Developing .net web apps on a mac

A while ago, I had to buy a new PC as my 2 main development machines (one for .net 2.0 and one for .net 1.1) were getting flakier and flakier. I decided to buy an iMac and experiment with virtual machines.

Well these last few weeks I have been running Visual Studio 2005 in a Parallels virtual machine without a hitch. In fact I owuld say it's even better than under my regular PC (an ageing Dell).

For a start, the screen on my iMac is the big 24" high resolution screen, so I get much more display space than 1280x1024. Even though the PC has dual monitors, as they are different resolutions, it never really helped.

Next, the Parallels VM never seems to forget the network drives that I keep my code on. Under native windows, my PCs tend to give up and either take A G E S to opena network folder or file from the nertwork or just give up altogther.

There are some issues; the keyboard was a bit wierd at first, but you simply have to ignore what's on the kecaps and poress the key that you would under Windows. eg. to the right of the left shift key. On the PC this is labelled as Pipe and backslash. On the Mac it is tilde and a diacritical mark. Under Parallels, it responds the same as under Windows. There are a few others like Home/End/Insert/Delete as well. But I'm getting used to them.

So I've only really just started on this model, but it's great so far. I think I may carry on with Macs next time as well...

House Price Bubble and Domain Names

During the past 10 years we have seen staggering house price increases, especially here in the UK. There are thousands of 2 bedroom flats (with laminate flooring) around the country priced will in excess of £250k - that's half a million dollars. Usually in previously down-trodden city centre locations, with the promise of "city living", they were snapped up off-plan by the naive and gullible. What was worth £50k only a handful of years ago is now out of reach to everyone on an average salary.

But times, they change.

The implosion of the credit markets has suddenly cut off the supply of low interest , easy to get credit that inflated these prices. And those stuck with them are suddenly seeing that they overpaid and have to deal with the consequences, whilst the banks cover their assets.

So how does this compare to domain names? Well, like any other item, domain names can be hyped up to massive value, sometimes beyond what would be acceptable. But don't confuse this with the dot com crash, or the current houseprice crash.

Good, generic domain names are still massively undervalued, and unlike property, they actually EARN money whilst you have them. Put it this way - you buy a brand-new, never before thought of domain name for £5 or £6. That covers you for two years ownership. Before the day is out, you could have a website on the name, or point it at a parking service. Every advert click, or affiliate purchase is money in the bank.

An example. I registered GardenSofas.co.uk last month. April 13th to be precise, so actually under a month. Already it has paid for its registration fee, so the next two years are effectively free. And this is on PPC adverts only, no affiliate sales yet. But when an affiliate sale takes place, that will add massively to the pot.

This is an average domain, in a niche market. But turning a profit with no advertising, and just a little management to ensure it doesn't get spammed out of existence is quite nice.

If you decide to buy a more expensive aftermarket domain name, then the numbers will be different, but you could make thousands of pounds per day in revenue. I bet a city centre flat doesn't do that.

I'm not saying go out and buy a domain name for £250k - although a lot of people do, but do include the possibilities of domain names in these uncertain times. The ability to receive an income from such undervalued assets is not generally understood by traditional investors, so now is a very good time to get involved.

And a key point. If someone wants to buy a 2 bedroom flat in the middle of Manchester, they have the choice of the market. Sellers will bid themselves down to get rid of their rapidly depreciating asset. If a business wants to specialise in Garden Sofas, then there is only one generic name that will do. And it ain't going down in value.

F1 Numberplates - Domain names

For those who wonder about the values of domain names and whether scarcity value really exists:

Fan pays record for Formula One car plates

A businessman has paid almost half a million pounds for the car registration plate "F1" - making it the most expensive ever sold in Britain.
Afzal Kahn, a Formula One motor racing fan, has fixed the £375,000 number plate to his 200mph black McLaren SLR sports car, which itself cost £300,000.
With VAT, the total paid for the plate by Mr Kahn was £440,625.

A number plate, let's remember is a pure vanity item. Yes it's unique, but it doesn't offer much in the way of return. It doesn't allow people to contact you, it has no way of earning you money directly, and it's only of interest to a small number of wealthy people and a small number of investors. It's also a very local thing. A premium UK number plate may look good cruising around Sloane Square but is unlikely to be seen in Monte Carlo, Wall Street, or Silicon Valley.

Domain names are different. For a start, the prices are still well under their true value to the market (and I'll come back to why in another post), so you don't have to drop £1/2 million on one just yet (although there are plenty at these prices if you like..).

But there are much bigger business propositions: people can contact you with a domain name, a domain name can earn you astronomic amounts of money with little or no effort (think how many people hit mobiles, loans, even secondary product areas such firebowls every week), and your buying circle increases massively, form domain investors, individual entrepreneurs and the business and marketing world - where the big money really is. Don't forget also, that a domain name is accessible to anyone on the planet with an Internet connection.

Unreported Income - Unless You Are A Minister

I wonder what would happen to an individual or business that earned £103,000 and didn't report it to anyone. I'm not sure, but I can guess.

Of course, if you are a Minister, you don't have to worry about little things like the law. That's for normal people, not the powerful-overlords.

Server problems solved with Google

Google + Blogs is better than any manual or helpfile, due to the fact that you can almost always find someone else with the exact same problem, and usually a solution as well. The blog aspect helps as you tend to also get a stream of user comments that might go into more detail.

A case in point. For whatever reason, one of my servers decided to stop resolving names. OK, chances are that the DNS servers I'm pointing at have fallen over or something, but that's no good for me, so I went hunting for more DNS servers to use.

I found the OpenNic Project, which is a free to use group of name servers - ideal for my requirements. I noted down the French and UK IP addresses (server is physically in Germany, so France is the closest on their list for me) and went to add them to my server.

Aha. A problem. Due to the server setup, it's not possible to update the DNS servers using the windows interface, as Windows tries to trap an error (which is there because of the ISPs configuration). No problem, I'll add from the command line. But how?

This posting from years back provides the solution, which worked a treat. Simply use the NETSH commandline utility and you can remove and add DNS servers with impunity! After a swift reboot to install recent system updates whilst I was sorting things out, the server is back up and running as it should. Phew!!

Financial Lead Generation

Lead Generation is technically quite easy. You need a trust-worthy site, with a form asking all of the questions that a correct lead requires. Obviously the fields required for a mortgage, loan, double glazing or DNA testing are different, but the concept is the same.

1. Provide detail of the product/service
2. Display a form with the relevant fields
3. Validate the form values, so that you don't get invalid details
4. Process the lead details
5. Get paid!

So technically, there's not a lot about it.

BUT, you need a stream of valid visitors to hit your lead generation pages, and this is where it gets difficult, as many people want those leads. You are up against the companies who buy leads themselves, as a self-generated lead beats paying someone for it!, and also many other small lead generation operations.

The obvious ways are to have good search engine placements. If someone searches for "loan" and you are on the first page, then well-done! You should get a stream of traffic for free. But that is a difficult place to get, and a million other pages are vying for that first page.

Another way is PPC adverts on the main search engines. These provide good targetted traffic, but you need to be creative with your keywords, as the main words such as "loan", "mortgage" etc. can all cost £5+ per click to be at the top. You need to identify keywords and phrases that don't have much, if any, competition, to ensure you get 5p clicks. Find 1000 words that get 1 click a day and you're on the way to getting rich!

Domaining Calendar

Serious domaining means that you need to have an edge over the rest of the market. For some this is budget: if you have the cash, you can buy excellent domains. For others this is speed: dropcatching is very profitable, but you gotta be quick. For the rest there is the brain. This involves out-thinking the rest of the domain buying market, or just being quicker.

For example, going through my affiliate calendar, my wife reminded me that Halloween is now the only second to Christmas as far as spending on gifts and novelties is concerned in the UK. So I fired up my copy of GREP and found all the Halloween related .com domains to see what was left available as a .co.uk. Surprisingly there were quite a few, so I will soon create some Halloween based sites (yes, I know it's only January, but these things need to be planned WELL in advance!)

Affiliate/domain watchers: remember that Easter is earlier this year...