Welcome to Land of Tricks

In an age of ever-faster communications, fewer people have time for voice mail
Taylor Davis, 20, a college student waiting tables in Wellesley for the summer, waits days to listen to her voice mail messages and, even then, checks her inbox only when she’s bored.
“Usually it’s from my boss or people wanting me to pick up shifts,’’ she said, shrugging off missed opportunities, “or from my mom or my aunts. They like to talk a lot.’’

Ja-Nae Duane, 32, CEO of Wild Women Entrepreneurs and Ja-Nae Duane Ventures, in Woburn, deletes many of her voice mails without even listening. “What I really hate are the soliloquies,’’ she said. “I spend more time listening to your message than I do responding to it.’’

Brian Walshe, 32, a Boston-based international art dealer, keeps his phone’s mailbox full to ward off new messages. The maneuver annoys those who want to reach him, but he estimates it saves him 30 minutes a day. “People complain,’’ he said. “Everyone likes to leave a message.’’

The problem is, these days, not many people like to listen to them.
In an age of ever-speedier communications, a growing number of people are unwilling to endure voice mail’s shortcomings. Some can’t stand the endless prompts just to hear a longwinded - and often pointless - message. (Hi, it’s me. Why aren’t you picking up? I’ll call you later.) Others dislike voice mails that can’t be searched, easily forwarded, or surreptitiously played during a meeting or lecture. And on the off chance a message does contain key information, it’s often left at the end of a ramble and spoken rapidly, forcing the recipient to listen all over again. And then write it down, of course.

For those who can’t be bothered to listen to messages at all, even those they care about, a number of companies now offer voice-to-text transcription. The best known is Google, which at the end of June began a rollout of Google Voice, a service that offers - among other things - voice mail transcriptions free of charge.

Craig Walker, a coproduct manager for Google Voice, described the transcription service as a “game changer’’ that turns voice mail from a “temporary audio recording trapped inside your phone’’ into information that’s “usable and storable and searchable.’’ Without transcription, he added, “the value of voice mail is lost. A few days later you’re looking for that matchbook cover you wrote the person’s phone number on.’’

James Siminoff, founder and CEO of PhoneTag, another company that transcribes voice mails and sends the text to users, agrees.

“Voice mail is a dead service as it stands today,Siminoff said. His company estimates that it takes 6 seconds to read a voice mail that would take 79 seconds to hear. Fees for PhoneTag’s services range from 35 cents to transcribe a single message to $29.95 for unlimited monthly transcriptions.

Initially, Siminoff said, some people are hesitant to lose the “sweet nothingof loved ones’ voices: “We’ve had people who said ‘I’d never use [a transcription service] - I want to hear how my wife sounds on every message.’ But people don’t check them quickly. Siminoff said the average person checks the voice mail six to eight hours after it was left.

“Your wife might have been happy when she left you the message asking you to pick up milk,but when you return home without milk because you didn’t listen, “it’s a different story.’’

After a month of using the transcription service, he added, only 1 percent of customers listen to the voice file that’s sent along with the transcription. “What does that tell you?’’

Still, some people can’t bring themselves to hit delete without listening. “It would seem rude not to listen to a message, and you might miss something important,said Lorrey Bianchi, 63, a Back Bay retiree, as he strolled through the Shops at Prudential Center with his wife. “Presumably if someone is calling you they have something to say.’’

And after all, we do ask people to leave a message - even if we have no intention of checking it.

Consider the case of Duane, the CEO who deletes some messages without listening. The outgoing message on her work line practically begs callers to leave a message. “Unfortunately I am unable to come to the phone now,her voice says sweetly. “But if you leave your name, your number, and a brief message, I promise I will get back to you as soon as possible.’’

A bait and switch? No, Duane insisted. She recorded the outgoing message years ago, in an era before e-mail and texting. “But,she said, “I’m going to change it now.’’

Popularity: 4% [?]

Why would you want your own Domain Name?

Having your own domain name is desirable for many bloggers for numerous reasons. For a start if you’re wanting to build credibility and a sense of professionalism around your blog a domain that reflects this can help. Similarly a carefully selected domain name has the ability to enhance the branding of a product, service, business or even person. Domain purchases give the added bonus of email addresses with the same domain (adding to both professionalism and branding) and can enhance your Search Engine Ranking.

Factors to Consider when Choosing a Domain Name

Just as there are many factors to consider in choosing the name of a person there are many implications of choosing names for a website. What follows is a list of factors to keep in mind as you make the decision. Keep in mind that there are many theories about what is right and wrong in this area and that despite all the rules that people have there are some very successful sites that ignore them all! Also worth remembering is that personal taste comes into decisions like this - what’s a good name will mean different things to different people. With those disclaimers in mind - let’s take a look at a few areas to consider:

Goals and Objectives - I constantly come back to this point in most of my tips posts on a variety of aspects of blogging - but it’s so important to be thinking of the long term vision that you have for a blog when you’re making decisions like those about domain names.

• What is the topic of the blog? - an obvious starting point - most blog names reflect their topic
• What do you hope to achieve with your blog? - is it about having a hobby, is it about building your profile/expertise, is it about earning an income via ads, is it to support an existing business
• What style will it be? - is it a blog with one or many authors? What length of posts will it have?
• What tone and voice will it be written in? - Will it be conversational, newsy, rant-ish, humorous?
• Who is the intended audience? - Are you wanting to appeal to professionals, young people, cool people, geeks?

You get the picture. Just like naming a business you need to consider overall strategy.

Source of Traffic - I’ve seen many articles on how to choose a domain name written but in very few of them (if any) have I see a discussion on the type of traffic that you will be wanting to build your website/blog around. To me this is a crucial question (that emerges out of your overall strategy) and one that will help you answer some of the important questions that we’ll discuss below. Let me flesh this out a little:

Traffic to a blog generally comes from three main sources:

• Loyal Readers
• Search Engines
• Referral Traffic (from other sites)

I’ve talked a little about each of these types of traffic in this previous post - they each have their own distinct advantages and disadvantages and can be the result of different strategies. One of the many things that can impact the source of your traffic is your domain name. I’ll explain this more below but think it’s worth naming what type of blog and traffic you’re after up front. If you want a blog that is high on SE traffic you might well end up selecting a name that is different to a blog with traffic based upon repeat readers. As I say - I’ll expand on this below.

Keywords and Branding - Many discussions on domain name decisions talk about a choice between choosing a domain name with keywords in them to domain names that are more brandable or generic. It’s worth stating up front that it is possible to achieve both (I guess anything is brandable to some extent) - but that this type of choice often comes into play. In my opinion comes at least partly back to the type of traffic you’re hoping to attract to your blog. Let’s look at each in turn:

1. Keyword Based Domains - these domains, as the name suggests, incorporate keywords that your blog is about in them. This is good for a number of reasons. Firstly it communicates something to your readers very quickly with regards to what your blog is about. The other positive is that Search Engines take a good look at the words in your domain name when deciding what your blog is about and how to rank it. As a result if you’re after SE traffic then these types of names can be worth looking at. Examples of blogs with keyword based domains are Cellphone9, the Movie Blog, Sims Gamer andDigital Photography School.
2. Brandable Domains - these domains might often have some relation to their topic in terms of their feel or sound but are much more about creating something memorable that can become an identity in and of itself. In terms of traffic strategy - these blogs would be suited ideally to developing a blog that is aiming to build a community of loyal readers. Of course these blogs can also do very well in search engines but this is usually for other reasons (keywords in URLs are just one of many factors). Blogs that have these types of domains include Boing Boing, Gizmodo and Dooce. In fact if you look at Technorati’s Top 100 blogs - you’ll see that most of them have brandable names and not Keyword based ones.

Like I have mentioned above, these two options are no mutually exclusive. One example that comes to mind is Engadget which has become a memorable and well branded name that incorporates ‘gadget’ into it.

There are good arguments for and against both types of domain name which we could talk about for some time and it’s quite common to feel torn when making this type of decision between the two options.

Thinking of the Future - another factor to consider that is related to my first point of goals and objectives is to consider what your blog might look like in the future. I’ve seen a number of bloggers start up blogs with domains that fit with the topic of the blog initially but which outgrow the domain down the track. In one instance the problem was that the blog started on a fairly narrow topic (a sub-niche) and on a domain that reflected this but that in time it expanded it’s topic as the industry changed. In the end the topic and name just didn’t fit.

Another ‘future factor’ to consider is how many blogs you’re thinking of starting on your domain. Take a look at About.com for an example of how it’s possible to have one domain with many blogs running off it. They blog (yes they are blogs - run by MovableType) ‘about’ hundreds of topics and have a domain name that suits this perfectly. I myself have fallen into the trap of not thinking ahead in this way with my livingroom.org.au domain where I currently have a blog on Digital Cameras. I guess this is an example of how ultimately it doesn’t matter what domain you start blogs on as it’s a blog that does pretty well - however I often wonder how much better if could have done if I’d just thought ahead a little more!

Lastly on the ‘future front’ - don’t pick a name that you suspect might date quickly. Picking a name that is time specific in any way might find you searching for a new domain when it is no longer relevant at some future time.

Name Length - there are a range of opinions on what the ideal length of a domain name is. Technically you can have one with up to 67 characters in it but it is generally accepted that short ones are better for a number of reasons including that they are easier to remember, that they leave less room for making mistakes when typing them in, they are good for word of mouth (online or offline) marketing, that they are more visually pleasing (eg on your business card) etc.

The other argument is that if you are looking for SE traffic that you might like to consider a longer domain name with a number of the keywords that you’re looking for traffic on.

My personal preference these days is for shorter domains if possible, but not just for the sake of being short. Plus short names are very popular and hard to find these days so you might be forced to consider something a little longer anyway.

Dot What? - Along with the debates over domain name length comes many different opinions over what is the best to have at the end of your domain after the ‘dot’. These letters (ie .com, .net, .org etc) are technically called the Top Level Domain (TLD) and are divided into two types. Firstly there are country code TLD’s and secondly there are ‘generic’ TLDs which signify different types of organizations (in theory at least).

As I say there are a variety of approaches to selecting which TLD to go for:

• Legalities - The first consideration is the legalities of your choice as different countries and generic TLDs have different requirements but the
• SEO - This is where many of the arguements over TLD’s come in. I’m not going to get into it in much depth except to say that most people believe .com to be most powerful and that .net and .org are also good. Also if you are starting a blog with a localized focus it is well worth considering a country code on your TLD as it will help you get indexed in local search engines (I get a lot of traffic on my .au domains from Google Australia). If you’re going for a more global audience try for .com or .net.
• Memorability - One of the frustrations I have with ProBlogger.net is simply that people assume that it can be found at ProBlogger.com. Of course when I came to register this domain I tried to get the .com but it was unavailable so I decided that .net would serve my purposes (which it has). The only cost is that .com is so ‘normal’ that many people make the assumption that yourblog’sname.com will always be your address.

Hyphens? - Another eternal debate with domain names is over the value of hyphenated names. For example a hyphenated version of this blog might be Pro-Blogger.net. There are a two main reasons that some people prefer hyphenated names:

• Availability - one of the main reasons for going with hyphens is that ‘all the good names are taken’ (or at least it can seem this way). Adding hyphens to names definitely gives more options.
• SEO - hyphens are said to identify keywords to search engines more clearly (once again there is some debate over this).

Of course for every positive there is a negative and the arguments against keywords include:

• Memorability - adding hyphens can make it tricky for readers to remember your name
• Difficult to Communicate - have you ever tried to tell someone a domain name with a hyphen between each word? It can be quite an annoying process
• Increased Margin for Error - the more characters in your domain the more chance of a mistaken keystroke
• Cheap and Nasty Factor - there is a perception among many web-masters that domains with lots of keywords and hyphens are spammy. I personally don’t mind a domain with one (maybe two) hyphens in them but domains-that-have-lots-of-them-frustrate-me-and-turn-me-off.

Numbers? - Another option to consider when choosing a domain on a topic that is quite crowded is to include a number at the beginning or end of it. Once again this increases your chances of finding a domain with your keyword in it but could ‘cheapen’ the sound of your domain (a matter of personal opinion of course).

‘Easy’ Names - Most ‘experts’ in this area argue that a domain name should be easy to spell, pronounce, remember and type. Web users are notoriously lazy and if your site is not easy to find then they might just quickly give up trying to find it. As a result the easier you can make your domain to remember and access the more chance you have of traffic to it from repeat readers.

Keeping it Legal - it is highly recommendable to think seriously about the legal implications of the words you use in your domain name. Avoid trademarked names especially. I know of a couple of instances where bloggers were forced into making changes months into new blogs because of legal threats. Whether these laws vary from country to country I’m unsure - but it’s worth considering if you’re picking a domain that might clash in this way.

The ‘Blog’ Word - One temptations for many bloggers is to use the word ‘blog’ in the name and URL of their blog. This has the advantage of opening up new options for domain names but can also have some costs. For starters it could see the possibilities for expanding your site down the track limited. If one day you don’t want to run your site in a blog format you might feel a bit trapped. The other reason is that if you are wanting to use AdSense as an income stream for your blog down the track, it has a problem of serving ads about blogging when the word ‘blog’ appears too prominently on a site. This is ok when your blog is about blogging - but isn’t too conducive to high ad relevancy if you’re writing on a different topic.

Secure Multiple Domains - One piece of advice that many experienced web-masters recommend is making sure that you secure other similar domain names to the one you eventually choose. For example, if you choose a .com domain name it might be worth getting the .net and .org ones if you can, or perhaps even getting plurals or other logical similar ones. This is not essential but might help you protect your niche in some circumstances.

Opinions of Others - Before you buy that domain you’ve been eyeing off - it might be worthwhile running it by one or two other trusted friends (who won’t run off and buy it themselves). It’s amazing how focused you can become on finding the right name and how that can cloud your judgement. It’s also interesting to see how a name might sound to a person of a different culture to your own. Words mean different things in different part of the world and it could help you avoid an embarrassing mistake or just a dorky blog name.

Previously used Domain Names - It’s worth checking to see if a domain has been previously registered. Spammers often buy up domain names and then abandon them later once they’ve used them up. This can leave these domains banned by Google which gets you off to a pretty poor start.

Of course the above points are not hard and fast rules. As I’ve mentioned many times before - some of the worse domain names on sites have ended up being quite successful. I have blogs trapped on domains that were not thought through very well (largely because I didn’t know any better and thats the way things evolved) - some of them do poorly and others do very well.

There’s more to a blog’s success or failure than it’s name or URL - all I’m arguing is that a wise choice in this can better your chances in the long term.

Some tools you might like to use in selecting a domain name include:

NameBoy
DomainsBot
Whois Source

Feel free to add your own tips, suggestions and experiences in comments.

Popularity: 5% [?]

You already know that if you want to lock down your Wi-Fi network, you should opt for WPA encryption because WEP is easy to crack. But did you know how easy? Take a look.

Today we’re going to run down, step-by-step, how to crack a Wi-Fi network with WEPsecurity turned on. But first, a word: Knowledge is power, but power doesn’t mean you should be a jerk, or do anything illegal. Knowing how to pick a lock doesn’t make you a thief. Consider this post educational, or a proof-of-concept intellectual exercise.

Dozens of tutorials on how to crack WEP are already all over the internet using this method. Seriously—Google it. This ain’t what you’d call “news.” But what is surprising is that someone like me, with minimal networking experience, can get this done with free software and a cheap Wi-Fi adapter. Here’s how it goes.

What You’ll Need

Unless you’re a computer security and networking ninja, chances are you don’t have all the tools on hand to get this job done. Here’s what you’ll need:

• A compatible wireless adapter—This is the biggest requirement. You’ll need a wireless adapter that’s capable of packet injection, and chances are the one in your computer is not. After consulting with my friendly neighborhood security expert, I purchased an Alfa AWUS050NH USB adapter, pictured here, and it set me back about $50 on Amazon. Update: Don’t do what I did. Get the Alfa AWUS036H, not the US050NH, instead. The guy in this video below is using a $12 model he bought on Ebay (and is even selling his router of choice). There are plenty of resources on getting aircrack-compatible adapters out there.
• A BackTrack 3 Live CD. We already took you on a full screenshot tour of how to install and use BackTrack 3, the Linux Live CD that lets you do all sorts of security testing and tasks. Download yourself a copy of the CD and burn it, or load it up in VMware to get started. (I tried the BackTrack 4 pre-release, and it didn’t work as well as BT3. Do yourself a favor and stick with BackTrack 3 for now.)
• A nearby WEP-enabled Wi-Fi network. The signal should be strong and ideally people are using it, connecting and disconnecting their devices from it. The more use it gets while you collect the data you need to run your crack, the better your chances of success.
• Patience with the command line. This is an ten-step process that requires typing in long, arcane commands and waiting around for your Wi-Fi card to collect data in order to crack the password. Like the doctor said to the short person, be a little patient.

Crack That WEP

To crack WEP, you’ll need to launch Konsole, BackTrack’s built-in command line. It’s right there on the taskbar in the lower left corner, second button to the right. Now, the commands.

First run the following to get a list of your network interfaces:

airmon-ng

The only one I’ve got there is labeled ra0. Yours may be different; take note of the label and write it down. From here on in, substitute it in everywhere a command includes (interface).

Now, run the following four commands. See the output that I got for them in the screenshot below.


airmon-ng stop (interface)
ifconfig (interface) down
macchanger --mac 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)
airmon-ng start (interface)

If you don’t get the same results from these commands as pictured here, most likely your network adapter won’t work with this particular crack. If you do, you’ve successfully “faked” a new MAC address on your network interface, 00:11:22:33:44:55.

Now it’s time to pick your network. Run:

airodump-ng (interface)

To see a list of wireless networks around you. When you see the one you want, hit Ctrl+C to stop the list. Highlight the row pertaining to the network of interest, and take note of two things: its BSSID and its channel (in the column labeled CH), as pictured below. Obviously the network you want to crack should have WEP encryption (in the ENC) column, not WPA or anything else.

Like I said, hit Ctrl+C to stop this listing. (I had to do this once or twice to find the network I was looking for.) Once you’ve got it, highlight the BSSID and copy it to your clipboard for reuse in the upcoming commands.

Now we’re going to watch what’s going on with that network you chose and capture that information to a file. Run:

airodump-ng -c (channel) -w (file name) --bssid (bssid) (interface)

Where (channel) is your network’s channel, and (bssid) is the BSSID you just copied to clipboard. You can use the Shift+Insert key combination to paste it into the command. Enter anything descriptive for (file name). I chose “yoyo,” which is the network’s name I’m cracking.

You’ll get output like what’s in the window in the background pictured below. Leave that one be. Open a new Konsole window in the foreground, and enter this command:

aireplay-ng -1 0 -a (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 -e (essid) (interface)

Here the ESSID is the access point’s SSID name, which in my case is yoyo. What you want to get after this command is the reassuring “Association successful” message with that smiley face.

You’re almost there. Now it’s time for:

aireplay-ng -3 -b (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)

Here we’re creating router traffic to capture more throughput faster to speed up our crack. After a few minutes, that front window will start going crazy with read/write packets. (Also, I was unable to surf the web with the yoyo network on a separate computer while this was going on.) Here’s the part where you might have to grab yourself a cup of coffee or take a walk. Basically you want to wait until enough data has been collected to run your crack. Watch the number in the “#Data” column—you want it to go above 10,000. (Pictured below it’s only at 854.)

Depending on the power of your network (mine is inexplicably low at -32 in that screenshot, even though the yoyo AP was in the same room as my adapter), this process could take some time. Wait until that #Data goes over 10k, though—because the crack won’t work if it doesn’t. In fact, you may need more than 10k, though that seems to be a working threshold for many.

Once you’ve collected enough data, it’s the moment of truth. Launch a third Konsole window and run the following to crack that data you’ve collected:

aircrack-ng -b (bssid) (file name-01.cap)

Here the filename should be whatever you entered above for (file name). You can browse to your Home directory to see it; it’s the one with .cap as the extension.

If you didn’t get enough data, aircrack will fail and tell you to try again with more. If it succeeds, it will look like this:

The WEP key appears next to “KEY FOUND.” Drop the colons and enter it to log onto the network.

Problems Along the Way

With this article I set out to prove that cracking WEP is a relatively “easy” process for someone determined and willing to get the hardware and software going. I still think that’s true, but unlike the guy in the video below, I had several difficulties along the way. In fact, you’ll notice that the last screenshot up there doesn’t look like the others—it’s because it’s not mine. Even though the AP which I was cracking was my own and in the same room as my Alfa, the power reading on the signal was always around -30, and so the data collection was very slow, and BackTrack would consistently crash before it was complete. After about half a dozen attempts (and trying BackTrack on both my Mac and PC, as a live CD and a virtual machine), I still haven’t captured enough data for aircrack to decrypt the key.

So while this process is easy in theory, your mileage may vary depending on your hardware, proximity to the AP point, and the way the planets are aligned. Oh yeah, and if you’re on deadline—Murphy’s Law almost guarantees it won’t work if you’re on deadline.

Popularity: 59% [?]