Nominet - Second Level .uk Domain Registration

Nominet are currently looking for feedback on a proposal to introduce second level domain registrations in the .uk domain space. This would mean that you would be able to register, for example, mycompany.uk as well as mycompany.co.uk for your business. This kind of domain structure has been available for some time in other markets, but not the UK.

I attended a Nominet round table session on behalf of the BCS Internet Specialist Group on July 10th, where a number of interesting points were made by attendees. The reason for writing up these brief notes is to give an overview of the topics discussed, rather than provide any opinion.

The Issues

Will this move create yet another domain name for businesses to "protectively" register even if they have no intention of using it themselves?

Which would you choose if you had the choice?

Who gets the second level domain name where there are competing third level domains already in existence, e.g. mycompany.co.uk and mycompany.ltd.co.uk?

Who will get the priority when there are contentious claims to a second level domain - those who have owned the third level domain the longest?

Will Nominet use a model similar to New Zealand, where owners of .co.nz domains were offered free upgrades to .nz?

Will too much choice of domain names actually drive people back to what they know best, i.e. .co.uk, to the detriment of the new second level domains?

Have Your Say

These are just some of the questions raised during the session, some may affect your business, or there may be other issues which you can think of which are directly relevant to the way your business operates. You can comment on the proposals until the consultation period ends on September 23rd this year. For full details of the consultation, and how to take part, please see this page on the Nominet web site, or this blog post.

There is another round table session scheduled for Monday 22nd July, again in London - the articles linked to above contain further information on how to attend.

Photo credit: Widjaya Ivan on Flickr

What would the city be like if George Dance's design for London Bridge been built?

This design for a twin London Bridge was submitted by architect George Dance, and the plans for it were published in Hansard in July 1800. William Daniell painted this impression of it in 1802. The twin bridges would allow road traffic to cross the Thames at all times, as one path would always be open.

It would have created a sweeping open expanse around The Monument on the north bank, and a similar crescent on the south bank. These areas are now heavily developed, and it's interesting to stop and consider what the city would look like now had this design become reality (and then survived the war intact).

The painting is on display at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London, the picture above is from the BBC web site. You can view the plan itself on the British Museum web site.

Six Silly Things to (not) do on LinkedIn

There's plenty of ways your Social Media presence can work against you, and your LinkedIn profile is no exception. Remember that LinkedIn is the social network for professionals, and you're probably there either to sell your services and abilities, or those of your company. Here's some things to avoid.

1. Send Default Connection Request Messages

Chances are, whenever you send a connect request on LinkedIn, it's either to someone you've known for a long time, or someone you met a few days ago. In which case, not having the time to replace the default message with one which says "hi", or which has a reminder of where you met, can make it look like you can't be bothered.

2. Send Generic "Hello and Thanks for Connecting" Messages

These can look needy and clingy, and are also particularly silly if you've accepted the request rather than sending it out. Got something specific to say - then say it, but if you haven't, save your efforts for another day when you can have more impact.

3. Use the Wrong Photo

As I've mentioned in previous articles, using the wrong photo, or no photo at all, can count against you. People are more likely to look at your profile if you have a photo, and if it's a decent one, they'll take you seriously, which is what you want of course. So, skip the drunk ones, the wedding ones, the sideways ones and the artistically cropped ones.

4. Confuse your Social Networks

Your exact whereabouts, mental state and the food you're eating are all things for Facebook and Twitter, but they're not things for LinkedIn. A continuous stream of irrelevant toot will have your connections clicking the "hide" link for your updates faster than you can know.

5. Break LinkedIn Terms and Conditions

Remember that although LinkedIn is a free service, by signing up, you agree to abide by their terms and conditions. And if these say that you can't put your phone number in the title field on your profile (and they do), then don't do that.

6. Don't keep your Headline and Current Positions in Step

At some point in the past, you may have put your current job into your headline, or LinkedIn may  have put it there for you as a default, and you accepted it. If you subsequently change jobs, make sure you change your headline as well, people may only look once, and you want them to get the facts as they currently stand without any confusion.

Read more for further ideas for your LinkedIn profile.

photo credit: cellar_door_films via photopin (cc).

For Google Apps users: Cross-Domain Email Address References

Image credit: Beau Giles

Recently I reconfigured my primary email address setup to get over some specific issues I was having with inbound email from one particular client. I run one domain in Google Apps, which includes this address. The work consisted of deleting the current address, which was actually a group set up on the domain (which redirected to multiple email addresses) and creating a new Google Apps user with the same email address to replace it. After the change, I retrieved all my email from that Google Apps user.

To summarise with an example:

BEFORE: foo.bar@baz.com was a Google Apps group on domain baz.com, containing the external email addresses my.other.email@isp.net and my.mobile.email@gmail.com allowing incoming email to be forwarded to those two other email addresses

AFTER: foo.bar@baz.com was a Google Apps user on domain baz.com

From an outside viewpoint, foo.bar@baz.com remained a valid email address, apart from perhaps a very brief period when I was doing the actual work. I expected that after the work, all email would continue to be delivered. This proved to be incorrect.

Following the changes, I noticed that I was no longer receiving emails from a couple of distribution groups, which fortunately I run, using another, entirely separate, domain which is also managed on Google Apps. In other words:

mygroup@somewhere-else.com contains a number of external addresses to distribute incoming mail to, including foo.bar@baz.com

Realising that I was no longer receiving email via this route, I logged in to the Google Apps control panel for somewhere-else.com and checked members of the group "mygroup", only to find that foo.bar@baz.com was no longer present.

So where had it gone? I am the only administrator for somewhere-else.com on Google Apps, and I hadn't removed it. It seems that Google Apps very cleverly checks email addresses to see if their domains are administered by Google Apps, and creates some kind of a link if they are. That way, if an email address is removed from a domain, that removal is propagated across Google Apps to other domains even if they are entirely separate.

I can see why this is a good thing to do, as it will reduce bounces. However, if you don't know about it, it can be difficult to track down if you're performing any operations which involve the temporary deletion of an email address, such as in this case.

Did you Mean to Mention me on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn recently added the new Mentions feature with the usual blaze of publicity, but like a lot of recent changes it's taken a while to propagate to all users, and in this case, to all browsers.

This is a great way to increase social interaction with those within and outside your immediate network. However, there have been some interesting side effects, and it's worth spending a moment looking at how Mentions work in LinkedIn.

You can try it for yourself by starting to type a status update. If at any point  you enter an "@" symbol, Mentions will kick in:

It also triggers if you enter the name of a person or company, but only if you've started it with a capital letter:

You can autocomplete the typing of a name at any time by pressing the Enter key. A Mention will be shown with the text against a grey background.

So what's the catch? Well, I've seen a few LinkedIn status updates inadvertently Mentioning companies because their names are based on words used in everyday language which could start a sentence, and hence be capitalised when typed. I took a screenshot of this great example which I saw soon after Mentions was rolled out:

This was a comment on a piece of good news announced by a company, and my connection simply wanted to say "Congratulations" - but inadvertently interacted with a French company of the same name.

As always, you should check anything you say on LinkedIn, and other social networks, as carefully as you can, whether it's a status update or your profile text.

How to Banish those Reply-All Email Explosions

Photo by Gregg O'Connell on flickr

In a previous blog post Keeping Control of your Inbox I mentioned that using the Reply-All button can actually add to your own inbox jam. It's the easy option to select, and indeed the laziest - why think about who the email needs to go to, when you can reach everyone with one click? Besides, who cares if the others aren't interested?

Of course this backfires when others then use the Reply-All button after you do, and it's not long before you get the "explosion".

So here's a great way to limit the Reply-All Email Explosions, but like all things you do have to do a bit of work yourself. The trick is to use a targeted recipient list and then subsequently forward a separate copy of your message to a secondary list of people who "also need to know". If a member of either list uses Reply-All, they'll only hit other members of their own list, and not the other one.

As an example, suppose your report has to go to Alice, Bob and Claire for review and update, but you also need to copy in Dave, Ella and Frank so that they know that the report has been submitted. You could email all 6, but in the event of a Reply-All button hit by any of them, others will be spammed. Also, it might be better for Dave, Ella and Frank to not see the report until after the update phase, and comments at this time might be unhelpful.

Instead, you email Alice, Bob and Claire, attaching the report. Next, you go to your Sent Items folder, and forward a copy of the email you've just sent, to Dave, Ella and Frank, optionally removing the report if appropriate. Both groups now have the information they need, and any use of the Reply-All button will be limited to the groups themselves.

Of course, there's nothing to stop, for example, Ella emailing Alice, Bob and Claire and copying you in, but that's a process which requires a deliberate thought process rather than an automatic response to click a button.

Try it for yourself and see how well it works for you.

LinkedIn Rolls Out Roll Over Changes

LinkedIn has changed the appearance of the pop-up windows which appear when you hover your mouse pointer over the profile of another user of the professional networking platform.

This is another change to bring elements into line with LinkedIn's new styling, and like other changes it sees the component taking up more space on your screen, but unfortunately showing less information at the same time.

By chance, this change started appearing just after I'd run a training session for a client, so we can do a quick comparison here. Previously, the pop-up looked like this:

It showed your entire professional headline, which is the first thing that people see about you when they look at the popup. Now, it looks like this:

Although the headline is still there, it is truncated, so you should bear this in mind when wording it, to make sure that the truncation doesn't create anything unfortunate (a topic I've covered before). All is not lost, however, as hovering your mouse over the headline will result in a further bubble (or "tool tip") appearing, which contains the complete text. I've shown this in the example above.

My verdict on the change? Overall this shows less information that the previous version, so I'd say it's a bad move - the extra roll over option helps, but you do have to know it exists.