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place - Jim Rohn
• Some people dream of great accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them - Anonymous
• Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you're generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make - Donald Trump, real estate and entertainment mogul
• The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look. The entrepreneur in us is more concerned with discriminating between opportunities than he or she is with failing to see the opportunities - Michael Gerber, author, entrepreneur
• An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he'll quickly learn how to chew it - Roy Ash, co-founder of Litton Industries
• The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It's as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer - Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese's
• I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful - Warren Buffet, investor and billionaire
• I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others... I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent - Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist
• Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the Trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover - Mark Twain, author
• There is a tide in the affairs of menWhich, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeIs bound in shallows and in miseries.On such a full sea are now afloat;And we must take the current when it serves,Or lose the ventures before us - William Shakespeare, author
• Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration - Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist

The MPAA and RIAA are still not smart. - Big suprise huh?

The MPAA and RIAA will leave no stone unturned in their quest to eradicate piracy from the Internet. Their latest target: Evil laser printers, which are surely harboring bootleg copies of "Iron Man" and "My Humps."

Laser printers of course are innocent of the crimes of which they are accused. But two professors and a student at the University of Washington are using printers (which have indeed received takedown letters in recent months) as an example of how poor a job the MPAA and RIAA are doing at finding copyright infringement online.

Using a number of BitTorrent-connected file sharing computers but not uploading or downloading any files, the researchers received over 400 takedown notices during trials in August 2007 and May 2008. All of the notices were directed at spoofed IP addresses which weren't engaging in any infringing activity: In fact, many of the addresses weren't even computers. But in addition to serving printers with legal notices, at least one wireless access point (which has no storage capabilities at all) was threatened with a lawsuit.

The full research report is available online (PDF link). The conclusions find that not only are false positives a real problem because the systems scanning for illegal activity are doing only cursory examinations of the behaviors going on at those addresses, but those addresses are easy to conceal and fake. The result: Mass hysteria in the world of copyright infringement. On the other hand, the study noted that the door swings both ways: IP blacklists, long a standard method of avoiding detection by P2P users, are "wholly ineffective" as a means of avoiding monitoring.

If You Want It, Bid On It - The Keyword Battle

Another court has decided use of trademarked terms in metatags and keyword advertising does not constitute trademark infringement, but the issue is far from settled and only gets more complicated as more courts hear arguments from both sides.

In this case, Designer Skin sued S&L Vitamins for reselling Designer Skin products online. S&L was not an approved retail channel, and was selling the self-tanning product at lower prices. Also, the company dropped the Designer Skin name into the metatags of its site to help with organic search rankings (a practice with debatable efficacy), and bid on Designer Skin keywords in order to drive traffic to the site.

Most often in keyword trademark infringement cases, the issue centers on whether competitors – in this instance, another maker of self-tanning lotion – have the right to use keywords in metatags or bid on trademarks. Courts have come down on both sides.

In this case, heard in Arizona, it is not a question of competition, but of sales channel control. At issue is a concept of "initial interest confusion," meaning when searchers see an ad or listing for Designer Skin, they could mistake S&L, a seller, as the maker of the product. The judge didn't think any consumer with a half a brain would make that mistake:

In contrast to the deceptive conduct that forms the basis of a finding of initial interest confusion, S & L Vitamins uses Designer Skin’s marks to truthfully inform internet searchers where they can find Designer Skin’s products. Rather than deceive customers into visiting their websites, this use truthfully informs customers of the contents of those sites. Indeed, in practical effect S & L Vitamins invites Designer Skin’s customers to purchase Designer Skin’s products. The fact that these customers will have the opportunity to purchase competing products when they arrive at S & L Vitamins’ sites is irrelevant. The customers searching for Designer Skin’s products find exactly what they are looking for when they arrive at these sites. S & L Vitamins is not deceiving consumers in any way.

The outcome of this case will be used as a precedent when deciding others and will bolster the argument that use of keywords in metatags and bidding on trademarked terms for search purposes is a legitimate practice. Fairly often, plaintiffs are more concerned about control of channels and control of competition than they are about trademark infringement.

Eric Goldman, author of Technology and Law Blog, goes into much deeper detail in his posting, and concurs that Designer Skin's suit was asking too much of the legal system. "[C]ourts are realizing that they are being asked to facilitate anti-competitive practices, and wisely they are balking," he writes.