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First Ever Registered Domain Changes Owners After 25 Years

Paul Lilly — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 07:00:34 -0500

During the same year that you sat in a movie theater chomping on popcorn watching Marty McFly bend the time-space continuum, a computer manufacturer headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts laid claim to the first ever registered domain name: Symbolics.com.

You may recall Nordu.net as the first domain name ever created, which dates back to January 1985. But it wasn't until March of that same year that Symbolics.com would go through the appropriate DNS process to be the first domain ever registered, after which it remained under its original ownership for a quarter of a century. Now almost 25 years later, Symbolics.com finally changes hands following XF.com Investments' acquisition of the domain for an undisclosed sum.

It's unclear what the future holds for the Internet's first-ever registered domain name, or for Symbolics, which largely fell out of relevance long ago.

Image Credit: channel4.com

Murphy's Law: URL Shortener Tr.im Turns Open-Source... and Open-Fire

David Murphy — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:00:11 -0500

I suppose it's not enough for a popular online service to face the reaper, come back from the brink of extinction, and turn open-source. No, there has to be some kind of controversy surrounding the whole affair--can't just fade quietly into the open-licensed light nowadays.

Such is the situation offered up by the death and resurrection of tr.im, a popular online URL shortening service whose recent entrance into the open-source community has been met with a touch of scandal. Perhaps scandal is the wrong word, though. Scathing might be better, given the tone of some of tr.im's blogging and actions as of late.

It's easy to talk about open-source as if it's some large, altruistic community that wants to do nothing but share-and-share alike. Everybody's friendly. Everybody's happy. Just a ton of developers churning out free code for everyone to use, distribute, and polish into a scintillating hunk of software that's going to revolutionize the world! Or, at the very least, stick it to Microsoft.

This is an idyllic fantasy. In the real world, businesses and developers don't always play nicely. You've already read about the back-and-forth bombing wars between the PortableApps and LiberKey developers. You can now add tr.im to the list... but who exactly are they fighting?

The History

Tr.im is a Website that shortens your URLs and provides statistics for how many people actually click on the miniature link. Easy. Simple. As you might expect, tr.im isn't the only game in town. I could fill a blog post with alternate URL services, but there's only one that's worth mentioning in the context of this story: bit.ly. Given the push for shorter URLs on today's Web, you'd expect that tr.im and it's four-letter domain would be wiping the floor with a competitor like the five-letter bit.ly.

Not so.

Bit.ly might have that extra digit, but it also has the backing of the popular online communications service Twitter. In fact, bit.ly is the sole, default URL shortener for any hyperlink you post on Twitter's main site. This pairing is like bringing Mike Tyson to a playground fight, and it was enough to deliver a knockout blow to tr.im's business model last week. Rising network costs sapped the company's cash; Twitter's endorsement of a single-shortener solution drained their will to fight--for a few days, at least.

The Eleventh Count

Not one day after its fateful passing, tr.im faded back into existence with a pledge to keep servers running and URLs minimized for an infinite duration. This was spelled out more clearly in a subsequent post nearly a week later. The developers now plan to release the full source code for tr.im into the wild, allowing anyone to use, develop, or take over, subject to confines of the service's MIT open-source license--of which there are essentially no restrictions whatsoever.

The "community" will receive the rights to the tr.im domain. How that will work is anyone's guess right now. Founder Eric Woodward is assuming all operating costs related to the transformation, and tr.im itself is opening its statistics and financial information for everyone to see. Truly, tr.im. intends to become as fully open of a project as is possible. That's an altruistic aim, but that's not to say that tr.im is keeping its chin held high throughout the ordeal.

I Hate You, Bit.ly

I jest, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Woodward repeats this phrase in his bathroom mirror every morning. After all, he did turn down bit.ly's $10,000 offer to take over tr.im's full service. We'll never know whether he saw this as an undervaluation or whether he truly detests bit.ly's partnership with Twitter that much, although one could easily make an argument for both. According to TechCrunch--who Woodward is rather unhappy with right now--the founder was asking for a near-six-figure sum for all of tr.im. Given that tr.im is now shooting for the open-source route, you don't need me to tell you where that request ended up.

As for bit.ly, Woodward is as upset by its partnership with Twitter--which he considers to be "controlling this flow of shared link data in a way it would not otherwise be able to"--as he is with bit.ly's quest to find a Web-wide solution for link-rot. What's link-rot? Look no further than tr.im's demise. When a URL shortener goes the way of the dinosaur, so do all the links. Any link that's ever been referenced, published, or Tweeted on the Web suddenly becomes invalid. Although bit.ly is in the dominant position through Twitter's partnership, it has just as much a vested interest in preserving its links in perpetuity as any other URL shortening service. And that's how the company developed the idea behind 301works.org--a centralized hub that where all interested URL-shortening services could archive links.

"That initiative, 301works.org, is little more than a bit.ly public relations stunt, which is why we have not joined it," wrote Woodward in a blog post. "It has little substance, claiming to address link-rot while it does nothing of the kind. If a URL shortener decides to close, only the donation of the domain name and the data can address the existing links. For any high-volume URL shortener, like tr.im, it is unlikely a commercial entity would do that given the offers we have seen come in this past week to immediately hijack all tr.im URLs."

Doing What to the Gas Tank?

I'd like to think that Woodward is doing his part to open up URL redirection and engage the community for its ability to make new advancements in this competitive space. But, honestly, I think Woodward has realized the light at the end of the tunnel and has decided to adopt a scorched-earth policy by using the death of tr.im as a potential thorn in the foot for bit.ly. Given the relative unpopularity of tr.im on Twitter--no more than two to three percent of all outbound links compared to bit.ly's roughly 80% domination--the actual valuation for the service would not have been very high at all.

Since Woodward promised to keep tr.im out of spammer hands, and refused to sell the entire service to his archrival, he had but one choice: Switch to open-source and use a free model to undercut bit.ly somewhere down the line. If he couldn't beat the big guy at his game, then at least he could be the person that started the open revolution. Just imagine what a company like Microsoft, Twitter, or anyone could build on top of a fully-functioning, URL-shortening framework. Perhaps, someday, a derivative of tr.im could become a free, feature-jacked alternative to bit.ly. That's a lot more impressive--and painful to the Twitter-bit.ly conglomeration--than burying tr.im for good.

Besides, this couldn't be a philosophical issue. If Woodward truly hated bit.ly's involvement in 301works.org, why would he open his entire program and datasets? This now gives anyone--even bit.ly--the ability to use tr.im or one of its future derivatives in direct conjunction with the program Woodward despises. That's like Microsoft saying, "Oh, yes, we hate Linux... so here's all of our code."

I could be wrong. Maybe I just have deep-seeded issues or some internal inability to find the good in people--a reverse Luke Skywalker, if you will. The whole tr.im scenario just seems a little odd to me. And no matter how you slice the pie, there's still some kind of resentment behind the service's desire to jump into the open-souce boat. Woodward should have sold out to bit.ly, pocketed the $10,000, and used that money to fund a new open-source project to address URL shortening and link-rot in one fell swoop. Also, Hawaii. I hear it's the perfect stress-buster.

David Murphy (@ Acererak) is a technology journalist and former Maximum PC editor. He writes weekly columns about the wide world of open-source as well as weekly roundups of awesome, freebie software. Befriend him on Twitter, especially if you have an awesome app or game you're dying to recommend!

Which URL Shortener is the Most Reliable?

Paul Lilly — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:09:44 -0500

Driven in large part by Twitter and other microblogging sites, URL shortening services are growing in number and popularity. This begs the question, is there any advantage to using one over the other?

Royal.Pingdom.com set out to answer that question by rounding up the most popular (and some less popular) URL shortening services and analyzing how much overhead each one adds to accessing the target URL, and how reliable each one is as measured in uptime.

The results are pretty surprising. Of the services tested (Bit.ly, TinyURL, Ow.ly, Is.gd, Su.pr, Sinpurl, Cli.gs, Tr.im, and Twurl), Is.gd ranked fastest with the least amount of overhead at 163ms, with the slowest service, Sinpurl, trailing significantly behind at 847ms. Bit.ly, which dominates the Twitter scene, took the No. 2 spot with 261ms overhead, while TinyURL sat squarely in the middle at 412ms.

But it's the uptime that most people are more likely to be concerned with, especially after the near-meltdown of tr.im, who recently went offline before re-opening and vowing to keep the service alive. Based on Royal.Pingdom.com's 30-day test window, Ow.ly ranked highest with 100 percent uptime, while Bit.ly was not far behind at 99.98 percent uptime. Su.pr, TinyURL, and Is.gd all recorded a 99.9 percent or higher uptime.

Take a peek at the full results here, then hit the jump and tell us which URL shortening service you use most.

Image Credit: Royal.Pingdom.com

Cool Google Hack: Find Images by Color

Mark Edward Soper — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:38:26 -0500

Another reason why Google has left its competitors way, way behind in the search engine race: Friday, a post on the (unofficial) Google Operating System blog noted that you can now restrict Google image searches by specifying one of twelve different colors:

red, blue, green, teal, purple, yellow, orange, pink, white, gray, black, brown

Only images that contain the specified color will be listed in the search results. Officially, you must use a command-line search in your browser's address bar to use this new feature, using the following syntax:

http://images.google.com/images?q=SEARCHTARGET&imgcolor=COLOR

[Replace SEARCHTARGET with what you're searching for and COLOR with the color you want to see in the images]

Here's an example that displays train photos containing the color yellow:

http://images.google.com/images?q=train&imgcolor=yellow

Here's an example that displays Union Pacific train photos containing the color gray:

http://images.google.com/images?q="Union Pacific" train&imgcolor=gray

[The spaces are replaced by the character string %20 in the web browser address bar when you enter the search: http://images.google.com/images?q="Union%20Pacific"%20train&imgcolor=gray]

That's a lot of typing, but the Google Operating System blog entry includes a simple drop-down menu you can use to perform your search (the results open in a new window). Hopefully it won't take long for Google to add this feature to its standard advanced image search, but it's still a very powerful image search tool.

Do you have other tips for using Google Image Search? Hit Comment and share your discoveries.

Australia's Blacklisted Hyperlinks to Cost Webmasters $11,000 a Day

Paul Lilly — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:08:25 -0500

According to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), this and other blacklisted hyperlinks will cost webmasters $11,000 a day if published on a website. The hefty fine applies to any site containing a banned URL, which was demonstrated last week when the AMA threatened the host of an online broadband disccusion forum after a user posted a link to a banned anti-abortion website.

According to The Syndney Morning Herald, the ACMA's blacklist doesn't significantly impact web browsing by Australians, but that could change if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship plan.

The newest site added to the ACMA's blacklist includes Wikileaks, who drew the ACMA's ire after it published a leaked document containing Denmark's lists of banned websites. Wikileaks had also posted Thailand's censorship, noting that both lists have expanded from child porn to other material including political discussions.

"We note that, not only do these incidents show that the ACMA censors are more than willing to interpret their broad guidelines to include a discussion forum and document repository, it is demonstrably inevitable that the Government's own list is bound to be exposed itself at some point in the future," Electronic Frontiers Australia said. "The Government would serve the country well by sparing themselves, and us, this embarrassment."

The Australian Government's internet censorship trials are due to begin shortly, however none of the major ISPs have been invited to participate. O_o

(Image Credit: mikeduran.com)

ICANN Approves .tel Domains to Be Used for Directory Information

Paul Lilly — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:49:22 -0500

Come December, directory assistance will hit the web in a big way, and it has nothing to do with the online yellow pages. Instead, ICANN has approved the creation of a new domain name, .tel, which will serve to offer a one-stop surfing destination to look up contact information on what it hopes will eventually include every individual and corporate entity.

ICANN says that .tel sites are stored within the DNS systems so that information can be "quickly accessed on any device from a game console to a PC to a mobile phone." Regardless of the vehicle, navigators could, for example, head over to WillSmithMPC.tel to gain access to a wealth of contact information, including address, phone, Facebook URL, IM, Twitter, and whatever else the MPC editor-in-chief chose to share. Companies can purchase a domain name too, meaning you could visit MaximumPC.tel to see who's on staff and other contact information for your favorite magazine.

The new Telnic-owned domains will go on sale this December with initial registrations reserved for trademark owners. Gneral availability opens up to public on March 24, 2009. Pricing yet to be announced.

Do Mainstream Users Need a Bloodhound to Find Their Address Bar?

Chris Moody — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:16:05 -0500

ReadWriteWeb.com is letting the world in on a secret, mainstream users can’t find the address bar. If you’ve ever done over the phone tech support you know this is true. They end up typing into a search engine, or a search engine bar, or into some piece of foul malware that wiggled into their browser. They will type anywhere but in the address bar.

What made ReadWriteWeb notice this trend was a report by Hitwise that showed more than 10% of the searches for the top 10 dating search terms were URLs like match.com and plentyoffish.com and almost all of the queries were something that .com could have been added to for direct navigation.

For competitors this isn’t such a bad thing. If you buy into Adwords your site can come up on a search for a competitor. For instance, type eHarmony on Google and the sponsor links come up with Match.com and LoveandSeek.com. Of course had they just tagged on the .com onto eHarmony in their address bar they would have gone straight there and never saw the links for the other sites.

Is it a bad thing for users? Not really. I make plenty of fat fingered typos and I hate landing on some misspelled domain that is brimming with malware. You avoid that altogether by searching. It is also human nature to take shortcuts. Users know they’ll get there whether they add the .com or not.

It’s not so hot for the companies that shelled out big bucks for the domain name. Domain names haven’t worked so hot since they came out and squatters snatched up as many as they could to sit on waiting for a huge offer. It’s led to some creative names for companies that desperately wanted their domain name to match their company name however.

TinyURL Finally Adds Vanity URLs

Paul Lilly — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:08:41 -0500

Paring down an extraordinarily long web address into a manageable hyperlink makes it possible to share line-breaking URLs via email, text messages, Twitters, or any other medium without overwhelming the recipient, and therein lies the beauty of TinyURL. Unfortunately, the ugly truth is that while TinyURL makes short work of long URLs, they're also exceedingly difficult to recall for anyone not fluent in Nerglish. Or at least they were.

At long last, TinyURL has finally given users the ability to denote a custom alias to shortened links instead of a random list of characters. That means you can focus on remembering http://tinyurl.com/YouTubeAds instead of trying to recall http://tinyurl.com/688o7d.

Of course, standard safe practice still applies. Don't click on hyperlinks from untrusted sources no matter what they're labeled as. And you know that buddy that still finds it amusing to send you a Rick Roll for the umpteenth time? Don't click on his custom TinyURLs either.