Pat Howe's Blog

New top level domains released today for general availability

Five new top level domains were released under general availability today (June 25); .industries, .parts, .supplies, .supply and .tools. In all, 32 domains have gone live (and are therefore available to buy now) since my last update just over a month ago. Excluding those released today the newly available domains are; .archi, .bid, .cards, .catering, .cleaning, .community, .condos, .cruises, .dating, .events, .flights, .futbol, .maison, .partners, .productions, .properties, .rentals, .reviews, .social, .tienda, .trade, .uk, .vacations, .villas, .webcam, .wiki and .xyz. In addition, there were 25 new domain name extensions given GA

What is the difference between a programmer and a developer?

It can be confusing with the terminology around programmers and developers especially when these descriptions are used interchangeably so in this article I will attempt to differentiate between the two. I know that not everyone will agree with me and some will think that developers and programmers are the same thing but from looking around when trying to hire resources, I think the market has pretty much adopted the same approach as me. So for people who may be looking to hire development resources or have a development project on

Only one week to go until .UK becomes available to use online

In just a week’s time on June 10th 2014 you will finally be able to use your pre-registered domain names with the .uk extension for email addresses, hosting websites, etc… This extension is only available to owners of domain names with a .co.uk extension and is not yet being offered to owners of .org.uk or .me.uk. At the moment, to pre-register a .uk domain name you have to either own the .co.uk or to purchase them both together. I have several .co.uk domains and I’ve purchased the .uk extension for

Update on general availability dates of new 2014 top level domains

Once again there have been many more domain extensions released during the last month with many more new dates for general availability (GA) of these new top level domains released. This is an update on my previous domain name listings. 20 domains have gone live (and are therefore available to buy now) since my last update. These include; .agency, .bargains, .boutique, .cheap, .club, .codes, .cool, .dance, .democrat, .expert, .exposed, .farm, .foundation, .kiwi, .luxury, .qpon, .viajes, .watch, .works and .zone. There were 22 new domain name extensions given GA dates in

How to pick a website domain name

I am asked quite a bit for advice on picking a domain (website) name but there are several factors to consider before you can select the right one and then what do you do if the name you want is unavailable. Here I attempt to explain what I do. Firstly, your domain name would ideally be your company name, or if you are a new start-up, why not make your domain name (including the suffix such as .com) into your company name. However, always make sure the domain name is

Getting started with HTML5 video

A while back I gave an HTML5 overview with the intention of writing more about each of those areas. So this is one of those and is dedicated to HTML5 video. The same methods apply to audio even though audio is not explicitly covered here. For everyone that has created websites in the past using previous versions of HTML, you will know the difficulties involved in trying to embed video into those pages. The easiest way for most people was to convert the video to Adobe Flash and rely on

Taking action against unwanted telephone callers

I gets lots of spam/phishing emails but also an increasing number of unsolicited telephone calls until I took some action. These calls range from legitimate companies cold calling to illegitimate scammers trying to trick me into divulging information or buying something that I don’t need. Basically, I have never bought anything from anyone that has cold called me. Even if I took a call and was interested in, “double glazing”, “home security” or whatever else they are selling, I will always make a point to never buy from a cold

An update on email scams with recent examples

During the last couple of months, I’ve been collecting all the scam emails that I’ve been receiving and publishing them on a separate page. Just recently scam email activity has risen quite steeply so I thought I would give a short reminder here about my “Special report showing examples of email scams in 2014” page. The page was getting quite long as I was just listing them as they came in so they were in order of the date received with the newest at the top. I didn’t want to

General availability dates of more new 2014 domains

There have been many more domain extensions released during the last month with many more new dates for general availability (GA) of these new top level domains released. This is an update from last month’s article Update on all the new top level domains available in 2014. That page listed the predicted availability of the new domain name extensions and this page just shares an update of that list. However, rather than list by GA date, I have listed them all alphabetically indicating whether they are currently available to the

Why your website needs search engine friendly optimisation (SEFO)

In this article I will explain what the search engines are looking for and what they don’t want to see. I will then show you how to get started on your way to search engine friendly optimisation for your website. I see quite a few websites that don’t even have the basics that would help search engines to index their site properly and others that go over the top. Both approaches will be bad for your business so you need the right balance. Google and other internet search providers are

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