I have used Digg and find that it is just not as good as it use to be. There are cliques and negative mobs that bury legitimate news stories for no other reason then they can.

I have been testing as a reader a new site called Spotplex. Instead of submitting the story to them the publisher chooses to participate by placing some javascript into there site. The story will raise in ranking based on the number of views of the story instead of a voting system.

TechCrunch announced today that Spotplex are accepting beta testers….

“To kick things off they’ve agreed to allow up to 1,000 blogs in to SpotPlex. If you want to be included, just email “signup@spotplex.com.” The first thousand requests will get in right away.”

We have signed up as beta testers. If you are interested in beta testing it with your blog then shoot them an email quickly as I am betting that the 1000 will be gone fast. If you make it too post a comment.

The OpenID site defines themselves as “…an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.” That certainly is a lot of technical mumbo jumbo that means that you can store your details in one location and login/signup using just one ID instead of having 50 different logins.

WordPress has announced that they will most likely incorporate OpenId into future releases of there software. There is a plugin already if you would like to install it.

I do not think we are ready for OpenID yet. There are thousands of software’s that will give you 1 login/register ability already and the market is just not there yet.

I do agree that it would be great to have one id to login everywhere. The problem with this is that Identity Theft is already at all time high. People are getting more and more sensitive with the information that stored, how it is stored and for what purpose they are using it for.

I think for an OpenID to work properly that some type of biometric device will have to eventually back it up. So a thumb print scanner in combination would certainly give me more trust in a service such as this.

When you purchase your domain you usually do so with a purpose. It is very rare that you just buy a domain for no reason at all.

A new Web 2.0 service called AboutUs.org now allows you to share your story on your domain. AboutUs is a wiki based site where you can add your about us details and then the community can add/edit or discuss your about us page.

AboutUs even urges you to consider having your own About Us page on there site instead of your own. I’m not sure I would go that far but it is definitely an interesting idea.

The article on Google Maps and Microsoft are very detailed, it is almost impossible to find all the information these pages describe so easily on the official sites. This documentation is constructed mostly by users after they use a website, no marketing stuff in there just honest documentation by users for users.

Take a second to update your AboutUs page and share your story.

Congratulations to Matthew who own the blog sharethemoneywith.us. He is our first Geek of the week and scores a point towards being Geek of the year. A few suggestions that we will be adding to the Geek of the week moving forward. The questions will be harder and we will not post answers to the question on the blog until the following Sunday.

This weeks questions are:

1. What IP would you ping to ping your local host?
2. Other then WEBrick, what are the other 3 server software’s you can run Ruby on Rails on?
3. What famous Geek invented BeOS? and where did he work before that?
4. Where did the name Google originate from?
5. What would the command du –max-depth=1 do in Linux?

 

This weeks discussion topic is should you post your prices on your site? 

I have visited a lot of sites being an online business. If I need business cards, shirts or anything I usually look online. I have found that business that do not post prices on there site I just pass over them and look down the list to one that is relevant that do post a price.

How about you? Do you find that in today’s information age that you want prices to be posted on the site?

What about a service where the price is complicated? Should they work out  an online quote tool or at least post a minimum price so you have an idea?

If you are a customer of RegisterFly then you may already know that there is trouble in the air. The DomainTools Blog posted these details several days ago:

“Reports are flying in about RegisterFly’s implosion. Registerfly’s web site went dark for most of the Monday after the CEO Kevin Medina changed the root password and locked everyone out. It started earlier in the month, on February 12th, vice president John Naruszewicz threw the first major punch by suing the CEO with a claim of misappropriation of corporate funds. The CEO and the Vice-President both own 50% of the company so they are in a dead-lock right now. It seems Mr. Naruszewicz has taken higher ground by sending Mr. Medina a letter of termination.”

This is not good news if you were a customer of RegisterFly. Today it was announced that RegisterFly may loose there accreditation from ICCAN. How does this effect you if you are a customer of RegisteFly? You can transfer your domain to any other registrar if you can provide proof of who you are which can be cross referranced with your whois details.

So what happens to those that use Whois Privacy or false information? You may be out of your domain if that is the case. If RegisterFly goes out of business then there is no one to prove you are the actual owner of the domain. If you use whois protection I would recommend reconsidering it. If you are worried about spam then set it to a free email account and check it once a month. If your business depends on your domain to be up then the small amount of spam you get may be worth it then loosing your domain.