June 20, 2011 ICANN Approves Historic Change to Internet’s Domain Name System. Plan to Launch New Generic Top-Level Domains Is Approved in Singapore.

“ICANN has opened the Internet’s naming system to unleash the global human imagination. Today’s decision respects the rights of groups to create new Top Level Domains in any language or script. We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind,” said Rod Beckstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN.

The subject of domain name registrations came up again into public view with ICANN announcement of new gTLDs rules and regulations.

News media reported yesterday that you can register any name you want for $185.000.00 and you have to hurry up because applications are accepted during three months only. The information is misleading and incomplete as usual in case of news involving Internet underlining principles.

In short gTLD is “global Top Level Domain” where TLD is .com .net .org or any other currently existing 22 gTLDs.

Applying for gTLD has nothing to do with Domain Name Registration.
Process of applying for gTLD makes sense for business that wants to become a “Domain Name Registrar”.

The sum of $185,000.00 is an application fee.
You need to pay $5,000.00 deposit.
New application period starts 12 January 2012 and ends 12 April 2012.
The process of approval may take anywhere from 8 to 18 months.
There are plenty of stringent rules and regulations.
Rejections are common.

The best page to get credible details on new gTLDs is the “Fact Sheet” page at

http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/factsheet-new-gtld-program-14apr11-en.pdf

Domain Name Registration is the process of registering domain name in a given TLD.
If you just want to have a domain name, you register it at your favorite Domain Name Registrar trough Domain Reseller like GoDaddy, 1and1, eNom and hundreds of others. Domain Reseller is usually not the Domain Registrar.

When you register “my-domain.com”, “my-domain” is domain part and “.com” is TLD.
The cost is around $10.00 per year. If the name if available, the registration is processed as soon as you can type your billing information. Then you own the “my-domain.com” domain name and have to host it somewhere or hoard it as many people do. There are many ways to use the domain names, but this will be subject for another day.

It has been reported by few people that Ping is “dead”.
Apple’s hopes to create a “social” service met with rejection and indifference.

Nobody, but me, embraced the new service trying to see what is was and how far it would get. I created Ping account the first day when the service was announced last year. My Ping is no more. I deleted it without regret. Nobody read it, nobody cared to make any comments. My favorite artists and songs were nowhere to be found. Bye Ping.

I do not have Facebook or Twitter account. It makes no sense to go with the crowd. Twitter is popular because of one persons bet or joke. Facebook is fading out. What happened to popular in the past Myspace and AOL ? Nobody is there anymore.

Amazing Google doodle today was dedicated to Les Paul.
The strings could be strummed by running the mouse over it. The sound was stereo. Strings on the left side produced the sound in the left speaker and the ones on the right in the right speaker.

What is more amazing you could record your strumming by pressing the black rectangle in the middle. I am not a musician, but you can play my doodle recording here http://goo.gl/doodle/4EwZx

Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009) known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations. Although he was not the first to use the technique, his early experiments with overdubbing (also known as sound on sound), delay effects such as tape delay, phasing effects and multitrack recording were among the first to attract widespread attention.

Les Paul was born Lester William Polsfuss outside Milwaukee, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, to George and Evelyn (1888–1989) (née Stutz) Polsfus. His family was of German ancestry. Paul’s mother was related to the founders of Milwaukee’s Valentin Blatz Brewing Company and the makers of the Stutz automobile. His parents divorced when he was a child. The Prussia family name was first simplified by his mother to Polfuss before he took his stage name of Les Paul. He also used the nicknames Red Hot Red and Rhubarb Red.

Is this “1″ fake or what?

You have to be blind or naive if you can not see anything wrong when looking at the official version of President Obama Certificate of Live Birth.

Check the page at the link below to see it for yourself.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/27/president-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate

For your forensic pleasures you may be able to download it from the official government blog.
I found it at the direct link below.

http://whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf

On YouTube there are plenty of videos demonstrating details of this blatant forgery.

The moral of the story is:
If you are exposed to public scrutiny and have something to hide, better hire top professionals in the trade who may be able to help you hide your secrets.

It would not be simpler to tell the truth?

Quoted from Epsilon web site.

IRVING, TEXAS – April 1, 2011 – On March 30th, an incident was detected where a subset* of Epsilon clients’ customer data were exposed by an unauthorized entry into Epsilon’s email system. The information that was obtained was limited to email addresses and/or customer names only. A rigorous assessment determined that no other personal identifiable information associated with those names was at risk. A full investigation is currently underway.
For Media Inquiries please contact Jessica Simon (212-457-7135, jsimon@epsilon.com)For Consumer Inquiries please contact Sarah Branam (303-410-5369, sbranam@epsilon.com)
* Updated April 4, 2011: The affected clients are approximately 2 percent of total clients and are a subset of clients for which Epsilon provides email services.

This is tragic!
Am I being pessimistic? – No.

So far I received apologetic email from Chase, Barclays, Best Buy, College Board, Target. It is tragic because most people do not understand what has happened and what will be happening soon. An avalanche of phishing emails is going to flood your email box if you do not act now to protect yourself.

The best way to deal with it is to change email address on each account. Delete breached email address. Do not use it anywhere and anymore. Forget it ever existed.

Each breached account has to get new unique email address.
No two accounts can share same email address.
Do not use same user name.
Do not use same password.

I changed all of my accounts, breached or not, to use randomly generated user names and passwords. Each account also got spanking new randomly generated email. Why randomly generated? Because it is simpler and there is no thinking involved, no “playing with numbers” and letters. Account names, passwords and email have nothing in common with each other.

Below are two interesting quotes from big name businesses.

Quote from Chase Bank email received 4/04/2011.

As a reminder, we recommend that you:
Don’t give your Chase OnlineSM User ID or password in e-mail.
Don’t respond to e-mails that require you to enter personal information directly into the e-mail.
Don’t respond to e-mails threatening to close your account if you do not take the immediate action of providing personal information.
Don’t reply to e-mails asking you to send personal information.
Don’t use your e-mail address as a login ID or password.

Great advice, but not everybody is thinking the same way.

Here is quote from FPL email received 3/31/2011.

Subject: “FPL: Reminder, your User ID has changed”
“At FPL, we are committed to improving the service we provide to you. We hope switching your User ID to the email address you first provided when you created your online account will help you access your account more easily.”

More easily for who? hackers and spammers?
What are this people thinking?
Who came up with this possibly fatal idea?

Stay tuned for more fatalistic news.
Need help with email problems – let me know.
I have few solutions that have worked for me and my clients for more than 15 years.