TJantunen.com

Just a few days ago, I conducted a poll to see how many domains you owned that were just laying dormant. That is, domains you purchased but simply were not doing anything with. So far, the results point to most people having between 1-5 dormant domains just laying around. I have a few domains myself that I don’t want to pay for anymore but instead of letting them go gracefully, here are a few ideas for putting those domains to good use.

• Use As A Prize – Hold a contest and use your domains as prizes. Domain transfers are usually a painless process

• Flip Them – Domain Flipping is the process of buying a domain or website, fixing it up and selling it for a profit. So if you have a somewhat good domain name, slap on a CMS, add some relevant content for a niche and then try to sell the site.

• Auction It Off – Domain registrars such as GoDaddy have an entire auctioning system for auctioning off domains. Let the domain go to the bidder with the highest amount.

• Outright Sell It – If you know a friend who could use a domain name or if its relevant to their niche, offer to sell it to them for a discount price. This is how I obtained a domain which so far, I’ve put to good use.

• Redirect Them – Instead of having the domains publish a parking page from the registrar, configure the domain to redirect to another domain of your choosing.

• Park And Monetize – Create your own HTML parking page with your own advertising on it such as AdSense and monetize the domain.

• Aggregator – You can use plugins such as FeedWordPress which will update your blog through RSS Feeds essentially creating an autoblog or an aggregator. However, this method requires caution as you certainly don’t want to be looked upon as a splogger.

• Just Keep The Domain And Do Nothing – If you can afford to keep paying the registration fee, you can always keep the domain in safekeeping until an idea hits you in the face

• Lifestreaming – Almost the same as creating an autoblog but this time, the content that you aggregate onto the site is yours. You can aggregate your Twitter account, Facebook, or anything that has an RSS feed into this site to create a one stop shop of your activity on the web.

Domain Auctioning/Selling Services:

Moniker
Sedo
GoDaddy Auction House
Bido
SitePoint Marketplace
Webhosting Talk Advertising Forum

Conclusion:

The ideas and list of resources doesn’t have to end here. Add your thoughts and ideas to the comments below. I’m particularly interested in hearing about your experience in selling domains through any one of the services I mentioned above.

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Once again, there’s been an outage at Google, this time rather than labeling all sites as malware, it was GMail, the free web-based mail system from the internet behemoth that stopped providing personal and business users with its services. Is this Google playing with our emotions, withholding favors and giving us a taste of what things will be like when it’s gone? Perhaps.

The system seems to be back online now. GMail and Google Docs were affected although Google Reader and Google Calendar stayed up all the while, it seems.

There’s a lesson to be learned here, though, especially for businesses that rely on Google’s systems for their day to day operations – don’t!

If you’re relying on a single company like Google, with no contingency or backup for your email, then you could lose out should there ever be a longer-standing fail than today’s GMail outage.

While the outage seemed to be short-lived, some bloggers and twitter users are still reporting problems with mobile access.

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Check out this cool Hackintosh mod from modder Widefault, the Hackintosh Junior.

This tiny Hackintosh Junior stands 5.5 inches tall by 7 inches wide by 5 inches deep, which explains why Widefault calls it ‘Junior’ as it is extremely small.

Here’s a list of the parts used in the Hackintosh Junior:

• Aaeon Gene-9310 3.5″ Embedded board, 4″ x 5.75″
• Intel Core Duo T2500, board will support up to a Core 2 Duo T7600 2.33GHz
• 2GB OCS DDR2-667
• Intel Pro 2200BG wireless with external antenna
• Seagate Momentus 5400.3 ATA drive

Head on over to Widefault’s website for lots more details and photos of this cool Hackintosh mod.

via Technabob

This is a Syndicated post from Geeky Gadgets.

Post from http://www.gadgettastic.com

The Hackintosh Junior

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Olympus has launched a new entry level DSLR, the Olympus E-620.

The Olympus E-620 is apparently the ‘The world’s smallest and lightest D-SLR with built in image stabilisation’, it features a 12.3 megapixel sensor and a 2.7 inch LCD display.

Here are the full specifications.

• The world’s smallest and lightest D-SLR* with Built-in Image Stabilisation and a portable creative studio!
• Easy-to-apply Art Filters for enhanced creativity (Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pale&Light Colour, Light Tone, Grainy Film, Pin Hole)
• Multiple-exposure function with LCD monitor display of current view on top of previously captured image
• During Live View shooting a choice of 4 different aspect ratios (4:3,3:2,16:9,6:6)
• 12.3 Megapixel Live MOS sensor
• High sensivity (ISO 100-3200)
• Spotless photography with a strong dust reduction system
• Qualified image processing with new TruePic III+
• Built-In flash (GN12) & wireless flash control directly from the E-620 Body
• Face & Background Control for beautifully balanced exposures of foreground subjects and background scenery
• Comfortable viewing with Autofocus Live View
• 6,9cm/2,7″ Multi-angle HyperCrystal III LCD with Live View for greatest flexibility and real-time monitoring
• Built-in I.S. with max. 4 steps efficiency
• Great image performance and large variety of bright dedicated-to-digital lenses thanks to Four Thirds Standard
• High-precision, 49-zone metering system
• Auto gradation adjustment to prevent blown highlights and blocked-in shadows
• Live simulation function (effective monitoring)
• Pre-control over White Balance & exposure compensation
• Preview of shadow adjustment technology (SAT) for maximum image results
• 5x/7x/10x magnified view for precise focusing
• Ergonomic design of body, control buttons and GUI for easy operation
• AE/AF lock functionality for individual customisation
• Accurate White Balance with two sensors
• High-speed data writing and lossless compression for quick processing
• Optional power grip ideal for portrait shooting and long battery life
• USB 2.0 High Speed
• Shadow Adjustment Technology adjusts dark areas in images.
• Precise focusing
• High-speed data writing
• Dual slot for CF and xD-Picture Cards

The Olympus E-620 will go on sale in May for about $699.

Olympus via Akihabara News

This is a Syndicated post from Geeky Gadgets.

Post from http://www.gadgettastic.com

Olympus E-620 DSLR

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Imagine a future where we no longer have a large LCD or Plasma TV cluttering up our living room, instead OLED wallpaper which delivers our content direct onto the wall.

Engineers at Toshiba in Japan are on their way to making OLED TV Wallpaper, which will allow you to wallpaper any wall you choose with a very thin OLED screen.

“The wallpaper uses light that has been redirected by an ultra-fine grating that is fabricated by self-assembled nano particles.” It would seem that the effect might be similar to that of a Fresnel lens like those used in traffic lights, amplifying the intensity without requiring additional energy.”

It certainly sounds like an interesting idea, imagine being able to paper a 100 inch screen on your wall, that would be the only chance I would have of getting a screen that size in our house.

Inventor Spot via Gadget Venue

Image Credit: Tresling

Post from http://www.gadgettastic.com

Toshiba OLED TV Wallpaper

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Carol Bartz, the new CEO at Yahoo, clearly doesn’t believe in letting the grass grow under her feet. Six weeks into the job, and she has taken the axe to some of the top execs at the internet portal in order to turn the business around.

For most of this week speculation has been rife about an announcement that would result in a major shake up at the top end of the company. Well that has now come to pass.

Being given the order of the boot, or I should say, resigning is chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen, who just a few weeks ago sat by Ms Bartz’s side during the company’s earning’s announcement. And just yesterday he was shilling for Yahoo at the Goldman Sachs Technology conference in San Francisco and talking about the door still being open to a search deal with Microsoft.

I was intrigued to learn that he was getting paid a salary of $500,000 (£352,000) according to the company’s most recent disclosures about exec compensation.

Also leaving is Yahoo’s mobile lead Marco Boerries who has family back in Germany.

Neeraj Khemlani, who ran the news and information division is jumping ship to Hearst. That’s the same company that owns the San Francisco Chronicle which faces the prospect of being shut down because of financial losses of $50m (£35m).

Ms Bartz has also done a bit of streamlining at the top and slimmed down the confusing hierarchy. I for one have always been lost on who does what because there seemed to be so many execs and a myriad of management layers that all appeared very similar.

A few top names are being given a big bump up under the new regime. Chief technology officer Ari Balogh, whom I have met a few times and strikes me as a very cool guy with an easy manner, has been made head of all products.

Hilary Schneider who runs the advertising side of things, and who seems to me to be one very capable lady, is now head of North America. An international head is still to be appointed.

And in terms of getting the word out on the street, especially Wall Street I suspect, there is a new marketing head in the shape of Elisa Steele who comes from NetApp, where Ms Bartz is also a board member.

The boss of HR is a guy called David Windley who previously worked in HR for Microsoft. Mmmm? Sorry, I am just being mischievous because so many people who work and have worked at Yahoo have also worked at Microsoft and vice versa.

There is to be a new head of customer advocacy to “help us better hear the voice of the customer” said the new CEO.

It seems Ms Bartz has embraced the role of chief blogger with her blog entitled “Getting our house in order.” In her post, she wrote “People here have impressed the hell out of me. There’s so much great energy and frankly lots of optimism. But there’s also plenty that has bogged this company down.

“So today I’m rolling out a new management structure that I will believe will make Yahoo a lot faster on its feet. For you using Yahoo! every day it will better enable us to deliver products that make you say, ‘Wow’,” wrote Ms Bartz.

Analyst reaction was mixed with Ross Sandler of RBC Capital Markets noting that: “This is what Carol did at Autodesk. That’s one of her biggest strengths and why she was brought in.”

However Barclays analyst Dough Anmuth said he is: “Increasingly concerned about Yahoo’s thinning management ranks and about who internally will help guide new CEO Bartz as she moves deeper into the internet space and soon makes critical strategic decisions for the company.”

Investors though seemed to like the changes with shares closing at $12.98 (£9.14), up 50 cents or 4% on a day when most stock indexes were down.

As a sidebar, I should note that the BBC also benefits from Yahoo’s shake up. John Linwood, who left his senior executive role at Yahoo last month, will join the corporation as its new CTO, a new role at the BBC, starting in April.

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I’ve just come off the phone with Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, who has been explaining a little more about the changes taking place at the social network, which are designed to “democratise” how the website behaves and operates in the future.

“Openness”, “transparency” and “dialogue” were the three words he used more than any other in the course of my five-minute slot with him.

Facebook has responded quickly and boldly to what Zuckerberg himself called a “firestorm” from users after the firm had made changes to its terms of services without informing any of its users.

“We should have been communicating more broadly. Being as transparent as possible is a really valuable thing,” said Mr Zuckerberg in relation to that recent controversy.

“We made a few mistakes,” he admitted.

Some people might be wondering what the fuss is exactly about? After all, nobody ever reads the terms and conditions or terms of service documents on a website.

And that is part of the issue. As more and more of our lives are shifting to the network and as we hand over increasingly huge chunks of personal data to faceless websites important questions have to be asked about what happens to that information.

Social networks are becoming a mirror to not just our public lives but also to our private lives. And there is huge value in what we are reflecting on those sites – both to ourselves and to advertisers.

Organisations like Privacy International are asking the important questions about how that data is being handled and what rights we have as users once we sign up to services.

During the most recent controversy, Simon Davies from the privacybody accused Facebook of a “breach of faith”.

He is now applauding the move to democratise decision-making within Facebook and calling on others to follow suit.

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In the last couple of days, I’ve talked to three people about the future of music – the head of digital at the world’s biggest music label, a very wired music consumer, and an executive at a fast growing new streaming service. I asked them all the same thing – will the arrival of that new service Spotify change the music industry?

Unsurprisingly, Roberta Maley from Spotify was convinced that this was a game-changer, not just another me-too service. She did give me some new figures on its growth – 250,000 UK subscribers, 800,000 worldwide, with Sweden and Spain the biggest markets.

But she was less forthcoming about two vital issues for the future of the company – the split between those who listen to the ad-supported service for free and those who pay for an ad-free service, and the possibility that users could listen on the move. Spotify is keen to have a “mixed economy” with new arrivals drawn in by the free service then migrating to the £9.99 per month subscription deal to avoid the ads.

Right now you only hear one thirty second advert every twenty minutes, as compared with 12 to 14 minutes per hour on commercial radio, but Spotify plans an increase to two and a half minutes per hour soon. The trick will be to have enough advertising to make some money and convince existing users it is worth upgrading to the premium service – but not enough to put off those trying out Spotify for the first time. Roberta wouldn’t confirm the story that Spotify is working on an iPhone application – I understand some work has been done, but mobile music is still some way off.

Rob Wells is Senior Vice President, Digital, for Universal International – in other words he is in charge of making sure the world’s biggest music business finds a way to prosper in a digital age which has so far been pretty disastrous for his industry. When we spoke over a Skype connection to Los Angeles, he seemed pretty enthusiastic about Spotify – but keen to put it in the context of a whole range of new services, such as Nokia’s Comes With Music and Sky’s upcoming broadband service. He says consumers are changing, “away from the per-transaction model, where they buy a body of work, and into a subscription model where they pay for access to all music. That subscription could be bundled into the cost of a mobile phone contract or a broadband connection.”

He was obviously keener that Spotify users upgrade to the premium service – the labels earn a bigger share of the revenue that way – but was also hoping that a free service would wean music fans off the file-sharing habit. “The consumers are already familiar with not paying for their music when they download it off the internet. So we have to do more and more interesting deals to make them listen to music in a legitimate format where we earn revenue.”

But it is Dan Moon whose views really matter. He is the very model of a modern music fan. He has put all his CDs away, and has about 30Gb of music stored on his laptop, which he streams over his wireless network to an amplifier and then to a pair of big speakers in his attic flat in London’s Maida Vale. But he has also started using Spotify, mainly to explore some new music rather than listen to stuff he already knows.

Dan says he used to go to file-sharing sites when he was a teenager – but now prefers to buy his music in the form of downloads from iTunes to be sure of a quality product. He’s not entirely sure whether Spotify will kill file-sharing: “If I were a heavy file-sharer, there would be a pull on the usability front. Spotify looks nice, quite pretty, while file-sharing is a bit laborious.” But he says it’s difficult to beat the likes of Limewire on one front: “There isn’t a better model than free – with file-sharing there’s no adverts either.” And the fact that he can’t take his Spotify music with him is another downside: “When I’m on the tube there’s no Spotify. I’m quite tethered to my laptop. It’s not portable.”

Spotify won’t change the music industry on its own – and still has to prove it can attract both a big crowd and a lot more advertisers. But, along with a host of other new services, its arrival does seem to herald a change in the way we view music. Rob Wells of Universal thinks the fact that his industry has cut deals with the likes of Spotify shows that it has turned a corner: “These new deals show that the industry is maturing, the market is maturing and consumers are willing to pay for music.”

Maybe. But let’s wait and see what happens with the new U2 album, “No Line on the Horizon”, so important to the revenues of Universal. You can stream it on Spotify, you can pay for a CD or download – or you can go and get it from a file-sharing site for nothing. The choices music fans make will show whether an ailing industry really has found a profitable way forward.

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