This Saturday marks the 135th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, KY. I have been fortunate to have attended twice, once when working and living in Louisville years back where I got a lot of the local flavor of the event leading up to it. Though I usually watch it every year on TV, I don’t get into it as much as I did when I was there.

Then the other day I found out one of the horses running is named Dunkirk! Its jockey even wears a blue jersey. As of the writing of this post, Dunkirk is listed with 4-1 odds and some news stories I have read have it picked to win. Whether it wins or loses, gotta love the name Dunkirk. Well, at least I do. I don't know for sure if it is named after the city in New York (as my Internet consulting firm is) or the city in France (which the city in New York is named after), but I do know who I will be cheering for.

Go Dunkirk! I will be watching with more enthusiasm this year!

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A few weeks back there was a meetup for S60 users and enthusiasts at the Nokia Flagship Store in Chicago. It was coordinated by S60Users.com though as they are in New York nobody was there from them. Despite this, there was a small but might gathering of 5 of us, as shown in the accompanying photo courtesy of Jon from JDMOTO Photography.

Our hosts from the Nokia store let us play with an earlier model of the forthcoming Nokia N97. As it was an earlier model of hardware and software, they wouldn’t let us take pictures of it. For myself, it was my first hands-on with the device. I liked its size, feel and layout. Though the keys on the keypad are small, they are easy to feel, especially compared to the new N75. Drawbacks to the keyboard are no separate row for number keys (there’s room for one!) and that they are hard to read. Of course the true test of the device is in its real-world use, and I would love to help the cause and try one out – hint!

Speaking of the N75, they had them on display and I spent some time using one. Where I like the form factor and how the keyboard slides, the screen is not much bigger than the E71, and the fact that they keyboard is flat is a drawback, as you can’t “feel” out the keys as you type. They are larger keys and there is also no separate row for numbers. As I have called this out twice now, it is obvious I enjoy this feature on my E70 as well as when I evaluated the E71.

And it wouldn’t be an event without swag! The friendly staff had some S60 items, including a flat 512MB Flash drive, pen and refrigerator clip. They mentioned they may be hosting other events in the future, so I will be on the lookout for them and will report back here on The Hot Iron. You can see more pictures from the meetup on Jon's blog.

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The International Olympics Committee is now touring the candidate cities for the 2016 Summer Olympics, and their first stop was Chicago a few weeks ago. Everywhere you looked throughout the Windy City, there were signs promoting the games coming here in 7 years. There were also a few signs against it, but that’s a topic for another time.

The signage was branded with the Chicago 2016 logo and imagery, as shown in the accompanying picture, which is at the corner of State and Madison Streets. It also features the recently changed tag line, “Let Friendship Shine,” which replaced the former one, “Stir The Soul.” Apparently the old tag line did not translate well into other languages. As someone who thinks about domain names as much as I do, I wondered if the Chicago Olympics Committee registered the domain names for the new tag line. From the looks of the registration data and registered domain names, it is not 100% clear if they did or not.

Searches of the WHOIS database using DomainTools show registrations for letfriendshipshine.com, .net, .org and .us. There was no registration for the other “primary” TLDs of .biz and .info. I did not extend the search beyond these TLDs. Looking at the registrants of these domain names, the .com and .org have private registration on them, which is a service to mask the true owner of the domain name. The .net is registered to a company in Chicago, and the .us is registered to an individual in Chicago. All 4 domain names point to parked pages which display advertising.

I then looked up the registration of the main Chicago Olympics Committee domain name, chicago2016.org, and its registrant was also masked by private registration, and the same one as letfriendshipshine.com and .org. It can be inferred these 2 domain names are owned by the Committee. I did not contact them to ask. As for the others, it can be inferred they are not.

Part of the reason for being inquisitive surrounds the registration of chicago2016.com, which was registered prior to the .org by an individual in Chicago. It is tied to a Web site offering a fair and balanced economic discussion about the Olympics coming to Chicago. The Chicago Olympics Committee filed a case to win back the name, but lost. Perhaps they did their diligence this time and got the domain names before the new tag line was announced.

If they do own the domain names, 2 questions come to mind. Why not register all available TLDs? In the grand scheme of things, domain names are cheap! Also, why not use them? A quick Google search found zero results for the official Chicago Olympics Web site for “let friendship shine.” Where getting the name to protect the brand is smart, actually using it can return great results in your investment.

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The decluttering continues! On the heels of selling my XO laptop, I have decided to go analog for my next item, and sell my Canon ELPH 370Z APS Film camera.

This camera was a wedding gift and we used it for about 2 years until we got a digital camera. It has just sat there in its protective case now for several years. It is in good working order and has no noticeable marks. It’s just that it is a film camera, taking the APS/Advantix film cartridges, which allows you to take wide panorama pictures, which I think is the best feature of the APS film.

The bidding starts at one penny. It makes a great gift for that friend or relative who just won’t go digital.

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I will finally be heading west to the next Silicon Prairie Social, which will be held this Tuesday, April 28 at Arrowhead Golf Club in Wheaton, IL.

For someone who works and lives in Chicago, I rarely get out to the ‘burbs, unless I am looking to do some shopping to pay less sales tax! There are, however, quality business and tech networking events outside of the city which easily rival those within the city limits, and this is one of them. And I know I will not be alone, as many others will be trekking west as well as some event sponsors that are from Chicago. Plus I promised Tim Courtney of XNet, who organizes the event, I would make it out there one day, and now I am.

Will I see you there?

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