Apple's New iPhone?

April 19, 2010January 30, 2016 · Brandon Hann

I’m not the first to report this, but I will toss in my two cents. First off, if you haven’t heard, someone is claiming to have found an iPhone at a bar in San Jose and upon closer inspection, noticed that it was not your everyday iPhone! They go on to further claim that it is the newest iPhone expected out this summer and was disguised in an iPhone 3GS case.

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The new iPhone is speculated to be called iPhone 4G or iPhone HD due to its faster network speed and HD screen. If the new phone is to sport a screen like the iPad, the price might still be too high for most. The HD screen for the iPad costs around $60 while the same screen in iPhone size might reach as high as $500. Gizmodo has launched a full story on the issue, and here is what they found in terms of hardware:

What’s new

Front-facing video chat camera
Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
Camera flash
Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
Improved display. It’s unclear if it’s the 960×460 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the “Connect to iTunes” screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.
What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
Split buttons for volume
Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic

What’s changed

The back is entirely flat, made of either glass (more likely) or ceramic or shiny plastic in order for the cell signal to poke through. Tapping on the back makes a more hollow and higher pitched sound compared to tapping on the glass on the front/screen, but that could just be the orientation of components inside making for a different sound
An aluminum border going completely around the outside
Slightly smaller screen than the 3GS (but seemingly higher resolution)
Everything is more squared off
3 grams heavier
16% Larger battery
Internals components are shrunken, miniaturized and reduced to make room for the larger battery

Is this real?

According to John Gruber at Daring Fireball, Apple has has lost a prototype although Apple is considering the phone “stolen” and they would like it back. Gizmodo apparently got wind of this phone from the individual who found it and subsequently purchased the phone, disassembled it and created the exclusive article and breakdown as summarized above.

The person who found it also mentioned that at first, he/she was able to play with the operating system for a bit before Apple apparently remotely wiped it (naturally). Now, all they get is the “Connect to iTunes screen”. However, it has been said that when the OS was working, it appeared to be that of iPhone 4.0 which is due out around the same time as the expected new phone.

My two cents

I don’t really care if it’s real or not. I won’t be buying a new iPhone this year anyway. In an effort to save money, I have started a plan to skip a year for new phones, so I’m staying with my 3GS. However, this phone does look pretty slick and if this is the new design, I’m pretty happy with it.

I was just thinking how funny it would be if this whole episode was planned by Apple in an effort to generate more buzz while at the same time diverting attention away from the actual design of a new iPhone. I wouldn’t put it past Apple to send this out in the world so other phone makers can copy the look and feel and then turn around and release something completely different!

At any rate, if this is legit and the phone was “lost” or “stolen” and if Gizmodo actually paid a price to exploit it, I believe they’re going to have some tough questions to answer if Apple decides to pursue this issue legally.

UPDATE 4-20-10

This phone is indeed “a device that belongs to Apple” according to a letter sent to Gizmodo by Bruce Sewell, Senior VP and General Counsel for Apple. Here’s the full letter:

Also, we all know the who the person is that lost it! His name is Gray Powell an Apple software engineer. He truly did leave the phone on a bar stool after getting drunk on his 27th birthday. The bar is a place called Gourmet Haus Staudt and it’s located in Redwood City, CA. All you crazy Apple fans can now go here and see the very stool that the new iPhone was left on for the world to discover months before it came out. They have the stool behind bullet-proof glass and you can’t take pictures of it, but it’s sure worth the drive!

Get the full story on how this whole fiasco unfolded at Gizmodo.

As for me, I feel sorry for Gray and I hope Apple doesn’t fire him for this mistake. Apple (as well as all of us) knows that this won’t hurt sales at all! In fact, it might even boost sales. They can now use the constructive criticism that’s sure to come to make improvements. Of course we lose the excitement of seeing the latest device from Apple being unveiled, but isn’t this whole story exciting enough?

There it is folks…the new iPhone has been leaked and the most uptight and secured company in the world has had a major blow dealt to its ego. My thoughts? Let’s move on to more important things in life–like when will the iPhone come to Verizon?!

UPDATE 6-9-10

We all know now that the iPhone 4 has just been announced and all your dreams of owning one can now become a reality on June 24th. In fact, AT&T has even allowed early upgrades for previous iPhone owners. This means that I might actually be getting the new phone! All I have to do is find someone that wants to buy my 3GS from me. Good thing there’s people on eBay looking to buy phones without having to sign up for a 2 year contract.

UPDATE 6-21-10

After a crazy and disasterous pre-order system and a bunch of drama later, I finally ordered my iPhone 4 and can expect it at my door sometime this week!

Twitter Announces Advertising

April 15, 2010 · Brandon Hann

For the first time since Twitter showed up on the web scene 4 years ago, they have announced advertising over their network. Companies already use Twitter to promote their products and services, but they face one fundamental problem–they have to have followers to get their message out.

This problem has now been solved by the use of Promoted Tweets that will appear at the top of search results very similar to that of Google’s AdWords program. Tuesday is the day that an initial rollout of 10 advertisers containing the likes of Starbucks and Best Buy will provide Twitter users with the first ads. However, these ads will only be visible to 2-10% of users for the time being. I’m not sure if these users will be chosen randomly or if it’ll be based on account usage, amount of followers, etc.

Twitter has long been slightly opposed to the whole advertising thing, suggesting that ‘ads could irritate users’, but the reality is that venture capital doesn’t last forever and if we expect Twitter to stay free, they have to make money somehow. Twitter says that in time, these ads may start appearing in the stream of posts that users see when they log in.

There is some good in all this; businesses will now have the ability to promote their offerings without having to first promote themselves to get followers. As a user, you no longer need to actually read any tweets for promotions and whatnot–just login to the site and click on every ad you want!

And just what kind of ads can we expect to see in all this? In the beginning, I’m sure all will be fine and dandy, but what happens once all the affiliates or spammers (is there a difference?) get on? Will we be faced with another over-saturated market of useless products and ebooks? I sure hope Twitter can get this one right. Who knows…maybe they’ll set the new bar for how advertising is done online.

My two cents

It may seem like I’m completely against all this and most of you might wonder why considering I run a website about how to make a profitable business online, but I’m really not–if it’s done right. What I am against is when legitimate ads are washed out by spammers and thousands of the exact same affiliate links because it causes users to become “blind” to ads and overall, it creates a horrible experience.

But I’m openminded…let’s see what Twitter’s got before we start judging!

Using digital barcodes on your business cards

April 10, 2010January 30, 2016 · Brandon Hann

I was sitting here the other day thinking about creating business cards for myself and I started thinking of a unique way to provide the same information that every business card offers, but in a way that people are more likely to remember. As I was thinking about this, I was playing with my iPhone and an app called RedLaser. This app allows you to scan the barcode of any product and it automatically searches the Internet for competitive pricing.

Anyway, I thought about how great it would be to have a business card in hand and rather than typing all that information into your phone, you could just scan a simple bar code on the card and have the information sent right to your contacts list.

bizcardbarcodes — Photo from NevilleHobson.com

I began a search to see if someone else had a similar idea and I found Neville Hobson’s blog and he had a post a while ago discussing just this topic! Well, without the iPhone app per se…at least in the incarnation I envisioned.

Essentially what he was talking about was that business cards have been a huge part of social interaction in the last some-odd number of years, but they suffer in today’s technological world–and frankly, I couldn’t agree more. When someone offers me a business card, I’m forced to comprehend the information it contains and then write it manually into my phone or other device.

Subconsciously, I also tend to “size-up” the person based on the design of the card. Too much flash and I’m thinking they spend more time on their image than on their business. Too little and maybe they don’t care enough. Now, if someone handed me a business card with bar code on it, this would make me feel like they’re on par with today’s technology. I feel much the same way when someone is able to offer me a v-card for download.

In a perfect world, business cards would be gone and vcards and iPhone apps like Bump will be the mainstay. But let’s face it…not everyone has an iPhone or even a smartphone and there’s something to be said about the old school business card–it still works.

In fact, people expect them when you’re at a conference or meeting with customers and not having one could mean a loss of business for you. What people don’t expect (at least now anyway) is the ability to copy your information simply by scanning a barcode right off your card.

How do I get this?

It’s easy and cheap to get cards printed, but here’s what you need to get barcode images printed out so you can integrate them into your card design. I wrote a separate post all about Microsoft Tag that goes into much more detail about their service.

Know your codes – There are different types of bar codes out there. You’re probably more familiar with the standard barcode you see on everyday products, but these won’t work because they can only store small amounts of data–namely numbers and a few letters. What you need are the kinds that shippers like FedEx and UPS use. The two most common are QR and DataMatrix. Microsoft offers a new color barcode called High Capacity Color Barcode that allows up to 3,500 characters to be displayed per square inch.
Get software – You’re going to need software to create the barcodes. If you want to make the Microsoft color tag, simply go to this website. Other barcodes have to be made using barcode software. Do a Google search for some.

Test it out

I created a tag that takes you to my website using the Microsoft Tag site and it only took 3 seconds! First, you need to jump on your mobile phone and visit this website: gettag.mobi. It’ll redirect you to the right software based on your phone. iPhone users: there’s an app for that. Once downloaded, you can load it up and take a snapshot of this picture:

It will automatically take you to my website! Isn’t that crazy?? As you can see, it works right off computer screens, so it’ll work anywhere you can print it–including business cards. To read more, check out my article about how to use Microsoft Tag on your business cards.

UPDATE – November 18th, 2010

I just wanted to update this post to include a picture of the business card I made for myself that includes both the Microsoft tag and a QR barcode on the front. Alongside their functionality, they also look great within the design. Originally, I planned on adding the barcodes to the back of the card, but I figured who looks at the back?! Check it out and let me know what you think!

Microsoft also introduced the ability to create the Microsoft tag in black and white as seen above. More on that over on my article about the Microsoft Tag!

Yet another URL shortening website!

March 24, 2010January 30, 2016 · Brandon Hann

UPDATE (Oct 26, 2010) :: I disbanded my original URL shortening service and have created a new one with an even shorter URL! I’m leaving this page up for posterity, but I’ve changed the links where applicable. Also, I wrote about my new URL shortening service, so you may want to head on over there first!

This time, it’s mine!! After I got onto Twitter and Facebook, I starting noticing all these little weird looking links and came to realize they were just pointers to much longer links. URL shortening services have sprung up just about everywhere. The issue of really long links is more of a problem to Twitter users because you only have 140 characters to type your message, but they’re starting to gain traction for just about every use. Use my new URL shortener to shrink you long urls today!

You would want to/need to shorten a url when you don’t have much space to post one or you want to make it easier for someone to remember. Now, there are tons of sites out there that can shorten long links into something tiny, but I didn’t want to trust my links in the hands of some fly-by-night service. Instead, I opened my own service and now I’m offering the service to everyone.

What is it?

Take this link for example: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FKindle-Wireless-Reading-Display-Generation%2Fdp%2FB0015T963C%3Fpf_rd%5Fm%3DATVPDKIKX0DER%26pf%5Frd%5Fs%3Dcenter-1%26pf%5Frd%5Fr%3D0Y2V14K8W4X1MTQ9XB9B%26pf%5Frd%5Ft%3D101%26pf%5Frd%5Fp%3D1253201642%26pf%5Frd%5Fi%3D507846&tag=ledfrog-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325. It’s a direct link to Amazon.com’s Kindle page. Now, imagine you’re on Twitter and you want to send that to your followers. It’s not going to happen.

Instead, you drop on by my new site and create a link that looks like this: http://xi.io/8m. Much nicer, wouldn’t you agree? In fact, this URL went from being 358 characters long down to only 15! That’s a difference of 343 characters!! You can use these links for any purpose and the best part is, you can also search for keyword text, so instead of getting a randomly generated number, you can get a text phrase (if available).

How is this site different?

It’s not so much different in features as it is in name. Other services such as goo.gl, bit.ly and u.nu all offer the same services, but as you can see, they all use International domain names.

Personally, I find two things wrong with this. The first reason is that the links are not universally recognized by a lot of Internet users. If fact, I’ve talked to some people that say they never click on links like that at all! This can provide low click-through ratios for your links.

The second reason is that these domain names are controlled by the countries who own the extension. This can, although probably not likely, lead to the domains becoming obsolete or even being taken back by the local government.

What can you do with a shortened URL?

The uses for this service are only limited to your creativity! Here are some ideas:

Use shorter links for Twitter posts
Cloak affiliate links
Mask a long URL for marketing materials
Use a shorter URL for your site to make it easier to tell your friends how to get there

This service is free and allows you to make an unlimited amount of links. Check it out by going to xi.io now!

What happens if a trademark becomes genericized?

March 18, 2010 · Brandon Hann

I was reading the article about Google™ getting denied on their trademark application for the name Nexus One. To quickly summarize the story, Google™ wanted to trademark the name Nexus Phone because of their new phone to be release, but apparently another company had already registered this name over a year ago.

The USPTO has denied the application and now we all await to see what happens. I don’t think Google™ will have any problems with this, but the whole story got me thinking about trademarks in general and the ensuing battles between stakeholders. More specifically, I started thinking about trademarks becoming genericized and what would happen to if Google™ simply became, google…

Genericizing is when the mainstream public starts using a trademark name as a generic word to describe a product or service. This usually happens by mistake, but it’s root cause stems from a company that has maybe done too great a job at marketing! Or maybe they just left a much larger impression on the public than previously expected.

Trademarks that can become genericized

To better define what I’m talking about, take the following list of brand names and ask yourself this question: Do I refer to every similar product by these names?

Kleenex® – The proper term for any facial tissue not made by Kleenex® is simply facial tissue.
Q-Tips® – Off brands are known as cotton swabs.
Xerox® – You didn’t make a “xerox” of something unless you did it on a Xerox® copy machine.
Adobe Photoshop® – People always attribute all photo editing as “photoshopping”, but this is incorrect. (Side note: I was reading an interesting page on Adobe’s own website outlining the proper usage of the term and all of their trademarks and it’s very specific.)
Band-Aid® – What else would you call it? That’s right, a bandage.
Blow Pop® – Not every sucker is one–just the ones made by Charms® which is now owned by Tootsie®.

I’m pretty sure you get the gist by now. So, what might happen if the brand name Google™ became a generic term for searching? If you really think about it, how many times a week do you tell someone to “google it” when they ask you something you don’t know? How many times a day even?!

I was watching an episode of the recently cancelled show, The Forgotten and in one of the scenes, they are searching Google™, but the logo was replaced with one of similar colors and simply titled ‘Web Search’. The rest of the page was google and it was clearly obvious. Ok fine, they didn’t want to pay for the use of the name, but…

In another scene, someone asks this woman how they got their information and she clearly says, “We googled it…” For anyone who knows anything about the trademarking process, you know that part of your responsibility as a trademark owner is to protect your brand and part of this protection is to ensure that it does not become a genericized term (as Adobe® outlines on their website above).

Trademarks that lost their trade value

To further clarify my point, here’s a list of some terms that were once valued trademarks:

Aspirin – Bayer® used to own this as one of their trademarks until it was declared generic.
Cellophane – Originally owned by DuPont®.
Dry ice – Believe it or not, the Dry Ice Corporation of America once owed this term!
Escalator – Once owned by the Otis Elevator Company.
Yo-Yo – Declared generic in 1965.
Laundromat – Once a proud brand, now a generic term for all coin-op laundry facilities.
Heroin – Another trademark taken from it’s original owner, Bayer®.

Whether these trademarks lost their “trade” value or not is open for debate, but what is clear is that each term has found it’s way into our very vocabulary. In fact, just looking at the list above, you may not have even known that these were once brand names.

All this talk about trademarks and losing them got me thinking about registering my own company name and logo for the sake of protection, but even then, nothing is guaranteed, right? At any rate, I bought a book on the subject and I must say, it has a wealth of information about all the ins and outs of trademarks and such. One of these days, I’ll actually get around to reading the step-by-step guide!

Ultimately, nobody can predict the future, but I ask again, what would the world be like if Google™ appeared in the dictionary without the capital G?

The power of 'autoblogging'

March 17, 2010 · Brandon Hann

Whether you know it or not, the key to the success of your blog is post consistency. Imagine if you went to MSN.com every time you opened your browser and for three days straight, you saw the same news stories, videos, etc. Would that make you want to go back? Probably not, and for your visitors, this is more of a reality! You’re not MSN, you don’t have the manpower or resources to be MSN, so you have to work especially hard to keep your visitors coming back.

Welcome to the power of autoblogging! What this is, is a simple plugin that you install within WordPress that enables you to configure automated keyword searches throughout the entire Internet and have content posted directly to your blog. No longer do you have to try and fit consistant blog posts into your busy schedule!

Although I don’t use this plugin on ledfrog.com, I do have a couple of other blogs that I use it on and I can tell you first-hand, this thing is amazing! It’s almost like I have a full-time writing staff constantly updating and adding new things to my site. The best part is that I can control everything such as when the posts appear, how many per day, what topics I want to include, etc.

Advantages of autoblogging

Your blog populates content about whatever you choose based on keywords
You determine post frequency
You can customize the actual post times
Content is fresh and always sourced from the latest articles online

Just the first reason alone makes this software worth it. But, this software is EXTREMELY powerful as you can imagine and you want to be careful about how you use it!

DIS-Advantages of autoblogging

Your blog can become “polluted” with recycled content
Some keywords can pull up mis-information (i.e. you want in article on Windows 7 and it pulls up an article about 7 different window treatments you can buy for your home)
Since the content is not entirely original, your blog can suffer in the rankings if you don’t add your own content
You will become a lazy blogger!

All-in-all, I love auto blogging software because I do it the right way. I’ll have it scour the Internet for me, grab a few articles and once they’re posted, I’ll go back into them and write up some additional notes or commentary. However, I never use content from any other source without given the original author credit. For example, in every single case where I might use someone else’s content, I’ll post a backlink and some very obvious text that clearly states I’m not the creator of the content.

Doing this will ensure that people know you’re not copying content and information just to try and rank higher in the search engines.

My advice is if you want to increase your post frequency, but you just don’t have the time, use PowerAutoblog and let it build your blog for you!

There’s a limited time offer (ONLY $47!!) on this software, but you’ll have to act now to get it. I’m kind of upset really, because I had to pay $150 for this when it first came out!

Download PowerAutoblog Now

Top Affiliate Network Companies

March 5, 2010January 30, 2016 · Brandon Hann

In in effort to organize the massive amount of information in regards to affiliate marketing, I’ve compiled a list of the top affiliate programs. I have used some of them, others are simply recommended from industry pros.

AzoogleAds (AZN Networks)

This company is universally recognized as the top company of its kind. Jonathan Volk is quoted as saying:

AzoogleAds is my personal favorite affiliate network and the one I’ve made a LOT of money on. I’ve been quite open about them being my favorite affiliate network for years and they remain my favorite.

Signup today!

Elite Clicks Media (ECM)

If you plan to market your products and services via social media networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and more, this site provides offers that are top convertors for those audiences. Jonathan Volk says this:

Besides having a lot of really great offers, the professionals behind Elite Clicks Media is a great team of guys that are set on helping their publishers go to the next level. For example, just recently, ECM held a free webinar on CPV/PPV Marketing. More importantly, they have even more webinars lined up to help their publishers learn! This, to me, shows how they are not just like any other old network.

Signup today!

QwikMedia

QwikMedia specializes in pay per click traffic, media buying and lead generations. They are recommended if you plan to focus on these elements. Jonathan Volk had some nice words about them:

Many of the offers are exclusive offers (meaning you can’t get them at another network) that are doing really well right now in niches like dating, insurance, and more.

Tatto Media

This is an all around company that provides great offers that work in any marketing plan. They also provide some of the best mobile phone offers. Here’s what Jonathan Volk has said:

The other great thing about Tatto is that many of the offers are their own exclusive offers that they have made and optimized themselves. They have some of the best mobile offers. Mobile offers do really well on social traffic and media buys. If you plan to focus on either of those methods, you should check out Tatto!

Neverblue

Neverblue provides tons of high converting offers and it’s easy to get started. If you’re focus is to market across social networking sites, Neverblue provides many offers specific to this niche. Jonathan Volk had this to say:

In fact within just a few weeks of running on NeverblueAds, I was able to get a campaign going that was making upwards of $400 revenue per day!

Day 1 – Signed up for first affiliate program

March 2, 2010 · Brandon Hann

March 2nd, 2010

This is technically not day 1 for the blog, but this is the first day that I started my project and it was a big day! I think at one point, I had about 15 tabs opened in Chrome!!

I want to start by saying of all the sites I’ve looked at in regards to free information to making money online, JohnChow.com seems to be the most honest. This is not to say that others are crooks, but John Chow appears to be in this industry for the freedom of it and not just the money plus he’s willing to help out anyone who needs it.

I’ll start listing the other sites that have been helping me out in this as soon as I get my links directory up. As I get further into this project, these daily reports will no doubt get more detailed, so stay tuned and follow me on Twitter or Facebook and the RSS feeds.

What I did today

I signed up for AzoogleAds today and expect my application to be approved (or not) within a couple of days. From what I gather, they seem to be the best affiliate network to start with. Previously, people were touting their referral payout system as being great, but I learned today that they have changed their payout from being a lifetime system to being only valid for 6 months.

I also made minor changes to the site including two subscribe links in the top right to allow visitors a choice between viewing RSS feeds in a reader or getting them by email. I then worked on some various SEO techniques on some of the older posts I had made.

The last thing I did today was setup an email newsletter account with Aweber. Newsletters is not all they do. This service is a monthly charge of $19.99 for the basic service, which is all I needed to begin with. Check out their website to see more details on what this service done, but basically it allows visitors to sign up on the site so you can send them newsletters, updates, free downloads, etc–email marketing.

Although I haven’t edited it completely, I did add a basic form on the sidebar for users to sign up for the newsletter. I plan to move this form up and make it fit in better.

That’s it for now.

Welcome – Read me first

March 1, 2010 · Brandon Hann

I know this post comes a little late considering I’ve already updated the site and have started posting my stuff, but I thought I’d create this welcome page for those of you who are new to the site and want to see what the future holds for it as well as how to get connected and stay connected.

This site was designed to be a personal blog for me, but over time, I get more and more requests to help people with building websites, finding/providing hosting for those sites and essentially just get people online. For anyone who knows about web design, marketing, promotion and maintenance, you understand how big of a job even the smallest of projects can be!

Some people don’t understand how it all works and comes together, so it’s hard for them to realize (and accept) the costs associated with such work. I’ll admit that even myself never understood how companies can charge thousands of dollars for search engine optimization when all the tools are right in front of you and they’re free! Well, after trying these tools out myself, I realized you’re not paying for the knowledge, you’re paying for the service.

And that’s what it comes down to–the service. So here’s what I’ve decided to do with my site.

I am going to focus primarily on helping others get online with their own ideas and business ventures for free! That’s right. You will learn everything from the basics to the more advanced. I will cover all aspects of creating your website, monetizing it, promoting it and most of all, maintaining it.

This site will be updated daily with relavent information that I have hand-written myself. Periodically, I will publish free ebooks that will consolidate content from the site into an organized fashion. I will attempt to provide bits of news articles that pertain to the subject matter and I will be active in responding to emails, comments and more.

All for free.

Why free you ask? Well, there’s reason to try and sell information that can already be gotten for free online, so what I want to do is give it all away. In turn, all I ask is that you help me promote the site! All you have to do is post links to my site wherever you feel they would fit in, send your Facebook friends over to my site, follow me on Twitter, sign up for my RSS feeds (what’s RSS? I’ll tell you here!) and/or join the mailing list.

The site is small right now, but is growing! I hope you enjoy what I have to offer!

Thanks,

Brandon
www.ledfrog.com

Domain Hacking Using International TLDs

May 5, 2009 · Brandon Hann

Originally, I had my blog located on what they call a “hacked” domain. I acquired the domain ERIO.US (hacked into myst.erio.us) a few years back. The plan was to create a personal blog space and I liked the name because it sounded rather mysterious. The problem was trying to get people to the site via word-of-mouth!

More often than not, people didn’t remember the little periods and ended up somewhere they didn’t want to be. At any rate, domain hacks were kind of born out of the popular bookmarking site, del.icio.us which was then bought by Yahoo! and subsequently changed to just delicious.com.

Domain Hacks

Originally, domain hacks were simply single words that could be “split” at various breaking points with the final break being between the domain and the domain extension. For example, the domain inter.net is nothing more than the word inter, but because it uses the .net extension, it becomes the word internet.

Here are some other domain hacks that either were or are popular:

Who.is – The term whois is a networking term that describes a service used to display the ownership records of a domain name.
Blo.gs – This site was also purchased by Yahoo! and is a blogroll type of service that allows you to keep tabs on all your favorite blogs.
Goo.gl – Google’s own URL shortener service. Basically you take a really long URL and shrink it down to something more manageable.
E.xplo.it – This domain requires two hacks using a third-level domain (e) to make it spell exploit.
Cr.yp.to – Another third-level domain hack spelling the word crypto.
i.am – This hack uses two real English words.

More information about domain hacks can be found at WikiPedia.

International Extensions

None of the above domains would be possible without the use of foreign domain extensions. If you weren’t aware of the many types of extensions available, basically each country in the world has its own 2-character extension for domain registration.

These extensions are popular because they are generally made up of letters that are used at the end of many English words. Some of these extensions are also popular because the two letters actually might spell a word itself or be an existing acronym. A few examples of this would be .FM and .AM (can be used for radio broadcasters) or .IT (if used to mean Information Technology).

One of the most popular international TLDs comes from the country of Montenegro; .ME. Because .me can add a personal touch to any domain name, many people are registering these names for blogs, family websites and even businesses. In fact, I own Brandon.me for obvious reasons! Other uses of a .ME domain could be various phrases such as For.me, Help.me, Fix.me, Sell.me and Date.me.

Having a hacked domain like For.me can yield so many other options when you start breaking the domain further up the line. You could create something like: Jobs.for.me, Real.estate.for.me or Entertainment.for.me. The possibilities are only limited to the words contained in the dictionary!

Erio.us

I own the domain erio.us and from that, I was able to make myst.erio.us and s.erio.us. I haven’t decided how I want to use the domain, which is why if you type it in, you’re redirected to this page! I can promise you that one day, I will develop a project around one (or all) of the hacks I can create with this one domain.