Hear me out now. Sure, one of the most obvious mistakes a domain noob can make is registering domains that include trademarks. And certainly Flickr has a trademark. So what am I doing these years later registering a trademark domain? Learning another lesson?  The hard way? Perhaps, so let me state this up front. If you’re the domain police from Yahoo… I can explain everything. First of all, you’re welcome to the domain. Just show me your badge and I’ll hand it over.  But, here’s what I was thinking.

I want to, but can’t, put an advanced search into Flickr, find Creative Commons images around a keyword, and get an RSS feed of the results. Kind of obvious, but you can’t do it.  I’ve fooled around with Yahoo Pipes but I don’t have the coding chops to make it happen. I registered the domain and put this post up to try to attract a developer for the project. For the right guy this is probably a few hours work.

But too: Flickr champions homemade apps by users. Check out the App Garden.  A lot of the apps have the word flickr in them. Some of those even charge. I have to assume that Yahoo has a pretty lax attitude towards the Flickr mark.

Typosquatting, at least the way I think of it, is where domainers register typos of known marks for the purpose of profiting from error traffic (kind of like Verizon and OpenDns). An 8 for an i, a 5 for an r and suddenly you’re on a page of ads.  This is what typosquatting / cybersquatting domains look like. But wait a second… isn’t Flickr derivative of Flicker? Weird. Check out the numbers the Flicker.com guy has posted there – 3.6 Million visits a year! No ads. Hmm. With all that traffic spilling over from Flickr you’d think he’d have some ads there. But checking “flicker” in a Google search I see all the results are related to Flickr. No ads at all! Could it be that Yahoo would come after him if he did have ads there? Checking the Whois, I’m seeing that Flicker.com was registered in 1998, flickr.com in 2003. Complicated. It does get complicated. [Update: 20100614 Looks like Flickr parent owner Yahoo bought Flicker.com.]

Anyway, if you’re a developer and you can build Flickrss I’ve got the domain ready to go. Drop me a line.

A post on TheDomains last week reminded me of how much I hate that Verizon DNS hijacks my typos to take me to their “DNS Assistance” page full of ads. When it first started happening in 2007 I got Verizon Online support on the phone and, maybe because it was so early, they didn’t know what I was talking about. So I tried switching to OpenDNS, but they do the same thing, redirecting to their ‘Open Guide’. Thing is, when I typo a url into my nav bar and get the usual error message, the error is still sitting there in my nav bar, I can see the error, usually one letter, and correct it. When Verizon hijacks my typo, they load the nav bar with a whole new url, so NOT ONLY do I have to see all their ads (assuming I don’t have Adblock Plus enabled) but I have to clear their url out of my nav bar and start all over. No more. Today I found the Verizon help page that shows you how to reconfigure your modem so that you are not re-directed to their DNS Assistance page.

Here’s the url http://www.verizon.net/central/vzc.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=vzc_help_contentDisplay&linkflag=guestsso_fios_primary_east_undecided_consumer&case=dns_assist. (Tip: You need to click the ‘disable DHCP client’ button in order to make the changes. Don’t forget to  re-enable it before you ‘setVC’. If you’re asked for a user name and password, try admin admin (then change it).

If you’re on Comcast, this will get you started: “How do I turn off the Domain Helper service? Click on the Disable this error service link found at the top of the page …we will ask you for your email address and your cable modem MAC address…” http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/FAQViewer.aspx?Guid=e02580db-8813-43a3-9642-b66d8cfceb1a.

If you have links to other opt-out information pages, please leave them in a comment and I’ll add them to the post.

[Update 081709 I was having issues. The DNS settings weren't holding. I would either have troubles connecting to the internet or the old DNS settings would pop back and I'd again get the DNS Assistance page. What worked was taking the opt out DNS numbers derived through the Verizon instructions page and puting them in my (Mac) network settings. So instead of doing it network-wide I have to set it up for each computer.]

Virgin Media calls it Advanced Network Error Search, clever! Here’s their opt-out page.

P.S. Take Back The Beep!

.

Then a post on Michael Berkens’  TheDomains.com blog about Comcast stealing error traffic, ” Comcast Launches “Domain Helper”: I Call It “Cash For Typos” re-sensitized me to how much it pisses me off that Verizon steals my type-in errors (costing me time and frustration) and re-directs to their ‘Domain Helper’ page full of ads. (Not to mention how much it pisses me off that OpenDNS isn’t Open at all and has their own version of browser-bar-Hijack-to-ads).

Then a friend who’s deep inside the web marketing business Tweeted how invasive ads are getting to be on some pages.
That all lead to me try the Adblock Plus Addon for Firefox, which blocks ads. Check out this 1:30 YouTube video for an overview. it really couldn’t be simpler.

Here’s what ad-free browsing looks like. I picked Ron Jackson’s DNJournal.com. I have a lot of respect for Ron Jackson and I very much appreciate the information he provides, but I’ve always hated visiting his site because the ads are so obnoxious. (If you haven’t heard it already, check out OzDomainer.com’s interview with Ron).

.
Before AdBlock Plus (much of this is blinking)

After AdBlock Plus

After tweaking AdBlock Plus for Ron’s site. (Really easy to do)

I’ve been browsing ad-free for a few days now. I love it. I’m reminded how much I hate ads. I’m beginning to sense the psychic price (as Bill Hicks would have put it) we pay to see all these ads everywhere. I’m thinking about my own mini-site experiments whose whole purpose in life is to generate a few Adsense dollars. I’m thinking about all of us scampering around generating content for Google to monetize with ads.
And my point? I don’t know yet. But I don’t think I want to be in the ad business. And if it’s this easy to turn ads off, maybe it’s something we should all put a little thought into.

.