.in (dot in) domain names were released for unrestricted registration to the general public on 16 Feb 2005. Before this, there was a 22-day (Jan 1-21) period called the Sunrise period during which Indian trademark holders could pre-apply for a .in domain name. It seems that after the registry opened up on 16 Feb at 12 pm, 24,000 domain names were picked up in the first hour!
I just registered my first .in domain name – www.maisnam.in. I registered it using GoodLuckDomain.in. Registration was easy and fast. My site went live in less than 30 minutes. The domain management interface was also good and I was able to change my nameserver settings without any problems. However, they do not provide any other DNS functions. The only catch about registering through GoodLuckDomain is that the payment page is not over https. But, it seems that payment is handled by NamesBeyond.com which does have an https certificate from Verisign.
– .IN Registry (Official site)
– List of Accredited Registrars
Actually, I wanted to register my .in domain name using Net4India or Directi since they are reputed companies.
But Net4India opened up live registrations late and when they did open up to live registration, I found out that the minimum registration period is 5 years. I guess they have a lot of corporate customers and so they do not really care about the general public who wish to register for only one year.
Directi’s live registration is still not active. And it seems Directi and its resellers had problems registering .in domains for the past few days. And many of those resellers actually had to register using GoodLuckDomains. [ More info ]
Update (3:30 AM 2/19/2005): The main Directi.com website does not allow live registrations of .in domains yet. But it seems you can register .in domain names by going to http://manage.directi.com/. I have not tried this yet and so I am not sure. But if anyone has registered a .in domain name using the above manage.directi.com URL, please let me know.
Serial burglar caught by webcam
This is really interesting!
A house burglar in the U.K. was caught after a webcam on the owner’s computer recorded images of him carrying out the raid. [news clip]
A home computer has been given the credit for putting a 19-year-old serial burglar behind bars.
Stills of serial raider Benjamin Park, 19, of Cambridge, were sent to an email address so even when he stole the computer, the images could be found.
The burglary – in pictures
And here is a comment from the police:
“It was a pleasure to show him the pictures and see his expression when we interviewed him.”
What is amazing about the incident is that the computer emailed the images even as it was being stolen!
_________
Images Courtesy: BBC
Six Apart Redesign
If you did not notice it yet, http://www.movabletype.org/ now takes you to a new site – http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/, which is part of the newly redesigned Six Apart website.
As of now, http://www.typepad.com/ does not take you to the new typepad site (http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/) yet.
Previously I did wonder what “Six Apart” means. After reading through the page, I learnt that it is the number of days between the birth dates of Mena and Ben Trott, the founders of the company.
While I was there, I glanced through the history of Six Apart. It was interesting to read how the company grew from a two-person hobby to a 60-person company spanning three continents.
Six Apart is definitely a company to watch for in the days ahead.
Related Links:
– 02/15: New Site Launches (Six Apart)
– 02/11: Should Yahoo Buy Six Apart? (Internet News)
– 01/17: Yahoo to acquire Six Apart? (Internet Stock Blog)
182,505 Gmail invites available at isnoop.net
There are currently (1:15 PM 2/12/2005) 182,505 Gmail invites available at the isnoop.net gmail account spooler. If you have not got your Gmail account yet, now is the time to get it! 🙂
Get your Gmail invite: http://isnoop.net/gmail/
After you can get an account, please return the favor by sending invites back to gmail@isnoop.net when you get them.
The upsurge in Gmail invites is maybe due to the fact that Gmail has started providing 50 invites to each of its users instead of the usual 5 invites.
Update (7:31 PM 2/12/2005) It seems there were 1.5 million invites available in the isnoop.net gmail account spooler on Feb 9, 2005! I think the number has one extra zero, because the isnoop.net website says that it has distributed 258,865 invites since Sep 13, 2004. And the current number of available invites is 186,046. So, that would mean that there have been a total of 444,911 invites on the website (distributed + current) till now. So, I guess Aaron Swartz meant 0.15 million and not 1.5 million. But anyway, 0.15 million is also a whole lot of invites!!! Go grab one! 🙂
Related Links:
– 06/12/2004: Got my Gmail account
EPIC 2014 – GoogleZon, Google Grid
If you have not watched it already, go ahead and watch it. The story is definitely “fascinating, amusing and unnerving”. Have a look.
– http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/
– Pick a random mirror
“In the year 2014,The New York Times has gone offline. The Fourth Estate’s fortunes have waned. What happened to the news? And what is EPIC?”
The ‘Evolving Personalized Information Construct’ (EPIC) is a look at how the media industry might be like in 2014. It is an 8 minute flash presentation by the Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson.
It also talks about GoogleZon (the alliance of Google and Amazon in 2008) and the Google Grid.
Related Links:
– News.com article
Aishwarya Rai on David Letterman’s “The Late Show”
Watched Aishwarya Rai on David Letterman’s “The Late Show“. She looked absolutely gorgeous! She was asked questions about Bollywood, her new film and why she still lives with her parents! Ash was also asked the “living with parents” question in her previous interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes (mentioned below).
The rediff.com article incorrectly mentioned the date as Feb 9. Because the show was on Feb 8 at 11:30 pm EST (which is technically Feb 9 in India, though). It’s good that I checked the CBS website today because I was assuming that the show is tomorrow. I would have totally missed it!
I missed the previous interview she had on CBS’s 60 Minutes (7 pm Jan 2, 2005). So, I decided to make sure I would surely watch this one. But I did get to watch a short video clip (link1 | link2) later.
Update (11:07 PM 2/15/2005):
Here is the list of the links to the complete videos for the two shows.
Aishwarya Rai on David Letterman’s “The Tonight Show” (Feb 8, 2005)
– Link 1
(Note: Do not click directly. The link will not work. Right click and choose “Save Target As”.)
Aishwarya Rai on “60 minutes” (Jan 2, 2005)
– Link 1 (AishwaryaRaiWorld.com)
– Link 2 (Mahiram.com)
Update (2:33 AM 2/9/2005): Found a link to the longer (maybe full?) video of the 60 Minutes interview. Page | Video
Ash is currently in the US to promote her latest film – “Bride And Prejudice“. I won’t be watching that movie though. I heard that it is boring.
Related Links:
– Rediff.com article
Updates:
– 2/15/2005: Discussion about Ash on the Feb 8 David Letteman show
– 2/9/2005: Ash does fine on Letterman (Rediff.com)
– 2/9/2005: Ash: Actors are like gypsies (Rediff.com)
– 2/9/2005: Not Ash
Google Video
Google has introduced a new service called “Google Video”. This engine (still in beta) enables users to search the text of TV shows. Right now, video playback is not included.
If you know the name of the TV program, you can use the “title” syntax. For example: title:tonight show
It also provides timings of upcoming episodes for a specified show and zipcode.
Yahoo also launced the beta of its video search engine on Jan 15, 2005.
More info:
– Google Video
– news.com article
– About Google Video
Preventing comment spam – the “nofollow” tag
Google has joined the initiative to fight/prevent comment spam. It has introduced a new tag called “nofollow”. When Google comes across a hyperlink with this tag, it will ignore these links and not give any credit to them.
Read more about it in the Google Blog post (Jan 18, 2005).
Movable Type already supports comment moderation i.e. comments do not show up online till they are approved. But even deleting the unapproved comment spam is a real headache. I get about 20 to 30 comment spam on an average each day. Movable Type released a Guide to Comment Spam some days back (Jan 4, 2005).
Update (09:30 PM 1/20/2005): Have installed the MT nofollow plugin. Now, the links in the comments will automatically have the “nofollow” tag added to them. So, Google and other search engines will ignore those links.
Update (12:52 PM 1/21/2005): Read related article at news.com
UT webmail quota is now 100 MB
The UT webmail quota has been increased to 100 MB from the previous 20 MB. This increase was supposed to have been implemented on Jan 1, 2005. But till yesterday, my quota was still 20 MB. Just checked now, and my webmail quota is now 100 MB. Yes!!!
I have a Gmail account but I don’t use it too often. Reason is that there is no IMAP access. And I just can’t live without IMAP! 😉 But if Gmail decides to offer IMAP, I am even prepared to pay for it. 1000 MB email space with IMAP access? That would be just awesome! 🙂
Update (6:14 PM 1/28/2005): There is an article in the Daily Beacon about the increase in the Webmail quota.
The Leonardo Bridge Project
LEONARDO PROJECT