July 12, 2006

Internet tech: Our increasingly paranoid World. Well America :)

Hi All

Well My mission of let's setup some new web-hosts has taken some interesting turns :) 3 of the web hosts I tried to create an account with have responded to my emails. Here they are below :)

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Jumpline.com
Dear Mark,

The order did not pass our verification checks. The IP address that you ordered from did not match the order address.

You can resubmit the order from correct location of the IP or change the address on the order. We can have the order setup for you right away once it is resubmitted.
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So Essentailly because I am in Dubai and my card is registered in the UK they wont play with me! Either that or I can fly back to the UK and setup from there and then fly back (perhaps not eh)

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IPowerweb.com

Oh this one is good :)

Dear Valued IPower Customer
Thank you for contacting the IPOWER Billing Team and for your recent web hosting order. Unfortunately we are unable to process your order at this time due to verification. Due to the high number of fraudulent orders we are receiving, we have found it necessary to verify that the legal cardholder has placed the order. To proceed with the activation of your account, please fax a legible copy of the credit card listed on the order (sides are required; front and back), as well as a copy of the cardholder's identification (driver's license, passport etc.). Finally, be sure to note the domain name(s) on the fax for immediate resolution. Our fax number is (602)307-5438. ( or you may scan .JPG copies of the requested documentation, attatch, and reply)
We do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please know that these measures are taken to ensure your protection as a consumer. All credit card information provided to IPOWER is confidential. Also if you are unable to fax the verification you can scan the copies of your identification and make them into jpeg files under 1mb and email this information to billing@ipowerweb.com
If you do not wish to fax your information, you do have the option of us sending us a check or money order. Our billing address is listed below:

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So they will play with me but only after I have faxed over all the stuff they ask for, hmmm so much for the instant actiavtion mentioned on their site then huh!!! Not only that but this is for WEB HOSTING!! Anyone would think I am trying to order enriched uranium!

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Startlogic.com

They have not responded to any of my emails after 4 days now so god knows what they are doing!

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My conclusion! hmmm thats a tricky one Just use UK based hosts I guess as the American ones appear to becoming increasingly paranoid. Check this, monitor that, protect this, protect that. protect YOU from yourself. Yep Ive said it before but George Orwell was right.

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 1:53 PM | Comments (0) | Internet Tech | TrackBack

March 15, 2006

Internet tech: Talk and Digg

Here is a great site you can use for website research purposes. It's called Talk Digger and will help you to find, follow and display conversations evolving around a subject (URL).

It works like this: If you want to know who is talking about you, copy the URL, paste it in the TalkDigger search box at TalkDigger.com and hit “Dig it!” Cool

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 2:36 PM | Comments (0) | Internet Tech | TrackBack

March 7, 2006

Internet Tech: Moving Hosts

Never again :) For many reasons we decided to move hosts. Simple I thought NOT! It has taken over a week with no small amount of heartache transfering databases, Blogs and applications over. Anyway all appears to be well now and running smoothly (at last).

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 10:13 AM | Comments (0) | Internet Tech | TrackBack

February 1, 2006

Internet Tech: Old people and technology

I had to laugh the other day. I was at my good friend Jon's house and he mentioned that his grandad has a new mobile phone. The funny part is that he keeps his numbers on the back of the phone of a small piece of paper that is taped on :)

I think I can see a product that could be marketed to the older generation that struggles with technology. A notebook perhaps!

Mark.

Posted by Mark at 2:00 PM | Comments (0) | Internet Tech | TrackBack

April 18, 2005

Internet Tech: Fact or Fiction? You decide!

Where are we heading? Well this is certainly one view that might interest you somewhat!

EPIC

What are your thoughts on that?

Mark...

Posted by Mark at 2:24 PM | Comments (0) | Internet Tech | TrackBack

April 14, 2005

Internet Tech: Keyboards

Well I would'nt normally rave about a humble keyboard! But I just picked up my new Logitech Di Novo bluetooth keyboard and multimedia pad (with mouse) and it's so nice I had to rave about it.

I have always been a bit of a Microsoft man where keyboards and mice are concerned but not anymore. Considering the only way I can interact with my PC is through a mouse and keyboard then for me it has to not only look good but also feel good too, and boy does it feel good :)

Mark...

Posted by Mark at 3:13 PM | Comments (0) | Internet Tech | TrackBack

March 25, 2005

Internet Tech: Robots.txt

Now here is a subject thats close to me heart :) Having built no less than 3 robots from scratch I know a fair bit about the subject.

However This post is about another type of Robot altogether, our little spider bots that roam the net 24 hours a day. More specifically this post is about the robots.txt file and why you should have one.

Search engines will look in your root domain for a special file named "robots.txt" (http://www.15dn.com/robots.txt) The file tells the robot (spider) which files it may spider (download). This system is called, The Robots Exclusion Standard. The reason you want a robots.txt file is so you can exclude certain files/directorys from being spidered and indexed. Now why would you want to do that? Well essentially it will prevent pages that you dont want people to see popping up somewhere in a search engine. This is my robots.txt file here at 15dn

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /15dn Subscribe Pages/
Disallow: /Aff/
Disallow: /arp3/
Disallow: /Banners/
Disallow: /BonusBooksGiveAway/
Disallow: /Corey4StepsDownloadBin/
Disallow: /emailTemplate/
Disallow: /Flash/
Disallow: /FreeToSellDownLoadBin/
Disallow: /Funny/
Disallow: /Linkpage template/
Disallow: /MailMerge/
Disallow: /movabletype/
Disallow: /Spam/
Disallow: /wusage/
Disallow: /En/
Disallow: /Templates/

User-agent *

means all robots and then you can see the directorys I have disalowed below that line. The tutorial Here walks you through creating a robots file for yourself.

Of course only spiders that adhere to the robots.txt standard bother to read the file. Malicious robots dont bother and will still try to harvest email addresses etc from your site even if you disallow those pages in your txt file.

Mark...

PS
Have a great Easter weekend

Posted by Mark at 8:53 AM | Comments (0) | Internet Tech | TrackBack

January 26, 2005

Internet tech: Google Blows RSS Away!

News Just in is that Google is Dropping RSS in favour of Atom.

For me it makes no difference to be honest because my feeds are piped through FeedBurner and FeedBurner suports ALL the formats. But I can understand that the RSS community would be miffed at that descision!

Essentialy its all about control :) Google is just flexing its muscles. But it does go to show just how fast internet technology moves!

Mark...

Posted by Mark at 9:35 AM | Comments (3) | Internet Tech | TrackBack

January 6, 2005

Dial up Hell

Only a small post today :( My cable has gone down although the analogue line to my building is still up so Im on a dial up 56k :( Oh my God how I had forgotten those days and also taken my 3 meg line for granted!

Click a link and bang full site in .5 second is the norm. Dial up hell is like er ok I`ll just nip to the shop and get some milk while the kettle is boiling and hopfully the page will be loaded by the time I get back home! And to think I used to play Ultima online with one, how did I cope?

I am assured all will be well tomorrow let`s see ehh.

Mark...

PS
Dont forget to comment on my new years competition post to win some FREE goodies this Month..

Posted by Mark at 10:00 PM | Comments (1) | Internet Tech | TrackBack