Regular readers of The Hot Iron know well my gripe with mobile phones locked to particular service providers, and them not allowing unlocked phones on their network. The one exception in the US has been T-Mobile, whom I have used for over a year after switching from Verizon Wireless. Though there were other issues I had with Verizon prompting me to leave them, it looks like one of them may be starting to go away.

This week Verizon Wireless announced at some point in 2008 they would start allowing unlocked phones on their network. However, only certain phones would be allowed “only if the devices have passed tests, which their manufacturers will pay for, in a Verizon lab” – a direct quote from another article on MSNBC.com.

Currently Verizon Wireless and all other mobile providers, including T-Mobile, sell phones that work only on their network. These phones generally come with a lower price than buying them direct from the manufacturer as the providers will subsidize their cost, not to mention control the software on the phones. Where your phone number is portable from one provider to another, your physical phone is not. With T-Mobile, you can buy a phone from just about anyone, and then you place the SIM chip they provide you in the phone and voila – it works. Hmmm, I never heard anything about a T-Mobile lab.

My gut tells me the Verizon Wireless spokesperson and all their executives were clenching their teeth when they made this announcement. This will force them, and all other providers who open their eyes to this, to provide quality service to their customers and not just rely on locking them into service with contracts or hardware. I hope this change for them is one step forward, and not accompanied with 2 steps back.

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What a coincidence – I write a post on whether or not people use Classmates.com, and then they file an IPO. I read this at TechCrunch, and they did a great job at describing their filing and get into the details of their business model.

After reading all of this, would you buy Classmates.com stock?

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Classmates.com was a social network before the term existed. The Web-based service to connect fellow graduates and alumni of schools, colleges and businesses began in 1995, and today they are owned by the group that owns NetZero among other companies. It has comparative features to other services like LinkedIn and Facebook, but has a much different business model.

I am considering deleting my profile from Classmates.com and thus I have written this post – do you pay for Classmates com? In order for you to interact with anyone on the site, you have to pay. It is free to setup and edit your profile, but if someone sends you a message, you can’t see it unless you are a paying customer.

Here’s an example. I get regular emails from them, and here’s a segment of the latest one:

Someone signed my guestbook – cool. So who did? When I click the link to get to the Web site, here’s a segment of the Web page I get:

In order for me to see who has signed my guestbook, I have to pay. Of course I have no idea who signed it, if they are someone I know or if it is spam or a legitimate message.

Classmates.com has lowered their annual cost to $9.95 from $39. But between LinkedIn, et. al. and a Web site I helped create for my high school class, is this really worth it? Isn’t my profile in Classmates.com worth more to them? For if I and others leave, wouldn’t the site becomes less valuable?

With the proliferation of social networking sites, how many can you really be active on? I am not on Facebook or others daily, and on LinkedIn I usually check the home page for updates every few days. Is Classmates.com worth the cost to you?

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You have only through the end of the year to buy a truly unique gift – the One Laptop Per Child computer. Originally billed as the $100 notebook computer to give to children in developing countries, the cost is a little higher, and this offer allows you to buy one for yourself while at the same time buying one for a child.

For $399 plus shipping, I will get a green XO notebook computer that runs Linux with unique and useful software – more information on the machine is on their Web site. As you get one for yourself or someone else, you can deduct from your taxes $200.

I ordered one myself, and am awaiting its arrival. As someone who got into computers at a young age and made a career out of it, I appreciate the need for children to be exposed to technology early on. It is a unique item that I will be able to use for my consulting business, Dunkirk Systems, as I can test and present Web sites on it.

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As much as I write about domain names, it probably comes as no surprise I think about them and notice them more. On a recent vacation to Germany, I made many observations on them, and to the fortune of myself and my wife, they did not disrupt the trip. Well, not too much.

One observation I made was the wide use of the German ccTLD of .de. A ccTLD is a country code top-level domain,. A top-level domain is commonly referred to as the domain name extension. Where .com, etc. can be used throughout the world, a ccTLD is ideally designated for an entity in a particular country. Most all of the observations I made of domain names had them ending in .de, both for German-based entities as well as international entities and brands. This was similar to the observations I made in Denmark the year before, where most all domain names ended in .dk.

I can see this for 2 reasons. The first is to direct a German language reader directly to German content on the Web site of an international brand. Have you ever gone to a Web site and the first thing you are presented with is a list of continents or countries for you to select before you get to any content? Identifying a user coming from Germany would lead them to German content, with the occasional option to select other languages. The second is national pride. It can be inferred that though .com is international, it originated in and is predominately used for US Web sites. It also adds a deeper level of identification that it is used by a German entity.

A second observation I made was the widespread use of dashes in domain names. I have a few photos of domain names in action, which represent only a handful of what I observed over the course of the trip. Where dashes can make for a more visually pleasing domain name display, it is easy to forget about them when recalling them from memory or when typing them. In the case of these particular names, a version of the domain names without dashes is not registered.

Whenever I work with a client to select domain names, I recommend they avoid dashes for the reason I mentioned above. I do have some clients who have them and use them, however they have been in use for many years, and in those cases alternate names redirect to the Web sites as well.

If anyone reading has any information or insight into the use of dashes in domain names in Germany, please comment to this post.

Domain Names • Technology • (14) Comments • Permalink