When clients give me computers that have lots of dirt and smudge on the screen, I grab iKlear
Now I also use iKlear
Bogus Domain Name Expiration Notices
As a owner of several websites, I regularly get misleading domain expiration notices from companies that are not my domain registrar.
Sometimes the notices are about domains that really are expiring soon. Today, I got a notice of expiration notice from a place called domainregisstra.com from verranhaddad@sellstones.com. While the email never stated the expiration of the domain, it implied one by stating a “due date” of May 13, 2011. The email text stated:
Attn :
This solicitation is to inform you that it’s time to send in your registration for [mywebsite.com]. DRS is a submission service and search engine ranking provider.
Failure to complete your search engine registration by May 13, 2011 may result in the cancellation of this offer (making it difficult for your customers to locate you using search engines on the web).
Your registration includes search engine submission for [mywebsite.com] for 1 year. You are under no obligation to pay the amount stated above unless you accept this offer by May 13, 2011. This notice is not an invoice. It is a courtesy reminder to register [mywebsite.com] for search engine listing so that your customers can locate you on the web.
So I looked up my domain at whois.com and found out the real expiration date of April 20, 2015.
The main scam here is that this looks like a renewal notice from my registar. But it’s from a company that wants to move me to a different registrar. If I was going to renew my domain, I’d just go to my real registar.
The price quoted from this email is $75 per year. That’s a scam considering that places like hover.com and godaddy offer domain registrations for $5 to $15 per year. The only claimed extra value is a “search engine submission”, which is really a worthless service. If your site is brand new and no search engine knows about it you can submit it to Google and submit it to Bing for free.
Download Flash Videos
If you want to download Flash videos, such as from YouTube, there are many options. My favorite way is to use the Firefox plug-in called Download Flash and Video. It actually can download anything that’s Flash including Flash games.
Install it like any Firefox Add-on by going to Tools – Add-ons – Get Add-ons. Once installed you will see a down arrow at the the bottom right hand of Firefox. It turns blue when there is content on the current page that you can download. It’s simple.
After downloading a video, you can use Handbrake to change the video to another format you might need.
iPhone 4 at Clarendon Virginia Apple Store
The line this morning was over 4 hours long at the Apple store in Clarendon, Virginia. Apple gave us water and a guy from Whole Foods came around with carts of food. The Whole Foods guy would hand out food, then a napkin saying, “There’s a nap for that.”
New eBay fees raise prices yet again
eBay has recently announced new seller fee prices to take effect at the end of March. While they announced “lower insertion fees”, if you are selling something that sells for between $50 and $1500, your total fees will end up much higher.
The new fee structure will have no listing fees for the typical auction seller. The old way was usually $0.15. Both assume you start your auction at $0.99. The old final value fees had a tiered structure where you pay 8.75% for the first $25 and then 3.5% for $25-$1000 and so on. The new fees have a flat 9% final value fee but with a maximum of $50.
The following table shows how the total fees will change. It assumes you start your auction at $0.99.
| Sale Price | Old Fee | New Fee |
|---|---|---|
| $10 | $1.03 | $0.90 |
| $25 | $2.43 | $2.25 |
| $50 | $3.21 | $4.50 |
| $100 | $4.97 | $9.00 |
| $250 | $10.22 | $22.50 |
| $500 | $18.97 | $45.00 |
| $1000 | $36.47 | $50.00 |
| $1500 | $43.96 | $50.00 |
| $2000 | $51.46 | $50.00 |
So unfortunately, most items you sell will have much greater fees, especially around the sweet spot range of $100-$500 where fees are about double to triple what they were. eBay has done this before where they announced the lowering of insertion fees but in reality it is an increase in total fees.