Technology

My company owns thousands of domains. Very few of them are registered with GoDaddy. Turns out that was a smart, unintentional business move. And that’s why we’re writing this review.

Our experience with GoDaddy has been a bureaucratic nightmare. They can literally freeze up your account and not give you access to domains that you’ve paid a lot of money for and that you’ve invested in developing if your company ever triggers their anti-fraud mechanism. And then your account could be locked up in-perpetuity if you’re unable (for legitimate reasons) to provide all the documentation that they request. To top it all off, when you call to talk to someone at GoDaddy about the frozen account, they tell you that they are not able to resolve fraud cases over the phone (at least the customer service guy we talked to and his supervisor said this) — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The conversations you have online are worth capturing, keeping, and referring back to over time. In fact, the things you share and the conversations you have about them gain weight, perspective, and importance over time, not just the moment you post them. Think about the time you announced you were getting married, or posted a photo of your newborn, or launched a project that changed your life on a social network and the conversations that ensued. That’s content you want to keep.

I’ve spent the last six years publishing observations, inquiries, and just bits and pieces of my life on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, and now Google+, and having conversations with my friends and readers about them. That’s why I built ThinkUp — via Smarterware

Earlier this year, MAKE Magazine’s Phillip Torrone wrote a provocative article asking Is it time to rebuild and retool libraries and make ‘techshops’? In other words, should libraries join some of the other new community centers that are being created (such as General Assembly which we covered yesterday) and become hackerspaces or makerspaces?

Yes!, says librarian Lauren Smedley, who is in the process of creating what might just be the first maker-space within a US public library. The Fayetteville Free Library where Smedley works is building a Fab Lab — short for fabrication laboratory — that will provide free public access to machines and software for manufacturing and making things.

So far, the Fab Lab is equipped with a MakerBot, a 3D printer that lets you print plastic pieces of your own design. The potential for 3D printers to revolutionize manufacturing as we know it is huge: imagine being able to design and then manufacture — or print — whatever you want. Moreover, imagine the tools of manufacturing being in the hands of everyone, not just giant factories (and remember, since this is a public library, this is really putting the technology in the hands of everyone, not just those that can afford a membership at a traditional hackerspace) — via redwolf.newsvine.com

If you plug in your iPad/iPhone/iPod then iPhoto or some proprietary image transfer application automatically opens even if you don’t want it to, because the device is regarded as a camera.

You can change this behavior by using Apple’s Image Capture utility to set defaults for each device — via Mac OS X Hints

Australian link-saving start-up Trunk.ly will be integrated into Delicious.com after being purchased by AVOS Systems, the company created by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, but the integration will come at a cost.

With AVOS purchasing Trunk.ly, Dong appears to have received his wish, after he and co-founder Tim Bull spoke with Hurley and Chen.

It became clear from the first discussion with Trunk.ly’s founders that our visions for the future of bookmarking and discovery were closely aligned, said Hurley. Their technology and insights will accelerate link-saving and searching capabilities in Delicious.

However, the acquisition has come at a cost for Bull and Dong.

As part of the deal, Trunk.ly will be discontinued, with the site immediately closing its new sign-ups and its existing users being given two months to migrate their links to other services, including Delicious. In addition, since Bull and Dong will be working full-time on Delicious, they will have limited time to spend on support for their former users. Especially since they also dedicate their time to numerous other projects they are involved in or giving back to the start-up community — Bull currently helps run a meet-up group on big data and analytics problems called Data Melbourne and is a mentor for PushStart and AngelCube — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Fuji Xerox is taking the last engineering steps towards implementing a bring-your-own-computer model, with the IT team currently running a pilot with 50 employees.

Fuji Xerox Australia CIO Information Services, Craig Gibbons, said that he hopes to have 300 staff using their own computers for work within a couple of months. To do this, he’s using Citrix thin client software and is currently deciding between two mobile device management products: MobileIron and Good for Enterprise.

If we’re going to give our employees preference and choice then they’ll enjoy going to work, he said, also pointing out the environmental benefits of such a scheme.

It’s not very green for them to have their own computer at home, a laptop and the computer I give, he said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

An attendee of Google’s Creative Sandbox event held at Carriageworks in Sydney this week snapped a cheeky picture showing the Wallet’s prepaid card service being used on a Commonwealth Bank-supplied test EFTPOS unit.

Officially, Google has said that the Wallet service is a US-only trial for a limited number of customers, but it’s no secret that discussions around NFC-based payments are being held with the web giant down under.

At the launch of the Commonwealth Bank’s Kaching! mobile payments service, chief marketing officer Andy Lark told ZDNet Australia that he’s pursuing a partnership with Google for its Wallet service — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Sources close to Adobe that have been briefed on the company’s future development plans have revealed this forthcoming announcement to ZDNet:

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates — via redwolf.newsvine.com

In the past few days several Brazilian ISPs have fallen victim to a series of DNS cache poisoning attacks. These attacks see users being redirected to install malware before connecting to popular sites. Some incidents have also featured attacks on network devices, where routers or modems are compromised remotely.

Brazil has some big ISPs. Official statistics suggest the country has 73 million computers connected to the Internet, and the major ISPs average 3 or 4 million customers each. If a cybercriminal can change the DNS cache in just one server, the number of potential victims is huge.

Last week Brazil’s web forums were alive with desperate cries for help from users who faced malicious redirections when trying to access websites such as YouTube, Gmail and Hotmail, as well as local market leaders including Uol, Terra and Globo. In all cases, users were asked to run a malicious file as soon as the website opened — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Open Mobile Summit John Donahoe, CEO of eBay, has said that the concept of e-commerce is dead and buried, since consumers really don’t care about where they buy, so long as they get the cheapest price.

Speaking at the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco, Donahoe said that the increasing use of mobile technology had blurred the barrier between e-commerce and regular retail to such an extent that the former term was essentially meaningless. Now consumers are walking into retail stores, and using their phones to identify better prices for goods they like, and will use either online or offline purchasing to get the price they want — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Ending a service it has offered for well over a decade, AOL is shutting down its free LISTSERV-based mailing-list hosting operations, the company told mailing list administrators.

If your list is still actively used, please make arrangements to find another service prior to the shutdown date and notify your list members of the transition details, an email notice sent out by AOL stated. If you are no longer actively using this service then no other action is required — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Users of Google Map links for their websites will be charged for heavy usage of the service, it has been revealed.

From 1 January 2012, Google will charge for the Google Maps API service when more than the limit of 25,000 map hits are made in a day.

Websites, especially travel firms, use Google Maps to link customers to a view of the destinations they inquire about.

Google is rumoured to be charging $4 per 1,000 views in excess of the limit.

Google maintains the high limit of 25,000 free hits before charging will only affect 0.35% of users — via redwolf.newsvine.com