Going Green With Refurbished Computers

You know that you should recycle electronics to keep from generating toxic waste in the landfill. In fact, you can get paid for used laptops online, and easily drop off cell phones and laptop batteries at some of the big box retailers for proper recycling at no cost to you. But did you know that there is a way to be green when buying new electronics and get yourself a big discount at the same time?

The site you need to visit is called Secondipity. It’s the meld of second chance and serendipity. You’ll consider it serendipitous that you read this article when you see how much you can save by purchasing store returns and factory refurbished computers and other electronic equipment.

The idea behind Secondipity is that there is usually nothing wrong with products that have been returned to the store. People just change their minds. Sometimes they get the product home and realize that what they bought just isn’t for them. Other times, they have a flash of panic when they realize that they really can’t afford to be buying gadgets on impulse when other bills are piling up. Either way, the item goes back but can’t be sold as new once the box is open and the merchandise handled.

Some stores mark returns down for a discount and sell them as open box. Others can’t be bothered or are concerned about markdowns competing with new full price merchandise. These items go to a liquidator. Overstock items are also moved off the shelves for liquidation.

By keeping a sharp eye, you can get what amounts to a like new laptop, iPad or game console at a big discount. The only problem is that there are relatively few of the deals at any particular store. You’ll have a much better chance of finding what you want when you shop the selections at Secondipity.

Let’s take a look at what’s hot on Secondipity right now. The front page suggestions include an Apple iPad 16 GB tablet, iPod Touch, Vizio 37 inch LCD TV, Sony PSP Go handheld game console, and a Carrom Signature Foosball game. Oh, that would look nice in the game room. All of these are available at significant discounts from the MSRP prices.

Every day, there is a special “Deal of The Day” that has an even better discount. Today’s deal is a Panasonic 42” 720p Plasma HDTV that is an open box item. There’s a whopping discount of over $200 on this one, so take a look right now if you are interested. Tomorrow there will be a different item, also at a huge discount. You really should bookmark the Secondipity Deal of The Day and take a look every day just to make sure you don’t miss something.

These are just few selections. You’ll find category tabs with lots more items under Electronics, TV & Home Theater, Camera & Video, Computers, Video Gaming, House & Home, Mobile Phones, Other and Clearance. There are some real goodies under that green Clearance tab.

How about those refurbished computers? I see a number of Apple iPads, Acer Aspire laptop, HSP Touchsmart all-in-one computer, HP Compaq desktop tower, Sony VAIO desktop and about four more pages of desktops, laptops, notebooks, monitors and other computing equipment. Apple MacBook Pro? Yes, it’s there at a discount. Just try and get a discount on Apple gear from Apple or at local electronics stores.

Secondipity ships free on orders within the continental U.S. over $35 and even has a generous return policy in case you change your mind or something doesn’t meet your expectations. Pretty hard to go wrong with deals like that. Plus, Secondipity donates a portion of every purchase to support classrooms in need through the nonprofit organization DonorsChoose.org. They really do believe in doing well by doing good.

Are you in the market for open box or refurbished computers or other electronic gear? Would you like a significant discount to make it an affordable purchase? If so, check out the deals available right now at Secondipity.

How to Transfer Your Domain Names From Go Daddy

We’re outraged! Bob Parsons, Go Daddy CEO, shocked and horrified the world with his bravado-laden “home video” of him brutally sneaking up on and shooting an African elephant in the dark of night. Based on expert review of the footage, it now looks likes he destroyed a young female elephant rather than the supposed dangerous bull he was tracking. Even more shame for Mr. Parsons, but the end of the line for many of us in using his GoDaddy.com domain name registration service.

It’s one thing to pick another registration service and vow to never buy another domain from Go Daddy. But what about all those domains you’ve already registered there? Are you stuck renewing with GoDaddy.com till you decide to abandon the domain name, or is there a reasonable way to escape?

Breathe easy. You can indeed transfer your domain names away from Go Daddy or any other domain registrar and move them to the new registrar of your choice. A registrar is a company that is officially licensed to register domain names. They pay a hefty fee to be able to do this. The process of registration and transfer is also regulated to protect everyone’s interest.

Things to Watch Out For
In general, it’s pretty easy to transfer your domain name from one registrar to another. But there are some pitfalls to be aware of. You can’t just register a domain name and then transfer it away, or transfer it to one registrar and then immediately change your mind and send it elsewhere. There’s a 60 day waiting period from the time you register or transfer a domain until you can transfer it to another registrar. So, if you’ve just registered or transfered your domain name, cool your heels for a couple of months.

Also, don’t wait until the last minute before your domain registration expires thinking that you’ll pull a fast one and move it before you have to pay for renewal. You can’t transfer domains that expire within a week or so or the process may not finish in time. It’s totally unnecessary to play that game because most registrars renew your domain name for another year as part of the transfer process. In many cases the transfer is free - you are just paying for the renewal you’d have to do anyway. That means the best time to transfer a domain name is anytime after the first 60 days and before the last few weeks of your registration period. You don’t lose any time on your original registration. The 1 year renewal just adds a year to the current expiration date.

Another gotcha is having your domain locked. Most registrars, including Go Daddy, automatically lock your domain to prevent anyone from trying to steal it. You can’t transfer it as long as that lock is on. What you need to do is go into your Go Daddy account, select the domains you want to transfer, and then click on the gold padlock that says “locking.” When the confirmation box pops up, uncheck the “lock domains” box and then click “OK.” The lock symbol for that domain will go dim indicating that the lock is off.

I’ve not used private registration, but some like it because it hides your contact information from spammers and others who scan the Who-Is public records to find people to bother. If you’ve got private registration turned on, turn it off before beginning your transfer. That’s so you’ll get the important confirmation emails you need to go through the process.

Let’s Get Started
Now you are ready to transfer. Go to the new registrar of your choice. I’ll use Namecheap.com as an example because I took advantage of their special offer to transfer up to 10 domains and have them make a donation to support elephants. That’s expired, but their regular prices are excellent and if you transfer through GoElly.com, Go Elly will make a donation for elephants.

What you do is enter the domain names you want to transfer at Namecheap.com (or other registrar) and click the “Start Transfer” button. You’ll pay $8.98 per domain name, which includes a 1 year extension of your renewal date. That’s an excellent price and a reason to transfer all by itself.

What happens next is that you’ll get an email asking for an Authorization Code or EPP Code. The registrar that has your domain has to issue this. It’s used to ensure that you really are authorizing the transfer of your domain and that someone else isn’t trying to steal it right out from under you. For Go Daddy users, you log into your account, go to “My Domains” and click on the domain you want to transfer. That takes you to the domain details page. In the left column labeled “Domain Information” you’ll see “Authorization Code:” Click on the “Send by Email” link. In short order you’ll get an email with the code. Copy it, then open the email from your new registrar and follow the directions to paste the code where it is requested.

More Help Is Available
Mike Rotman has written an excellent guide called “How to leave GoDaddy.com” that helped me through the process. You should be aware that transfers aren’t instantaneous. They can take at least 5 days. I subsequently learned that you can speed up the process through Go Daddy by going to the “Pending Transfers” sub menu on your Domains tab and manually accepting the transfer by clicking on the green Accept/Decline check mark and then choosing to accept. Otherwise they’ll hold on to it for about a week just to make sure you don’t want to change your mind.

This may seem a bit long and involved, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll wonder why you stayed with your old registrar and paid too much all these years. The transfer process is no doubt slightly different with each registrar, but they’ll give you step by step instructions and you can contact them for personal assistance if something doesn’t make sense. The website Good also has a picture tutorial for moving domains from Go Daddy.

Help an Elephant
One more thing... don’t forget that Go Elly - Elephant Friendly Domain Registration and Web Hosting Services offers a list of recommended domain registrars and will donate a minimum of $1.50 per domain transfer or registration to an organization that supports elephants. Click on the Go Elly page links for the registration service of your choice to make this happen.

The Elephant in Bob Parsons’ Business

You know Bob Parsons. He’s the bigger than life “Go Daddy” CEO of GoDaddy.com. Everybody who builds websites or otherwise does business on the Web knows of and has probably bought at least one domain from GoDaddy.com. Parsons has built an empire from popularizing the once obscure and nerdy business of domain name registration. You’ve surely seen his “Go Daddy Girls” on Super Bowl commercials, posing as a mashup of Hefner’s “Bunnies” and Hooter’s waitresses in a frenetic effort to elicit even more business from online wannabes who think they’re only one website away from being just like Bob.

And why not? Bob Parsons has a storied past that includes being wounded as a Marine rifleman in Vietnam and surviving to be decorated with several medals. After earning a college degree magna cum laude, he went on to leverage his accounting degree into a software business that sold to Intuit for $64 million. Now as head of the Go Daddy Group, Inc., he’s rich, famous and in a position to create a legacy in the world that will define his life the way Bill Gates is wiping out contagious diseases in Africa or the way Andrew Carnegie founded libraries across America a century ago.

What has Bob Parsons chosen to make his mark on society? He’s become a big game hunter. In case you think that avocation went out with Teddy Roosevelt or the writings of Ernest Hemingway, be advised that it still exists in stark contrast with all of the conservation awareness and efforts to protect endangered species in recent decades. For Bob, it’s still no later than the 1930’s, an era when game was endlessly abundant and no animal, save man, was more than mere meat on the hoof.

In his naive bliss, Bob proudly shot himself an elephant in Zimbabwe and then produced a slick video of his trophy kill for worldwide acclimation. Take a look. Note the smug smile of satisfaction on Bob’s face and his sense of humanitarianism from killing a beast that was trampling native crops and then letting the lucky bystanders strip the carcass of anything worth consuming.



Does this video wash over you with a warm sense of pride that man is still king of the beasts, with the absolute power and right to dictate at whim when they are better destroyed than suffered? Do you see the vision of a conquering hero who is ridding the African continent of the scourge of elephants and other beasts that stand in the way of making Africa more developed and less “wild”?

What could be the proudest moment of Bob Parson’s life is now morphing into a horrific backlash that might just be his undoing. The elephants are in full stampede and administering nothing less than a trumpeted stomping of Go Daddy assets.

By elephants, I mean not just the physical manifestation of pachyderms that have inhabited the African Savanna since before human DNA can be traced back. I mean the entire community of elephant conservationists, supporters, aficionados and just plain fans. People love elephants. They’re majestic, social, perhaps as intelligent as humans... certainly some humans... and rare.

Yes, rare. The various elephants of Africa and Asia, once numbering in the millions have dwindled to the thousands, in some cases hundreds of individuals. The causes are many. Swelling human populations and a move from hunting & gathering to agrarianism and industrialization have usurped ancient elephant territories. These migrating animals are now fenced out, chased out or hunted out of “civilized” land plots. Poachers claim thousands more, not for the meat but for the ivory that is worth a small fortune to eager buyers. Often they discard the meat in situ, negating the noble notion that people need this bush meat for survival.

Elephants, and indeed other big game animals, are so rare that protected reserves and sanctuaries are popping up worldwide to preserve what remains of the species. People who care about the fate of elephants perhaps outnumber the individual elephants themselves. What’s more, they are now networked through social media like Twitter, Facebook, and even websites running on the same servers that fuel the Parsons empire. Well, perhaps not for long on those servers.

The international outrage resulting from Parsons’ “vacation” video has been both immediate and intense. Starting with organizations that support elephant welfare and quickly spreading to caring individuals, the reaction has been disgust, not admiration, followed by a cry of “where is a good place to move my domain and website?”

There are numerous hosts and registrars that aren’t promoting their CEO’s testosterone driven blood lust, but how to choose? What would be ideal is a technically solid, competitively priced organization that is at least sympathetic to the cause and preferably supportive.

Into this void jumped Namecheap.com. They are also an entrepreneurial company with growth driven by aggressive pricing and feature-rich services. Namecheap tweeted disgust at the Parsons’ video with an offer to be the safe refuge for elephants lovers wishing to transfer their domains away from Go Daddy. To demonstrate their sincerity, Namecheap offered to donate $1 per transfer to Save The Elephants, an organization dedicated to the conservation of African elephants.

Update: More resources are now available at: Go Elly - Elephant Friendly Domain Registration and Web Hosting Services

Does anyone else see the irony here? What started as the hubris of bringing down a majestically powerful creature for sport has resulted in a backlash that could end with the bleached bones of a once majestically powerful technology organization abandoned in the marketplace, after being brought down by a more intelligent consciousness and picked clean by competitors. The law of the jungle is still in full force.

In the way of full disclosure, I should state, without snickering too much, that I’ve already taken advantage of the Namecheap special to open an account and transfer 10 domains away from GoDaddy.com. I expect to move additional domains to Network Solutions and Domain.com to take advantage of their special pricing. I appreciate these opportunities, but was on the hunt for a new registrar even before the special offers were announced. I can no longer be associated with Bob Parsons or his organizations in good conscience.

VoIP Phone Service Plans Finder

You’ve heard that VoIP phone service can save you money compared to many traditional landline plans. Now, if there was only a way to compare VoIP phone service plans so that it would be easy to pick the right one for your needs.

You’re in luck! Just such a service exists. It is called Affordable VoIP. It takes only a few seconds to pick the type of plans you are interested in and get a list of service providers and their offers. Go ahead and give it a try now....



Let’s take a closer look at the plans finder and what options you have. First notice the plan type automatically defaults to “residential.” That’s what you want for a home user or home office user. You might be tempted to select “business” if you are operating a home office. Don’t. In this case, “business” refers to businesses that have their own stand-alone business address and, likely, employees.

Also notice a “most frequently called country” option. If you tend to make a lot of calls to one particular country, say Mexico, then you’ll want to select Mexico as your called country option. Why? It’s because some VoIP service plans offer lower than usual international rates. These rates vary among countries and between providers. By selecting the country you most want to call, you’ll be able to compare provider calling rates to get the lowest cost for those international calls.

The additional information you can provide helps to narrow the selection. You can choose to view only plans that offer no activation fee, have an adapter/router included or include a digital phone. The adaptor/router, also called an ATA or Analog Telephone Adaptor, is the device that connects your current telephone to your broadband service. It often includes a place to plug-in your wireless router or computer as well as the broadband connection from your DSL or Cable modem. This is a convenience since you will most likely be sharing your broadband service with both your phone and your computer.

Once you’ve made your selections and clicked the “search” button, you’ll instantly see a list of VoIP phone service plans organized by lowest to highest cost. As an example, I selected Mexico as the country I want to call most frequently. This chart now lists a Mexico Rate to make it easy to compare plans with that rate in mind. You can also click on “Mexico Rate” and the chart will reorganize to list the plans from lowest to highest per minute calling rate to Mexico.

Why don’t you give it a try? Feel free to play around with different options and to investigate each plan more thoroughly to get all the details. Use the Affordable VoIP Service Plans Finder right now.

Beware of Firesheep Lurking in WiFi Hotspots

When you think of RAM, it’s generally along the lines of wishing you could afford more for your laptop or desktop computer. But there’s another type of ram out there that you want nothing to do with. It’s the Firesheep - a serious, serious threat to your privacy.

What’s a Firesheep? It’s a plug-in for the Firefox browser. Fox... Sheep... Get it? Sounds like a joke, but this malicious software is anything but. Download it free, install it on your computer and you can break into other people’s computers running on the same WiFi network.

That wooly looking guy over in the corner of the coffee shop? He could be reading your email right now. He might even be canceling your Facebook account just for fun. Oh, wait, he’s just playing Farmville. It’s the petite blonde sipping her latte and appearing to be tweeting something who’s the real culprit. What she’s tweeting is your passwords to her criminal boyfriend in the car outside.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. You’re the one about to get sheared by this sheep gone bad. Where are you vulnerable? Anywhere you are on an unprotected wireless network. That pretty much includes all coffee shop and restaurant WiFi hotspots. The airport, the car repair shop and the bookstore are suspect too. Unless a hotspot is running encryption on their wireless signal, it’s as open and transparent as a CB radio. Too young to remember “break-one-nine, good buddy”? OK, think about a conversation among friends in a crowded bar. Are you really that sure someone isn’t eavesdropping?

Here’s an even bigger horror story. You never did enjoy privacy on your WiFi connected sessions. Dedicated hackers have had the tools to listen-in on data going over the air from the hotspot access point to user computers for years. You could have been compromised months ago, but for the fortuitous lack of hardcore troublemakers where you happen to frequent. What’s changed is that Firesheep enables even the least talented curiosity seekers and wannabe pranksters to engage in vandalism, identity theft and espionage. Something like 200,000 copies of the Firesheep plugin have been downloaded since it was introduced less than a week ago. Probably more by the time you read this. It’s a baaaaaad situation.

Now that you’ve got a case of the chills that could really use a good hot cup of coffee, let’s talk about how to keep the evil sheep from grazing the green green grass of your computer. The way this thing works is that it lets network snoops sniff packets going between computers and hotspot routers. It also let’s them copy cookies set by the websites you visit. That’s right, they steal your cookies in the coffee shop right off your plate. Since they are only monitoring and copying, you won’t even notice a crumb is missing.

What you need is a way to scramble the messages so that anyone watching will just see gibberish.That kind of scrambling is generally provided as part of a VPN or Virtual Private Network. The IT people at your company may have installed VPN software on your computer before they let you access the company servers. Now you know why. VPN software encrypts any data going to or from your computer so that it makes no sense to anyone who doesn’t have the key. That includes malicious sheep.

But you don’t have a VPN of your own. Well, perhaps you can use your company’s. It depends on how they feel about personal use of their network. Better check and see if they’ll allow it, considering the threat. If not, there are pay VPN services available. Some possibilities are AlwaysVPN, AceVPN and StrongVPN, as suggested by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols in his post “Five Ways to Shear Firesheep.”

There is some security built into your browser. SSL or Secure Socket Layer is a VPN technology used for online shopping and banking. The problem is that only sites with https addresses rather than http use SSL. Don’t be fooled into thinking that just because a site requires you to log in that your session is secure. Once the log-in process is complete, the cookies being used to store information on your browser may not be encrypted. They’re like fresh grass waiting to be nibbled by the Firesheep.

What’s better than a WiFi hotspot for broadband on the go? Those 3G and 4G wireless modem aircards that use the cellular towers aren’t subject to WiFi snooping. It’s a completely different transmission system. Cellular wireless also has the advantage of enormous coverage areas, so you can use your computer while parked in your car, on a bench in the park or anywhere else you need to be. The only drawback of this service is that it isn’t free or even cheap. It’s about the price of cellular service and typically has the same coverage area.

There’s an interesting aircard device called the MiFi that works to connect cellular broadband with WiFi so that you can get broadband Internet for all your WiFi enabled devices. You can have a couple of computers, a game, an iPad or iPod Touch or even a camera with an Eye-Fi memory card all communicating through the MiFi as your personal hotspot. Just be sure to turn on the WiFi security feature to keep it as your private personal hotspot.

By the way, you are just as vulnerable at home as you are on the road if you aren’t using WiFi security on your home router. It isn’t generally turned on by default because it’s easier to get the network up and running when it is wide open to the world. Take a few minutes, check the manual and make sure you have WEP or WPA security turned on. The peace of mind should more than make up for the inconvenience of dealing with security codes. It addition to thwarting Firesheep, you’ll keep neighborhood hackers and bandwidth moochers off your network. Don’t be surprised if you suddenly seem to have more bandwidth once the security is activated.

Firesheep is a clear and present danger to anyone using wireless Internet access. I’d suggest keeping up with news, blog posts and tweets until it can be proven that this threat has died in the wool. In addition to the Networking blog post mentioned earlier, Peter Shankman’s “Why It’s Time to Say Goodbye to Free Wi-Fi – Part Two” is a good read. It will make your hair, er, wool curl.