eBook & Internet Publishing News
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A few days ago, I I wrote about PopBox, a cool tool that allows you to make zoomable images on your web pages. The nice fellow who created PopBox, John S. Reid, saw my blog article and informed me of a little mistake.

I thought I was being clever by manually adding (using a graphics program) those borders round the thumbnail and zoomed-in versions of the images. Turns out that I wasn’t so clever after all - I was wasting my time - PopBox could have done it automatically for me. Oops!

ScriptRocket.com is our web site where we offer a number of powerful PHP scripts that you can use on your web site(s). These include:

• Piranha Feed - A script for quickly integrated automatically updated content from Amazon.com to your web pages. It also allows visitors to search Amazon without leaving your site. And all product links are tagged with your Amazon associate ID, allowing you to earn commissions from sales of these products.
• CBRocket - A ClickBank search engine for your site - it can also display context sensitive advertising links. With this script, the links are coded with your ClickBank nickname, allowing you to earn commissions from them.
• Top Site - start your own top sites list (other webmasters will send you traffic for free).
• Polls - Create your own web polls.
• Click/Counter Tracker - an invisible page counter and advertising tracking script.
• Feedback Form - Get feedback from your visitors
• Essential Scripts - A collection of scripts, at reduced price, containing Top Site, Polls, Click/Counter Tracker and Feedback Form.

Anyway, while don’t often raise our prices, consider this post as advanced warning that we do intend to make some price rises on most, perhaps all, of the ScriptRocket products in the very near future. The new prices will should come into effect some time on Tuesday January 15th 2008^*. In short, if you want to purchase any of these products at the current (cheaper) prices, please do so on or before Monday January 14th 2008.

^* Although this is the planned day for the price changes, there are a few technical issues that we need to deal with… it’s there is a very small outside chance that the implementation of the changes may take slightly longer than we expect. Don’t bank on it though!

Happy New Year!

I’m already back at work, so let’s get down to it: I’ll begin the year with a quick plug for a wonderful, and free, tool for displaying image thumbnails. The tool is called “PopBox” and what it does is allow you to put thumbnail images in your web pages which when clicked, can expand, shrink, or stretch in various ways. The cool thing about PopBox is that it’s based around JavaScript (and a little CSS), so it’s easy to add to pretty much any web page - and you don’t need to mess around with Flash.

The tool is called PopBox, and it’s available from the following web site: http://www.c6software.com/Products/PopBox/

It’s worth checking out the site to see what it can do - and you’re probably already getting ideas for how you could use it. If you have a photogallery on your site - that’s one obvious application for starters. I’ve just added to our Guide to Muscle Gain (click on any one of the four little thumbnails of the pages, about half way down the page, just after the big image of the Table of Contents).

When you’re using PopBox, you don’t actually need to make up separate thumbnails for each image that you use it on. However, as with most things in life, a little extra effort can pay great dividends. On Guide to Muscle Gain, I actually spent a few minutes actually preparing the images and thumbnails for a better result:

(the grey background around the images below is not actually part of images, but was chosen just so you can see the edges of the images).

Step 1: Take a screenshot of the page Step 2: Scale down the screenshot image by 50% in both directions Step 3: Add a 2 pixel black border on all four sides of the image from step 1 (this becomes the zoomed in image) Step 4: Add a 2 pixel black border on all four sides of the image from step 2 (this becomes the thumbnail image)

I’ve got a new coupon code that allows the maximum possible discount on DreamHost web hosting. When ordering, enter promo code SUNIL to save up to $97 on their hosting packages.

As I mentioned before all the packages allow unlimited domain hosting, an excellent control panel, plenty of bandwidth and storage, and a ton of features including CGI, PHP, unlimited MySQL databases, Ruby on Rails, and a lot more. Plus there’s one click installation of packages such as WordPress (for blogs), phpBB (for discussion boards), and ZenCart (shopping cart)

The amount of discounts on each of the plan is shown on the table below:

These discounts are all set at the maximum possible on DreamHost’s current system, so you will not find a better offer anywhere else.

We’ve been using DreamHost for the best part of a year now, and quite a few web sites hosted there now, with more being added (although we do also have other older sites at other hosts too). I can unreservedly recommend them for the following reasons:-

1. Excellent value for money.
2. You can host as many domains and subdomains as you like - at no extra cost. Additionally you can add new domains and subdomains yourself very easily from the control panel, and they are added instantly
3. Excellent control panel for managing your site(s). This includes features for adding domains to your package, adding databases, and one click installs of scripts such as WordPress (blogging), phpBB (discussion board), ZenCart (shopping cart), and a lot more.
4. Lots of bandwidth and storage for your money - and they increase the amount included in your plan, every week, at no additional cost

All their packages include - as standard for no extra cost - unlimited MySQL databases, Front Page extensions, RealAudio and RealVideo streaming support, Quicktime streaming support, php4 and php5 support, and Ruby-on-rails support. Many of these are features that you have to pay extra for elsewhere.

All the packages also include email support, and for the level 2 and higher plans there is a telephone call back option too.

Therefore overall, recommended.

If you want to order an account - go to DreamHost’s web site, and when ordering enter ANS2000 in the Promo Code field. You will get $25 to $50 off the standard price depending on which package you choose!

It’s an ICANN rule that domain registrants have current correct contact information, but what happens if there is a mistake in your contact info? Say, for example, you changed email address but forgot to update the email address in your domain registration record?

Well if you registered with GoDaddy, it seems that they might just take your domain away, even though it’s bought and paid for, and is yet to expire. That’s what happened to the owner of FamilyAlbum.com, after he failed to respond to an email requesting that he check/update his contact information. GoDaddy’s response is here.

To add insult to injury, the information available suggests that GoDaddy made some money reselling the domain in question via a back-order (this is where a person can order an already registered domain with the hope that the current owner will abandon it or let it expire), and if you visit FamilyAlbum.com now, you’ll see a GoDaddy parking page (which I’d imagine GoDaddy makes money from too).

My own question about GoDaddy’s response is this: They apparently feel that if you don’t respond to email for some period (the exact period isn’t clear from the news story, but it appears to be 8 weeks or perhaps less), that they are entitled to take the domain back - but what if the domain owner is sick? Or vacationing? Or climbing mountains in Antarctica? Because, remember not every domain owner is using their domain to run a business. ICANN requires valid contact information, but, as far as I know, doesn’t specify a time limit for how quickly domain owners must respond if contacted.

And of course the obvious one: What if the registrar’s email(s) requesting that it be checked/updated accidentally landed in the domain owner’s spam folder, unnoticed? What if the contact info, including address, phone number and email address, are all valid and current? Could you lose your domain for failing to update that which is already fully up to date?

The other thing, that is already being speculated about, is whether a malicious person could do something like this (perhaps targeting GoDaddy registrations, because he knows they will cancel registrations with incorrect email addresses):

1. Extract email addresses from domain records in the WHOIS database (not necessarily for every domain, but perhaps for domains which are 1 or 2 dictionary words, domains with high Google PR, etc.)
2. Email each address and see which email addresses bounces
3. For domains whose email address bounces, back-order them, then email a complaint to the registrar (GoDaddy in this example) complaining of invalid contact information

Or an even more scary scenario: What if the malicious person who wanted a particular domain, simply mail bombed the domain owner (sending so much email continuous to flood his inbox and guaranteeing that he can’t respond to email). The malicious person would have to keep this up for a while…. but, if he did…. could he acquire a domain name by guaranteeing the owner won’t be able to receive/respond to GoDaddy emails?

iPower is offered .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, and .us domain registration for $2.95 for the first year. This seems like an excellent deal to me, and their web hosting offers seem pretty good value too.

But that’s not the best deal I’ve seen recently. That award goes to Dotster who are running a happy hour on March 22nd, between 1pm and 2pm Pacific Time. During the happy hour, they’ll be offering 1,000 coupons for $1/month hosting (normal price is $8.95/month for this particular hosting package), and it includes, among other things up to 2GB of storage, and hosting for up to 50 domains.

Our new site SudokuReview.com incorporates a feature allowing webmasters to syndicate a daily Sudoku puzzle on to their web site. The puzzles update automatically, they’re easy to add to your page, an excellent way to attract regular visitors - and best of all - they’re absolutely free. Details here.

I recently wrote about midPhase’s 2 months of free hosting deal. Well, I received an email from another hosting company today, PowWeb who are offering a range of exceptional deals.

In fact, PowWeb have a choice of 3 special deals on their $7.77/month hosting plan (which includes 5,000 Megabytes storage, a massive 300Gb/month transfer, and a bunch of features). All PowWeb’s deals also come with a free domain name and setup.

1. Either buy 1 year’s hosting - and get 2 months free. I believe this deal ends at the end of October.
2. Or, buy 2 year’s hosting - and get 2 years free. I believe this deal also ends at the end of October.
3. Or, get $5 off any package by entering code "sept05" at the check out. Hurry up if you want this deal - it ends 30 September.

Well, I guess I’ve potentially opened the floodgates and now I’m going to receive email from other hosts about other special deals they offer - in the expectation that I’ll write more stories on those lines. While that ain’t gonna happen - this is going to be my last story about hosting deals for a good while: let’s get back to eBook and Internet publishing!

midPhase is offering two months of free hosting (and the chance to win a car). To get the free 2 months, all your have to do is enter a coupon code (see below), when ordering. midPhase’s plans include 5,000Mb of storage, CGI, PHP and MySQL features, $100 of Overture credit, and unmetered^* bandwidth. The prices start from US $7.95 per month.

^*If you look at the small print at the bottom of the midPhase’s site, it says "Regarding Mega-PHASE, Pro-PHASE, Windows and Windows Pro customers: Some sites may not qualify for Unmetered Bandwidth. In the event that a website does not qualify, the website will be allocated 65-75 GB of bandwidth depending on the package."

That looks like a very good deal to me, even if you don’t qualify for unmetered bandwidth.

Oh yeh, the coupon code - it’s "twomonthsfree". Go to midPhase and sign-up now if you want it. I understand this offer will be ending fairly soon, mid October - I think.