Alexandar Tzanov ~ The Titan » Techie

srcTitle – the answer to the “null” title for the “from” link in Google Buzz feed

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:54:23 +0000

This morning I implemented Google Buzz. You can see the button on the left of this paragraph. After playing around with the code, I buzzed my last post, which was about high fructose corn syrup. When I checked my Google profile I noticed that after the title of the article there was a “null”, which linked back to the home page of my blog.

After spending few minutes searching on the Internet, I wasn’t able to find much information on the problem. Next I decided to look for API documents and other help information published by Google. Seeing that the Google Buzz button works by sharing via Google Reader, the best place for the answer was in the Google Reader help docs . I found this post – Adding a ‘Share in Reader’ link to your website or blog.

The solution to the problem is very simple and logical. As “title” – the title of the item you are sharing, is to “url” – the address of the item you are sharing, “srcTitle” is to “srcUrl”. In which case the former is the name you want to use for the source of the item, and the latter is the address to that source.

... &srcurl=123&srctitle=numbers ...

The use of “srcUrl” is completely optional for your Google Buzz button, but keep in mind that if you do use this URI parameter, then you should probably also use “srcTitle”. Otherwise people will be seeing ”null” in their Google Buzz feed, and some of them might not like that and start deleting buzzed/shared item and eventually completely stop sharing your content.

By the way, you can set the “src Url” and “srcTitle” to anything you want. In my case, I am contemplating between setting them to to my blog’s home page or to the author’s post archive. I suppose the latter would be more crucial/useful when used on blogs or websites with multiple authors!

Skribit – Topic Suggestions are ready for the big time.

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 06:04:34 +0000

Skribit, a topic suggestion tool, which I have been using on my blog for over a year now, is ready for the big time. Last month the Skribit team announced the release of changes to the service and new features. They continue to add new features, some of which you can see below:

Follow your favorite bloggers on Skribit and see their recent activity
Sort suggestions by status, hotness and more
Merge similar suggestions
Ignore suggestions by user and IP (Internet Protocol or Intellectual Property) address
Reduce clutter with new comment and suggestion spam protection
Customize your the URLs for your Skribit blog and user profiles
Easily share suggestions through Twitter and Facebook with a click

I do find the Skribit service interesting, and as I have see it on other sites, it can prove a valuable tool. By the way, I first came cross Skribit on Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger blog.

Bonus: There is also a promo code – ackbar42 – which you can use by Jan. 27th, 2010, to upgrade your account to Skribit PRO at half-off the cost for 1 year.

Enjoy!

My XBOX 360 is kaput!

Alexandar Tzanov — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:04:25 +0000

xbox 360, logo, controller

My XBOX 360 is kaput! It’s at the point where it won’t even turn on. Well, it does, but it immediately powers off everything but the Red Ring of Death (RRoD). It sucks. I have been having some issue with the Xbox for some time know. Recently I wrote about how I was experiencing some xbox video problems. Well, about a week or so ago, I lost video on it completely. The TV knows that there is something connected to it, but all I get is a black screen. Amanda came across a tutorial on how to check what might be wrong with the Xbox 360, through getting it to show an error code. Well, the error code I repeatedly received was 0102, which indicated that the Xbox has no idea what the problem might be.

We have had the system since 2005. So it is definitely out of Microsoft’s manufacturer warranty. I figured there isn’t much to loose by trying some of the hacks and fixes people have described on the Internet. Since it was already broken, what could happen? Brake it even further than it is? ….. hahaha, funny, now that I write this after the fact. What can I tell you … I have indeed managed to brake a broken Xbox 360!

Back to the Xbox 360 hack on the World Wide Web. After reading number of issues and fixes described by Xbox owners, I decided to go with the 360 Hot Air Gun fix. Supposedly if the CPU and GPU, and some times the RAM chips are heated up, with a Hot Air Gun, to the point where the solder melts, it possibly can resolve the problem with the cracked solder joints and lack of conductivity between the chips and the xbox motherboard. Unfortunately for me this fix did not work, and “broke” the Xbox 360.

It will be easier for me just to go out and get a new Xbox 360 around Christmas than to keep trying to fix a 2005 Xbox 360. Hopefully newer models do not have the same issues. Although, I thought about simply picking up a new Xbox 360 motherboard from eBay, but I see that there are Xbox 360 Elite motherboards with the same issue, 4 year latter! I will most likely post this one on Craigslist for $50 or so to help contribute toward the cost of replacing it.

Now available in Bulgarian.

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:56:11 +0000

As a Bulgarian I’m always excited when I see “[...] available in Bulgarian.” or simply a link titled “Bulgarian” linking to a Bulgarian version of whatever site I am on. Today, one of these sites I came across was WordPress.org.

Wordpress in Bulgarian.

There are many Bulgarian communities around the world. To my knowledge the largest one is right here in Chicago. I’m not counting Bulgaria, because that’s a whole country! Bulgarians make many contributions to many web sites, science, industries and technologies. We have also made significant invention contributions to computers and aviation, as well. Something to be proud off.

Firefox and DNS prefetching

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:39:59 +0000

Firefox and DNS prefetching – I read about this being a feature in Google Chrome, but I wasn’t sure if it was, yet, a feature of Firefox. It is in Ff 3.5. Here you can find a list of the new features in Firefox 3.5.

What is DNS prefetching? – It is the process of requesting domain name and IP (Internet Protocol or Intellectual Property) address resolution used in links, images, documents and other content linked to from a page a web surfer is currently browsing. Theoretically, by taking care of the name resolution before a surfer desires to navigate to a file or another page from a link on the current page can save fractions to X number of seconds. Name resolution being out of the way the surfer should arrive at its next destination faster. The former is my definition and understanding of DNS prefetching. In my experience, at leased in Google Chrome, I am able to see performance improvements.

I needed to know how can I tell if it is on or off. In Google Chrome it is in the options menu and it can easily be turned on and with a simple check-mark click.

Google Chrome DNS prefetching option.

But, in Firefox this is not a function in the options menu. At leased not at this time.

Meebo has finally started to monetize its home page.

Alexandar Tzanov — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:50:59 +0000

Meebo home page now featuring a background ad.

Meebo has finally started to monetize its home page. I like the design. Unlike many monetized backgrounds on popular web sites, their is more integrated, in style, with the content on the page. Good job.

At this time the add is for the Toyota Prius – 3rd generation.

Meebo does have some other products and services to complement its main function – integrating various instant messenger networks and protocols on the same web site. My favorite of their products is the Meebo notifier.

The Meebo notifier is a small app that sits in your system tray and it stays connected to the Meebo network, allowing you to exit your browser. The memory footprint is small, so it is not resource hog. In addition to providing notification when contacts come online and when new IMs are received, you will also be notified when any of the added accounts, like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, have new emails. A feature, which can be disabled if you don’t care much for emails. Lastly, the notifier is not an Adobe AIR app. Something, which to some extend, I find to be beneficial.

One thing I would like to see Meebo support is micro-blogging services, like Twitter, Identi.ca or Jaiku.

By the way, Meebo powers the chat room on this blog.

So, do you use Meebo? If you do, where do you use it? If you don’t, do leave me a comment regarding the reason.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

[cb type="company"]meebo[/cb]

Whois domain record: Meebo

XBox 360 no video, only audio

Alexandar Tzanov — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:22:58 +0000

xbox 360, logo, controller

Over the weekend I had some lack of video from my XBox360. Nothing that some heat couldn’t fix. Apparently most problems with the Xbox360 are fixed by that that kills PC – heat.

I have an XBox360, which is one of those that was born with bugs and “genetic” issue – meaning an early version – one from the early ones, made before the red ring of death became evident and all the various versions started to come out. Luckily, I don’t abuse and rarely spend massive amount of hours playing it, thus I don’t have very many problem with it! Other than the occasional screen flicker and the constant refusal of the DVD-Rom tray to actually stay closed after attempting to close it. Apparently the DVD drive gets a bad taste from DVD discs and refuses to work with them. HAHA. My solution for the latter is to place my thumb on the drive tray and prevent it from coming back out, then pushing the open/close button again!!

What is the point behind a URL shortening service? Why are there so many?

Alexandar Tzanov — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:30:59 +0000

What is the point behind a URL shortening service? In essence, why is everyone using them and why are there so many? These were questions asked on TechCrunch, yesterday, by Ronald Tin, but not in so many words. My reply to him was as follow:

Ronald, the point of a URL shortening service is to have a short domain and URL, but that’s beside the point. The real reason behind URL shortening is to have an easy to remember or pass along URL. Instead of having – http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/19/now-even-the-new-york-times-is-entering-the-url-shortening-arena-kinda/#comment-2708504 – which you will never remember, or care to do so, you have http://tcrn.ch/Lk. Much easier to remember or tell someone about.

The whole URL shortening idea has split into two evolving concepts – money making thus the variety of sites offering this service; and content ownership. The later ensures, by owning the URL shortening service, that traffic from the short URL will never stop. If any of the other URL shortening services go down or close down what happens to traffic coming from all the places where those URL have been used/posted? It stops, which results in decline in SEO, page hits, ad impressions and clicks …. It also guarantees that whatever the URL the short URL is pointing to will not be changed by someone, thus stealing the traffic.

This is pretty much what my view of URL shorteners is. There might be something missing, so feel free to add in the comments below.

In general, I find URL shorteners annoying and a nuisance. I like to be able to see the URL, which I am about to visit. I also want to be sure that whenever I post a link to something that link will remain working , and anyone, who clicks on it, will not have to go through extra hoops, especially through one that might not be there some times or eventually. I am kind of bothered by how many services exist, because each has something I like about it and some times it can be hard to decide on which one to use. I suppose it all comes down to convenience. I am also sure that there will be more URL shortening services, like is.gd, tinyurl.com, cli.gs, bit.ly and many others, in the future. Variety can’t hurt, but over saturation does! When services can’t make enough to pay their bills they close, variety suffers, but so do users and the Internet.

Let me know your views on URL shorteners and which one is your choice in the comments below. Oh and here is a quick poll about preferred URL shortener(s).

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Domain record whois: TechCrunch, tcrn.ch, tinyurl.com

Server scalability and Oxbury Publishing.

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:15:59 +0000

Currently Hive Minds Hosting is hosting Oxbury Publishing, including their other web properties. As the company business is growing, and it is expending in to customized reports and articles, delivered via newsletter, I know that the current server will not be able to handle the load of newsletter campaigns that are going to take place. I’ve spend today consulting the company owners about renting a dedicated server and moving their operations to a machine, which only serves their needs.

I have also selected phpList as the mail list management solution. Once I have configured their new server, I will be installing and configuring phpList, which by the way has to integrate with their current site and have new users automatically added to the different newsletter campaigns at the time of them registering on the main web site. I found some scripts, which might do the trick, but there were some complaints from other users. Hopefully with Oxbury things will go smoothly.

Tonight I will be leasing the new server and then I will be working on installing and configuring the usual software required to operate a website smoothly.

Domain whois record: phpList, Oxbury Publishing

3000MB does not equal 3GB

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:20:59 +0000

I find it so annoying when companies and individuals, who are in the technology business or are technically inclined, incorrectly calculate storage space. For example Wordpress founding member Matt Mullenweg, in his “Free Space to Three Gigabytes” post states that the free space on Wordpress.com will be increased to 3,000 MB, yet the title states that it will be increased to 3 GB. If the later was true, then a simple calculation will should that he space should actually be 3,072 MB. What ’s worse is that Kristen Nicole from Mashable, a technology oriented website, simply restated the announcement instead of correcting it.

Below you will find a simple storage space numerical explanation.

Bits & Bytes
1,024 bits = 1 kilobit (kb)
8 kb = 1 kilobyte (KB)
128 KB = 1 megabit (mb)
8 mb = 1 megabyte (MB)
1,024 KB = 1 megabyte (MB)
128 MB = 1 gigabit (gb)
8 gb = 1 gigabyte (GB)
1,024 MB = 1 gigabyte (GB)

The easiest way to go about calculating how many gigabytes a number of megabytes or kilobytes would be is to divide by 1,024 your megabytes number, or divide twice by 1,024 your kilobytes number. Or start multiplying by 1,024 if you need to get down to specifics. I recently had to do this when I was configuring Postfix message and attachment acceptable size. I wanted the acceptable message size to be 15 MB, but the number I needed to set in Postfix was in bytes. So I multiplied 15 MB by 1,024 to get the number into kilobytes, then I multiplied it again by 1,024 to get it into bytes.

What erks me the most is when web hosting companies do this to customers. Their price plan gives the space in gigabytes, but the admins set the actual account space to that number with few zeros tagged behind it, instead of calculating it.

Techie readers, are you also annoyed by such misleading statements? Let me know by leaving me a comment below.

Email Signatures – I Hate Them.

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:11:59 +0000

I f-ing hate email signatures. For most part they are useless and only take more space than the actual email content is. In my time of receiving emails and providing customer support I have come across a variety of email signatures and other text and image email appendages that are completely unnecessary. It is rare for me to come across an email signature that is simple and small.

People use company logos in addition to their names, emails, alternate emails, phones, mobiles and fax numbers, as well as toll free customer support numbers. To those we corporate addresses, social network addresses, instant messenger addresses and you end up with a lot of information that gets tacked to every email of an email string. Why? It is a waits of bandwidth and space, and also time consuming to sort between the signatures and the actual email content.

Not to mention people who use double and triple signatures, because they are part of multiple organizations or want to show off their affiliations and other sorts of background. Also lets not forget that if you use a free email service, like Hotmail or Yahoo, they also append their own signatures, to promote their service and that they provide free email service. Or when someone emails from a business/corporate account, then there is a security message that comes with the email to inform every recipient that the information contain in the email “is confidential” and sharing it might violate something or another.

Image thanks to Transformatum.com

Overall there should be some standards to email signatures and what other information may be automatically appended to an email. I doubt that that will come to fruition, though. People and companies have been trying to standardize emails since the email system was invented decades ago, but as we can observe today – this has yet to happen. I would only hope and wish for that email signatures are only appended in an initial email. When there is an existing string of emails going back and forth then there is no need to append a signature. The involved parties clearly know who they are and what they can do. A signature should be appended only if the email string is forwarded to a new recipient.

Another thing that I am not a fan of, but it doesn’t bother me as much is when people forward emails and I can see that the email was forwarded 2, 3, 4 times and I can see tens of emails with each forward section. Not only does this take space, it consumes bandwidth, but most importantly it is a security problem. It creates an opportunity if one of the recipients is a spammer, or pissed at the sender to harvest the emails and use them to SPAM the rest of the recipients or cause damage to the senders reputation.

Are you also bothered by the above issues? Take the poll and let me know by leaving your comments below.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Web design and standards. Key word standards!!

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:08:59 +0000

I am working on a new project with my brother and his publishing company. One of my tasks is to set up a new site for his company. One thing I am really, and I mean really, good is modifying things. Be they digital or physical, I can take something and turn it into something else. I am not a big on starting things from scratch, because it requires a lot of time, and in this point in my life, I am kind of short on it.

Anyways, they bought a commercial theme for the CMS I advised them would be best to go with. They, and I mean my brother and his partners, tasked me to modify the theme so the site looks and functions similar to the way their current one does. I don’t know why they picked the theme they did. By the time I get done with it, both the layout and the code will hardly be recognizable to the original. I did something similar for JutiaGroup.com, but I only made changes here and there, nothing major like I am doing with this project. But I am off topic! This was supposed to be a micro-post! here it is:

I hate developer who do not follow standards with CMS theme design. Each theme has parts to it, and when developers take shortcuts their products suck!!

Little bit of background here – I am unhappy because I just discovered that the developers amongst few things that they had omitted to do, they had also set up the same file to be used as the front page and post page. These to display different elements when rendered. This won’t be a problem, though, I can set up a new page in no time.

The Ultimate Thrill Ride.

Alexandar Tzanov — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:39:59 +0000

I saw this video on enterprenurer Morten Lund’s blog. I want this robot installed in my house. Getting flung around, safely, looks like so much fun, unless of course you get motion sickness.

I enjoy the fact that it can be programed. Although in the begging of the video it looked like that guy’s head was about to be smeared all over the floor.

Do you guys have any robots you would like to have. Leave me some links to pictures or videos of your favorite/wish to have robot in the comments below.

[cb type="person"]morten-lund[/cb]

Friendfeed and Twitter – is it time for an intervention?

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:28:59 +0000

I have decided to write this post sort of as an echo of Michael Arrington’s call for an intervention with Robert Scoble’s addiction to Freindfeed and Twitter, who has spend more than 2600 hours interacting with those services. I am rounding up from Michael’s post, because Robert states that he spend at least 7 hours every day. But he also responded to the TechCrunch and in his post Robert states that he started in February and it is only about 200 hours. Both question if the Scobleizer blog was harmed. I would like state that in cases like this there is more than just a traditional service that is harmed. In my case I did not allow my addiction to extent to my family, but it did affect other aspects of my life.

Twitter can be addictive! I never got into FriendFeed, only because I find it cluttered, or better yet – way too much going on. There is way too much going on in the activity stream to keep track of and to pay attention to comments. That is not to say that I have not picked up on some good images or links from the activity stream, but I do not use its commenting system. Actually, even thought some times I spend 50 to 60 hours per week on the Internet, I really do not find it useful. I know that many content creators, just like me, prefer to have/own comments either by us or to us. What happens if these services go down? All those comments will be gone.

I used to be addicted to Twitter. Just look at the graph below. But thanks to the type of work I do and its needs I was able to realize how much time I was wasting posting and refreshing all the time. At times I would simply sit and refresh the page for minutes at a time, hopping that “I won’t miss something”. Pretty ridiculous, huhh?! To me that was the biggest waist of time, because even though I was micro-blogging I was still spending more time REFRESHING A PAGE.

Twitter Stats by TweetStats.com

Some say that Twitter and micro-blogging is the next evolution of blogging. I disagree. I think that 140 character blogging, if you can call it that is a digression, not an evolution. I have concluded that Twitter and 140 character blogging is simply a retarded form of a chat(instant messenger) system. First of all, as a blogger, I hate the character limitations. Listen I have A LOT to say. If you go back in my Twitter history, you will see that I used to use TinyPaste to compensate for the limitations and to say what I have to say. Some would say why don’t I simply write an email or use an instant messenger. Well, because emails take too long to get a response to and not everyone uses an instant messenger. The Twitter users, with whom I communicate, they would hardly be willing to spend time writing a lengthy email, when they have the wonderful use of Twitter’s instant response – in short. I’ve also expressed on many occasions my disgust with how Twitter and services alike are forcing users to become grammar unintelligent so they can say what they have to say.

Probably about a month or so ago I decided to cut down on Twitter. I still get my urges to check it out, and I do. I do glance over what others are doing, but I hardly post now – mostly in response to others. Lastly, I found Twitter to be damaging to one’s social environment. That is not to say that Twitter is not good to start new friendships, keep up with people and expend one’s views, but that’s how far its usefulness should extend. A good personal example is from my work environment – instead of simply using my voice or getting out of my chair and making 5 steps, I communicate via Twitter with my coworkers. This also goes back to my statement that Twitter is a retarded form of chat/instant messenger.

Maybe it is time to evolve from Twitter and micro-blogging back to blogs and maybe then we can come up with a new better form of instant online communication. There are web sites which are trying to compensate for the character and hopefully grammar limitations by starting services, which mimic Twitter and such, but also allowing for longer post. But, again, if you think about it, isn’t that simply creating another blogging platform?!! Looks to me that people are evolving back.

Follow me NOT! What’s the point?

Alexandar Tzanov — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:15:59 +0000

On Twitter, a user by the name of Donna Mahony started to follow my domainventory account. She claims to be a domainer of 10 years and supposedly is the founder of Domain Boardroom forums and some other domain awards web site. When she started to follow me I responded in kind and also direct messaged her for more information on her “private” forums.

BTW, what exactly is the point of having private domaining forums? Some of the biggest and most successful domaining forums have succeeded not by being private, but by charging for services and features.

Anyways, after couple of weeks I did not receive a response to my message. So, I simply registered on the forums, while doing so I was asked to provide 3 domains to verify my identity. I listed TitanFusion.net, Innovadix.com and DomainVentory.com. All three have my name on the domain record info. The following day my registration was rejected – “did not meet our membership requirements”?!?! As domainer with few hundred domain names to my name I’m pretty sure that I do meet the “requirements”, but, whatever. The point of this post is to illustrate poor customer service and public relations. Why? Because after I received the registration decline email, I emailed back to ask Donna what gives, because she was already following me on Twitter as domainventory. I did not receive a response from her, nor did I receive one after I tweeted about it.

Not responding to a potential customers or partners after multiple attempts via different channels is a poor way to do business. Do not write off the small ones, because someday the stands might be reversed and you might be in their place. Be prepared to be treated the same way you treated them!

Twitter – sorry you canNOT delete this message.

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:45:59 +0000

I am pretty sure this is system wide, based on my experience with multiple accounts, but it looks like Twitter has changed who can delete direct messages. In the past either party could delete a message and then it will disappear for both, meaning that there was only one copy of the message. Now only the sender can delete a message. So if you have a lot of people sending you messages, it makes it impossible to remove what one might not want to look at, unless the sender deletes it themselves. The problem is that some people like to keep their messages, PMs, IMs and emails. It is even worst when messages are sent from people that are not following you, so now there is no way to contact the sender to get them to remove it. The results of this are two: 1) The user cannot remove messages; 2) It makes it easy to SPAM people, because they can’t remove the messages received.

The solution to this is for Twitter to add two extra columns in their database – a delete column for both the sender and receiver. It will be a link)','caption', 'datatype - true or false' );">boolean column, meaning it can be only true or false. When the system filters which messages to display, whichever column says true for the delete then that user does not get to see that message. The message can be truly deleted when both users have marked it delete either during a routine database maintenance and optimization, or when a user marks a message as deleted the system can check if the other user also has marked it delete. If both have done so then the message can be completely removed, in real time.

Whatever Twitter decides as far how direct messages are managed, it would be nice to be able to delete unwanted ones once again.

BTW, if you are not, you can follow me on Twitter by following either TheTitan or DomainVentory.

So tell me, are you bothered by these changes from Twitter or not?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. [cb type="company"]twitter[/cb]

Developing a business website solo – I underestimated it.

Alexandar Tzanov — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:00:59 +0000

I have been working on and off on developing a business website with functionality other than this is who we are, this is what we do for some time now. It has been taking me some time now to make some progress on the DomainVentory project for Innovadix, because of duties like family, day job and simply being tiered from everything that needs to be done every day. But anyways, every thing with its time.

The reason why I am saying that I underestimated the time it will take me to develop the site is because of all the things that pop up in my head that needs to be included in the web site as I work on it. Unlike other website project I have worked on, this is the first time I am developing a business and a websites with a variety of features and needs from the ground up. Granted I contemplated for a very long time if I should use a CMS or build my own interface, I decided to go with using one of the more popular CMS simply to get he project off the ground. Once the website and it is functional and servicing clients it can always be upgraded. It won’t be anything new. Over the years I have seen many websites which have switched from one CMS to another, or simply gone with developing a proprietary interface and vice versa. Every time I sit down to work on the site, as I am working on something at least half a dozen other things come to my mind that need to be included and once I place them on my to do list, half a dozen more pop up for each of them. For example tonight I am working on documenting how customer’s will be referenced across multiple sites, especially ones that are not mine. As I figured out how I am going to do that and started to document it, the fact that I also need to collect and maintain customers’ personal billing information also came to my mind, and as I typed the previous I realized that that data needs to be encrypted.

It is definitely a learning experience. Even though my grand parents, my father and my Amanda’s father all owned or still operate their own businesses, being an entrepreneur was not something that interested me until 3 years ago. Thus I do not have much knowledge or experience with it. The who start up and get going process can be difficult especially when building everything solo with limited resources and the most valuable of them being time to work on business development.

So far the planing stage seems to be taking long time, but not as long as documenting how everything is going to work. The most important thing is to make progress. Some times it is a lot, other times it is as little as few words, or paragraphs.

GoDaddy discount lacks the discount. It’s OK though.

Alexandar Tzanov — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:58:59 +0000

Last week I was contacted by a GoDaddy company representative by the name of Logan, who provided me with a list of my expiring domains until the end of the year, informed me that he has been assigned to my account and can offer me a discount. I responded to him by asking for more information about the discount. The discounted price per domain he provided me with, in his replay email, was the same price I receive as a member of the domain discount club.

One would thing that when offering discount to their customers GoDaddy would check to see if it is worth doing so, when the customers are members of the domain discount club, and the company is not willing to offer a greater discount! I suppose it makes no difference, because this is a courtesy service and a money raising act, but if it was me I would have taken a different approach.

My experience with GoDaddy, as a customer since 2003, has ALWAYS been positive. I have always had a good experience with their customer support, which I am glad is located in the States and I can call them at any time. To my knowledge GoDaddy does not outsource, so I must give the company and Bob Parsons props for doing this and keeping Americans employed. I know that part of the company’s customer relations strategy is to provide courtesy services, like company representatives personally calling me and emailing me to remind me of my expiring domains. In the past I have benefited from it, I enjoy it and appreciate it.

[cb type="company"]godaddy[/cb]

PayPal – You are the SUCK!

Alexandar Tzanov — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:23:59 +0000

Courtesy of Screw-PayPal.com

PayPal, not only does your customer service blow you out of the water in being able to be at the top of the WORST customer service I have dealt with since I have been on the Internet (20 years now), but there are some really stupid rules in place. To shop I need to add a credit card, when I already have a bank account added. When I add a credit card and remove the bank account, because it is pointless to have the first linked when it canNOT be used to show with, my account becomes unverified, even though I have been a member for NINE years and have been “verified” numerous times before. Pathetic!

I used to wonder why so many people hold a poor opinion of PayPal, but recently I have been able to understand why, by developing my own negative opinion of the service.

Courtesy of PayPalSucks.com

[cb type="company"]paypal[/cb]

I was right! Buy Yahoo stock.

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:08:59 +0000

yhoo stock rebound - image from TechCrunch

Last week I tweeted that Yahoo’s stock was at $10 per share and it was time to buy. Comments on my link)','caption', 'Micro post.' );">tweet (Micro post.) said that it is pointless to do so. As I was on my way to New York, I wasn’t able to provide a response to the comments.

With today’s reports about Yahoo’s CEO, Jerry Yang, stepping down I wish I had listened to my own advice. But there is still time to buy, buy, buy. People have been complaining about Yang and wanting him out of the decisions circle. Now he is out and I can only imagine that the stoke will continue going up as the company finds new leadership or is bought or merged with another one. I would like that company to be Microsoft.

[cb type="company"]yahoo[/cb]

Invites… Get your Invites here!

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:30:59 +0000

I have created an Invites request page where you can view my reviews of various web sites and services on the web that require invites to become a member, or did required one at the time of the review. As I spend a lot of time on the Internet, I register on many websites and thus come in possession of invites, which I am more than glad to share with others interested to test the web site in question as well.

You can request an invite via two methods;

You can leave me a comment on the blog post about the website you are interested in.
You can use the Invites request form on the Invites page, where you can request invites to multiple services at once.

Either method will get you an invite, IF they are still available. If I run out of invites I will look into getting more, but not all web sites will be willing to share more. If you have invites that you would liek to share, either let me know and I will let you know when someone wants one, or just comment on one of the invites offer posts for others to get a hold of you. In cases when you have invites to a web site that I have not posted about, contact me and I will make a post about it.

Skype and broadband result in happiness.

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:29:24 +0000

Last night, after 10 years, I was able to see my dad live. Thanks to broadband being available, and most of all more affordable, my dad and I were arable to have a video session via Skype.

Last time I saw my dad was at the Sofia airport in Bulgaria in August of 1998. Since that time I have talk to him on the phone, but I have seen only 1 picture of him and that was probably 4 or so years ago. I was very excited to see him and I really wanted for him to see me! Thankfully I had Amanda’s web cam.

Skype is just a technology. There are many other methods making video conferencing possible. Skype is simply one of the more popular ones.

No matter the methods, the moment we were able to see each other was overwhelming with joy. I can’t wait to do it again.

[cb type="company"]skype[/cb]

Time for bed

Alexandar Tzanov — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 06:14:27 +0000

After eating two and a half pounds of crowfish and finishing my number two car chases favorite movie – Ronin, I spend about hour and a half looking for a way to do a system restore on an HP PC. I was able to start the system restore console, but I haven’t been able to get the process started. After further research on the Internet I have found out that the recovery partition on HP systems is useless, because consumers are not able to use it to start the recovery. All of a sudden the Dell recovery partition doesn’t seem as stupid of an idea as I thought once upon a time. This is why I like to put together my own computers.

WTF HP? But I am determined to find a way to get the recovery performed.

Ad4Game.com fix your web forms

Alexandar Tzanov — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:00:25 +0000

Yesterday morning I tried signing up as ad publisher on Ad4Games.com. I own few gaming sites and want to show more targeted advertisements, so this ad network seemed as a decent choice. I saw them serving banners on few other websites. When I tried to register, the town I live in is comprised of two words, as a result their system told me that only the following characters can be used “A-Z and a-z” (as seen in the image on the right). Seriously now?! The first two two word city names that come in my mind are Los Angeles and New York.

I contacted their support staff and my conversation follow:

[11:39] yvebts: Hello
[11:40] ad4game: hi
[11:41] yvebts: I am trying to register on ad4game.com as a publisher, but your system will not accept my city, because the name has a space in it
[11:41] yvebts: I can’t use – or _ because they are not accepted characters
[11:42] ad4game: just use no space
[11:42] ad4game: or write
[11:42] ad4game: space
[11:42] ad4game: we will adjust it
[11:42] ad4game: what is your website please?
[11:42] yvebts: OK. thank you
[11:43] yvebts: hivemindsgaming.com and clanmp.us
[11:51] ad4game: allright
[11:51] ad4game: i see you havent finished registering yet
[11:53] yvebts: I will attempt to complete the registration at a latter time. Thank you for you assistance.

Even though I know that I can send a letter to any one address in the US just by writing down the ZIP code and 4 digit extension, I wouldn’t write “space” in the name, because it will irritate me when I see it printed on the envelop. I have observed and have experienced the results of doing something silly like that and from people making assumptions. To top that, I have seen some really odd town names, so if they actually have someone who manually enters the address, why would they think of changing the town name?

Lastly, I tried registering last night and right before I typed this post. They still have not fixed this. As a company that claims to have been in the game advertising business for over 5 years you would think that they are quick to respond and fix issues in their system. Ad4Games.com, if you ever read this, if you have really been in the business for over 5 years just think about the number of publishers you have lost on. Even worse, the amount of revenue from advertisers you have lost on, because your advertiser sign up form has the same issue. I am not going to register until this is fixed. Probably eventually I will forget about your site and will not register at all.

BTW, what does “… been in the gaming industry for more than 5 years.” mean? You have been designing, developing, selling, promoting …. games?!

UPDATE (2008-10-27): It appears that the type of character limitations in the sign up form has been fixed. When I was signing up I noticed that Ad4Game had made a positive step in password security by mandating that passwords be alphanumeric. Good job.

Domain Record whois: Ad4Game.com

Survey or poll?

Alexandar Tzanov — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:35:12 +0000

I have come across web sites that state they provide surveys services, but their surveys are only one question with multiple answers. To my understanding and the rest of the world’s aren’t those called polls. For a questioner to be considered a “survey” should it have two or more questions?

What do you think? Take the following poll, please:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Valve being bought by Google. Please say it isn’t so.

Alexandar Tzanov — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:20:10 +0000

Valve being bought by Google! That is a horrible thought, but there are number of web sites which are reporting this. Here are a few links:

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/17/google-valve
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/google-to-acquire-valve/

I decided to send Valve a quick email, and I think that everyone that is agains this happenign should do as well.

Good morning,

TechCrunch and TheInquirer are reporting a potential acquisition of Valve by Google.

Please say it isn’t so. I’ve been a fan of you company and games since you guys first started. I have been following your company and enjoyed your products all these years. An acquisition by google might seem like a financially good choice but technology and product wise it is not.

Valve has managed to remain financially independent and overcome a variety of obstacles all this years. Please do NOT give into the google idea. Be yourselves. Visiting Valve headquarters and working for Valve is a dream for many people. Don’t destroy your fan base.

Sincerely,

Alexandar Tzanov

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/17/google-valve

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/google-to-acquire-valve/

You can email Valve at contact@valvesoftware.com, or contact the company in the following ways

Telephone:
425-889-9642

FAX:
425-827-4843

Postal address:
PO BOX 1688
Bellevue, WA 98009

The community has already started a discoution on the Steam forums.

Live From TechCrunch50 Con 2008

Alexandar Tzanov — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:09:03 +0000

The TechCrunch50 conference is going on this week. Very Exciting. You can watch the live stream from the conference, thanks to Ustream.TV, below.

BTW, TechCrunch50 is 52 this year. Two extra companies, which is good. The more the better.

UPDATE: Look at all the bloggers/laptop screens.

TechCrunch50 Con 2008

[cb type="company"]TechCrunch[/cb]
[cb type="company"]ustream[/cb]

Is it necesary to be so loud?

Alexandar Tzanov — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:55:24 +0000

I have been listening to radio, music and videos on the Web using tools like WinAmp, flash players and embedded Windows Media Player and QuickTime. For some reason, even though the volume on my PC is set to as low as possible without being 0, the sound coming through my headphones is always extremely loud. Is it really necessary for this sound to be so loud? Why do programmers feel the need to set the default volume so darn loud?

People are not naturally deaf, nor should we have to anticipate deafeningly loud sound coming from the speakers.