Category: Technology

This morning I’ve been working on a site domain issue for a new client who we’re building a website for, along with social media and email newsletter campaigns. The issue I’m working on is rather obscure, and I had a quick thought to check out how other domain services handle it to compare with the service we are using (Namecheap) for this account.

I reviewed the regulars such as Hover, GoDaddy, eNom, Network Solutions etc then remembered that Google had recently opened up its own domain service to everyone after a while in beta. We had a beta account early on and I moved over one domain there to see how things worked. It’s a nice, clean, simple, and straightforward approach somewhat synonymous with Hover’s.

What surprised me this morning (I’m sure it’s been there for a while and I’ve just missed it since I don’t use Google Domains on a regular basis) are the promoted website building partners that Google is prompting here along with its own (terrible) Blogger service. Domain services such as Namecheap or GoDaddy offer an in-house style page builder that is an additional cost / upsale for domain purchasers. I wonder what the deal is between Google and these services?

All of these are relatively easy-to-use services and have their own unique monthly or yearly costs. We use Squarespace and Shopify occasionally for clients as a caveat. I wonder what the conversion rates for these are? Do people (not website devs or agencies like ours) sign up for these services through links such as this?

I wondered if other domain services had similar promoted partner offerings, and it looks like Hover has recently rolled out a similar thing…

 

Obviously, Google isn’t going to promote Tumblr after it was acquired by Yahoo last year, but Squarespace and Shopify also show up in Hover. Format is an interesting addition as I’ve always thought of them as a more static / portfolio type host.

As an aside, I wonder if other smaller site builders such as Ghost or Barley (in reboot mode now) will find audiences through these types of promotions?

Regardless, I encourage everyone to have a blog for their own person and to have a site for their business / group / school / club / nonprofit / church / organization etc. You simply cannot base your online identity (personal or professional) on Facebook or Facebook Pages for many reasons. These types of promotions will hopefully lower the bar and help more people on the web realize that.

Now that you can easily create and design website on your phone, it feels as if the act of setting up a site has moved from something like “specialized knowledge” into common understanding. That’s a good thing and will make the web stronger (even if it gets a little uglier).

And when you get ready to take your site to the next level, get in touch and we’ll build you something unique and capable of what you need after you get your feet wet.

“I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.”

Source: DNA/How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet

Still a good read from Douglas Adams (16 years later).

What do you say, Merianna? Baby Harrelson’s first baby food from Amazon? Have to get kids started young in their consumption silos!

You May Soon Be Able to Buy Amazon-branded Milk, Cereal and Baby Food | TIME: “The online retailer is planning to expand its private label lineup into groceries like milk, cereal, and baby food, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The newspaper also reported that Amazon filed for trademark protection in early May for more than two dozen categories under its existing Elements brand including coffee, soup, pasta as well as household products like razor blades and cleaning products.”

I was listening to a podcast on my iPhone via Overcast on the way home (my pregnant wife needed a milkshake at 9pm after all). I plugged in my headphones when I got home and was going to continue listening to the podcast on my phone as I usually do when I try to squeeze in a few minutes of work at night before bed on my main computer.

I’ve recently purchased a new Macbook Pro in the last week or so, and I’m still discovering things that I had heard of but hadn’t realized yet. Instead of going to my desktop to work on some logos with Illustrator, I decided to try out the Macbook since it runs Adobe apps just fine.

When I flipped it open (with my headphones on and still plugged in to the iPhone playing a podcast via Overcast), I was surprised to see this small item in the Dock:

I was surprised to see Overcast using Apple’s much touted but overlooked new “Handoff” component to its ecosystem (as part of a wider initiative known as Continuity).

While I try to avoid lock in to one physical or software system (I still use and love my large Windows desktop for heavy graphics work and I keep my Moto X plugged in and try to use it at least once a day but that’s dwindling), I keep finding myself pleased by things that Apple is getting right on the hardware front. Their software and approach to the “cloud” is still behind but with things like Continuity, it looks like they are getting better and better at that in the post-Jobs era.

Kudos to Marco Arment on Overcast. It’s a battery hungry app, but that’s because I use it so often on my iPhone. It’s a beautiful piece of software, and little surprises like being able to handoff podcasts between my phone or iPad to my Mac without skipping a beat is pretty magical. It’s the little things.

Incredible Editor’s Note following Thursday’s article by New York Times “tech” writer Nick Bilton…

The Disruptions column in the Styles section on Thursday, discussing possible health concerns related to wearable technology, gave an inadequate account of the status of research about cellphone radiation and cancer risk.

Neither epidemiological nor laboratory studies have found reliable evidence of such risks, and there is no widely accepted theory as to how they might arise. According to the World Health Organization, “To date, no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use.” The American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have all said there is no convincing evidence for a causal relationship. While researchers are continuing to study possible risks, the column should have included more of this background for balance.

In addition, one source quoted in the article, Dr. Joseph Mercola, has been widely criticized by experts for his claims about disease risks and treatments. More of that background should have been included, or he should not have been cited as a source.

An early version of the headline for the article online — “Could Wearable Computers Be as Harmful as Cigarettes?” — also went too far in suggesting any such comparison.

via The Health Concerns in Wearable Tech – NYTimes.com.