The Internet’s Broken Heart

Originally, I announced this security breach vulnerability by reblogging Tumblr’s announcement of it. But now I have a few further details. This is reblogged from my Blogger blog at:

http://blog.websitewebmaster.net/2014/04/heart-of-internet-is-broken.html

Which is reproduced below for your convenience…

By now, you have heard of the bug, “Heartbleed” that has nearly all manner of websites updating their system servers. Heartbleed is a radical security hole that was identified on April 7th, 2014, which allows malicious hackers to bypass the encryption of OpenSSL software which secures a majority of servers on the internet.

Only OpenSSL versions 1.0.1 through 1.0.1f which utilize the Heartbeat extension are at risk. You will have to contact your host in order to see what if you use the OpenSSL system and whether or not your server uses a version that is affected with the heartbeat extension compiled in.

SSL Security Certificates themselves are not broken, though if you are using OpenSSL on your server, you should have your administrator upgrade to version 1.0.1g immediately, wipe the server cache, and then reboot.

You should also advise your users that they should secure their account with a new password because of the threat this security vulnerability.

Users who participate in any membership on any website should also make the rounds, find if your service has addressed the issue, make sure that they have or will, and once they have, change your password.

This is a huge frick’n deal. It will inconvenience all of us (at the least) for a very long time. The worse case scenario is that you might have your personal information that is stored on any server, stolen. So the whole of the internet, administrators and users, have to address this issue immediately.

Ads, Ads, Ads…

So much spam. I abandoned this droll blogging platform when WordPress suddenly decided to add advertisements to the blog. I was so upset that I cancelled my paid domain name mapping (where http://domainating.com was the actual address of the site). You can still get here via the http://domainating.com address, but now you are redirected to this web address (https://domainating.wordpress.com/).

So, I will lose all credibilty with my domain name in Google, as Google very hypocritically and absolutely very definitely hates redirects used on any server other than its own, even though they use this method of directing traffic all the time (check out chrome.com , android.com or picasa.com, as examples).

So I started blogging on Tumblr and wouldn’t you know it, after their sale to Yahoo the very first post to every one of my blogs is now a very spammy advertisement. Sometimes these ads even contain malware!  Hence, I will not even list my 7 tumblr blog addresses here.  In fact, if you visit any blog on Tumblr, make sure you have a good malware client.  An anti-virus program is not enough!  In fact, an anti-virus program does very little to protect you from spyware and malware.  I use a good one, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Pro, and I recommend it, highly.  You wouldn’t believe how much stuff it has already caught and protected me from.

So now, I feel betrayed once again.  Why can’t a guy write on a blog without seeming like a spammer or scammer anymore?  I don’t have $100.00 a year for that, even full-function web hosting is cheaper, and you have more control.  It used to be that everyone who liked to blog could find a safe haven.  But now everyone is just using us to build their own scraper site.

What is a scraper site?  A site that uses ads to scrape a few cents away from the advertiser to reflect the lead, or link, giving him traffic to his site.  Now, I am not at all against advertising, when it is done right and responsibly.  But peppering the advertisements with lies, mistruths, misleading info, outright deceit, viruses, trojans, malware and spyware has always been against the law.  Plus, advertisers such as WordPress, Yahoo, even Google and Tumblr lose control of the ads and the quality of the ads because truth in advertising is never enforced in digital media anymore.

I guess I’m going back to Google’s Blogger platform, now.  At least I don’t have to display ads with Blogger (so far).  I guess all we can do is pray that corporate America sees the light and revolts against all this privacy intrusion…

Jesus Christ, please forgive the stupid people behind these corporations that are taking advantage of us bloggers and our readers with crap advertising, spam, viruses, trojans and malware, but please get some smart people into these corporations that can take charge, look after their brands, not mar us and ours up, and make it pretty darn quick! This is just plain idiocy. Amen.

Yahoo!’s Domainapalooza

Yahoo has decided to release some of its premium domain names to the public through an auction at Sedo…

Yahoo!’s Domainapalooza …(This link was updated on November 16th, 2013)

This premium domain name portfolio auction started today, November 14th, and runs to November 21st, 2013.  Although there are quite a few names that I feel are not very good (especially for the reserve price indicated), there are some great domains in the bunch…

• AV.com
• WebServer.com
• Sandwich.com
• Sled.com
• VoiceMail.com
• Crackers.com
• Freeby.com/.net
• BlogsPort.com (or brand it as BlogSport.com)

Now, please note that the above is merely a sampling of some of the best domain names in the Yahoo Domainapalooza premium domain portfolio auction.  But that portfolio is listing over 500 names on its first day, and Yahoo! also indicates that it will also be adding even more domain names throughout the auction.

Can you walk away with a great brandable domain name that you could develop into a profitable website or business?  Very likely, considering the quality of some of these names.  Especially with names that have an excellent second meaning.  For instance, even though winter is coming and sled would make a great name to sell winter snow sleds, “sled” is often how I refer to older muscle cars that had great power but lacked the handling of a sports car.  These beasts will never have sports car handling because they double as grocery-getters and transportation to work.  And if you are into muscle cars like I am you would see the opportunity in that street rod slang name.

As of this writing, there are 517 domain names available for auction and with Yahoo planning to add even more this may become the most watched premium domain name portfolio auction in history.

Happy domaining!  I hope there will be many domainers taking advantage of this opportunity to add to their portfolio and domainate the market with domainating names.  😉

Yahoo!’s Domainapalooza …(This link was updated on November 16th, 2013)

-Doug
…”Domainating”
(I’m going back to check out that list!)

Still In Recovery

I have been spending a great deal of time recovering from 2 things… a physical ailment where I actually tore something within my inner hip/pelvis region when I tripped over a “safety guard” while working the freight at Kohl’s, and the second being that I still have not reinstated all of my online properties after my high speed web hosting reseller account (which was so expensive that I couldn’t resell it) was finally cancelled on February 14th of this year.

The Injury:

Although I had recovered well and felt good when I went back to work after over a week off and taking Advil every day, soon after the tolls of the graveyard shift and the constant physical labor of unloading and replenishing freight was wearing on me.  I plan on going back to see the doctor because now my hip makes popping or clicking sounds in my normal day-to-day routine when I’m not working.  This is often accompanied with a shooting pain, but sometimes it is more noise. But I still haven’t recovered from taking the one week off after I had the injury.  I am really hurting financially because work was already slow and my domain/hosting sales also slow-up in the summer. I admit I am feeling pretty frail now, these days.

The Websites:

Only a handful of websites remain offline currently, these are mostly my general subject directories.  One that remains up and online (after recovering it) is Hyperlink Directory.  Because of complications with the databases of other directories, I will be using the Hyperlink Directory database to form the start of my other directories which were previously phpLinkDirectories (Worthful Index & Reciprocate Links!, which are currently parked until I have some extra time to get them online).

Some of the other directories I ran seemed to be running on what might be considered insecure directory software, so I am leaving those offline until I can find a migration path.  Since phpLD doesn’t support directory database migration, I am looking to other software solutions.

In the meantime, I have not only continued recovering the websites and intellectual properties that went down in flames due to my expensive web hosting issues, I’ve also been making those recovered websites better, as well as continuing to build my empire of websites and brands. One example is that I setup Font-Journal on Domain Hostmaster hosting and I am also trying to keep it updated as I have a whole bunch more fonts to upload (the list is quite long).

I also setup Glossary Index, which is a handy little dictionary word lookup utility site with live feedback as you type in your word.

I have established a couple more pin-up beauty sites honoring and celebrating the unsurpassed beauty of women. These are both on Tumblr, Top Hot Girls seems the most popular. I don’t know if it is the monochromatic style or simply that I have been lucky to find some shots of very precious beauties in this format, but Super Elegance is one of my favorites. To me the beauty of women is undeniable proof of God.  You can’t tell me that there isn’t a superior intelligence at work there, they are pure living art.  I just wish they made sense.  And there you have God’s humor making our lives interesting.

I also setup a domain to display my old HTML Character Code Reference Table at (where else?) HTMLCharacterCode.com.

I am working on a few other new sites and updating some elder ones, as well.  Right now I am trying to setup sites using best web design practices that take advantage of the HTML5 & CSS3 web standards.  This is proving to a be a lot more difficult using CSS to structure the layout.  Although I love the standard, it is a great deal more difficult to code this way.  It is also harder to struggle through the code when designing radically different sites, as I always have to start over from scratch.

The worst part is that while I am trying to get all my old sites updated with HTML5 and CSS3, I am not learning all the neat things that I can do in HTML5 with the canvas property that I need to know.

I feel like I’m always racing to catch-up.  My part-time job doesn’t exactly help me accomplish a single thing, either.  It’s a very physical job moving freight all night long and always wears me out and takes me out of the game for well too long recuperating afterwards.

Why even have this stupid menial labor position, I don’t know, I am farther in debt now than when I started a year ago.  WTF?

Swamped!

Right now I’m just making a quick post because I am swamped with things to do after my web host finally shut-off my services (and did I ask them to shut off my hosting and stop charging me for it, SIX MONTHS AGO).

I’ve been documenting what I’m doing to get caught-up at http://www.Blare.Info/ – but I have a long way to go, yet, and I better get some sleep before I go into work again tonight.

I thought this freelancing stuff meant I would have FREE Time, but NO!

Busy as a Bee…

I’ve been so busy updating domain names and websites. I have a bad host that is costing Me a great deal for the account. I really liked the hosting, even though they were so expensive, until they made a big deal about my Top Sites script and shut down the site.  That’s the one I was paying them to handle.  I can get all sorts of other hosts to handle the other domains at almost no cost to Me.

What sites have I been updating? I’ve been trying to get lots of domains and websites moved off the old host. So I’m not doing too much. But here’s a list:

http://www.4gz.net/
http://www.4gz.us/
http://www.abitofallright.com/ – Actually, I messed this one up. I still have to go back and fix the a names.
http://www.adgtw.com/
http://www.adtda.com/
http://amanshomeishiscastle.com/
http://automotivesalvageyards.com/
http://www.derivant.com/
http://www.designerartist.com/
http://www.domainance.com/
http://www.domainants.com/
http://www.domainperfection.com/
http://www.poetlike.com/
http://www.superelegance.com/

Aside from moving them off that expensive server so that I can close that web hosting reseller account, I am trying to get these sites to look good on a mobile phone screen. Let me know if I need to address any particular site. I actually have a Droid X with an HD aspect screen that most websites actually look pretty good on.