Category: Of Interest

Those miscellaneous things that just must be published.

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Knoxville on fire?

Greg's fire

West Knoxville has a strange smokiness lingering over it. Not fog. Not haze. Smoke. It is a faint, woody smell like a forest fire is burning. I first smelled it at the church as I dropped Amy off for preschool and discounted it as construction burning. However, the smell is also at our house 9.8 kilometers* south of the church. What’s burning?

*Conversion courtesy of OnlineConversion.com

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I finally listened to my own advice regarding meaningful domain names

For those wanting to cut to the chase, the last paragraph explains that you can now read my blog at http://realityme.net/ with post feeds at http://realityme.net/feed/ and comment feeds at http://realityme.net/comments/feed/. The http://blog.siliconholler.com/ links also still work.

Client: "My email address is irunmyownbusiness@aol.com."
Doug, long sigh once again pondering why he hasn’t written this down: *gives viral marketing speech* *gives who controls your business speech*

The viral marketing speech goes something like this: Every time you send an email you are sending an advertisement for whoever is on the right side of the @ symbol in the email address. That means irunmyownbusiness@aol.com is advertising America Online with every email sent. Even non-techies and computerphobes know they can decompose an email address from irunmyownbusiness@aol.com to http://www.aol.com/ to see the business’ website. Instead, this person should buy the domain http://irunmyownbusiness.com/ (domain names are cheap now-a-days: $5.99/yr).

Who controls your business? You should but when you are irunmyownbusiness@aol.com you are letting AOL control your business. If you quit using AOL and relied solely upon Comcast your email address would change from irunmyownbusiness@aol.com to irunmyownbusiness@comcast.net. Nothing sent to irunmyownbusiness@aol.com would forward to irunmyownbusiness@comcast.net. Instead the mail would bounce (get returned to the sender) and your customers would go elsewhere. If AOL’s mail servers have problems, you cannot do anything. If you own your own domain like http://irunmyownbusiness.com/ then you can create as many email addresses as your hosting plan permits (usually in the thousands). So you can have sales@irunmyownbusiness.com and support@irunmyownbusiness.com and so forth. If your host (the company you rent computer space from and houses your domain) starts having problems you can move to a different webhost and your clients will never know because the client/user looks at irunmyownbusiness.com regardless of which computer serves that domain’s website and email.

More on who controls your business? If you have a domain name, then you can rent some server space (this is called hosting) and setup a website, email addresses, and more. However, instead of spending the $5.99/yr plus hosting fees for http://irunmyownbusiness.com/ many people choose to go with free services like http://korrnet.org/ (now wisely using a better domain name http://discoveret.org/). These free services often put your domain as a tertiary domain to theirs so you become http://irunmyownbusiness.korrnet.org/ which means that at any point in time if korrnet.org goes out of business or changes their domain name that your business suffers. Same thing with services that provide you a domain name as http://discoveret.org/irunmyownbusiness. You are not in control and you are advertising their business.

Let’s talk advertising. Your domain name should be everywhere! It should be on your business cards. It should be in your voicemail greeting. When you shake someone’s hand you should declare "My domain is irunmyownbusiness.com!" It should be on your letter head (you do still send letters right?) and it should be in the email signature of every email you send (in addition to being part of the email address). It should be on your billboards and in your print and television ads. Put it everywhere! Tattoo it on your forehead. Now let’s justify spending the $42 per year by pointing out the savings on printing alone. If you have given out business cards with irunmyownbusiness@aol.com and change to irunmyownbusiness@comcast.net or igotsmart@irunmyownbusiness.com then ALL your old print material is wasted and you have to spend a few hundred dollars reprinting. That business card sitting on someone’s desk for a year has a bad email address and you have lost a potential client. If you had printed on the business card sales@irunmyownbusiness.com and you changed hosting from one webhost to another you do not have to reprint anything and you haven’t lost potential clients!

And a stylistic note. A domain name should not be confusing. http://dashes-and_underscore-makeaconfusingdomainname.com/ Ideally a domain name should be meaningful. http://blog.siliconholler.com/ does not relate to Reality Me. That said, meaningful domain names are sometimes hard to come by. A squatter has http://realityme.com/ for instance. http://www.mccaughan.com/ is not me or any of my family to the best of my knowledge. So, when a meaningful name cannot be acquired, get a memorable name.

It pains me to see people using access provider email addresses such as irunmyownbusiness@aol.com and irunmyownbusiness@comcast.net to represent themselves professionally. There is so much benefit that can be had from your own domain name for $5.99 a year and a cheap hosting plan around $2.99 per month. For those slow on the math that $41.87 per year (probably tax deductible).

And on following my own advice? I own http://siliconholler.com/ and set my blog up as http://blog.siliconholler.com/ but this both goes against my own advice and is a confusing domain name. Additionally, it does not match the title of my blog "Reality Me." So, I finally listened to myself and now have the blog under http://realityme.net/.

I trust 1&1 for domains – Get yours for $5.99 today!





  

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The Earth is growing

In today’s science, a video purports that the Pangaea theory is wrong and that the continents are not being pushed around by the tectonic plates. The video claims the world is growing and it gives a pretty decent argument. There are still questions about how the Earth can grow but keep the same density. Is there any real evidence to support the growing theory? Today the ScienceDaily reported that the Earth’s crust is missing in the middle of the Atlantic.

Scientists have discovered a large area thousands of square kilometres in extent in the middle of the Atlantic where the Earth’s crust appears to be missing. Instead, the mantle – the deep interior of the Earth, normally covered by crust many kilometres thick – is exposed on the seafloor, 3000m below the surface. [Source]

Could this gaping wound be where the Earth has grown and simply not yet reformed the crust? Of course, if the Earth is growing, seems like with today’s technology it would be fairly simple to measure.

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The Best Blogfest Write-up!

The best Blogfest write-up goes to Barry with his perfect recap of a wonderful evening! East TN bloggers met in person to put name to url. Glenn Reynolds has the list of attendees. These events are a little strange to enter. For one, the children (except Noah) were with us and I have continued to fool myself into thinking that blogging is something we do unawares to them despite knowing full well they understand our blogs completely. I am sure that both Tommy and Sarah have visited each blog and declared them "boring and weird" since our blogs don’t use the word "cuz," don’t change the font size nearly frequently enough, and have no picture from Naruto. Also, we all read each other so…is there really anything to talk about? "Um..Post #1345." "Ha! That was great. I responded in comment #12768." "Read it! Excellent retort! Did you catch the Youtube video on that?" "Covered it in post #4491." Silence. "Check please."

In reality, we walked in 30 minutes later than intended and confused the hostess since we had no reservation, no call ahead seating and, apparently, had no intent to sit down. We made various attempts at figuring out if anyone was here: "Blogfest?" Blank stare from the waitress. "Inn of the Last Home?" A waitress goes to get a manager and whispers something about police. I didn’t know they already had a run-in with Mike Faulk. Sarah exits the restaurant in embarrassment and I stare blankly at a crowd of people that looks something akin to the prisoners on the train in The Wall.

So Rich Hailey approaches asking, "Looking for Blogfest? Someone identified you." For a brief moment I experience what celebrities must feel and I reply, "Good to read you!" Blogfest 2007 attendeesAfter locating Sarah we fill the final seats at the blogger’s table. Lucky for Sarah, a girl near her own age was sitting right beside her. They ignored each other the entire evening. Tommy had the pleasure of sitting beside Mike Faulk who graciously tried to engage the nervous, bored teens until being drawn into adult conversation with Dr. Helen, Glenn Reynolds, Perry Nelson, and Lissa Kay. Amy sat on Sarah’s other side. Evan took the head of the table with Cathy and I on either side of him until Katie Allison Granju, Jon Hickman, Randy Neal and Mrs. Neal showed up adding yet another table. The early bird side of the table included Thoughts of an Average Woman, Barry, Michael Silence and his wonderful daughter, Rich Hailey, and Say Uncle. As some seats emptied, Les Jones and his wife, Melissa, filled in (I hugged his wife and he was probably packing!). Pulling up the rear was Mark Steel who enjoyed Tuckaleechee Porter until closing. [Hopefully I covered everyone. This paragraph should have links to ALL attendee’s blogs and their Blogfest review.]

A play date?

In the realm of overt cuteness, Michael‘s daughter with a huge grin unabashedly bee-lined it to Evan, grabbed his hand, and led him through the restaurant to the vacant upstairs banquet area so they could run and play. Ah! My boy’s first date! Of course, little Casanova is in big trouble if he let’s the ladies lead him so easily.. ahem! They were adorable and thrilled beyond belief to have a playmate.

In the small world realm, Melissa and I go back a decade give or take. We met at a friend’s party eons ago. She recounted how I encouraged her to get into computers. The teenage girls who ignored each other in lieu of text messaging went to the same beach at the same time for a vacation this past summer. Perry Nelson worked with Lissa Kay.

In the realm of social ineptitude, I flashed our camera enough to make restaurant patrons think they were at a Hollywood movie debut, asked Mr. R Neil, "So, what do you do?" only to see everyone look at me like I was from Mars, Cathy and Katieand I got to blathering such a technical description of something that I myself became lost in my words! Guess I need to get out of the basement more often.

Overall it was fantastic event. Rarely do you attend something where no introductions are needed and the person sitting beside you possibly understands you better than your psychologist. It was definitely interesting meeting people face to face with whom you already have somewhat of a connection. I only wish we had more time for deeper conversation. The time flew by and partings had to come almost in conjunction with hellos. I look forward to the next Blogfest!

Evan chose Jon

Update: As I re-read my post with Cathy I realized I left something from the "In the realm of overt cuteness" paragraph. I had intended to tell about Evan and Jon. Ironically, before I could return to update the post, Jon had commented about being left from Barry’s recap. Evan doesn’t always warm up to people. He even shys away from the grandparents from time to time. There was a moment at the Blogfest where Evan stopped running around. Planted his feet. Extended his left arm straight as an arrow and pointed his index finger at Jon. Then he reached his right arm out straight as an arrow and pointed his index finger at Jon. Jon was the chosen! Evan declared him, "The fun guy!" Then Jon, father to be, reached down and picked up the insistent Evan who proceeded to drool and snot all over him. Evan really liked Jon!

Update: Mark Steel came in as we left.