I receive quite often questions about server and server problems. Most of the webmasters have a root server or at least a vhosting and usually these servers comes with administration “duties”. Here is bellow my list with commands I am using for my servers: (more…)

For the third time, lat week I participated at the ESWC (European Software Conference) 2009 in Kempinsky Bristol Hotel, Berlin. As I expected this year the number of visitors and sponsors was strike by the crisis. But still, the presentations saved the conference. I hope in the next year we can go back at the 250 visitors, btw Wien is going to be the host of the next conference in 2010. (more…)

I received an incredible email from Snapnames. Can I still trust them with the money I invested until now?

Dear SnapNames customer:

I’m contacting you today to inform you of an unfortunate incident at SnapNames, and to let you know what the company is doing to address it.

Recently, SnapNames discovered that an employee had set up an account on the SnapNames system under a false name and, under this name, bid in SnapNames auctions. This is a clear violation of our internal policy and was not approved by the company. We deeply regret that this conduct has impacted our customers.

Extent of impact

This conduct affected a small percentage of SnapNames auctions:
* Bidding affected approximately five percent of total SnapNames auctions since 2005, most of which occurred between 2005 and 2007.
* The incremental revenue from the bidding represented approximately one percent of SnapNames’ auction revenue since 2005.

No matter the level of impact, SnapNames takes this matter extremely seriously. When the matter was discovered, the company immediately closed the account in question and began a thorough investigation. The employee has also been dismissed from the company.

SnapNames further discovered that, on certain recent and limited occasions, when the employee won an auction, the employee secretly arranged to refund from SnapNames to the fictitious account a portion of the winning bid amount.

Remedy to affected customers

Though on some occasions the employee won the auction, in many instances the bidding caused the ultimate auction winner to pay more for a name than had the employee not participated in the auction.

SnapNames neither condones this conduct nor wants to be perceived as benefiting from the conduct. Accordingly, we have decided that regardless of the circumstance, in every auction where the employee’s fictitious account submitted a bid which resulted in a higher price being paid by the winning bidder, SnapNames will offer a rebate, with 5.22% interest (the highest applicable federal rate during the affected time period), to affected customers for the difference between the prices they actually paid and the prices they would have paid, had the employee not bid in the auctions. The rebate will be available in cash or in credit on the SnapNames platform, at your discretion.

SnapNames has moved quickly to address this situation. The company has retained Rust Consulting, an independent third party, who will administer the rebate offer. Within the next week, Rust Consulting will contact affected customers to provide details regarding the offer.

Your business and ongoing relationship are important to us and we can assure you that we have taken all necessary steps to ensure the integrity of the platform and reinforced controls and procedures to avoid any possibility of further breach. These include:

* Enhanced monitoring of bidding activity for suspect behavior
* Additional controls over financial transactions
* Specific domain name registration policies for employees

In the meantime, if you have any questions, you may consult the FAQs here, or contact the SnapNames support team: By e-mail: support@snapnames.com Phone: +1 (866) 690-6279 (toll-free in the U.S.) +1 (503) 241-8547 (outside the U.S.)

SnapNames, and all in the Oversee family of companies, are deeply disappointed with this incident. Since its founding in 2000, SnapNames has been committed to the principles of fairness and trust; the company wants to assure customers—through both words and actions—that it remains committed to those principles.

Thank you again for your business, and for your ongoing trust in SnapNames.

Sincerely,

Jeff Kupietzky Craig Snyder President and CEO General Manager,

SnapNames.com SnapNames 1600 SW 4th Avenue,
Suite 400 Portland, OR 97201

Matt Cutts is maybe the most popular member of Google WebSpam team, with strong relations in the SEO community. He is responsible fo the Search Quality Google in Google. He has also the reputation of being the one trying to promote the Google Webmaster rules. Matt wrote also the first version of SafeSearch, the family frienldy Google filter.

He has also the reputation of not telling the whole side of the story. Because of the nature of his job he is probably forced to keep away from our ears some “details”. Bellow you can find some of the interviews and Q&A sessions with Matt Cutts.

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Google has released a few days ago in an official post a 22 page PDF document outlining recommendations for web site optimization rules. The basic guide is touching a number of basic elements, such as titles, meta descriptions, no follow link attributes, hyphen etc.

You can download and read the Google SEO starte guider PDF. The document is a great proof of what all SEO-s are doing, a chance to validate the value of your techniques and it validates the SEO practice overall. (more…)