You see, this past week, we brought down our secondary mailing server (the same server that provides service for our email marketing software) to upgrade its functionality and fix some of the problems that has been slowing it down. As a result, we discovered a hacking attempt from some folks in Turkey. Im sure this was just another bot hack attempt that is attempted on everyone that happens to be connected to the internet but it happened during our maintenance of our software and, somehow, managed to corrupt the database of a few different services.

Making a long story short, I sit here on a Monday morning, bleary eyed and frustrated with my line of work. Not a great way to start out the new year to say the least but I’m not going to let it dampen my new year’s spirit. We’re wrap up our work on it shortly and get back to what we do best: Providing damn good web development to our clients!!!

Happy New Year everyone!

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The internet as we know it is changing. We, as latin root language speakers, have enjoyed only domain names in our alphabet (such as www.abc123.com). This has been, in large part, due to the fact that the internet was pioneered by the United States (well, to be specific, the United States Military… sorry Al Gore, you did not invent it).

The ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers… the overlord for all domain names) is migrating is role to be more internationally friendly. As a result, you’ll start seeing domain names written in other language scripts such as Russian, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, etc.

This move to a more international governance of the internet has caused alarm for many. Largely, many American companies are concerned about losing the rights and privileges that they’ve enjoyed by having a more Western governed internet.

The explanation given by ICANN is that they shifted to a more international stance with the understanding that if they did not, smaller nets (often regulated or governed by individual countries) would start popping up which would be under no regulations of the ICANN and would, thus, reduce the importance of the existing internet.

So what does this mean for us? Well, not much initially. But I feel that in the next 5 years or so that you’ll start seeing a huge increase in domain names that we are unable to read (or even type on our keyboards for that matter). But, with all changes such as these, opportunities are presented to cater to this new market and even prosper further. So, ask yourself, how is YOUR business affected by this? The answers and opportunities may surprise you.

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Had a great time with it and looking forward to next year’s costume…

Here are a couple other very unique and fun costumes that came about this year:

My wife as Tobias Funke from the now defunct TV show “Arrested Development”:

My wife

The ORIGINAL Tobias Funke

Bacon and Eggs

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice...

Lydia from Beetlejuice.

Me, Devil, Circa: I dont know how long ago at this point.

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That's me, on the left, with my authentic Bolivian dance costume... for last Halloween.

Halloween has always been a fun time of year for me. It seems that its just a darn good excuse to dress up and play the role of someone else.

As a kid, I was obsessed with ninjas. It seems I was dressed up as some form of ninja for about 5 years straight. But before that, I was much more imaginative in my costume selection (well, to be fair, my mother was much more imaginative in helping me put together my costume). One year I was a knight, complete with silver spray-painted plywood shield and wooden sword. Another year I was Superman which included blue, ballet tights and a homemade cape.

It was from about 15 years old until I was in my late 20s that I really didn’t dress up at all. Other things really just seemed like they were more important. It’s only now, as I creep daintily into my 30s, that I’ve rediscovered the fun in dressing up for Halloween.

In 2007, my wife and I went to Bolivia for a couple of weeks. We brought back with us a couple of traditional Bolivian dance costumes. We had some concern, however, when we brought them back through customs. They were adorned with authentic horse hair, goat toenails, and other animal parts that should not be mentioned. Yet, they were authentic, which I loved.

Last year, my wife and I dressed up in these traditional costumes and had a great time (see picture). This year???? Well, my costume is ready. I’m so excited about my costume this year that I actually told my wife, “If I had thought of this before our wedding, I would have insisted on walking down the aisle with it on.” Yes, I’m quite excited about this year’s costume. Stay tuned to see what it is…

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Yes, the purpose of this image is to bolster my case for a Rottie... Michelle are you reading this?

As many of you know, we lost our dear beloved Rottie, Bear, not too long ago. We was our best friend.

If you’ve ever loved and lost a canine companion, you’ll understand that our house now feels deplete of certain liveliness that only a dog can provide. While we’ve been grieving and mourning for quite some time now, we have also been asking ourselves, “when is the right time to look for a new companion for us?”

Certainly, Bear is irreplaceable. But we are, at our core, dog people. We love those furry little guys and miss having one in our lives. We would never want to go out looking for a new puppy thinking that it would replace Bear. We would want to search for a pup that satisfies our love for dogs and owning dogs.

So, the friendly debate in the Roberson household has been, “when and what kind of puppy are we looking for?” While there’s really no easy answer to the previous two questions, we have rounded the “what kind” down to a couple dogs: Another Rottweiler, a Bernise Mountain Dog, or a Bullmastiff (yes, we’re big dog people). The debate on what kind of pup shall rage for many more months I assume. Suffice it to say that I’m leaning towards another Rottie.

The “when” is a much harder question to answer. We had Bear for 10 years. He was a well traveled dog that adapted quite well to change. In short, we were lucky with him. I don’t think we can assume the same luck with our next pup. I think the plan is now that we get some of our travelling wishes done with over the next year (Ireland, South America, Asia, etc) and, when we finally settle for a bit, start a serious search for a new furry family member. With that said, the tide changes on the “when” debate on a daily basis. You may very well see some pics of a new pup on this blog before the end of the year.

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I guess this post should be more aptly named “Jets of the future…” as British inventor James Dyson (yes, the vacuum cleaner guy) is close to launching the world’s first bladeless fan to US and Australian markets.

What’s this have to do with websites and the online world? Well, nothing really. I just think it’s really, really cool and wanted you to know about it (it’s the enginerd coming out in me).

The fan works by forcing a jet of air out a narrow circular slit and then over an airfoil to generate an Air Multiplier effect that causes 119 gallons of continually flowing air to flow per second.

The benefit is elimination of the fan blades (a safety hazard) and continual flow of air as opposed to intermittent flow that fan blades cause. Plus, it’s just downright cool!

The cost of having the newest toy in your neighborhood? About $300.

To read more, follow this link: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5ba62a00-b755-11de-9812-00144feab49a.html

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I’m sure your initial thought is that hackers from countries like China, North Korea, and similar countries would wage the wars on our government’s websites  for sensitive information (CIA, NSA, etc). However, it’s important to realize that our country, and our world, has become dependent upon our websites to run our businesses. Should a country decide to wage cyber-war on another country, they aren’t only going to go after the sensitive government information, but they are going after the heart of our economy as well. They will do this by waging war on private websites in order to strike a blow to the country’s economy.

If you think this is a simple over-exaggeration, consider this. Our firm responded to a frantic call from one of our clients last year after being successfully hacked. The initial review of the security breach by our firm noted that the hackers simply changed the home page to boast the successful hack of the website. Further investigation by us found that the hackers corrupted most files on the website as well as installed software on the server in order to add this server to their “bot-net” (a bot-net is a number of servers, several thousand usually, that have been hacked and are turned into a server-zombie with it’s sole purpose to carry out orders by the hackers – usually sending viruses, SPAM and carrying out denial of service attacks on other sites).

The hack on our client’s server was reversed and they were back online within a few hours. We further researched the hack and traced it back to a user in North Korea. Just as our government is putting in place thousands of new professionals to thwart cyber-attacks on our country, other, malicious governments are hiring thousands of hackers to carry out these attacks.

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Bear and the wife...

I violated the first and most often violated cardinal sin of blog writing: Never take breaks.

Well, I did just that. Unfortunately, life got the better of me this Summer and I let my regular blog writings slip. However, know that there were good reasons for my hiatus. Good reasons? Yes. Pleasant reasons? Certainly not.

I won’t get into the details of what the distractions were this summer but I can summarize it with the following:

• The municipal sewer backed up into our basement
• We had some crazy torrential storm hid our area and knock out a bunch of trees in our neighborhood and in our yard
• And, most importantly, I lost my beloved best friend, Bear, to a battle with cancer.

So, Im picking myself up and hopping back in the saddle (yes, that was a violation of cardinal sin #85 in blog writing: “Thou shalt not use cliche’s in blog posts”)

Rest assured that I have much more to share with you guys. While the summer may have been quiet, it sure wasn’t inactive. The online world is evolving faster than ever before and I’m here to keep you in the know.

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To help celebrate the launch of our new service, during the week of May 11th through May 18th, each of our clients will be able to transfer an already owned domain name to us. This is a $14.95 value and will automatically add a year of registration on to your existing domain name registration. Keep watching here for details on how to redeem this free offer which will be released later this week.

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To be honest with you, my results came out pretty poor. I got caught checking my iPhone 4 times (my wife was keeping me honest), I HAD to make an emergency website fix which took up about 30 minutes, and I took a phone call once. This was all between the hours of 6pm and 8pm on Friday.

Once I realized how far gone I was, I turned my iPhone off. I spent the whole day Saturday just relaxing and having a couple beers with my friends and my wife. Overall, I’d consider Saturday a success! Friday, on the other hand, well, let’s pretend it didn’t happen.

So, let’s hear it. How did YOU do?

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