Did you know domain names are case insensitive? Had you even thought about it?

This is a question I have been asked a few times, so I thought I’d write about it and share with all. From a technical standpoint, domain names ignore case. Therefore, it you are typing in a domain name in a browser, you can use uppercase or lower case letters and it won’t matter. For a more technical description, read this article from the Internet Engineering Task Force on domain name case.

Why this question comes up is when people are presenting a domain name in print, whether in paper form or on a Web page or a PDF document. Typically this is if they want to capitalize one or more names that make up a domain name. For example, the domain name for The Hot Iron can be presented and entered into a browser as thehotiron.com, TheHotIron.com, theHotIron.com… you get the gist of it.

URLs May Be Case Sensitive

Despite the domain name being case insensitive, a URL may be case sensitive. The domain name portion will not be, but on some Web servers, the remainder of the URL may have both uppercase and lowercase characters, and you will need to be careful to enter them properly.

If you are planning on displaying a domain name on a billboard, be as creative as you’d like and mix character case all you want. If you are planning on displaying a URL on a banner… well, on second thought get another domain name to redirect to that URL.

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Domain Names • Technology • (3) Comments • Permalink

A while back online brokerage TD Ameritrade launched Ted, a virtual assistant. The virtual assistant consists of a static (read – not animated) headshot of a white male and a text box where you can ask a question, and upon submission the question is restated and the Web visitor will get a response.

When I heard about this a few questions came to mind. As a friend of mine has a TD account, I asked them if I could try out Ted. The following is a log of the questions and responses from Ted. I have edited some of the responses as they simply gave details on how to use a TD account, which I felt were not relevant to the retelling of this experiment.

The Experiment

You Asked: where are my statements Ted: To view or print your statements and confirmations, click… (edited)

You Asked: did my last trade go through? Ted: The "Order Status" screen displays information about your trades for the current… (edited)

You Asked: how did the market do today? Ted: The "Markets" overview page under Research & Ideas… (edited)

You Asked: I'm not sure if I want to sell or buy Ted: I would love to help you, but I'm not sure I understand your question. Please try rewording your question.

You Asked: I said I am not sure if I want to buy or sell Ted: To place a stock order online, you can select "Stocks" under Trade… (edited)

You Asked: but should I Ted: TD AMERITRADE accounts are self-directed, allowing you to choose how to invest your assets. We offer an extensive set of tools, products and services that can help you build a portfolio. We don't offer advice for self-directed accounts, but we do have other programs you may be interested in. Please contact a Client Services representative for more information.

You Asked: How are you Ted: I'm good, thanks. How are you?

You Asked: Not too bad Ted: That's good to hear. What questions can I answer for you about TD AMERITRADE?

You Asked: do you think in this volatile market TD ameritrade should be launching a virtual consultant? Ted: Good question. I am not sure how to answer that. Please try rewording your question. I understand simple questions best.

You Asked: why a virtual consultant Ted: I apologize I don't have an answer to your question. A Client Services representative would be happy to answer your question by email or phone. For contact information click Contact Us. Contact Us

You Asked: What is your last name? Ted: I don't have a last name, you can just call me Ted.

You Asked: Thanks for your help buddy Ted: You're welcome.

You Asked: have a nice day Ted: Goodbye.

My Assessment

When I first heard the name of TD’s virtual assistant is Ted, the first thing that popped into my mind was United Airlines’ failed discount airline of the same name. I tried to keep an open mind though when I posed these questions. As you can see, these questions ranged from the mot common to personal. In the middle I posed a few questions seeking advice, as I was curious to what the response would be.

I laud TD Ameritrade for experimenting with Ted. It may not be for everybody, but in some cases it may help people, especially in navigating a comprehensive and complex Web site. Even in tough times, it is important to be innovative - even if Ted couldn’t answer that question directly.

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Business • Technology • (9) Comments • Permalink

If you are reading this and it is your job to manually spam blogs and forms with links, all I have to say is I am onto you!

You don’t need me to tell you that spam is a problem. Well, if you do, Dunkirk Systems, LLC would be glad to put on a private, paid workshop for you, but I digress. Unfortunately there is no set solution to spam. If you look at it as spam is a journey and not a destination, you will grudgedly accept this. As a result, any method that you have used to prevent or thwart spam today may be rendered useless down the road.

When we think of spam, we think of it in large volumes. Opening our email to hundreds of spam messages on a daily basis, getting a ton of form submission spam, and on a blog a lot of this is in the form of comments. Robots tend to find our site somehow and have a field day. As turning off commenting and not using forms altogether does not make sense from a user perspective, other methods needed to be considered and deployed.

First Strike – Verify Submitters Are Human

My first step was to implement technology to “ensure” a form submission was made by a human. I decided to use a random question that needed to be answered. For example, a question is “what is 2 + 2 – spell it out” and the answer would needed to be entered as “four.” I chose this method over CAPTCHA for several reasons. In addition to personally not being a fan of it, CAPTCHA is as far as usable for those with are visually impaired. And forget the audio CAPTCHA – try it for yourself and see if you can comprehend it!

The random Q&A functionality worked initially, and cut down form and comment spam to almost nothing. But it did not block it entirely, as some kept coming through. After further review, I determined all was working well, and that people were the culprits!

Second Strike – Moderation

Even though I have always had moderation turned on my own blog and that of my clients, I consider this a final step after others are taken. Especially when human beings are the ones filling out the forms. How do I know this? There were 2 tell-tale signs. The first was courtesy of my site’s analytics. Many visitors came to my site from either a search query of something like “remember my personal information” or from a Web site that tracked Web sites that do not have the “nofollow” attribute on links. If tagged with nofollow, a Web site’s search engine will most likely not follow links off your page, which helps in the ranking of the sites linked from yours. As I think this is of value to me from both sides, adjusting this did not work.

The blog comments and form submissions manually submitted are interesting in themselves. Some are blatant and others are more subtle. Each post has a name, email address and some URL in it, and the comments tend to be short and choppy. Some say things like “interesting post” and others actually have some context of the original blog post in it. But as you take a look at the URL in the comment, and often the domain name and IP address of the poster, you can see they don’t really match the URL or someone associated with it, or even the same hemisphere. Those always get deleted.

Final Thoughts

Where I consider a blog a community, it doesn’t mean you necessarily have to log into it to participate. As a result, I don’t generally advocate logins for blogs. If one is considered to prevent spam, I would recommend methods as I previously mentioned. If it is thought these are too much labor than it is worth, I would ask you to consider your audience, and maybe even pose it to them. Unfortunately you may get some spam in response.

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Business • Technology • (5) Comments • Permalink

There is a growing and growing myth out there about what some call the “traditional office” but not many people realize it.

The myth is that it is alive and well! Office space keeps going up, or in the case of the accompanying photo of the BlueCross BlueShield building in Chicago, it is expanding. The reality, though, is that it is shrinking. As huge corporations lay off people in droves, send jobs overseas or just shutdown, the notion that there is a need for so much space is far-fetched. Even for those organizations who continue to thrive, the need for traditional space is declining.

Why is this? Office space is expensive, and the reality is that it is underutilized. Other than storage, how many hours of the day to employees really occupy their space? Couple this with more and more people working form home or Starbucks or wherever, especially by choice, the picture is clearer about the lack of need for massive office spaces, and the shift away from the traditional office.

Still, I have encountered many people who have not embraced this, and I share these examples.

At my last employer before I went on my own and started Dunkirk Systems, LLC, I had all of the capabilities to work remotely. From VPN connection to all of the software, I could work from home, and did so in the evenings. But during the day I was not allowed to. My immediate manager did though, and others outside of my department did, but I couldn’t. Why? I was told the VP of the group liked seeing people in their cubicles. Granted the cubes had 5-foot walls! But it didn’t matter, it was not an option.

Recently I made a connection with a local high school about possibly bringing on one of their students as an intern. As I work from home, I told them we could arrange to meet at the school, a library or other neutral environment. Their response was pleasant, but since I could not offer their students a “traditional office” experience, I was disqualified from their program. We never got into any details about my business or what I could offer the students. I never got a response from them on my challenge to them to consider the new paradigm of offices.

A friend moved to the southern US from the north recently and I connected with him briefly last week during the day. He told me he had to go as his office was shutting down. I wondered how this impacted him, as he still had the same job, just working remotely. His response was the manager of the group was closing the office due to local snowstorms, which didn’t impact him at all. Even after inquiring to his manager about working as his colleagues dashed through the snow home, he was told the network would be disconnected.

Perhaps these examples will help paint the picture of where offices are going, and feel free to refer these to those who don’t quite get it yet.

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Business • Technology • (5) Comments • Permalink

Years ago I read an interview of Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee where he said he was surprised people and business would promote URLs, displaying them in print, advertising, et. al. Not surprising as the idea of the Web is all about linking. Some URLs are better for this as they are short and easy to remember, and others are long and cumbersome.

It is the long URLs that are made easy with services that all you to create a unique, short URL that redirects to the long one. This presumably started to make them easy to type and handle, and they became exponentially popular with short messaging services like Twitter. And Twitter actually automatically rewrites short URLs using the original service, TinyURL.

But have you seen some of these URLs? Where in some cases you can pick a text string, most common ones are taken and the new URL is structured as a domain name followed by random characters. It is short but not memorable. And do you have control over it? Unfortunately no. That is, unless you manage your own.

This is exactly what I decided to do – create a Web application for creating and managing short URLs. I call it psURL.com. For example, the short URL to the Dunkirk Systems, LLC Web site is http://psurl.com/dk. You’re probably wondering why anyone would want to do this? Here’s a few compelling reasons:

• Control your own destiny – I have written on controlling your own destiny before and it something I firmly believe in, especially in turbulent economic times.
• Brand your short URLs – You can choose your own domain name to synchronize branding with your company and give further meaning to them.
• Choose the URL string – No need for random characters, as what goes after the domain name is under your control.
• They can be changed – Did the long URL itself go away, or do you want to redirect the short URL to something else? You have the ability to easily change the destination URL.
• They are measurable – From basic logging and reporting to third-party analytics tool integration, you can measure them like any Web page or Web site.
• You can monetize them – Where this is not in place right now, it is possible to add interstitial pages to display ads before redirection is complete to the final URL.

Dunkirk Systems, LLC has developed the first release of its short URL application and is offering this as a hosted service. Of course you would have to choose your own domain name, but many good names are still available. Whether you choose to manage your own short URLs or not, it is good to know this is an option that works to your advantage.

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Business • Domain Names • Technology • (7) Comments • Permalink