DROA: now with a Belgian lawyer

Published on November 13, 2010 in internet. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

It seems my contacts with the people from Domain Registry of America (DROA) have gone one legal step up. Last week I have received an official letter from a Brussels law office, representing the Domain Registry of America - DROA (Buffalo, NY, USA), Domain Registry of Canada - DROC (Markham, Ontario, Canada), Domain Renewal Group (London UK) and Mr Alan Benlolo. Apparently my claims about the “domain renewal scam”, as most legit domain registrars and thousands of fooled users call it, are “completely unfunded” and constitute “defamation and libel” (Article 443 – translated from Dutch by me).

Furthermore they claim that

  • I supposedly have published the home address of Mr Benlolo on my blog. I have checked and in none of my blog posts about the DROA (DROA scam, Govern yourselves accordingly and DROA: the saga continues) have I published any address belonging to a person: all addresses are PO Boxes – so not physical addresses – belonging to companies, not persons. These addresses I have found either on the letters what were sent by the DROA or on their web site.
    The letter I received actually shows Mr Benlolo’s address, and I can confirm it is nowhere on my blog. Other unhappy customers might have done that on other blogs/forums, but not me.
  • I am supposed to remove the three blog posts mentioned above ASAP. I have reread all three and in each I just cite known convictions of persons and companies involved, as well as reactions from institutions like the  FTC and Better Business Bureaus who all disapprove of the type of business that the DROA is active in.
  • Interestingly I’m also supposed to remove a fourth blog post “Amy Cross is spamming Technorati” which I did not know was related. Maybe it’s just because there’s a link to the DROA article.

I have gotten seven days to comply, and that period has just expired. I have tried to contact the lawyers but no one has bothered to call me back. I don’t agree with their claims, and I still stand by the blog posts I have written.

Fix for error -15000 Remote speakers on iTunes / Windows 7

Published on October 22, 2010 in Apple. 64 Comments Tags: , , .

So, just to be clear: this is not about iTunes on MacOSX, it’s only about iTunes 10 on Windows 7. It might work on Windows Vista, but I have no PC with Vista to test. It might help on versions earlier than iTunes 10 (I read the version 8 already had the problem), but I haven’t tested that.

The problem is the following: while it used to be possible (in older versions of iTunes), your iTunes  might not stream the music to an Airport Express / Apple TV (the feature they call ‘Airtunes‘), and every time you try, iTunes will come back with an error ‘An error occurred connecting to the remote speaker (…). An unknown error occurred (-15000).‘. What is happening is that the Windows Firewall is blocking the UDP connections for Airtunes (ports 6001-6003 if you’re asking). For some reason the old firewall rules for iTunes don’t work with the new version.

How to fix this: only if you’re not afraid of diving into your PC’s configuration. If you’re a novice or feel unsure, ask someone more knowledgeable to do it for you. Check if the person knows what a firewall is used for. “Security” is a too general answer.

Continue reading ‘Fix for error -15000 Remote speakers on iTunes / Windows 7′

Idea: email as a platform

Published on October 8, 2010 in technology and Web2.0. 3 Comments Tags: , .

146354021_1c0f548dfe_m[1]Something has been bothering me for a while. I have a colleague that needs to post some files on a site every week, and she needs to do it via FTP. FTP is ‘geeky’ for most people. Their PC does not come with an FTP program installed, they never need it for daily web usage and they’re not sure how it is different from email/web upload. I ended up installing Filezilla for her and she manages, but it would be so much easier if I could tell her: just email it to XYZ@example.com and it will arrive on that FTP server. Sending email, everyone can do.

Another issue I had is that I would like to offer a service (that involves audio manipulation of WAV files) and I would like people to send an email with the file attached and I send back the result. In both cases, the problem is the same: email now arrives in a mailbox and is expected to be handled manually. I would like a platform service: I pay for the usage of an email address, and every mail that arrives there triggers a number of actions that are automatic.

Not just a service, a platform

Of course I’m not the first one to think of this. Flickr allows for posting pictures via email (I use that a lot), you can send your blog posts via email with Tumblr, Posterous and even WordPress. Customer support services allow auto-responding on incoming emails with suggestions for resolutions. It’s just that all these services are specific to the provider. To do it, you have either poll for incoming email (check your POP3 box every N minutes) or build/configure an SMTP server that handles incoming email. If you’ve ever encountered the black magic involved in configuring a sendmail/postfix/qmail server, you know that’s not for everyone. Me as a web developer/hacker, I want to configure: mails sent to XYZ@example.com are posted to my web page with the email body, sender, attachments (as URL), or published via a private RSS feed, and that’s how I get them into my workflow.

The funny thing is that a much more limited communication method, SMS/texting, has these platforms. There’s Twilio, Fortumo, Tropo, that allow you to receive text messages and make them trigger things. The US providers even allow for setting up automated IVR (Interactive Voice Response – a.k.a. “Press 1 for …”) application through these services.

So, the idea

So what could this platform look like?

  • I register for the service and I get the prefix ACME
  • I then start defining my services: acme.upload@example.com, acme.support@example.com, acme.register@example.com
  • I configure acme.upload to save attachments to an FTP server and send a confirmation email.
  • I configure acme.support to send a confirmation email with a unique number and forward the email with this unique number in the subject. Also, I get an SMS.
  • I configure acme.register to take .XLS files, convert them to TEXT and post them to a web service I have created. I also get the sent emails in an RSS feed.
  • I now create my ‘public’ addresses: upload@acme.com / support@acme.com / register@acme.com and forward these to the email addresses I created above.
  • I get daily/weekly reporting, spam detection, and unlimited scaling.

Do anything like this exist?

DROA: the saga continues

Published on September 22, 2010 in internet. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

This post is about my dealing with the company DROA / Domain Registry of America.
I first wrote about them in Dec 2004: “Domain Registry of America scam“: they had sent me letters to urgently advise me to renew my domain names. When I researched a bit who they were, it became clear it was an shady initiative of some Canadian ‘businessmen’. They write scary letters in the hope that a non-tech-savvy person in the accounting department gets scared and quickly pays, thus transferring their domain management to DROA, who charge more than the average.

Then in March 2007, they contacted me to demand the removal of the blog posts, if not they would sue me for an Ontario court. “Govern yourself accordingly” showed that I was not impressed with that threat.

Now the saga continues: I have been contacted by a Gilbert Duchanan in an effort to make me remove my blog posts. It started on last Aug 19, with a short email. “I represent a company that is currently in talks to acquire the company Domain Registry of America. Upon searching on Google we discovered links to negative articles on your blog regarding the company. What would it take to have you remove the article(s) found at (…) Gilbert“. Just a first name, not a “Legal representative”, “Customer relations” or anything. That’s kind of weird for a legal person.

I replied: “Dear Mr Duchanan, I find it hard to believe that a company with honest and bona-fide practices would be interested in taking over the heritage of the DRoA. So unless you could convince me of the opposite, I will just assume that the scam will continue, and I will not take away the articles. Please be aware that this conversation could end up on my blog too.    Peter” Who knows, it might develop into a good story. I of course expected to have legal threats at some point.
Continue reading ‘DROA: the saga continues’