Today, October 23 at 9.00 CET the German domain registry DENIC eased some restrictions on domain registrations. The most notable change is that two letter domains have become available. These are usually quite popular, so a “land rush” was expected.
As my first name is Lode, I wanted to register the domain hack lo.de. I only read about this land rush at a couple of websites, so I anticipated some problems, namely domain registrars not knowing about the new rules. I contacted Namecheap support on thursday evening to check if they knew about this new restrictions starting today. The answer I got was quite clear, if not completely convincing: “Sure, we’ll be ready. You should be able to register directly through your account. Let me know if you’ve got any other questions.” The “should” part worried me a bit, so I prepared some backup plans.
At 9 AM I had different browser windows open, logged in to my different domain admin accounts and was ready to click “register”. I opened my accounts at OVH, Godaddy, Inforbusiness and Namecheap.
As I’m writing this, I am at 30.000 feet, somewhere between Chicago and San Francisco.
Up until recently, airplanes were one of the last places where you could spend some time being entirely disconnected from the outside world.
Sure, you could place satellite phone calls for $10 per minute, and for some time you could even surf the internet via satellite through Connexion by Boeing. Because of the $500.000 price tag to fit airplanes with the satellite service, the service was quite limited. “Gogo Inflight Internet” seems to have solved this issue. For domestic US flights this service uses cellular technology to equip planes with internet access. Cell towers from Aircell have been fitted with antennas that point upwards, and planes seamlessly hop from one tower to another as you’re in flight. The internet signal is distributed via standard Wi-Fi on the plane.
This is the first flight I’ve been on to offer this service, and I’m absolutely convinced of its value. The price for this 4 hour flight is $9.95. On top of a plane ticket of several hundred euros, this feels like a bargain. (Especially since I didn’t pay for the plane ticket 
)
The plane is equipped with 12V DC power ports. Luckily I’ve got a special cable to connect my laptop, so my battery won’t die before landing.
Being a techie, of course I had to try out the quality of the service. My friend Toon happily volunteered or a Skype video chat, him being in Belgium and me being somewhere over Iowa. The quality and latency were great. Sometimes there is some latency, probably during handovers to another tower, but all in all it’s pretty usable. (After testing Skype I noticed video chatting and other high-bandwidth services are apparently not allowed, though I don’t think I’m using other people’s bandwidth as I seem to be the only one using it on this flight. You are also asked to restrict yourself to “respectful internet browsing”. In other words: no porn on the plane, please.)
Remote desktop sessions over SSL-VPN work smoothly as well.
In-flight video chat
In-flight Wi-Fi speed test
After a transatlantic flight + layover of about 12 hours it’s nice to be able to check your e-mails and catch up on the news, but as John Troyer put it: “All you people streaming, skypeing, tweeting from your flights: you realize this means YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO STOP WORKING EVER AGAIN”
He’s right, of course. But for a geek like me this still pushes the right buttons. (And I didn’t check my work e-mail. Yet.)
By the way, without logging in you can’t do much, except DNS lookups. I’ll try to get OpenVPN over UDP 53 running before my next Wi-Fi equipped flight (Wednesday Sep 9th from SFO to SEA). I’ll keep you posted.
Let’s assume you already know Apple is releasing the next generation of Mac OS X, product name “Snow Leopard” this coming friday. You probably already know most of the new stuff, right?
I’ve been running the betas for a while now, here’s some tips and solutions for problems I’ve encountered along the way that might make the transition even smoother.
(more…)
Instead of working out of a Starbucks and paying for “rent” through coffee and tips, you can just as easily enter a random office building (the bigger the better), find a desk that’s obviously free, find an empty ethernet socket and plug in. If anybody asks who you are, say you’re from IBM/HP/Dell (look at which brand the desktops are) and that you’re here for “the computers”. I’m pretty sure this works about 95% of the time. (I could certainly spend several days without being noticed at certain customers, like I am right now, killing time before my contact person arrives.)
De Tijd verandert aanstaande zaterdag van kleur. In een poging om meer au serieux genomen te worden als zakenkrant neemt de krant de trade dress van The Financial Times over. Deze Engelse krant verschijnt al sinds mensenheugenis op zalmkleurig papier.
Mijns inziens zou een terugkeer naar “de Financieel-Economische Tijd” dit meer benadrukken (en kans op verwarring met, ik zeg zo maar iets, de Gazzetta dello Sport kleiner maken), maar daar gaat deze post niet over.
De herlancering gaat immers gepaard met een reclamecampagne die, hoe kan het ook anders, gebruik maakt van het sterkste merk van dit moment, Barack Obama.
Luister even mee:
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“Op vijf januari werd Barack Obama de eerste zwarte president van de Verenigde Staten.
(Quote overwinningsspeech Obama op 4 november 2008): “Change has come to America“.Op negen mei verschijnt de Tijd voor het eerst op zalmkleurig papier, of hoe een simpele kleurwijziging meteen meer inhoud met zich meebrengt. De vernieuwde De Tijd, vanaf nu zaterdag meer dan ooit onmiskenbaar zakelijk. Tel mee, De Tijd.”
Op vijf januari? Ik hoop dat de redacteurs van de Tijd iets preciezer zijn dan de copywriters, want voor zover ik me herinner vond de inhuldiging van B.O. plaats op 20 januari jongstleden. Zelfs met een beetje goede wil (het blijft per slot van rekening een geklooi met al die tijdzones) is 15 dagen ernaast wel wat veel, vooral als je weet dat de datum van de inhuldiging van een nieuwe president redelijk constant is.
Maar toch, zo’n vernieuwde krant kan me altijd bekoren. Zaterdag eens checken.
Update: Blijkbaar is hun spreekwoordelijke frank gevallen, want deze ochtend was er een geüpdatete versie te horen, deze keer met de juiste datum.