The ICANN looks to introduce tiered pricing for .biz, info and .org gTLD domain names

All domain name owners, in the world, count on the fact that every year, the domain name renewal price should be stable between 6$US and 12$US, depending on the related services.

The ICANN is currently looking to enact a tiered pricing policy that would allow registrars to charge whatever they decide to renew a .biz, .info or .org domain name.

Here’s the way this nightmarish scenario plays out.

You buy a given domain name and you build it up. Visitors come in larger numbers and you’re finally on the first page of the search engine results. You’re quite happy with the way things are going. Life is good.

Then, one morning, you get a message from your registrar requesting that you renew your domain name for another year, based on the ICANN’s newly approved tiered pricing and this means instead of paying, let’s say 10$US a year, you’ll be charged 75,000$US because your domain name is now associated with a web site that is getting more attention (all based on the sole registrar’s appreciation).

Is that the worst nightmare ever, or what?

The simple fact the ICANN is looking to go forward with this terribly bad piece of legislation shows it has little or no respect for 99.999% of us, loyal domain name registrants.

If you don’t act now and tell the ICANN it’s proposed plan makes no sense and threatens to litterally stiffle, freeze and kill any kind of innovation online, next Monday, it might be too late… so act now!

Here’s how, write a message to any of these Public Comment Forums using the corresponding email addresses. For instance, I wrote to the biz-tld-agreement@icann.org forum because I own excellent .biz names.

Don’t take any chances, the ICANN has a troubled history of lacking good judgement and unilaterally favoring “registrar” friends, in their previous decisions — act now or risk seeing the end of the internet, as we know it.

Tags: icann, domain names, domains, legislation, registrars, .biz, .info, .org

Encrypted PHP scripts are a nightmare

Just as the PHP programming language is gaining significant momentum as a solid platform to launch highly interactive and commerce-enabled applications, a huge threat is mounting against the initial spirit of community that helped PHP emerge so quickly: encryption.

The problem isn’t encrypted passwords with an MD5 hash functions, it’s the multiplication of affordable software-based or script-based solutions to fully encrypt the PHP code in every page, in free or commercial scripts.

At first, it may look like a good idea but after a while, you start to realize it’s a nightmare.

Let’s look at the issues.

On the upside, encrypting the PHP source code in web pages helps the developer protect his intellectual property, which is fine. This added protection for the publisher means the final user of this same “encrypted” script will -never- be able to modify a single bit of code!

Would you buy a PHP script if you knew that none of it can be modified to your liking? Unless you’re absolutely certain that you’ll never change a single pixel of a given script, buying an encrypted script is a losing proposition, for any sane buyer.

Furthermore, an encrypted script is -very dangerous- for any buyer because there’s no way to see what the script does, exactly. Does it secretly send information to third parties? Is there a private “backdoor” entrance? An encrypted script can hide anything and that’s a major security issue.

In the same line of thought, using an encrypted PHP script for any application where third parties can eventually be “abused” (in any way) leaves you open to a wide range of legal actions which could cost you multiples of whatever you thought you saved buying an “affordable” (because it was sold encrypted) PHP script.

Encryption profits to one party and only one: the seller (or publisher).

Buyers always loose so they should -never- buy encrypted PHP scripts.

In fact, it should be a standard request from buyers that no encryption be included in the script before any money is exchanged. If the seller prefers not to tell, you can assume “hidden code” or worse, encrypted code is included in his script.

Countless PHP enthusiasts and business users alike are being ripped off right now by encrypted PHP script sellers. By hiding the code, it’s also easier for the sellers to ship sloppy code that will never be properly updated.

Encrypting every bit of code also means the buyer can’t learn new way to code simple or complex queries using the PHP language, thus seriouly hindering the “community” effect from which, ironically, even the PHP script seller have vastly benefited from.

As a rule of thumb, any PHP script seller that encrypts his work doesn’t deserve your business because he’s putting his personal interests before yours, in every way.

PHP script encryption should be banned but until that happens, PHP script buyers worldwide should restrain from purchasing them and ask immediate reimbursements from the shady script sellers who included potential Trojan horses in the scripts they marketed as “secured”… which is another lie, until proven otherwise by a neutral third party (which -never- happens, anyway).

If encrypters are just too anxious to encrypt something, let them encrypt, for instance, Oracle query codes (being a commercial and somewhat already restrictive language) but not PHP, an open source programming language which is clearly “community oriented”.

Tags: encrypted php, encrypted php scripts, hash functions, md5, php encryption, php scripts

Yahoo! Search’s Site Explorer gets an update

Yahoo has joined the “beta” bandwagon with an updated release of it’s truly useful (and free) Site Explorer online tool to help publishers (and everyone else) see what links go to and come from any web site.

The neat categories are displayed in such a way that even a “novice netizen” will find Site Explorer fun and rather easy-to-use… à la Google, if you will!

Here’s a short list of featured novelties, for this recent upgrade (August 8, 2006):

• There’s more information about the sites you own, including “last crawled” date and more.
• Feed submissions are much smoother. You can submit RSS, Atom and URL lists, and manage all of them from one place. For authenticated sites, you can also track when they were submitted and processed.
• An Update Notification Web Service was added for you to notify Yahoo of feed or site updates, part of the popular Site Explorer API suite. Since these return the same data as the tool, it’s recommended to use them for automated applications.

The new interface, in and of itself, is perhaps the masterpiece, within the scope of this update — a lot more information is available through the smart and tasteful use of expandable results which instantly reduce clutter.

Add to that the much requested ability to download more URLs from sites you own (supported by a more robust authentication process) and you see why Site Explorer should be on your “explore-worthy” list of cyber-destinations.

In case you still haven’t tried the Site Explorer tool, go check what kind of results it returns for your web site… and then check your competitors’!

Tags: yahoo, site search, web sites, web crawling, web publishers, site explorer, notifications, api suite