Hashemian Blog Web Tools, Financial Markets, Technology Wednesday, November 11, 2009 Online Radio and Traditional Media  I don't remember exactly when or why, but up until a few years ago traditional radio stations were barred from broadcasting online. I believe it had something to do with advertising rules. But then the rules were apparently relaxed and one by one the stations started broadcasting online in addition to the airwaves. Still, internet-only broadcasters such as Pandora, Slacker or Last.fm have had a competitive edge. They have large cache of music, they play few or no commercials, and they can adapt to their listeners' tastes. But as the music industry has begun to demand royalty payments, the internet-only stations have had to adapt by playing more commercials and/or charging fees. Previously I wrote about my defection from Pandora to Slacker for that exact reason. Now I've left Slacker for traditional radio and so far have been happy. What convinced me to make the switch? When I found a radio station that played the kind of music I like. A few weeks ago while driving to Hartford, CT to run a half-marathon, I was flipping through radio stations when I stumbled on an alternative music station (104.1 FM WMRQ, Hartford, CT) that kept me listening song after song. I thought what a shame that I couldn't get the station where I live or work. Fortunately it wasn't long before I found that the station also broadcasts online and I've been listening ever since. Sure there are commercials and DJ interruptions and the selections are not perfectly tuned to my taste (pretty close though), but listening is as simple as clicking on a link, no logins and no fees. In fact internet-only radio isn't perfect either and they play more commercials these days anyways. My experience speaks to a bigger issue here. To borrow a quote form Mark Twain, the reports of the traditional media's demise are greatly exaggerated. The arrival and propagation of the Internet has not necessarily just given rise to the upstarts to the detriment of the traditional companies. On the contrary, it has given the old media new means of serving their audience and also reaching new ones. The Hartford radio station is one such example whose listeners aren't necessarily within the sphere of its antenna's influence anymore. radio,online radio,radio stations,media Labels: internet, music <Online Radio and Traditional Media> // posted by rh 0 comments Thursday, October 29, 2009 Chrome Wishes  For a creature of habit like me it was a difficult move, but I have finally migrated from Internet Explorer v6 (IE6), and not just to v7 or v8. As long as I was making a leap, I went out on a limb and started using Google's browser, Chrome. While occasionally I find myself back on IE6 for a few sites, Chrome has become my default surfing window into the world wide web. Chrome comes in 3 flavors, known as channels, Stable, Beta, and Dev. I took the middle ground and settled on the Beta channel, what I would call the Goldilocks version, not too safe but not too risky. For the most part I like this browser and as new versions go online and are automatically downloaded, it just keeps growing on me. Chrome is fast and clean. It launches much quicker than IE or Firefox and it has an impressive response time, specially for the Web 2.0'ish pages that seem to be everywhere these days. And the so-called omnibox (combined search and URL bar) is an ingenious feature. But for all of its goodness, there are still a few areas that it falls short. Here are my top 3 pet peeves with Chrome: • View source - Like other browsers, Chrome does allow one to view the HTML source of a page but not correctly after a form is submitted. This still stymies me at times, until I realize that when viewing page source, Chrome appears to make a fresh request to the URL rather than just display the current content. This results in displaying source code that is inconsistent with the page that's resulted from a POST operation, such as a form submission. This bug needs to be fixed. • Image properties – Just about all browsers allow users to get the properties of an image (URL, size, dimensions, etc.), generally via a right-click and selecting "Properties". There's no such capability in Chrome. The "Inspect Element" menu item just loads the page source and positions the cursor at the declaration of the image tag. Hardly helpful for obtaining image properties. • Referrer settings – This one can be generalized into allowing users to tweak low-level browser features. Chrome has a number of nice commands like about:memory and about:dns, but where is about:config, as in Firefox? One of the browser features I like to disable is the Referrer. I know this could lead to some usability issues on some sites, but I despise giving sites any information about myself including where I'm arriving from. Chrome doesn't allow any such tweaks, but it should. Ok, I know Chrome's source code is out there and I could edit and recompile, but really I'm not that desperate :) chrome,browsers,google,ie,firefox Labels: browsers, google, internet <Chrome Wishes> // posted by rh 0 comments Wednesday, September 23, 2009 From Pandora to Slacker  So finally the 40-hour free listening limit per month on Pandora caught up with me. I had expected it already but still when it happened, I started to think about ways of wiggling out of paying the $1 for the remainder of the month or the $36 annual fee. It's not so much about the money. I know nothing is free, but having grown up on FM radio I pay my dues by listening to commercials, not cracking open the wallet. In the end I opted to give Slacker a try. I chose the classic rock station and so far I'm impressed. The music is good and there is good variety. There are more commercials than Pandora, but I don't mind that. Being a loyal kind of a person, I didn't make the switch lightly. I'd been listening to Pandora for over a year after switching from the Launchcast service by Yahoo. I had Pandora trained pretty well to play my kind of music, and recently I had noticed that Pandora was playing more variety which was a good thing. I realize that Pandora has done its best to strike a balance between keeping its audience and paying its dues to the music industry, but in the end I decided that Slacker was a better option for me. I hope Slacker can continue with its current model to keep the music free and support itself on commercials. Maybe some day Pandora can do the same and win back some of the defectors, but for now it's goodbye to Pandora and hello to Slacker. music,pandora,slacker Labels: internet, music <From Pandora to Slacker> // posted by rh 0 comments Tuesday, September 15, 2009 Mexico Top Level Domain (.MX)  Today I happened to see that Go Daddy is offering the .mx TLD which happens to be assigned to Mexico. Based on what I read the .mx TLD had been restricted to addresses within Mexico up until recently and now they have decided to open it up for international registration - for $210 per year? Altruistic? Hardly. I bet they're hurting for cash and that's the real reason behind this scam. Are you kidding? $210 annual fee for an .mx domain? No thanks. Unless there is very compelling reason to own an .mx domain, such as a conglomerate trying to establish itself south of the border, I see no reason why anyone would pay such an outrageous sum for it. There are plenty of other TLD's around to choose from at much lower prices and more are on the way. Why throw good money away? mexico,domains,tld Labels: internet, web <Mexico Top Level Domain (.MX)> // posted by rh 0 comments Tuesday, June 30, 2009 Amazon Vs. Internet Sales Tax  As an Amazon Associate (you can see the banners even on this page), I have been following the spat between Amazon and the cash-strapped states that are legislating Internet sales taxes. The states argue that Amazon Associates in their jurisdictions are tantamount to company branches constituting presence and therefore any sales made to their residents are subject to state sales taxes. Amazon counters that associates do not add up to physical presence and therefore it should not be required to collect sales taxes on behalf of those states. To put its money where its mouth is, Amazon has terminated its relationship with affiliates in North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Hawaii and has vowed to do the same in other states where such laws are passed. California, for example, is one such state that Amazon could axe its associates if the state decides to go through with an online sales tax law. Admitting bias in this debate, I think Amazon is right and the states are being short-sighted for something that doesn't amount to much money anyways. By pushing Amazon and others into terminating their resident associates, not only would they lose potential sales tax dollars, but they would financially harm their own residents who would most likely spend their earnings in their own states as well as pay income tax on their Amazon earnings. Online affiliates should be considered nothing more than advertising vehicles. If a company places an advertising in a state's newspaper, that doesn't constitute presence. A Web page is just like any other publication, the only difference being that it's online. There are other factors that complicate matters even more. What if the Web servers used by an associate are housed in a state different than the associate's residence? Suddenly that state may want a piece of the sales taxes too. What if an associate has a second home in another state where weekends are spent tweaking the Web site? In the end, if many states succeed in passing Internet sales tax laws, Amazon will most likely pull the plug on its associates program completely. Or it may decide to only work with associates from a handful of states that are too lucrative to walk away from. That may be bad for Amazon, but it's even worse for those states that would in fact cut off their residents from a source of income, possibly forfeiting tax earnings to other states who may be wise enough not to pass such laws and, as the result, harm their residents and ultimately themselves in the process. amazon,sales tax,income tax,internet sales tax,amazon affiliates, Labels: internet, law, tax <Amazon Vs. Internet Sales Tax> // posted by rh 0 comments Monday, April 20, 2009 Oracle Buys Sun  When today I heard the news of Oracle buying Sun Microsystems, my first thought was that I wished I had picked up some JAVA shares after the IBM deal had fallen through. It was just a matter of time before a suitor would snap it up. My second thought was about its impact on the tech sector and the end users. For one, this puts Oracle in the hardware business with new competitors like IBM, HP, and Dell. It's possible though that Oracle would sell off or just kill that part of the business. The more interesting situation is the future of Java, MySQL, and OpenOffice. My predictions are: Java will continue in its current form, free for users with a fee-based maintenance arm. MySQL will be absorbed into the big Oracle DB mother ship and will continue to be free of charge under a moniker like Oracle-Light or something similar. Again, there will be a fee-based maintenance plan for that. As for OpenOffice, Oracle will have its challenges with Microsoft and Google. It's probably steady-as-she-goes with regards to OpenOffice, at least for some time. Oracle seems to have the right combination of fortune and skills to successfully absorb acquired companies into its collective. If the past is any indication, the Sun Micro acquisition will be yet another smooth sailing (pun intended). Of course the downside of this will the layoffs that follow such an event. It’s a bit sad to bid farewell to Sun as an independent firm. This company has had such a huge impact on the tech sector in terms of innovation and the proliferation of the Internet. But considering the alternative (possible bankruptcy or a state of irrelevance), Oracle may be just the right company to keep Sun's legacy of innovation alive and even push it further. oracle,sun microsystems,microsoft,google,java,mysql,openoffice Labels: financial, internet <Oracle Buys Sun> // posted by rh 0 comments Wednesday, June 18, 2008 DNS Mystery, NameServers, IP addresses  Today I was trying to reach 1&1's home page, but the browser kept failing to pull up the site. Mysteriously I was able to reach 1&1's home page when I changed my DNS servers to those of OpenDNS.org. Feeling curious I decided to investigate the matter in depth. My default DNS server was reporting the IP address of www.1and1.com to be 217.160.232.1. While that address belongs to 1&1, it's really one of their routers or gateways and not a Web server. No wonder I was unable to access the site. the working IP address reported by OpenDNS.org and a number of other DNS servers was 217.160.226.203. That is indeed the correct IP address for www.1and1.com. So why was I seeing different results from different DNS servers? As you may know the job of translating a host name to an IP address falls on a program known as the resolver which queries its designated DNS server for the answer. If the DNS server can not produce the translation (from its cache or authority zone), it issues what it's know as a recursive query to the DNS network on the Internet. The host name is broken to its fragments and each fragment from right to left is queried successively. The results generally consists of hosts known as NameServers, which get the query one step closer to the final result. The final NameServers produce the IP address translation. However, if any of the NameServers along the way can produce the translation, the query stops and the IP address is sent back to the resolver. Using the Unix/Linux dig command I followed the name resolution for www.1and1.com one step at a time. Results are shown here and shortened for brevity. This command displays the root servers: # dig ;; ANSWER SECTION: . 451081 IN NS M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 451081 IN NS A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 451081 IN NS B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 451081 IN NS C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. This command queries one of the root servers and produces NameServers for "com." TLD (Top Level Domain): # dig +norec @A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET www.1and1.com ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: com. 172800 IN NS K.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. com. 172800 IN NS L.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. com. 172800 IN NS M.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. com. 172800 IN NS A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. This command queries one of the "com." NameServers: # dig +norec @A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET www.1and1.com ;; ANSWER SECTION: www.1and1.com. 172800 IN A 217.160.232.1 ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: 1and1.com. 172800 IN NS ns27.1and1.com. 1and1.com. 172800 IN NS ns28.1and1.com. Generally the previous command shouldn't produce and IP address, instead the authority section would prompt a final query to one of the 1and1.com NameServers (which by the way have the correct IP translation.) Instead somehow an IP address is produced at this level and the query ends with this inaccurate IP translation. I've tried the same query with the homepage URL's of Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and a few other sites and none return an IP address at this level. It remains to be seen if this erroneous translation would eventually spread around, causing 1&1's homepage to become widely inaccessible. Anyone knows how that IP translation ended up in of the "com." NameServers? Am I making wrong assumptions here? Feel free to let me know. dns,nameservers,domain names,ip addresses,internet Labels: internet, networks, web <DNS Mystery, NameServers, IP addresses> // posted by rh 1 comments Wednesday, March 19, 2008 Google, Blogger in German?  Here's a head-scratcher for tonight. When I got home one of my kids was trying show me something on blogger.com and suddenly everything was in Deutsch, as in German. At first I though that it was a mix-up. Some programmer at Google (which owns Blogger) had screwed up and suddenly everything had gone Teutonic. Now we have a German-speaking household, so then I assumed that the kids had changed some setting to German language and Google was happily obliging. Hoping to unravel the mystery, I logged in to my own account on the XP machine and headed to google.com. no luck, it kept switching over to google.de. What was happening here? I checked the regional settings on the XP machine and everything was as expected, en-US. Then I headed to the whoami page to see if my IE browser was specifying a wrong "Accept-Language" header (i.e. de-DE) prompting Google to redirect to its German site based on the CultureInfo. Nope, that wasn't the problem either. Then I launched Firefox and surfed onto google.com. Same behavior, I landed on Google's German site again. Somehow Google was convinced that I was German and it was trying to help me, more like coerce me, to their German site. Is it possible that they had an algorithm tracking web sites visited from my house and deciding that the "most appropriate" site for us was their German version? I can't say for sure, but apparently Google had decided that we should use their German site. A quick fix was to click on the English link on Google's homepage. That deposited a cookie in the browser indicating that I was interested in the standard google.com site and it fixed the immediate problem, but not entirely. Blogger was (and still is) coming up in German and deleting cookies, as I often do, would bring things back to the annoying redirect. Was Google erroneously identifying my IP address as one from Germany? Feeling frustrated, I searched the newsgroups for an answer and I found this thread that confirmed my suspicion. One of the posters who was experiencing the same problem had written to Google and had received this response: Google has recently started using IP-address detection to help our users find our foreign destination sites. Unfortunately, our IP-address detection is not perfect and you are being inappropriately redirected. We are working on the problem. In the interim, you can regain your old Google.com experience by simply clicking on the 'Google.com [English]' link in the footer of the page. By clicking on this, Google will note that you have opted out of the foreign domain site and you will no longer experience redirects. So it was an IP address mis-identification after all. This is the most ridiculous scheme I have heard of, and to have it come out of Google, it is almost inconceivable. No doubt the folks at Google are padding themselves on their backs for their ingenuity. Meanwhile they apparently have disregarded the basic rules of IP addresses on the Internet and the proper way of serving visitors. First off, please don't help me along when I haven't asked for it. That is so Microsoft to try to be helpful in all the wrong places. If I want the German site, I'll ask for it myself. Second, the correct way of determining a user's preferred CultureInfo is checking the browser header. The browser will tell you what language the user is likely interested in. Third, the IP address is an unreliable way of determining the user's preferred language. The user could be an American connecting his laptop from his hotel room in Germany. Or a Parisian employee of an American company using a corporate proxy server in the U.S. Fourth, if you must persist in this IP detection insanity, at least make sure your databases are not flawed. I'm connected over an AT&T DSL circuit in Connecticut, yet Google apparently believes I'm in Germany or Lichtenstein. And finally don't give the visitor some half-baked solution of clicking on a link, when it doesn't help with your other sites and reverts to the original problem when cookies are deleted. Not to mention that it wouldn't even work if the user has opted to block cookies. For a company that prides itself in its technical prowess and its service, Google sure astounded me with this one. Or, is this just a ploy to throw some traffic to their foreign sites? Google,German,ip addresses,internet,web browsers,Firefox,cultureinfo Labels: google, internet, web <Google, Blogger in German?> // posted by rh 1 comments

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