So I decided to let Facebook check my Gmail contact list to see if I had missed some contacts (people using aliases, etc …). After carefully selecting a couple of FB friends to invite (a buddy from the army, …), I clicked ‘Select’ and then ‘OK’ on the next screen that I supposed was a ‘Confirm’ window. I didn’t even read what was written on it. Some minutes later I saw emails starting to come in on different email aliases I had created in all my years of Internet activity. Apparently I allowed Facebook to send email messages to all Gmail contacts with email addresses that were not yet ‘known’ in Facebook. I have about 1500 addresses in my Gmail, let’s say some 500 already have a FB profile: so I just allowed Facebook to send out 1000 ‘unsollicited commercial emails’ or *spam* on my behalf. There is no way for me to know how many emails went out, nor to whom. I feel strongly embarrased, since I have been a strong opponent of spam for years, and since I have no idea who I have bothered with this bulk mail.

A company like Facebook probably has a whole team concentrated on user experience and workflow streamlining, so I can only assume that this strategy is by design. They probably have to keep the monthly exponential growth numbers so they use every opportunity to collect new email addresses. This is plain wrong. The default should be ‘opt in‘, not ‘opt out‘ (that is, select those you want to invite instead of unselect those you don’t wanto to invite).

So dear Christopher Cox and/or Chamath Palihapitiya at Facebook, while you will probably say that ‘but it is clearly written on the page that they’re about to send an invitation to (in my case, 1000??) contacts‘, you know that you are wrong on this one. You’re spamming. Big time, like real jerks. Since you’re probably not going to do anything about it, Google: any ideas?

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=46004a5733eee4f0&hl=en

http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=266

http://www.smartmobs.com/2007/09/02/facebook-friending-spam/

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• First try: I order the keyboard, do the checkout procedure, pay with credit-card and get an immediate reaction: purchase OK, shipment will follow soon. Wow, that’s slick. Several days later, UPS passes by my front door while I’m not there, they say, the package is signed off by a certain “Korenberg” and I get an email: delivery OK. Slight alarm bell: I know no “Korenberg” living at my appartment. When I get home this is confirmed: no one in the building knows anyone by that name. Keyboard is in the twilight zone. I file complaint with Logitech, they propose refund, I accept, I’m still waiting for confirmation. But, I still need a BG keyboard.
• Second try: I order another keyboard and try to pay with my credit card. Twice I give my credit card details, press “Process” and get redirected to the same check-out page, without any notion of whether or not my order is accepted. I check the “order history”, see that my recent purchase is not there and decide to give up on credit cards.
• I select “bank payment” and finish checkout. They tell me what bank account I should pay on (one of Bibit), and with which message. I do the payment, see that the number message is not a structured number (”gestructureerde mededeling”) and put it in the normal message box. Since then, nothing. Has Bibit recognized the money as the payment for Logitech? No idea. Has Logitech started fulfillment? I guess not.
• I visit the Logitech web site again, checking out the Squeezebox, and decide to test the checkout system again. I put a Squeezebox in my shopping cart. When I go to the customer care, I fly from shop.logitech.com (where I am logged in) to logitech-nl-emea.custhelp.com (which looks the same, but where another login is necessary, because both accounts aren’t linked, apparently). There I get into an eternal redirection loop, with an infinite number of “&cl=BE,nl” adding themselves to the URL.
• I try to break out of that loop by going back to the shopping cart page. For some reason my shopping cart now contains 2 Squeezeboxes instead of one. That’s it , I’ve had it.

Bottom line: this online shop of theirs is as trustworthy as Lindsay Lohan saying she’s gonna stop drinking. I buy online a lot from shops like Amazon and Pixmania, so I think I’m qualified to say that their shopping application stinks. I’m gonna wait until next week for reply on the second purchase, if there’s none, I’m cancelling that order, and I’m never shopping with Logitech again.

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What American accent do you have? (Best version so far) Midland (”Midland” is not necessarily the same thing as “Midwest”) The default, lowest-common-denominator American accent that newscasters try to imitate. Since it’s a neutral accent, just because you have a Midland accent doesn’t mean you’re from the Midland.

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Further, there were almost 3,000 other eu. domain names registered and offered for sale by the same “seller”, Mr. Kurt Janusch who, nevertheless, acts on behalf of various companies in this regard

Mr. Janusch is what they call a “domain squatter” or cybersquatter. He is of the same moral fiber as US counterparts like Jeff Burgar and John Zuccarini (the latter has been arrested).

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Spider-Man 80% Superman 70% Iron Man 60% Robin 55% Supergirl 50% Wonder Woman 50% Green Lantern 50% The Flash 45% Hulk 40% Batman 25% Catwoman 25%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

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Cain is the founder and CEO of Realroot, hoster of a large collection of high-bandwidth, and often NSFW, websites – including Zattevrienden, Zattemadammen, Wijfzonderlijf, Gallerygalore and Thisislife. He is known for being a shrewd business man and not the most subtle of conversationalists. But the way he speaks about his pr0n-consuming users in this article sets a new high for self-confessed customer contempt.

Some (translated) quotes:

• (about his early days as a self-taught consultant) I could bluff my way into any company as a consultant. I would throw some complicated terms at the IT-manager I was negotiating with. Generally he was not that clever and was easily intimidated.
• (about access logs) I can see it right away when a top minister is j*rking off on one of our chicks.
• A belgian webcam visitor stays logged in for 7 minutes on average, and a Dutch one for 15 minutes. “A Dutchman w*nks at half the speed of a Belgian” concludes CR.
• I am very happy with the sex addicts, they make me a lot of money. We help them get off. Our customers are perverts, not us. (not sure how to translate “vetzak” in English)
• The eyeballs are the watchers, the w*nkers: our customers. In the posh cities (Amsterdam, London, Paris) are the watchers with money, the rich w*nkers.
• (”Aren’t the customers pathetic?”) Maybe they are. Amongst them are a lot of frustrated and sorry bastards. They have a right to our help.
• Actually, the guy just wants to talk. He’s safe at home, with his pants down, in his own house. He doesn’t want to go into therapy. Hij prefers doing his thing anonymously, with a naked virtual girl from Rumania.

It’s funny that in these days when Kathy, Seth and Tara are trying to define how you should try to treat your customer with respect and start a dialogue, there is such a blatant example of how the exact opposite can also be succesful.

Isn’t Cain afraid his customers might read the newspaper and feel offended? Frankly, I don’t think he gives a damn.

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Today my copy of “Beautiful evidence” arrived in the mail. Actually a Belgian Post employee came to drop it off, because I had to pay 10 euro douane/customs. For a book of $52, that is an unpleasant extra 25%.

The legislation that was printed on the back of the receipt states that any item from outside the EU, with a value higher than 22 euro, or not conform to ’small letter mail of non-commercial kind’ (up to 45 euro), or containing goods from outside the EU should be presented to customs. Standard fee: 10 euro. I have just ordered a t-shirt from SomaFM ($50), I wonder what customs will think of that.

This means that there is still a big hurdle for purchasing stuff in between continents. For the Tufte book, I already payed $5 shipping fee (surface mail), and now an extra $13 in customs. So, in this case I pay more than 33% extra as a ‘punishment’ for not living in the USA. It may be a global market for buying stuff, but not for getting stuff.

I don’t think Edward Tufte is focused on huge turnover (it’s kind of a niche topic, let’s be honest), but for US vendors that are, they should investigate ways to not punish their non-US customers that hard.

• for a book publisher: either sell through Amazon.co.uk (or .fr, .de) or set up a deal with an EU printer/shipment firm to fulfill orders from within the EU. For Tufte books: the only one you can get on Amazon UK is The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.
• for custom t-shirts e.g. SomaFM): instead of shipping them from the US, create a European Spreadshirt store. As they correctly state: “Note: Yes, if you’d like to sell to both markets, you’ll need to register two different shops!”
  
  

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First impressions

As one would say in French: “plutot sympa”. You see the couple: Richard Green, an ex-cricket player and Rachel Greenwood both smiling in the camera while they draw up the paperwork. They look like ‘regular people’. The site is very simple (1 page, 1 image of the contract, and a small home video of the two confirming the deal) and the layout looks like it might have been done by a non-webdesigner. To be honest, real beginners tend to be overenthusiastic with fonts and colors but this site is not like that.

But then: a text ad for a “hardc0re video” on top of the page, a banner for “Lucymail free p0rn” on the bottom and a mentioning of the bandwidth hosting by Original Blue Pill. Not that sympa anymore. So I dug a bit deeper.

View source

Let’s take look at the HTML code. It’s obviously not written by hand, the excess font tags and design with tables make me think of some WYSIWYG editor like Frontpage. So that still fits the amateur web author profile. But then at the bottom: a Websitestory HBX counter. That is not a free web statistics service, like most amateurs would use, but a high-end rather expensive tool, something professionals need. The customer code of the HBX counter points to a company NetCollex. This company, based in Thames Road, Barking, Essex, is specialized in adult web sites, and quite well-known for it. Doesn’t sound that innocent anymore, does it?

DNS/hosting

The site is hosted by Mistral, a large UK hoster. That does not tell us a lot. The DNS Whois lookup, however, is more revealing:

The address does ring a bell. Thamesroad.co.uk is one of the NetCollex domains. Richard seems to be quite close to these guys.

My theories

Depending on how much faith you have in humanity, I have 2 theories for you:

1. NetCollex are nice people

Poor Richard. His girlfriend just promised him a threesome with another girl, but only if he can make a website that gets 5.000.000 hits. That sure sounds like a lot. He calls up his old school buddy Martin because he’s doing some kind of internet stuff. “Hey Martin, you know me, I only know how to drink and chat up girls, I wouldn’t know how to make a site. Can you help me out on this one?” Martin, who works at NetCollex, pitches the idea to his marketing manager who likes the idea. “OK, we’ll make the site and pay for the bandwidth, but we will put some ads on the page. Nothing too offensive. Is that OK with him?” Martin agrees, they all have a Guiness or four, and one week later pleasemakethiswork.com is on-line.

2. Netcollex are shrewd people

“Hey boss, have you seen this milliondollarpage site? I bet you I could make something viral like that, and it would make us money.” Boss agrees, and Martin writes down the scenario: he needs 2 actors, they can be a couple,but that’s not necessary, who should look insuspicious (no boob job or piercings in odd places). The site should be not too professional, as if it were created by the guy himself. The angle of the story should be simple and sexy, in a playful way, not too kinky. Key points: it should look authentic, and it should be the first of its kind. There’s no money in being second.
Their casting process comes up with a nice couple: he’s a former sports jock, she’s cute but not too stunning, they both have an ‘normal’ thing about them, and they need the money. They agree on the price for the initial viral campaign, and on the fee for selling pictures and videos of the threesome, should it go through. The site is launched and announced in the adult newspaper Sunday Sport that NetCollex owns. The news is taken over on June 11th by LSE and the rollercoaster ride begins.

Call me a cynic, but my money’s on theory 2.

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The reason: I was too late for the renewal of my domain smoothouse.org so it expired, my Coditel broadband connection was down so I didn’t notice that my mails stopped coming in until Saturday. I did some emergency DNS adjustments, changed those, and then still did some other stuff, and so this is the situation 24 hours later:

• my email addresses @forret.com are now served by Dreamhost and they should work. (when all DNS updates have propagated through this universe)
• my DNS management for forret.com is now also at Dreamhost, which makes life a lot easier for me now (e.g. creating barcamp.forret.com was a piece of cake – with an external DNS that’s always a bit more tricky)
• my web tools are now at web.forret.com/tools instead of at www.forret.com. In short: the domain www.forret.com can not be hosted by someone else than Dreamhost, but my web tools have to run on Windows (ASP), which my Dreamhost account does not have. Hence: web.forret.com, which is my Windows hosting account. However, since www.forret.com now runs on Apache, I can do automatic redirects with mod-rewrite, so that *should* be transparent to users.
• I’ve lost my domain smoothouse.org – must check with Hostbasket if I can get it back during the DNS holding period.
• my Smoothouse content can now be found on xampled.com/smoothouse (e.g. my collection of house podcasts)
• my Smoothpod Mashup podcast has moved to www.xampled.com/smoothpod.
  UPDATE : and it has now moved to mashup.xampled.com
• The Webjay wizard has moved to my web tools, where it belonged anyway.
• my HTTP header analyzer has also moved to the web tools, together with it’s companion the Squid Cache policy checker. (I bet you don’t have one of those, right?)
• I have at last been able to give my sister and father back their @forret.com address (long story). And I gave my mom a new one, for Mother’s Day!

So: please resend your messages, certainly if they were about Barcamp Brussels.

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The raw numbers

BLUEHOST.COM	DREAMHOST.COM
PRICE
$6.95/mon (2 years prepaid)	$7.95/mon (2 years prepaid)
FEATURES
10 GB storage 250GB/mon bandwidth	20 GB storage 1000GB/mon bandwidth
6 domains, 20 subdomains 50 MySQL, 50 Postgres DB 2500 email addresses PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails	unlimited domains unlimited MySQL DBs unlimited email addresses PHP, Ruby on Rails
ONE-CLICK Install
CPanel/Fantastico: Wordpress, pMachine, Nucleus, Drupal, Joomla, PhpNuke, Typo3, phpBB2, OS Commerce, Coppermine, Gallery, PHPList, Advanced Poll, PHProject, SohoLaunch, PhpWiki, PhpAdsNew, WebCalendar, Moodle, …	Home-made: Wordpress, phpBB, Advanced Poll, osCommerce, MediaWiki, Joomla, Gallery, WebCalendar

BLUEHOST GUI
Bluehost has a nice management interface: Cpanel Pro.

Their list of one-click application installs is impressive:

DREAMHOST GUI
The management interface of Dreamhost is an own-developed web application:

The list of one-click installs is more limited but has most best-of-breed applications:

DNS MANAGEMENT
A big difference between the two is the way they handle DNS management.

• Bluehost will expect their DNS servers to be responsible for any domain hosted. Their management web interface will not accept to host a domain that is not controlled by their DNS servers. Believe me, I’ve tried.
• Bluehost does not allow you to just define subdomains in DNS and point them to some external IP address. All your subdomains must be hosted on the same Bluehost server
• Bluehost does not allow you to choose the subfolder for a subdomain: blog.example.com is hosted on /blog. Unfortunately any other domain example.2.com that you have will not be able to get a subdomain blog.example2.com on another subfolder.

CONCLUSION
If your demands are not too high (not something like 10 domains with 150 subdomains), you like a complete and easy web interface and the luxury of being able to install 30+ applications with one click (it’s three actually, but who’s complaining), then take Bluehost, they’re the cheapest.
If you need flexible DNS management, are not afraid of installing programs yourself (FTP and such), need a lot of email, database or bandwidth: Dreamhost is the way to go!

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