.Com, .net, .org. These are the website suffixes most people are familiar with. Today Go Daddy, and a slew of other registars, began offering .Me names in hopes of reinvigorating the domain squatter market. And boy did Go Daddy rile up a stampede of people. At 11 am eastern when the landrush began Go Daddy’s servers took a hit. The site was sluggish and searching for an available new cyber-property became grueling.

I was just poking around looking for something slightly amusing. I think I managed to buy beam.me but as of now it hasn’t shown up in my domain queue on my Go Daddy control panel. Other people are reporting failure notices after they think they have registered a domain which I have not received. A co-worker was trying to grab lemonli.me and treadon.me so he could create dont.treadon.me. As for me (pun intended), the possibilities of my geeky beam.me include a funny Star Trek reference at beam.me/up or something else. On the train ride home I was thinking I could partner with an uber Star Trek geek who would blog on my domain while I managed and ran the technical stuff. I would even be willing to split the ad revenue 50/50.

But this is most likely only speculation for now. If I don’t get it, no big deal. These secondary extensions will soon be just as worthless as .info, .ws, and the dreadful .biz. But this will be nothing compared to when ICANN roles out custom top-level domains in 2009.

Robert Scoble (Scobelizer) and Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library TV) were both in the nations capital today which is a good enough cause for the DC tech community to hold a bash! The Capitol Valley Media group managed to pull together a great event at MCCXXIII on Connecticut Avenue. With nearly 500 expected guests, the place was packed with passionate DC technologists and social media gurus. I caught up with a few friends and managed to have a word or two with New Media Jim and Robert Scoble.

Social mixers aren’t really my thing so I ducked out early to catch the metro home to Glenmont. I hope I didn’t miss anything but it was great to see how big the tech community is in DC. 500 people just to see two famous Internet people, wow!

One of the most dreaded tasks every web developer faces is testing their pages in the multitude of browsers to make sure everything is working as it should. Until recently, that required having multiple systems lying around. Microsoft only let you install one version of Internet Explorer (IE) at a time due to the fact that it is built deep into the system kernel. Apple used to keep Safari to itself on the Mac operating system leaving the only option of buying Apple hardware to get at the browser.

While there have been several stand-alone versions of IE cobbled together, I just don’t trust them like a fresh native install. And it’s good to see how a site renders with the text rendering engine of the Mac versus the Windows rendering system. Now with virtualization tools like VMWare Fusion, we can have it all.

After installing VMWare and an instance of Windows you may be tempted to set-up another virtual machine specifically for another version of IE. But this is foolish because each XP virtual machine can take up a good chunk of harddrive space. Fortunately there is another way to accomplish this while saving a heap of space.

Below are the steps I took to download the free Virtual Disk images that Microsoft provides with a bare minimum installation of XP or Vista and IE6, IE7, or IE8 Beta. All that we need to do is convert them to a format that VMWare can use and we’ll be in business. The basis of this walkthrough came from Running IE6, IE7 and IE8 on your Mac by Jeremy Gillick. So let’s dive in…

1. Go and download the version(s) of IE that you want from Microsoft. This can be anywhere from 330MB - 3GB
2. Download Qemu-0.9.1-windows.zip. We’ll use this to convert the Virtual PC disk images to a VMWare compatible virtual disk.
3. Start up your virtual XP machine and drag the two files onto the XP desktop.
4. Un-zip Qemu-0.9.1-windows.zip to your C:/ drive so it will be easier to find later.
5. Speaking of making things easier, it would help to rename the folder Qemu-0.9.1-windows to qmenu. This will come in handy later when we are typing up a storm on the command line.

   

6. Double click IE7-XPSP2_VPC.EXE to extract the image. Save it to C:\qmenu. You should now see a .vhd file in your qmenu folder. Size wise it should be a little over a gig.
7. Again, to make things easier to type later we shall rename XP SP2 with IE7.vhd to XPSP2IE7.vhd

   

8. Now it’s time to do the conversion via the command line. Fire it up by going to Start -> Run and typing cmd. Then press enter to launch the command line.
9. Navigate to the qmenu directory by typing cd c:\qmenu
10. Now type this line to run the actual conversion process: bin\qemu-img.exe convert -f vpc C:\qmenu\XPSP2IE7.vhd -O vmdk XPIE7.vmdk

    

11. You will know it is working because all you will see is a blinking cursor on a new line. The amount of time it takes to finish converting can be anywhere between 10 minutes and an hour depending on your CPU.
12. When you get back the C:\qmenu> with the blinking cursor you will know the process has finished. There will also be a new file called XPIE7.vmdk in your qmenu folder.
13. Copy XPIE7.vmdk back to OS X by simply dragging it out of the VMWare window and onto your Mac’s desktop.
    
14. Open VMWare Fusion and create a new virtual machine by going to File -> New.
15. Go through the wizard and once you get to the Virtual Hard Disk page, expand Advanced disk options and check Use an existing virtual disk. Use the drop down to select Other… and go find the .vmdk file you just copied over.

    

16. Finish the wizard and boot it up. If prompted to upgrade the virtual harddrive, click Yes.
17. Install the VMWare tools by going to Virtual Machine -> Install VMWare Tools as soon as Windows boots up. Now you’re done!

    

You should have a dedicated IE machine that you can test your web pages in. Mine weighs in at a mere 1.06GB compared to the typical multi-gigabyte requirement of a full install.

Before you go rushing off in a state of web development nirvana, it should be noted that you will have to do this every three months as the Virtual PC images that Microsoft gives out expire. This is done to deter free loaders from using the OS for real work. But since you should only use it for testing purposes, it won’t be a big deal to delete the image and start this process anew every couple of months.

Happy testing!

Today is June 17th and that means Firefox 3 becomes official. After several betas and release candidates the successor to the #2 browser in the world has finally been thrusted upon us. You might want to skip Firefox 3 if you don’t use any addons, only use one tab at a time and/or enjoy a slow, bogged down web browser. Besides better memory management, the new “awesome bar”, and refreshed interfaces that better integrate into the look of your operating system, Firefox 3 manages to pack in over 15,000 other improvements.

To draw attention, the folks at Mozilla headquarters decided to break the Guinness record for the most downloaded software in a 24 hour period. Hence Firefox Download Day was created.

I updated Firefox on my MacBook Pro, on my Windows XP virtual machine running in VMware, my ancient PC at work, and even my huge Windows laptop. That last update was particularly tricky as the wireless card for my desktop replacement died and I had to tether it to my Mac via a cross-over cable. Here is a picture of the irony.

Apple makes a great $2700 wifi card!

How many computers did you update today?

P.S. Get your own certificate.

UPDATE: Now you can track the number of downloads in real-time as well as see the average number of downloads per minute!

Twitter may be the king of the 140 character-limit hill but with it being down more than it is up, it is nice to have options. Pownce was seen as a possible “Twitter killer” offering a more stylish interface and a bevy of additional features like nested replies (keeping conversations neat and tidy) and embedded media options. But it says something when one of the main people behind Pownce, Kevin Rose, flings his Twitter address all over the place. It’s a real shame because Pownce is better organized and even includes a business model. Too bad it’s a virtual ghost town compared to the fluttering Twitter community.

Plurk is a similar service with a unique visual twist. Instead of reading your messages in a linear stream, Plurk displays your correspondents on an attractive timeline. Each Plurk can be directly responded to like a mini-forum eliminating the barrage of @ responses that comes with Twitter. Taking a page from Facebook’s status update feature, Plurk lets you specify an action like “is”, “likes”, “thinks” etc. which are uniquely colored similiar to the popular Twitter mashup Twistori. The site tips the scale when it comes to AJAX effects with lots of fading modal windows but provides a rich experience for consuming the stream of information presented before you.

The two most unique features that Plurk brings to the game are Cliques and Karma.

Cliques in Plurk are just like Cliques in real-life: an exclusive group of people. Plurk lets you separate your friends into different groups so you can better filter messages coming to you. Cliques also let you send out a message to a certain group of people so you can keep your messages to your family hidden from your group of co-workers.

Karma is a community status indicator so you can easily spot the active members from the passive on-lookers. Your score is calculated every day and is influenced by you and your friends Plurk activity as well as friend referrals. It’s a pretty clever idea by the site creators to help build buzz by giving a useless number to try and grow. Think of it like a score in a video game.

Plurk is still missing an open API so other people can build apps on top of the service and mobile support so people can send Plurks in while they are out and about. But Pownce was in the same boat when it first launched and adding those features hardly helped it’s market share. The real test will be if Plurk can attract the hordes of Twitter followers because microblogging services like this are only useful if the people you know (or want to know) are part of the game.

Oh and the mascot is a dog without a head.

Follow me on Plurk, Twitter, Pownce, and a bunch of other social services.

Román Cortés managed to create a dead-on recreation of Homer Simpson using nothing but HTML/CSS. To boot it is essentially a vector image that will scale if you increase the text size of your browser. Go to the page and press the control and the ‘+’ key at the same time to see what I mean.

The source code isn’t too pretty but for this spectacle it is certainly understandable. It just makes a good case that open technologies like SVG, which will make it easier to construct vector graphics out of XML code, need to be adopted much faster.

Today is my 23rd birthday, but I’m not the only one who has a special day today. Did you know American Idol first season winner Kelly Clarkson’s birthday is today? Or how about Chipper Jones, the 3rd baseman for the Atlanta Braves who was also born on this day? Apparently Benedikt Lechler, a famous composer, celebrates his 414th birthday today. He was born in 1594.

Thanks to BrainyHistory.com I know all of this random trivia about April 24th. But not just limiting themselves to birth dates, Brainy History also offers a catalog of death dates and important events. Estee Lauder died at the age of 97 on the same day I turned 17 in 2004. But my favorite event that happened on April 24th hands-down has got to be from 1982 when the IBM-PC was introduced. Those that know me realize this is a perfect fit for me.

But birthdays aren’t all about looking back and reflecting; they’re about getting free stuff on your special day. HeyItsFree.net (via Pammy) has the ultimate list of food, entertainment, and services that give away free offerings to birthday boys or girls. We’re talking mostly about free ice cream and cake but some places like Chevys mexican restaurants give away a free desert and a sombrero. The catch is you have to sign up in advance to take advantage of most of the offers. Too late for me now, but maybe next year.

Finally my Dad reminded me that when he was 23 he was in Vietnam in charge of 30 guys in a supply department on the USS Warrington. I sure am lucky I’m not off in a war zone and get to spend my birthday with family and friends.

Kristina made me brownies and got me grown presents like shoelaces, belts, and the movie 300 for my birthday.

Blowing out candles is still fun no matter how old you are.

The guy behind the blog nihilogic.dk decided to partake in an exercise of game design using JavaScript. Choosing the classic Super Mario Brothers game, his proof of concept is considered a success. The whole thing weighs in at 14Kb and the entire game is contained in one JavaScript file.

“There are no external image files or anything, everything is rendered with Javascript using either canvas elements or old fashioned div-making tactics (for IE). The sprites are stored in custom encoded strings in a format that only allows 4 colors for each sprite but in turn only takes up around 40-60 bytes per sprite.”

Granted it is very brief and not entirely true to the original gameplay, it is still downright impressive that something like this can even be accomplished with a web-based scripting language.

If you are interested in seeing how the whole thing works, you can sneak a peek at the uncompressed code.

Keeping with the 8-bit video game theme of this post, Tetrageddon.com is an odd Flash site. The style of the music and graphics is in homage to the 8-bit videogames of years past but there are no explicit directions about what to do. Instead you are left to fend for yourself exploring the site and uncovering the wacky consequences of your voyage. The whole thing is “CENTALLY MHALLENGED” to borrow from the sites page title.

Tip: on the main page hold the up arrow key and make sure you allow pop-ups for the site.

If anyone can figure out something interesting to do at Tetrageddon.com let me know in the comments.

For the past month I have been working feverishly on the latest release of America’s Best Graduate Schools put out by U.S.News and World Report. Today we finally launched it to the public and I wanted to show the difference between last year’s release and this years.

The old Best Graduate pages were constructed with several year old PHP code and hosted on a couple of Apache servers. Much of the layout was done with tables (spacer .gifs ugh…) which became very difficult to manage after many annual revisions.

This year we decided to re-do the whole thing with a new look and a new Zope backend. The HTML and CSS code was completely modular for maximum efficiency. It was actually a lot of fun seeing the whole thing come together.

So have a look around the new site and let me know what you think. You can see the official blog post about all of the new features and functionality here. If you want to know some of the technical details, leave a comment. There was a lot of mental energy that went into the design of the site. But now I’m beat from the pre-launch stress and look forward to getting to bed before midnight.

When I heard that Flickr is nearly ready to add video capabilities, I felt a bit queasy. Flickr is the leader in the photo sharing arena by a large margin. The main reason it reached critical mass was because of the community it built around the photos uploaded by users. It is also one of the harder sites to monetize since display advertising clashes with photo viewing and there isn’t enough text content for contextual advertising to work. The $24.95 Pro memberships (which can be given as gifts *wink wink*) keep Flickr from being a total money-sink.

Photos require a large chunk of bandwidth to serve up to the millions of Flickr users, but that is nothing compared to the overhead of video. This is probably a moot point considering the company is running off the pipes of it’s owner, web pioneer Yahoo.

While there are good and bad reasons for Flickr to add video, I don’t think they can compete in such a crowded video-sharing marketplace. Did Vimeo, Viddler, Revver, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Veoh, and the all mighty YouTube leave anything for Flickr to improve upon? It looks like Flickr will have a long, uphill battle to even catch up to the middle of the pack.

Flickr has a huge community around photos and what they need to do is offer more photo related services. Many artists on Flickr have an account at 3rd party sites for selling prints of their work. Flickr could offer fine-art prints from members that opt-in to sell their photos with the service. This way Flickr would tie the browsing and buying experience together and could make a small profit off of each transaction. An example of another art site doing something similar is DeviantART.com (see my prints.).

DeviantART lets users upload as many photos as they want with no file size limitations, just like Flickr. Every member is eligible to opt-in to the standard print account which allows them to sell their art work and receive a cut of the profits. A Premium print account is available for $24.95 a year and offers more print customizations and a higher share of the profits from a sale. These are not run-of-the-mill snapshot prints like at Walmart or Costco. DeviantART does high quality work. The beauty of this is DeviantART can set a base price which includes a tiny profit with every transaction as well as helping out it’s communities. When community members profit, the company profits as well.

Flickr needs something like this! How could such a megasite sit back and watch it’s users point potential customers off to make a purchase? This is money that they are letting go by under their noses. And what do they plan to do with video anyways? Nobody has figured out a successful way to monetize video.

Flickr already has an intuitive interface for uploading, tagging, and browsing photos, why can’t they add selling photos to that list? I feel offering a way for the community to profit off their work while helping Flickr earn it’s keep makes everyone happy. This is way better than adding the latest me-too feature that is already pervasive throughout the web.