ui.com sells for $275k

That domain's a steal at that price. I thought it would go for a lot more than that.

Government records go missing

The same Government that want us all to have ID cards, is trying to create a national DNA database and wants to keep every bit of data possible about British citizens has managed to lose the personal records of 25 MILLION PEOPLE.

Yes, 25 million. Names, addresses, National Insurance numbers, dates of birth and bank details. It sounds like it contains details of anyone in the country who receives Child Benefit. The details were sent on 2 CDs/DVDs (?) in regular post and have disappeared. It's only now, a month after they were sent (and didn't arrive) that we are hearing about it.

Whether they have fallen into the hands of organised criminals, who could use these details to apply for loans etc. is not yet known, but then they wouldn't tell us anyway...

National database? ID Cards?

Just say no.

iPhone blogging

I'm just testing posting to my blog directly from my iPhone. It should
work , but who knows!!

Facebook continued

Well the application is out there. It's an Advent Calendar for facebook and can be found here (you will be asked to login if you are not already). Obvioulsy by it's nature, it doesn't do anything until December 1st, so please be patient!

But this app was a test really, and it has raised further things that I will do next time, such as store every facebook ID when someone installs the app (and remove them when they remove the app) so that I have a proper count of users. This time, I will only be storing the ID if and when they actually open their advent calendar.

It's been interesting to see the burst in activity and installs when the app hit the Facebook directory. Of course, now there are a few more advent calendars, but that's to be expected. It'ss be interesting to see what activity levels do on December 1st when people start opening their calendars.

The other amazing thing is just how broad Facebook is. We don't store the information, but we blip it past on a staus screen that monitors server activity (with a nice jingle bell sound of course!). We've got installs ALL over the world! Quite amazing, and changes some of our affiliate plans considerably...

Anyway, roll on December 1st...

Facebook application day 2

Well in between other tasks today I've finally got my Facebook app complete and working on a public facing server that Facebook can see. Well, I think it's working. I'm recruiting 3 or 4 friends to help test it first, but it's out there if anyone stumbles upon it.

The main problems have been to do with the Facebook caching model. I understand why they need to do it, but it's a bit of a nightmare to deal with at times. Eg. If you are going to post anything, such as an image, to the user's Facebook profile, then Facebook will cache the image (so that they don't serve up broken images). This means if you ever change the image, you need to get Facebook to recache it, or use a different filename. All possible, but another hoop to jump through.

One thing that I did get working is the ability to invite friends to use the application. This makes use of Facebook's standard page to handle these requests - "multi_friend_selector.php", so a little bit of code to pass the correct parameters in, and Facebook does the rest.

Facebook - Anti Social Ads

There's been a lot of talk about Facebook's new ad platform for "Social Ads". Well they've gone live and killed my ad campaign which was working fine! The Flyers Pro which were the previous PPC adverts on Facebook have been tarred for low CTR, well I had managed to create a set of adverts which were getting 4-8 times the CTR of usual adverts. This was great and allowed me to drop the CPC down to 8p or so. Bargain. And because they had such a good CTR, they got preference over other things and appeared to run almost immediately.

Well, the new system looks like it will be better, but the change in system means my CTR history is, well, history. And the format is slightly different, so I can't replicate what I did before. And there is less text allowable. And, and, and.

So they killed (my) ad campaigns :-( The new system seems to just not get any click through at all (or minimal) and I have no idea where they are being displayed. Net result = my leads go down and Facebook ad revenue goes down. I assume other advertisers are going to see the same.

Now. Just need to figure out how to get the new platform working in my favour!

Facebook part 2

Well, the development is going OK so far. If Facebook didn't keep throwing "An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host" errors at me for no apparent reason, it might go even better. I asusme that the sandbox servers are overloaded, as it works for a bit then stops.

Basically I have the structure in place, so I have:

• Section of FBML that displays on my profile page
• This clicks through to the main page which gives a kind of status
• Items on this page then click through to a more dteailed page which updates the database and the FBML section.

Nice. I've still got lots of bits to do on it, and even more graphics to purchase (iStockPhoto we love you!) or make myself (How can PaintShop Pro be better than PhotoShop for some small bits? I don't know, but it is!)

But I'm quite pleased with how that's gone so far. I can already just about see the finished item, ready for submission to the directory and hopefully MASSIVE takeup by the FaceBook community. A man can dream!

Facebook Application development

I dabbled briefly in making Facebook application a few months ago, but never really pushed it due to other commitments. What with recent new stories going on about how popular some Facebook apps get, and how much they can be sold for (!), I thought I'd give it another try.

My dev platform is .Net 2.0 with C# and SQL Server to back it up, all hosted on Windows 2003.

My idea is kind of time critical, so I need to start working on it now (well, after XP has installed it's latest updates and rebooted...)

Things I need to think about is how integrated into profiles is the app going to be? Is it just going to sit there, or should it add message to the user's news feed? Should it be shareable, and therefore send messages to friends? I need to think it through...

Anyway. We start here on 6th November with nothing written. No concrete plans, no installed users. Nothing. Except we have reserved a Facebook application name and got an API key to use.

Let's see if (a) I get the time to dedicate to this to get something up and running (b) and how many installed users we get before the end of the year if I get it done in time! :-)

Minicab sir?

The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again. Rather than pay £8 a day for London congestion charges, a growing number of Londonders are registering their cars as mini-cabs:

"Among the luxury vehicles on the list of shame are "17 Bentley Continentals, which cost £117,500 new, three £300,000 Maybach 62s and eight two-seater Mercedes-Benz SLs". Others apparently plying their trade include an Aston Martin DB7, two Maserati Quattroportes and eight Rolls Royce Phantoms."

Of course, some of these are likely to be owned by high end limo companies, and so would be telling the truth, but possibly not all of them :-)

And why not - £82 one off cost + £27 per year for a mini cab, or £8 per day (rising to £25 per day next October).

Cassette Tapes

In the car this morning taking my 11 year old to school, someone on the radio mentioned having Nirvana's Nevermind on cassette. A confused look crossed here face - "What's a cassette dad?". I explaine dthem as being those small plastic things with two wheels in the middle that we used to us in our old car. "Oh! Those things that break" was her response.

I feel old. :-)

When is cybersquatting NOT cybersquatting?

Let's get this straight - I'm not going to talk about trademark or typo cybersquatting here. Some people do that, most don't, and most domainers are at least attempting to clear up any trademark issues.

What I am going to talk about is those people who call anyone with any parked, undeveloped or under-developed domains a cybersquatter. The argument is usually revolves around wondering why the domainer should have such useful domains and not actually do anything with them. They feel that the domainer should be forced to give them up or sell them for a pittance.

There is one thing in common here, in that most of these people don't actually hold any real valuable domains themselves, either due to coming to the party late or simply being unable to pay the high prices that premium domains command.

But this whole feeling of theirs is irrational, even at a cursory examination. When you mention things like private number plates, they have no problems. When you mention land ownership they also have no problem. But domain names? They just simply don't get it. Just like the guy with CAR 1on his car won't give it to you, and the owner of a scrap of land being used as a car park in the middle of town won't sell it for peanuts, a domainer won't give their assets up cheaply.

Reasons why a domainer won't give it back/sell it for a pittance:

1. They own it. Not you.
2. It might get a huge number of direct type ins
3. It could well earn a fortune in PPC revenue
4. The name could be worth millions of dollars to the right buyer

So when you want to make an offer on a domain name, put it into context. There is only ONE of each domain. If the domainer sells it to you, they can't make another one the same. They sell it - it's gone. If the domain is premium, then so will the price be.