I have recently heard some great things about the brain child site of Seth Godin called Squidoo. If you have not seen it, I do suggest you spend a bit of time there reading some of the lenses.

Squidoo is a social network (yes another one) that is built around the idea of people sharing and exchanging their ideas on business and various other topics. It is a good tool if you are just starting out your business as a visitor.

After going through though, I ask myself why would anyone want to create an account and produce lenses. There is no way to monetize it for your time and there is no link love for you to post. So you are posting content for them so they can make money from your content.

So with that in mind I ask myself why would anyone want to contribute to Squidoo? If you are really helpful and like to provide advice why not start a blog? If you have used Squidoo let me know if I am missing something here.

If you own a .ca domain name then you most likely received an email from CIRA today letting you know they will be at Massive and urging you to visit them at the booth. If you did get the email did you consider it to be spam?

Here is the email I got:

By the definition of spam the email was not personalized, did not have an option to opt out and after doing many sign-ups through CIRA I don’t remember ever authorizing to being sent these type of notices.

Don’t get me wrong I think that the Massive Technology show needs as much hype as possible and CIRA sending out these emails will certainly get more web masters out to the show. The positives of them doing this are obvious but does the means justify the end?

As a host, we have a zero tolerance for spam as do many other hosts. I know I am conflicted on this and a bit confused on what should be done if anything. What are your thoughts?

In Part 1 of our PHP Tutorial series we covered how to use PHP and HTML together and use the print command.

In this one we will learn to use variables and use the date command. If you have never programmed before then the concept of a variable may be new to you. A variable is like a box in which you can store something for later. For example you may store the date or name of a person in a variable so that you can use it later in the code. A quick example is to open notepad again and add the following code then save it as a .php file and upload to your site:

[code='php'] $variable1="Bob";
$last_name="Smith";
Print("Hello my name is $variable1 $last_name");
?>[/code]

In the above example there are 2 variables ($variable1 and $last_name). When using a variable the name needs to start with a dollar sign ($) and not have any spaces in it. If you are setting the variable to be text then you will need to use an equals with the text in brackets. Remember that all lines in PHP end with a semicolon (;).

A variable does not have to be text but can be a function. For example if we wanted to display the date we could do the following:

[code='php'] $now=date("F j, Y, g:i a");
Print("The date today is $now");
?>[/code]

Again be sure to save the file with a .php extension and upload it to your site. In this example you should see the current date.

Stay tuned as we will continue this tutorial with more details on using PHP.

We had put out a general notice last month discussing RegisterFly troubles and that they may loose their ICANN accreditation. Thelatest update is that ICANN has now terminated their agreement with RegisterFly.

According to an article on registerflies.com, “when the Agreement is terminated, ICANN can approve a bulk transfer of all current RegisterFly domain names to another ICANN accredited Registrar”. The real question is will they?

I suggest anyone that has a domain with RegisterFly consult a lawyer and contact ICANN. If you have a whois protect you may be completely out of luck in ever getting your domain back.

The strange thing is that the RegisterFly site is still up and taking orders like nothing has ever happened. Those who register at RegisterFly are not getting the domains.

As a side note, this is the first time that ICANN has ever terminated a registrar.

Congratulations to this weeks geek Matt who own the site mattsblog.ca. This puts Matt in the lead with 2 points. This weeks questions are:

1. What is Putty and who created it? 
2. What software company makes Fantastico?
3. What DOS command did you have to type in Windows 3.x to make a Boot Disk?
4. What command can you us to find out the version of Ruby running on a server?
5. What does CIRA stand for?

As today is St. Patrick’s Day, I thought our topic should be about Luck.

I am sure you’ve all heard it said, either on TV or in movies, “I don’t believe in luck, I make my own.”  So this week’s discussion is whether there is such a thing as luck or is luck something you make happen yourself?

My own belief is that there is such a thing as luck when it comes to random games of chance, like dice or cards. The only way to make your own luck in games of chance is to cheat. I also believe that those people in life we feel are lucky are the one’s that make their own luck. They create a vision of what they want and then take the actions to get it.

What are your thoughts?