Click To Hit

Quite the amazing announcement and something I'm really keen to work with the new crew from Critical Path on. Now's the time to roll up the sleeves and prove to both our new and existing customers just how committed we are to ensuring we exceed all of their expectations of what an outsourced Email provider should be.

Tucows expects no disruption in service for existing hosted messaging customers. Tucows will assume full management of the hosted messaging infrastructure and continue to run current data center operations in Denver, Colorado and London England. In addition, Tucows will hire the majority of Critical Path's hosted operations and support teams.

It may take a little time for the dust to settle, but I think Tucows rock solid history as a premium supplier will provide a sense of confidence that their messaging service will not only be unaffected by this move and stable going forward, but a soon to be even greater value than what they receive today.

Hopefully this announcement explains some of the reasons why I haven't expanded on a few of the changes to my role here until now. I'll still be working closely with Blogware and Blogware customers, but I'm also excited to be working closely with the new team from CP in the transition for some of our important new messaging clients. 

There are a few other changes to my role that I'll expand on another day, but I can feel that 2006 will be a very busy and exciting new year.

Now this is a very interesting move by Amazon's parent Alexa. They're effectively renting out their search technology to anyone interested in mining 5 billion documents using a proven and robust search infrastructure without having to invest in building it first.

Imagine: you have the next great idea for search… What do you need to get off the ground? The first and perhaps most difficult and expensive piece of the puzzle is a good Web crawl. Your crawl will need to access a high-speed internet connection, it will need to pull down thousands of pages per second. It will need to manage thousands of connections and process pages to extract links. Then you will need to store hundreds of terabytes of data. And that doesn't even begin to tackle the rest of the equation: processing the documents, indexing, storing the index, serving it, and keeping it updated. You are going to need millions of dollars in technology and staff and at least a year to get things rolling.

Well, I don't know if that last sentence is entirely accurate, speaking from experience and even though it was more of a directory you can build something pretty darn impressive for less than a quarter million.  

Either way if you're interested in becoming the next Yahoo on a shoe string or need to index a few billion pages the day before your school project is due you can check out the site here and the pricing here.

After spending the last week on holidays and the week before that preparing for a bit of a change in my role here at Tucows, I'm finally back, fully recharged, and raring to go.

More on the exciting changes once the dust settles a bit more, but in the meantime everything's back to normal with a ton of emails to catch up on as always after disconnecting for a while.

I'll have more time to post some thoughts on a few topics I've been tracking once I play the “catch up” game, so thanks in advance for the patience if I owe you an email or a phone call, I'll be there soon.

One thing about Tucows is that we don't generate press like a lot of the players in our space so we sometimes end up appearing out of the shadows when an article's written about us. Being primarily wholesale focused is one of the reasons and favoring cows over beautiful scantily clad women in our advertising is probably the other. Either way there've been a couple of stories the last few days I thought I'd share, and although unrelated both contain very important messages I feel everyone should be aware of.

The first is an article written by our very own Ross Rader who's Tucows Director of Research & Innovation as well as a very active participant in the ICANN policy space. I won't even comment on the article since I want everyone to go and read it directly, but other than Kudos on an absolutely brilliant piece that eloquently articulates concerns regarding the ICANN - Verisign .COM Registry relationship that everyone should be paying great attention to, I'll have to ask Ross where they found that picture since it definitely doesn't do him any justice

The second article is one on Tucows in the National Post today that covers everything from the high profile addition of Mark Cuban as an investor, analyst reviews, the fact we started trading on the TSX, and even comments on our offerings including one service in particular that for some pretty obvious reasons I hold a little more dear than some of the rest.. 

… is bullish about the company's prospects because of its blogging service called Blogware.

“Blogging has taken the world by storm but the big challenge from a business perspective is how you make money off it,” Mr. Shore said.

“We think Tucows might have come up with a way to make money from the growth of blogs by providing blog capabilities to service provider partners who bundle it or sell it to customers. To participate in one of the top three hot trends in the Internet and make money off it is a good thing.”

I've been hearing a lot of feedback lately that people don't know how to make money out of blogging yet. I may be way too entrenched in the industry but I don't necessarily understand where the disconnect is… that's like someone saying they don't know how to make money out of Web Hosting. Like the hosting industry of days gone by, there'll be a surge of free to fee Blog users as market demand matures so the opportunity to capitalize on this vertical as a fee based recurring revenue service is tremendous and should be the first model to consider when wanting to get into this space.

Although this trend has already manifested itself in the public growth of some of the fee based players out there, I feel that our retail partners are in an amazing position to take advantage of this surge through the relationships they've developed with their customers from their core offerings. The relationships we've built with them (Our wholesale customers) is a testament to the success and viability of what I feel is one of the most powerful distribution models online, and one that definitely benefits all of our services let alone Blogware alone.

Elliot Noss, CEO, says his company doesn't get enough credit for being the world's fourth-largest Web site domain name registrar.

Although I feel the same could be said around every service we offer today, the proof's in the pudding and like any sleeper hit I'm sure that recognition will eventually manifest all on its own.

Although an athlete rarely receives any notoriety for coming in third or fourth place in the 100 meter, they will if they also appear in the top four of the 400 meter, 1000 meter, Long Jump, High Jump, Pole Vault, Decathlon, Marathon, Discuss, Heptathlon, Javelin…

I was reading this article today on Wired discussing how with today's technology, we as human beings can accomplish 10 times more work than ever before and goes on to debate whether employees should be just because they can. My understanding of the author's intent was to remind us not to let technology get in the way of fulfilling our personal and spiritual needs, in effect don't take work too seriously…

Interesting point but I disagree, let me explain.

Technology allows you to accomplish more, definitely, and the growth curve in this hyper competitive market ensures that we will continue to have longer and longer work days where even today I consider myself “on-call” weeknights and weekends for my employer and customers. Now IMO, this is not because of technology… it's because I have Passion for what I do.

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence, but in the mastery of his passions.

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892)

I have been in a corporate environment now for a good portion of my career, but as you can see allot of my experience is centered around Entrepreneurial endeavors. Having passion is a key ingredient in any start-up effort, and a requirement when developing creative thought processes in order to transform a vision into reality. I feel that the passion I harbor and infuse in everything I tackle no matter the odds is what has fueled what success I have had on either side of the entrepreneurial / corporate fence. The one really shocking thing that I've run into working with some people in corporate environments is that passion is sometimes even frowned upon.

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.

Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784)

Anyone who doesn't believe in a project are quickly cast out of a start-up environment, but sometimes you'll find that in a corporation you'll have people who exhibit the emotional attachment to their efforts of someone who seems to only work for their next pay cheque… ”It's just a job”.

In terms of my compensation outside of commissions I'm no different. I do have a small investment in the company I work for but that's out of my own interest and nothing to do with any serious ownership stake that would fuel any passion in and of itself. So when you look at me from the outside, you may (and it has happened) ask the question “Why is he so serious about his job?”.

Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.
 
Claude A. Helvetius (1715 - 1771)

That answer is Passion. I apply passion to both my professional and personal efforts. I take advantage of every minute of every day to accomplish as much as I can to enrich my life and proceed as far down the road we call life as possible before my journey ends.

Passion holds up the bottom of the universe and genius paints up its roof.

Chang Ch'ao

So if you're not sure if you have passion about your work… you may want to ask yourself these:

If you find that your duties displease or stress you out to the point of being negatively emotional… you may not have passion.

If you decide that solving problems is more important than growing and taking calculated risks for success… you may not have passion.

If you focus on the follow through of processes to the detriment of your results… you may not have passion.

If you stop caring about what pains your customers, or the employees whom you are accountable to… you definitely do not have passion.

If you asked yourself these questions, and you find you don't have the passion you thought you did, I'm not sure how you can get it since it definitely doesn't grow on trees.

What I do suggest is that you find something in your life that you find passion in and stick with it. Even though you can fake it in the sea of faces at a corporation, passion for what you do will be the only avenue to your true personal and professional success.

All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.

Honore De Balzac (1799 - 1850)

I've mentioned on this blog before that I've been known to be a bit of a gamer. I'm not a die hard, but when thing's like Half Life 2, Doom 3, and Sierra's latest release F.E.A.R hit the market I've turned on the gaming machine and given them a whirl for their adrenalin inducing escapist fun.

So yesterday I was able to get my hands on the latest release I've added to my collection, Call of Duty 2.

The original, which was rated game of the year in 2003 was something I've never had a chance to try so I thought I would give this one a shot with the screenshots looking as juicy as they do (You can click on these to go to the full screens). The first thing I did was download the demo that's available on Gamedaily and after checking it out I was pretty shocked with the realism, graphics that i find are as good or better than HL2, and sheer adrenal inducing series of action events that made me decide to go for the full copy as soon as it came out yesterday.

After installing the 6 cd collection and doing a quick defrag I started the game and jumped into the first level that starts you off in basic training as a young russian with a rifle and rotten potatoes as grenades since real grenades are <thick russian accent>” worth more than you are”</thick russian accent>

By the time I ended the level watching the collapse of a 10 story building full of enemy troops where I'd just finished planting explosive charges on the foundation, I felt the smallest bit of moisture well up in the corner of my eye and had to literaly stand up and start to applaud an imagined team of developers and game designers I knew I will never meet let alone hear me. My wife was so shocked she came running downstairs to my office to find out what all the comotion was about.

All I have to say is… two thumbs up, 5 cows, 10 out of 10, or the best of whatever other rating system suits your fancy.

An interesting article by businessweek drawing some conjecture on how a few Europeans have caught some screenshots of a new service called “Google Base”.

It would be interesting to see how any of the big search co's try to compete with Ebay in the auction space, especially since it would be pretty difficult to improve on the current model without getting into a price war or giving it away for free.

This move would also provide the background for Ebay's 45 slide explanation of the acquisition of Skype where they basically justified the move with how their “competitors” are already in this space and they were just “Keeping up with the Jones's”.

Google, MSN, and Yahoo all have VOIP features through their IM solutions.

There is a very interesting debate looming on the horizon for all of us in the industry.

I will reserve my direct commentary for now due to my position, but it would be a dire shame to see politics interfere with the growth and openness of what I would consider one of man's greatest achievements in history.

Some quotes of interest for all of you to consider are…

Viviane Reding, European IT commissioner, says that if a multilateral approach cannot be agreed, countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and some Arab states could start operating their own versions of the internet and the ubiquity that has made it such a success will disappear.

“We have to have a platform where leaders of the world can express their thoughts about the internet,” she said. “If they have the impression that the internet is dominated by one nation and it does not belong to all the nations then the result could be that the internet falls apart.”

The US argues that many of the states demanding a more open internet are no fans of freedom of expression.

And then…

David Gross, who headed the US delegation at the Geneva talks, said untested models of internet governance could disrupt the 250,000-plus networks, all using the same technical standards (TCP/IP), which allows over a billion people to get online for 27bn daily user sessions.

“The internet has been a remarkably reliable and stable network of networks and it has grown at a rate unprecedented in human history,” he said. “What we are looking for is a continued evolution of the internet that is technically driven. We do not think the creation of new or use of existing multilateral institutions in the governance of essentially technical institutions is a way to promote technological change.”

and you can then round it out with this…

Calls from Argentina for a continuing debate while Icann is restructured are believed to have garnered support from countries such as Canada which do not like the perceived power that the US has over the internet but are wary of opening up the web to overall state control.

Just before the meeting in Tunis, there will be a three-day gathering of bureaucrats to try to thrash out a deal on internet governance. Getting the parties - especially the US - to agree to anything looks like a near impossible task but Mrs Reding believes it is crucial to find common ground or see the global communication network disintegrate.

If any of this concerns you, and it should, make sure your ICANN constituents, Registrar, or anyone willing to listen in anyway is aware of what you think. Now is not the time to remain quiet.

I attended our first meeting today to go over the scheduling and itinerary of our efforts at ISPCon this year. We already have a great turnout of resellers who are booked for our Reseller event that was a pretty smashing success from what I hear last year.

Personally I'm really looking forward to this, it's the first time I have attended this particular event, and we are doing some pretty  innovative stuff on the Blogware side to let everyone know who we are and what we are doing.

If you are going to ISPCon, make sure you take advantage of  our discounts and attend the reseller event.

1. We are exhibiting in booth 700 with demos of Blogware, the Platypus Billing System and our other wholesale services.  Expert members of our team will be available to talk with you about any of our services.
2. Tucows Reseller Only Event will be on Tuesday October 18 starting at 6:30 PM. After the positive feedback from last year's event, we will again host our channel partners for hors oeuvre and drinks.  There will be a series of brief presentations on current and future projects and much more time to give your perspectives to the Tucows team.
3. Elliot Noss is speaking on Wednesday October 19th at 4:15PM.  His topic is 'Love technology - Use it to win customers'.  Kim Phelan Product Manager for Website Tools is speaking on Thursday October 20th at 10:15 AM.  Her topic is 'Blog Hosting Services, Sound Models Amid the Hype'.

We have arranged for free exhibit passes and a discount of $100 off the full conference price.  Please use this link http://resellers.tucows.com/ispcon and let us know you are coming to the Reseller Only Event and access the discounts for the conference.

We'll be painting the town yellow so make sure you come by and say hi, I'll be the guy doing the Blogware demos with the big smile on.

In June 2006 MSN Messenger and YAHOO! IM users will be able to trade messages seemlessly, and make their combined number of users roughly as big as that of AOL the incumbent.

Obviously a defensive move, but one that benefits all of us. The article mentioned Trillian which I've used in the past, but it's not perfect and really doesn't address the ease of use and integration that either of these services have now that they will be interoperable.

Very cool stuff, what's AOL's response?

Here is one of the latest reports from an employee with Directnic Registrar whos offices are in New Orleans.

Reader discretion is advised, this is not the type of report that would be broadcast by traditional media…

My prayers are with all of you…

I decided to make a move and upgrade the Motorolla v400 I acquired about a year ago to the new Nokia 6670 smartphone so I may highlight some of the great moblogging features of blogware for customers (True 1.2 megapixel Photos) as well as some of the best native Videocasting support of any hosted service (support for up to 10 minutes of recorded video).

It'll be interesting to see how the speed factor plays out in posting these higher quality images and video files on the go. I'm also very excited about some of the applications usually reserved for the pocket pc market such as video and photo editing, the office suite, and synchronization tools for integration with your desktop calendars and address books .

Either way I'll report on my experiences and start to play around with videoblogging now that I have a mobile tool that inherently supports these features *almost* as well as Blogware does.

The world has become a little dimmer for me with the loss of an ex co-worker who passed away of natural causes at the young age of 27 yesterday morning.

His genuine attitude, exhuberance, excitement for life and all around positivity are things I continue to strive for every day. May God bless his soul.

Kris, enjoy the next steps on your journey and let this transition for you remind us all that life is too short and to value the time we have in this world.

The car has been fully broken in for the last couple of months now and boy have I made sure of it.

Once that odometer hit 2,000 KM's it was only the fear of a speeding ticket and the threat of bending it around a tree to keep my foot off of that gas pedal. When they said this car lives at High RPM's they weren't lying, I've heard that oh-so familiar and subtle beep of the tachometer hitting 9,500 RPM more times than the sound of a pager at a Physician's conference. Absolute heaven…

I haven't yet hit the 8,000 kilometer point for the first servicing. It's only supposed to be a simple oil change, but for all of the complaints about oil consumption it hasn't been any worse than my last car which was a traditional 6 piston. So far it's been about 1 quart of oil for every 5 tank fulls, that's way less than the one every 2 fill ups that I was told by the sales rep, not sure why but she's driving amazingly so it might just be good luck. Now on the fuel economy side I haven't been so lucky, so far an average of about 350 KM per 50 litre tank full which isn't so hot.

Now, let's look at some of the specifics….

Performance: Nothing to complain about here, in fact I have driven many different cars in my life and I have to honestly say this car came through with a significant lead on the fun factor side. For a 4 door car it can go like stink, it's practical and extremely responsive. The feedback and stability alone put this car in the lead of anything I have driven, and when I tried the 350z which is about as close as you can get on the bang for the buck side, it's much more practical and so much easier to drive. The 350z takes some effort, the RX-8 is probably the most forgiving car out there.

Maintenance: Considering it isn't scheduled to go in for the first oiling for another 1,000 km's, not too bad really. The only thing I've spent on this car is more car washes than the two previous cars I owned combined (Pride alone, silver is a very forgiving color for dirt) and I'll have to spend about $80 to get the paint touched up where a cab driver hit me about a month ago. That was a frustrating experience, totally not my fault, but it was minor so I let it go and skipped the insurance claim. They'll ding you for bad luck you know…

Uniqueness: I have seen a few here in Ontario, not too many, maybe about one every week or two so definitely high up on the uniqueness factor. I constantly get the thumbs up from passers by, especially anyone who ever owned an RX7. For the price, this sort of reaction is priceless and usually only reserved for those owners who have spent 6 figures on their choice of usually European modes of transportation. When I took a drive down into the US recently the results were even more shocking. I had a crowd gathered around the car in the parking lot when I left the major outlet mall, but considering almost 90% of all vehicles I saw down there were domestics it wasn't too much of a shocker. I mean in all reality a honda civic would have stuck out, but still a pretty cool experience nonetheless.

Conclusion: I've only driven the car in the summer but all inidcations are she's a keeper! I'll have to put it through a Toronto winter before I make any final decisions, but so far they'll have to pry that miniature steering wheel from my cold hands in order to get it away from me…  Next update after the first snow falls so stay tuned for a winter driving report.

Sad but true, we ended up finding out that anyone could rent the track for $250 an hour, and based on the fact we would have the track for three hours and there were 23 cars slated X $60 each that would equal $1380, so there was some definite profiteering going on there.

Add to this 20 other drivers I have never met on one track without insurance coverage and you can figure out why we backed out. We decided to spend a little more each, collect 5 close friends who we know and are comfortable with, and rent the track ourselves in August or September for 2 hours. Less traffic, less danger, and the ability to do single time trials

Now onto another note, I found this GREAT video review of the RX8… it seems on their test track with the same driver the RX8 tied with the BMW M3 and the 350Z at 1 minute 31.8 seconds. Very impressive and defintely an interesting and entertaining review.

A very good friend of mine who owns an '04 Subaru WRX has invited me to a group event where around 28 cars are going to rent a racetrack for 3 hours on the 31st of July.

Although I have raced amateur in my youth, this is a bit different. In my old age I have to think about all kinds of things including self preservation plus making sure nothing happens to the 4 month old car which keep zipping through the mind no matter how much I want to step on that finely polished aluminum gas pedal..

We will have a short briefing prior to getting out on the track, followed by a few warm up laps, then lapping for the rest of the day. “Lapping” refers to just that, doing laps. Passing is STRICTLY prohibited except on the back straight, and only when the person in front of you has allowed you by signaling you to pass. We reserve all rights to kick people off the track that are driving dangerously and/or aren't listening to track marshalls.

So there you go, safe, fun, and should be a total blast. Although this is an event organized by a bunch of Subaru fanatics (A make of vehicle I came very close to buying myself before the leap to Mazda), another friend will also be joining us who has a BMW 540I with over 280 HP. So far the Bimmer, my RX8, and a Honda S2000 will be the only non Subaru entrants, but there will be pics, and possibly my first Video cast so stay tuned.

No matter the cause, no matter the motive, terror and fear as a tool solve nothing.

My prayers are with those hurt and the families of those killed in London today.

I read this article on Technology Review that correlates the logical association between gaming and the community building benefits of Blogs. Not to mention just the community building aspects of a Publisher hosted blog, but imagine every monthly subscriber to World of Warcraft being provided a blog to share their woes, tears, successes, and enjoyment of their gaming experience. Not to mention the fact a gamer who has a top character always wants to showcase what they have built, and what better trophy case than a game branded web presence that is easy to use and can track and hold descriptions of raids, screenshots, videos, and even podcasts or videocasts of gaming on the fly. Guild blogs, character blogs, storyline blogs… all of these networking and communicating together all the while reinforcing the awareness of the game and the publisher is a strong value proposition that I can see emerging just over the horizon.

As an avid part time gamer myself and  having experience with such titles as Earth and Beyond which has been cancelled for some time now, EVE, Guild Wars, Lineage, and currently Matrix Online, I know the amount of dedication players of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) give to their game of choice. There is even a website dedicated to the realm of MMORPGs that discusses what is coming and what is the best rated today.

When a gaming publisher that generally acquires revenue from monthly subscription fees looks for that next big differentiator to their competition in this highly competitive market, it will be interesting to see how long it takes for one of these providers to take the next logical step from the chaotic tough to follow forums that do not support RSS that most provide today, to a Game blog, and eventually a Blog offering for every subscriber.

What better vehicle for providing this feature than an outsourced fully wholesale and completely brandable best of breed blogging solution than Blogware? There is none…

If there's one thing I really hate in this world… then that's moving.

 Well I'm doing it again this Sunday. We found a nice rental on the west side of Toronto, reasonable size so we have some room and a nice deck. I'll try and pop some pictures when I have the housewarming BBQ next weekend but I will definitely be out of commission for a little bit until I get Internet back online at home. Although Blogging is part of my job I really don't have much time to do this at the office as of late. In sales, being busy is a good thing so this definitely isn't a complaint

As you could notice by some of the moblogging posts I've made, I'm traveling in Europe again. I have a really tight agenda so I won't necessarily have much time to post all that often, although moblogging with Blogware is so easy I'll definitely be taking some shots of the sights.

I came into London early this morning UK time and was greeted by a beatuiful 19 degree Celcius day with some sunshine… absolutely georgious. Coming from Toronto where we had our latest conflict with old man winter this was a needed change for my sanity.

This time around a few meetings in London and other parts in the country, and then off to quite a few destinations across the rest of Europe. Very busy week to say the least, Blogware and Tucows is really taking advantage of my time this trip