I just had to say something about this. I get one or two of these letters a month and it just boils my blood when I receive them. Not only do I get them, but my clients, honest business owners, receive them; many of whom would not know the difference.

It looks like a simple invoice showing the domain name you own and states that it’s coming up for renewal. It then shows what looks like an invoice for $65 to renew the domain name (Quick note: I pay $10/year for a domain name). Another version that I have received is from the Domain Listing Service (suspiciously from the same address in Chicago) peddling search engine submission service.

(Photo source http://braun.no-ip.com)

Looks harmless enough, right? Unfortunately, these guys are up to no good. If you fall for one of these traps, it can be an absolute nightmare to clean up. The company takes control of your domain name and moves it to their registrar, removing it from the company you have it held with and then cleares the DNS so that your website becomes non-existent.

Take a look at the company’s BBB record.

What’s worse is ICANN, the corporation that creates all the policies and rules regulating domain names has a policy that prevents domain names from being transferred frivolously. So when a domain name is transferred, they put a hold on the domain name for 60 days that prevents another transfer to another registrar. This is where the trap is most cumbersome. If these guys end up transferring your domain name to their registrar, in effect, shutting down your website, you may lose control of your site for 60 days until you are able to get it transferred back to the correct registrar.

How do they get away with this, you think? They simply state on the letter that it’s not a bill, but a solicitation. That’s it, and they can make it look as close to an invoice as they want.

As you can imagine, this boils my blood. I’ve had clients of my colleagues who have been caught in this web and paid for it dearly. If you end up receiving one of these (and odds are, if you own a domain name, you already have or will), just SHRED it. Most domain names are set to auto-renew with the registrar they are held with. Most registrars do it as a service to the domain owner so you don’t worry about losing the domain name.

How can you protect your domain names from these scams? Simple. Send any correspondence regarding your domain name to your web development company or registrar. That way, you’ll get verification of the validity of any offers or notices. In addition, make sure your domain name is locked from transferring. This prevents anyone from actually trying to transfer your domain name elsewhere.

The one protection I have found most appealing, though, is to do a private registration of your domain name. This puts the contact information with a domain privacy company and thus forwards any correspondence and/or solicitations to the servicing company protecting you from potentially making a mistake.

When it comes down to it, you really need a development company that has experience with these types of scams and can help you recognize and avoid them. If you have questions about this or any other domain name scams, or just have a comment, send us a note through our contact page.

Some of you may know and even follow my wife’s blog at http://www.erinhession.com. Lately, she’s been in the running for the top spot as WRTV’s A List in the Wedding Photography category. For those of you who might not know, or haven’t voted, the contest ends this weekend. She’s less than 5% away from grabbing the top spot! Click the link below to vote for her today!

http://wrtv.cityvoter.com/details.aspx?business=51614

Zoho Creator

I’m a developer by nature. Someone gives me a problem, often times, I can think of a development solution. But solutions can come at a price, whether it be time or resources. So for me a piece of software that can duplicate simple data driven solutions is a big plus. In walks Zoho Creator, a simple solution for simple database needs. No, it doesn’t replace a SQL Server or work as a RDBMS, but for a lot of simple database problems, it can be a very powerful solution.

For example, say you have a client with a lot of archived forms, you need an issue tracker for a major development project, a project list to manage the progress of current projects across multiple developers, designers, DBA’s, etc and you need a simple CRM that you can easily customize. Zoho can do all this and more. in addition, you can share the Creator apps with other users allowing you to work together with other users and embed the forms into your own site using an iframe instance.

Plus, you can even export the data into xls, csv, html , JSON, and tsv. (which comes in handy with their other new service Zoho DB)

And because it’s a web app, it’s an easy way to approach cross platform project collaboration.

The main reason, though, that I love this app is because it’s CUSTOMIZABLE. If there isn’t a field that I need, I add it. If there’s a extraneous field, I remove it. The nature of the app is completely a my discretion and it’s simple for me to customize it using their online editor, or coding it manually using their powerful deluge script.

I use Zoho daily. In fact it’s the only way I choose to collaborate on a large scale because I can mold the app to my needs and it’s built to handle it.

Google Reader

For many blog and news enthusiasts, going to each and every blog or news site can take hours of your time depending upon the number of blogs they frequent. For me, I monitor hundreds of feeds with over 1,000 new posts DAILY as part of what I do for my clients and for myself. So, I need a feed reader that I can use online (obviously) and allows me to mark certain posts of feed items for follow-up.

Google Reader is my salvation in this area. Not only can I organize feeds into folders to keep my projects organized, but I can view all the new posts for an entire folder. Using their “star” system that is functionally similar to what they provide in GMail, I can easily mark a news item for follow up. It also sorts the starred items into a “starred items” folder so I can read through them all (old or new) at a moments notice.

In addition, I can switch back and forth between a list view and detail view for each feed item and they offer support for importing and exporting OPML feeds so you can import to and from other services (which I do… more on that later). And with the integration into the overall Google services, I can access Google Reader with the click of a button from GMail.

Finally, the newest feature (which I find the most helpful) is the new “offline” feature which makes use of the new Google Gears (consequently another one of my favorite online services) to download the data from the feeds so you can read through it offline.

Google Reader helps organize my life and get access to the news and information that I need with a minimum of fuss.

Aside from actual coding and design, about 90% of what I do on a daily basis is online. I keep my to-do list online, my calendar, Blog (obviously), bookmarks, and so much more online. My life is online and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love managing it all online and technology is making it easier to manage that life on and off the WiFi. So I’ve put together a series of posts designed to show some of the online services that get my vote when it comes to the best online services. Today, I’ll be starting off with a lesser known but still great service that has changed how I schedule my day:

Google Calendar

I’ll admit, when GMail first came on the scene several years ago, I was enamored. Not only could I organize my email in a logical pattern, but the spam filters were second to none. When Google integrated their Calendar app, I was all the more happier. Google Calendar is a well thought out Ajax enabled calendar app that provides not only private calendars, but public calendar sharing and subscription to shared calendars. In fact, in addition to managing my own schedule on Google Calendars, I also have been able to search a list of public calendars and import them into my own. As you can imagine, I’ve already included the schedule for the Colts season in addition to sharing a calendar with my wife.

Google Calendars also has the ability to import events (although there really is no mass import feature) and provides private and public calendar URLs that you can use to embed in other web services (more on how I do that later)

Adding events to the calendar is very similar in function to that of a desktop app with one click event adding and drag and drop functionality. The feature that I like the best is the email alert a few minutes prior to the event to remind me. Some of the online calendars that I looked at in the past wouldn’t email you or provide any alert to remind. I must have the email alert and Google provides.

Basic service? Yes. But with the integration with GMail, the well designed UI and the ease of use, I am hooked.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY]

A big announcement from Microsoft yesterday that the newest SQL Server (2008) is now available as a Community Technology Preview. Most notable in the release is the new Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and incredible Entity Framework which allows data to be organized in a conceptual model rather than in logical tables.

This just keeps getting better.

ChaCha, heralded as the human powered search engine has just recently announced a partnership with blinkx to provide video content (over 7,000,000 hours of it) for the search engine to index. You can read more about it here.

The thing that I love about this search engine, besides the fact that it’s local to me, is that they are different. They use the collective power of “guides” to help you find what you need on the web and improve your search. They employ over 30,000 guides that can help you find what you need.

Okay, so I started working today with ASP.Net AJAX and so far I have run into a snag. For some reason, the new Beta doesn’t like for you to have the old Atlas stuff on your PC (For those of you who don’t know what Atlas is, you are probably safe, but might want to check to see if you installed it some time this year).

I surfed a few forums because I couldn’t physically uninstall Atlas and found that if you were to download the most recent CTP (Community Technology Preview) of Atlas from Microsoft, and use it to repair the software, you can get it to uninstall.

So I tried it, by downloading the CTP here and going to Add/Remove Programs, clicking on the link for support information and pointing the repair to that file.

It worked for me and now I can get to work!

As many of you know, Vista, Microsoft’s new OS, will be released soon and with it a whole new UI. Well, I got a sneak-peek at the new UI on my own computer when I installed the Vista Transformation Pack earlier this evening. This new software actually changes your UI (don’t worry, it doesn’t make any changes in your programs) to match that of Vista.

So, I’ve been having fun tonight toying with this. It gives you the transparency in your windows, new toolbars and Start Menu and even changes your starting screen to give you a complete picture. My vote is in and I like the new UI!

By the way, if you want to try the Transformation Pack yourself, you can download it here.