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ModernWarfare3.com owner outed by GoDaddy
Miami, Florida resident Anthony Abraham has been sitting on a very valuable URL for approximately two and a half years at this point. And though he'd hidden his identity through his URL registrant, GoDaddy.com, via its "Domains By Proxy" hiding service, a domain dispute from Modern Warfare 3 publisher Activision dissolved that shield this past weekend. Abraham is the owner of ModernWarfare3.com who has been seemingly trolling Activision for days now. The publisher filed a domain-name dispute with the National Arbitration Forum, claiming that the site owner violates Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. Rather than stand by Abraham, GoDaddy instead lifted the electronic shroud hiding the URL registrant's name, opening him up to direct contact with Activision (and by extension, we imagine, Activision's legal team). Currently, the ModernWarfare3.com URL brings up nothing more than an error, though over the weekend it redirected to both Battlefield 3's main site as well as a spoof site lampooning Modern Warfare 3 (featuring the video seen above) Activision has yet to publicly comment on Mr. Abraham's actions, instead choosing to let its UDRP complaint act as representation. The publisher believes Abraham "has no right or legitimate interest in the Domain Name," and argues that it's entitled to control given its history with the Modern Warfare IP.
Apple goes on a domain name shopping spree
Apple has bought at least 50 domain names in the last three days. While many of the domain names are related to features of Lion or iOS 5 that were introduced at WWDC on Monday, it's unlikely Apple will use most of the domain names as active URLs. Instead, Apple probably just snapped them up to keep squatters from getting them. After all, it's got to be tiring going after every single person who buys a domain with one of your trademarks in it. Here's a complete list of the domain names:
Palm.com quietly replaced by HPwebOS.com, no wake to follow
It goes without saying that funerals are a downer, but we all deserve a proper sendoff, -- unfortunately for Palm.com, there will be no tearful goodbyes. We reported just a few months ago that Palm was on its way out, and now HP's unceremoniously given the brand's URL the boot. You can still find the Palm logo at a number of related URLs scattered about the internets -- the brand's support page, twitter account, and official blog are still up and running -- but try typing Palm.com in your address bar, and you'll be swiftly redirected to HPwebOS.com. And here we thought our aunt Pearl moved on quickly.
ICANN has .xxx domain names? Yes!
The controversial step to approve .xxx domain names has today been taken by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, paving the way for a whole slew of new addresses suffixed by the famous triplicate x. Funnily enough, before the decision was made today, opposition to it was proffered by both conservative groups opposed to pornography and adult entertainment companies fearing they'd be more easily compartmentalized and potentially blocked by overzealous governments. Moreover, every popular adult website at present will pretty much be forced to buy its .xxx version, which, for an industry famous for its frugality, will be an understandably tough pill to swallow. We are surprised not to see the people of Amsterdam consulted, however -- their city's emblem features three Xs too, shouldn't they have a say in this? A further meeting is scheduled by ICANN for June 20th to discuss opening up all possible domain name suffixes to registration, pending the validation of a set of guidelines for approval. That's looking quite likely to be passed too, as the AFP sagely notes that there's a celebratory party scheduled for two days after the event. URLs are about to get a lot more varied, it seems; they're certainly going to feature a lot more of the (English) alphabet's 24th letter, whatever the case.
Sun.com, the twelfth oldest domain on the internet, will be decommissioned on June 1st
Sun Microsystems, one of the original gangsters responsible for supplying all the electronics and infrastructure we now know as the internet, ceased to be Sun Microsystems in January of last year. Assimilated into the Oracle juggernaut, its operations no longer carry that familiar logo and soon they'll no longer even be referenced in the same spot on the internet. Yes, after 25 years of answering the call of sun.com, the company that no longer is will be letting go of its former domain name as well. The site has already been redirecting users to Oracle for quite a while, but come June 1st, it'll be like the Sun we knew had never even risen. [Thanks, Jeroen]
URL Hunter game takes place entirely in your browser's address bar, courtesy of HTML5
That's right, kids: the tyranny of the browser window is over! Thanks to Corey from ProbablyInteractive (as well as clever use of HTML5 and the Canvas tag), we now have URL Hunter. Using the left and right arrows keys, the player controls an ASCII "O" that has nothing better to do all day but kill the letter "a." When you find yourself on top of the "a" key, hit the space bar to earn a point. Simple? In theory, yes. But trust us -- It's harder than it sounds! Hit the source link to try for yourself.
New Goo.gl URL shortener API lets third party developers in on the outrageous fun that is Google URL shortening
Just a quick note, because we know how much you love APIs: Google has opened its URL shortening service to third party developers. That's right -- not only can you use Goo.gl to generate QR codes, but now you can build it into your own software. As well as support for URL shortening and expanding, the API will also let you track your history and analytics. Says Ben D'Angelo of the URL shortening team: "You could use these features for a wide variety of applications, enabling behaviors ranging from auto-shortening within Twitter or Google Buzz clients to running regular jobs that monitor your usage statistics and traffic patterns." The team is also working to improve spam and malicious site detection for the service. Since the government of Greenland seems to be a bit more stable than that of a certain Muammar al-Gaddafi, we're sure that Google won't run into the same problems that vb.ly did (although we wonder if things would change if Kuupik Kleist got his own voluptuous Ukrainian nurse). Hit the source link to get coding.
Libya cracking down on .ly domain names, reportedly yanking them at will
Ruh roh. It looks as if current owners of .ly domain names may need to be on high alert -- you know, in case the Libyan government decides to yank your URL from the face of the internet. According to a thorough report from Ben Metcalfe, that's exactly what's happening. Vb.ly was recently pulled because the content on the site (read: not the domain) was found to be "obscene, offensive and illegal," presumably based on what would be expected under Libyan Islamic / Sharia Law. More concerning still is that Libya seems to be dictating the pulls on their own, even if the site content isn't in violation of that law. 'Course, it's all pretty vague to begin with, making it even easier to toss under said umbrella and call it a day. We're also hearing that .ly domain names with less than four letters are now being reserved for local Libyans only, and we're guessing that a continued fallout is upon us. Bit.ly, Ow.ly, Ad.ly -- you guys still with us, or what?
Goo.gl URL shortener can also spit out QR codes, if you ask it nicely
Once again, Google fails at being ordinary. Although the claim with its Goo.gl URL shortener is that it's more about quality than features, the search giant couldn't help itself and has inserted a QR code easter egg into the mix. Should you be so daring as to append a .qr at the end of your contracted hyperlink -- such as turning http://goo.gl/JCKW into http://goo.gl/JCKW.qr (both point to this post) -- you'll be treated with a QR code, built especially for you by the company's imaging smurfs. So, in case you still don't have Android 2.2 and its awesome Chrome to Phone functionality, here's an alternative method for transitioning the webpage you're reading onto your phone. Heavens forbid we'd ever have to actually type anything out ourselves.
First non-Latin domain name goes live, trips out browsers
ICANN decided late last year that URLs would finally be allowed with non-Latin characters, but it wasn't until this week that the first one was set free onto the world wide web. The new hot place to visit is http://موقع.وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر/, and while you'll need to know a bit of Arabic to actually pronounce it, you don't have to have any foreign language skills to click the link and see what happens. As of now, the site loads as http://xn--4gbrim.xn----rmckbbajlc6dj7bxne2c.xn--wgbh1c/ in pretty much every browser we've tried here in the US, but all of the site content seems to populate just fine. Remember that URL gold rush from last century? Round two is officially on.
ICANN set to allow non-Latin characters in domain names, half the world rejoices
In the name of cultural and linguistic diversity, our loyal comrades over at the ICANN are about to approve availability of domain names in non-Latin alphabets. That's right, Chinese and Japanese folks will finally be able to address their websites in their native tongue, as will fans of Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek or Hindi scripts. Basically, linguists of every type are finally invited to the interwebs party, a move described by ICANN chairman Peter Thrush as "the biggest change technically to the internet since it was invented." This follows an extensive two-year testing period for a translation engine that can convert your lazy Latin scribblings into the refined hieroglyphics of modern Cantonese. Pending approval this Friday, the first new domain names will start coming out in 2010, when we can expect a whole new wave of internet land grabbing. [Via Switched]
TagWoW shrinks your WoW URLs [Updated: NSFW]
There are already quite a few "shrink your URL" sites out there, from the famous TinyURL to my favorite, is.gd. But former Wowhead honcho Tim Sullivan has seen fit to add one more to the mix, and who knows, maybe the tiny bit of functionality it adds will be worth it. TagWoW will shrink your Warcraft-related URLs (well, it'll shrink anything, but it's meant for Warcraft stuff) into whatever tiny URL you want, and then it'll track the most popular pages on the homepage.Sure, it's just another URL-shrinking site, but there is some usefulness to be found here -- Blizzard forum URLs, many guild websites, and talent builds on Wowhead and elsewhere all have gigantic URLs, and shrinking them down to a memorable phrase could be helpful. Not to mention that Tim tells us that they want to "heavily moderate" the service -- gold farmers, keystroke loggers, and phishing sites are supposed to be kicked right out of the system, so if you see a TagWoW link on the forums, you will hopefully always be able follow it without worrying about compromising your security.Like I said, there's just enough functionality added here that it could end up being something big. Currently, there's apparently only a few URLs saved in the system (the site only went live last week), but you can probably expect things to pick up with our post here -- and hopefully we won't burn the site down. With the right URL submissions and, as Tim promises, some serious moderation to make everything trustworthy, TagWoW could be a nice service.EDIT: Be advised that as of this writing one of the links on the front page of TagWoW leads to an adult site though it doesn't say so in the link description. Click the links on TagWoW at your own risk.
URL hints at Wrath beta
Alright, this is only the ghost of a hint, but at this point I'll take what I can get with anything that looks reminiscent of a Wrath of the Lich King beta. A tipster known only as "Anonymous" wrote in to let us know that the URL http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com is active, and redirects to http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/game/character-copy.html. The logical conclusion is that this page is meant to let (authorized) people transfer characters for some sort of beta. And what's coming up that might be beta-tested? Wrath.Right now, the address returns a "403 Forbidden" page, but obviously, someone at Blizzard HQ bothered to set up the "beta" subdomain and make it redirect to something. Any address on beta.worldofwarcraft.com seems to redirects to that "character-copy" page. Remember, a "forbidden" URL was our first real confirmation that Wrath of the Lich King was going to be the title of the expansion, so we've gotten information this way before. There's still no telling how long it'll take until a beta is available to us, as this page may well just apply to an interior beta, but this might be a clue that we're getting closer. Does this mean there won't be a patch 2.5?
Apple adds new mobile protocol handlers
I've now spent a good deal of time hunting and searching through the updated SpringBoard executable. Much of what I found is dull; some is useful. While hunting around during the adding-Apps-to-SpringBoard effort, I discovered a number of items that appeared to be new Safari-style protocol handlers. These items were each listed near a host application, for example itms near com.apple.MobileStore. Not surprisingly, opening an itms:// URL launches the iTunes mobile store. Here are the working protocols, both old and new itms:// Launches Mobile iTMS store. maps:// Launches Google Maps. (iPhone only) feed://, feeds:// Launches dotMac reader tel:// Dials a number, specified in the URL. (iPhone only) mailto:// Launches the iPhone mail app. (iPhone only) youtube:// Launches YouTube. Other items that were listed but do not seem to work are: calshow://, callto://, vmshow://, prefs://, nowplaying://
Pyro 1.6: Campfire client gains search, drag and drop file transfer enhancements and more
It's been over a year since we first mentioned Pyro, the powerful Mac OS X client for 37signals' Campfire web-based chat service for groups and businesses. While I personally didn't pick up a copy back then since I wasn't a Campfire user, I'm not entirely familiar with every change that has come since April '06. Still, even the most recent list of changes warrants Pyro another mention, especially since I'm looking at using Campfire for a few uses and projects. In addition to already offering a dashboard and central location for all your Campfire chats and displaying message status alerts in the Dock icon, check out what's new in Pyro 1.6: Any file type can be dragged onto Pyro to share in a Campfire chat Pyro will automatically zip a folder or .APP Dragging an image from a web browser will insert a URL for that image instead of uploading it Campfire's new sidebar search field now works in Pyro Support for the new WebKit installed by Safari 3 beta (mentioned on the Pyro development blog) and of course, bug fixes As Campfire's example uses page details, there are a lot of great scenarios for such a slick web app, and Pyro looks like the perfect tool to bring together the coolness of Campfire with the power of Mac OS X. Surprisingly, Pyro is still offered free, and even though Campfire primarily focuses on business users by offering a few paid accounts, it too has a free account with which you can register and tinker around to see if Campfire is right for your use.
An Adium Xtra for linking any browser's current page
I know Adium can insert links from some browsers by itself, but I just found a script at the Adium Xtras site which offers much more fine-grained control over inserting a link from any browser, with the page name's descriptive title linked nice and clean, instead of the long ugly URL you get from copy/pasting. As you can see, specific commands are included for all the major browsers (and even some not-so-major ones), as well as a catch-all Default Browser command. The ones I can test seem to work pretty well, though I'll admit I don't have any copies of iCab or Netscape lying around. Enjoy.
Bare Bones Software releases Yojimbo 1.2
Yojimbo, the information collection app from Bare Bones Software that helps you 'master the onslaught', has been updated to version 1.2. Among the additions and improves are a Quick Start movie for new users that launches on first startup, search term highlighting, browser bookmarklets for one-click bookmarking or web archiving in Yojimbo, AppleScript importing and much more.A 30-day fully functioning demo is available, while Bare Bones offers full single user, family and educational licenses for $39, $69 and $29, respectively.
iWeb update simplifies URLs
The iLife Updates Apple released yesterday fixed a gripe some users (including myself) had with the new URL scheme that iWeb employed. With its original release, an iWeb site's URL was http://web.mac.com/username/iWeb/. Leaving that last /iWeb/ off the URL would result in a 404 error. While this isn't a big deal to some, it's just one extra quirky name to add to a URL. To those unfamiliar with the internets however, .Mac and iWeb could mess up, resulting in that exponentially increasing frustration that usually leads to users simply giving up on the endeavor.After installing the 1.0.1 update last night and making changes to some of my iWeb pages, I was pleased to see the URL in the "announce your site" confirmation window chopped down to simply http://web.mac.com/username. This not only makes the URL a little easier to remember and pass around, it also adds a bit more credibility to the URL, especially over the previous http://homepage.mac.com/username scheme.
My other issues with iWeb
Adding to the small pile of gripes with the new technology Apple is using with iLife 06, such as complaints about iWeb's bloated CSS or RSS standards and photocasting, I just developed a beef that I haven't really seen mentioned yet: the crummy new URL scheme for iWeb sites, both on and offline.First of all, in the olden day the .Mac "homepage" did't seem to be case sensitive, as in: homepage.mac.com/user will get you to the same place as /User. iWeb is a bit pickier, as a wedding site I'm working on lives at web.mac.com/myuser/iWeb/Wedding/, but /wedding/ will result in a 404 error. Yes, a friend already reminded me that "Unix = case sensitive," but I don't care. While this could be labeled a minor complaint, my fiance and I have plenty of family members who aren't too hip on these computer thingies. They're going to get confused by something silly and minor like this, and I'm sure our relatives aren't the only ones.Next on my list is the URL scheme itself. web.mac.com/user/iWeb/sitename? Could that get any less friendly? Granted "homepage.mac.com" might seems a little unprofessional to some, but this new scheme feels pretty cumbersome and just plain ugly. Why couldn't we simply have web.mac.com/user and web.mac.com/user/othersites, Apple?Last but not least is how the new sites are organized in a user's iDisk. Old homepage sites still live in iDisk/Sites/, while shiny new iWeb sites live in iDisk/Web/Sites/iWeb/sitename. Nevermind a discussion about how needlessly buried that file structure is - I'm sure this dichotomy of old/new sites and content is going to confuse plenty of .Mac customers if they ever want to get at any of those files, or make a backup of their sites or entire iDisk.But enough about my gripes, what do you guys think: do iWeb and its underpinning .Mac support have more issues besides CSS and standards? Let's hear your thoughts.
Create clickable URL/file events in iCal
MacOSXHints has a slick tip on creating clickable iCal events that are either URLs or links to files. Sure, you can add a URL to an event's description, but with this simple method you can create an event itself that is click-able from iCal's main day/week/month calendar view.All you need to do for a URL is either drag it (or its icon) from a browser's address bar onto a time slot in iCal, or add a URL to an event's title and surround it with carrots like this, sans-quotes: "." To create a click-able link to a file, you'll need to use a web browser (such as Firefox) to surf your file system, then simply drag a file or folder from the browser into iCal in the same way as a URL. Don't try it with Safari, as it apparently doesn't do local file/folder surfing.This has already has become a darn handy tip for me, as I constantly add URLs to iCal events for upcoming local shows, and this takes one step out of the "so what is the site again?" process. The one thing I haven't tested yet is whether these would be click-able in iCal's pop-up reminder window. Anyone?
