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As I was updating my bio to be um… a bit more up to date and current, I noticed that the last new post was from October 2015. It’s official, I have horribly neglected this blog. The good news is, I have more ideas and content ideas now than I have ever had, so it is likely I’ll be sharing more ideas here in the near future. In the meantime here is a little photo history of what I’ve been up to since 10/2015.
If we are Facebook friends, you might notice that I frequently celebrate when a big company like Google enters into another space. Competition a large company brings is great for consumers. We all know what the customer service is like when there is little competition. The prices creep up and the quality shrivels. Before you know it your resenting making that broadband or cable TV payment every month. A shout out is due to Hugh Briss of Social Identities, since our discussion on Facebook today inspired me to register a domain and be pleasantly surprised enough to share the results.
This week you might have heard that Google has started offering domain name registrations. The main feature they are touting is the dynamic DNS. Dynamic DNS allows you to have your domain name or part of it change whenever your public IP address does. This can be useful if you want to be able to access something on your home network but do not have a static IP address through your hosting provider. After doing my own registration of a new domain, I found the dynamic DNS to be just one of many great features they are offering. Let’s take a tour of the process and then we can evaluate some of the other advantageous features.
The process is really simple, especially if you’re already logged in to a Google account and have a Google Wallet payment method setup.
By accessing domains.google.com you get a dialogue box to type in a new domain name. I chose “competitionhelpsconsumerswin” and clicked the search button.
This brings up your choices:
The following screens allow you to pay for the domain and enter the registration information. There is one particulary great option, a private registration. Other registrars charge a pretty penny for this, in this case it is included in the price! GoDaddy charges at least $7.99 a year for this. Just make sure you select the option to make it private:
This results in a private registration, your information is masked by a third party provider for your privacy and to avoid getting those predatory domain name registration letters. The companies who try to harvest information will only get this:
Once you’ve paid for your domain and provided your registration information. You now have the opportunity to add things like Email forwarders, custom DNS records and even website creation through some third party providers.
The intention of this article is to let you know there is fresh competition in the domain registration space and that it’s worth checking out. I think experts and novices alike will appreciate this offering and it is likely to force the likes of GoDaddy, Network Solutions, etc. to improve their products. Google has built a clean, simple interface with a robust offering at a great price. Competition helps consumers win! 🙂
Hopefully you read my last post about the return of my program on Blog Talk Radio. If you didn’t that’s okay, you can pick it up from here, or read it and come back. The short version – the program is coming back after almost two years later this month or early June.
When I started the podcast I was in full technology exploration mode. I was trying every social network I could find, creating videos for YouTube and blogging. Pod Casting seemed cool and Blog Talk Radio had the tools to allow me to get going with minimal effort. So I tried it out…
Then something really cool happened.
A fire was lit, I really enjoyed Pod Casting and became quite passionate about it. These kinds of fires are not easily extinguished, but they do flicker occasionally allowing us to get consumed by other priorities. During the break I recognized that having those conversations, making deeper connections with people and learning about what mattered most to them is really important to me. Many of the guests were friends, others were people I had just seen on TV or saw speak somewhere. They all had one thing in common, they inspired me and I learned from them. It wasn’t just the guests, some of the greatest moments involved the people who participated in the chats on btr and called in to say hi. There were even co-hosts like Gini Dietrich and guest hosts like Kathrina Rashid and Erica Allison.
The new theme was inspired by a couple of sessions in my hammock:
My secret weapon 🙂
Things were very experimental with the original podcast and as a result I cast a very wide net with the topics. There will be great flexibility with the re-launched version, but it will also be more focused. I really like helping people, and I’m not saying that because I’m trying to impress you or make you think that I am a great person. I am just a normal guy but I am blessed with a tiny but important piece of life experience. The experience of feeling great benefit from the opportunity to help others. I believe this is something that is present in all of us but might require a little spark to bring out. It’s what I do personally and professionally, it’s how I’ve managed to stay self employed for a very long time. This is something we can share and help others experience.
The objective of the podcast will be to give people ideas to improve their businesses and their lives. Anyone that contributes to this will be part of the inner circle, contributing to others and experiencing the rewards of helping others.
I’ve been brainstorming on potential guests, my first episode is likely to be either May 21st or May 28th. The booking process has begun, but I am still open to YOUR ideas. To inquire about being a guest, recommend a guest or recommend a topic leave a comments, use the contact page, or use this form.
After running 94 episodes on Blogtalkradio, the program abruptly stopped in 2012. After struggling to keep a business alive in 2008-2010 I was once again swamped and over-whelmed. I learned first hand what they mean by the saying “something has to give” and it eventually did in 2012 when I stopped booking new guests for the Podcast. Originally I only intended to give it a short hiatus, but intentions aside reality would be something very different. Over the last 6 months the need to re-kindle the awesome conversations that many of you were a part of has taken hold. It is no longer something I can put off, the show must go on!
Perhaps one of the more encouraging aspects of the long break is you get to see what content is resonating most with listeners. Blogtalkradio is good about sending you status messages indicating the number of times your content is being consumed every week. Though this podcast was never about the numbers, it was about the conversations and the people, the numbers are valuable in demonstrating what people enjoy most. The podcast is closing in on 100,000 listens and 36,316 of those were of the last ten episodes. Here is a little inside view of the statistics for the podcast, which are shared openly because there is no concern about sponsorship or similar commercial concerns:
Of the last 10 Episodes, these three were most popular with listeners (stats as of 4/28/2014):
The great thing about a long podcast hiatus is that you can change as much or as little as you like. At this point I am putting the finishing touches on everything but you can contact me about guest or topic suggestions and get all the updates.
If you’ve ever been around the 3-5 year old crowd at some point you met Thomas the Train. He’s a fussy little train that often gets into trouble because he has the demeanor of his target audience. Parents like Thomas and Friends because there is always a lesson that, in theory, their child can learn. If you are lucky enough your little person(s) will have a favorite episode. This popular episode will have music and quotes that you will hear over and over again. This is why of course, that I immediately thought of the seasons quote when I wanted to share some changes here. I happen to use the same quote around the house whenever something is changing. These changes range from a young persons mood to simply the weather outside.
I am working on a major update to my business website and most of the content will no longer fit, so I am moving it here to my personal blog. My company Managed Solutions will soon be branded exclusively toward Computer Integrated Manufacturing Solutions. I have no intention of abandoning all of the content I built over there and I am still engaged with a number of great IT Clients. In turn I intend to do a few things here:
I also have some other items on my wishlist, but I’ll save those for another day. In the meantime don’t be surprised if some posts related to IT happen to pop up in your subscription. This will be relatively short lived and I expect it to be done in the coming week. Please do stay tuned!
Image compliments of Antijingoist, Creative Commons via Flickr.
What have you been up to in my (long) absence?