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iceland

Technology

December 9, 2013

Edward Snowden voted Guardian person of the year

“He gave his future for the sake of democratic values, transparency, and freedom,” said Miriam Bergholz. Colin Walker wrote: “We need people like him to have the courage to forget about their own life in the cause of other people’s freedom. Let’s face it, his life is over as even if he goes back to the US he will face decades in prison and the personal sacrifice he has made is immense.” One commenter, identifying themselves as “irememberamerica”, said he voted for Snowden “for his extraordinary and exemplary courage, and the historic value of his daring act. At every step, he has displayed an astonishing integrity and presence of mind. He is a great American and international patriot.”

Well deserved Snowden. I salute you.

Icelanders Overthrow Government and Rewrite Constitution After Banking-Fraud – No Word from US Media

Besides CNN Europe’s own coverage of the scandal, the events in Iceland were widely covered by international media and are easily verified by a simple search on Google which leads to a variety of reputable international news sources that ran numerous stories on the Icelandic revolution.

Wow, I didn’t know or even hear an ounce of this revolution. It’s amazing how distorted the US media can be. What is the US Government so scared of??…

Here is the full documentary of the change called “Pots, Pans and Other Solutions”. Very inspiriting. The Western world needs this.

Samsung tells customer to shut up about Galaxy S4 fire

Samsung saw the video and instead of rushing to rectify the situation and let it blow over, as everything on the Internet does, the company sent the user a letter. In this letter, Samsung reportedly stated that it would swap out the man’s charred and now useless Galaxy S4 — which was still under warranty, mind you — only if he removed his video discussing the matter from YouTube.

More rubbish from Samsung. Go figure.

The Sad Story of the Battery Breakthrough that Proved too Good to be True

[B]y spring 2013, it started to become clear that Envia could not replicate the 400 wh/kg technology and turn it into a product. Samsung, LG and Asahi Kasei declined to buy the company because it found problems with the technology, according to the court documents … When the technology was not recreated for GM by summer 2013, GM eventually cancelled the deal.

This is rather unfortunate for everyone because batteries seem like the technology that isn’t progressing exponentially.

Technology

How To Register a .is Domain Name

This article describes how anyone can register a “.is” domain. And how to associate it with a current name server (ex. forward to a website and email). This does not discuss website hosting issues.

Why “.is”?

The Icelandic .is domain names are becoming very popular. McAfee  ranks it as one of the more secure top-level domains (TLDs). You might be more familiar with more popular TLDs such as .com, .net and .org. This is because Iceland is one of the most pro-privacy nations in the world. And even the Pirate Bay  seems to be starting to using it.

Another good reason to get yourself a .is domain name is because there are only about 40,000 registered. This means that domain name you’ve always wanted has a very good chance of being available at a reputable TLD. It also sounds cool as it plays on words such as who.is and christina.is.

What You Need: 

While there are a few places you can register a .is domain, such as 101domains.com and gandi.net. They often require you to purchase web hosting plans. And personally, I believe there are much better places to host your website at a better price and performance ex. KnownHost.com.

*Internet á Íslandi hf. (ISNIC)*

This is THE best and original registrar to purchase your .is domain.

It costs about 39 Euros or $52 USD. This is the most cost effective place to register your domain as others can cost up to or more than $100 USD to $300 USD with web hosting.

UPDATE: June 10, 2015: ISNIC tweeted me that it actually costs 29.90 Euros since Dec, 2014. Even better deal! 

The Main Issue:

I encountered this the hard way and spent quite a while trying to figure how to point my new .is domain to my current web host. You will quickly find out that ISNIC has very strict rules and only allows you to direct your .is domains to a limited number of domain hosts. For example, I could not simply direct the .is domain to my VPS name server on Knownhost as they do not comply with the ISNIC rules.

There are some work arounds, as ISNIC does allow a simple “web forwarding” function.

Domain Name Server (DNS) Service:

However, if you want to do things like have access to MX records, you need to use a registered DNS service. While registering a .is domain on ISNIC, you will come across that list of all the web hosts and name servers that can comply with their standards. Many of these are in Icelandic and are hard to understand. However, I found some good and free ones available in English. These are the cream of the crop:

  1. 1984 Hosting  is the free DNS service that I personally used.
  2. http://x.is (free) (use Peter Hartree’s Icelandic instructions linked at end)
  3. http://www.zoneedit.com and https://dnsimple.com are paid services.

Right now I moved my DNS service to 1984 Hosting which is free. They are well established from 2006, have a mission to maintain the privacy of their clients and only use green-energy to power their services.

As a company (1984.is) and it’s officers will always go the extra mile to protect the customers civil rights, including the freedom of expression, the freedom of the press, the right to anonymity and privacy.

Now that is a very confident statement indeed!

Once you choose one of these services, you will be prompted to set up your A record. All they want you to do is point to your websites IP address. For example, “host= newdomain.is” and “IP address of newdomain.com (webhost)”.

Next,  you will want to go back to the ISNIC registrar and point your .is domain to the DNS service ex. If you use 1984.is, their name servers are ns0.1984.is, ns1.1984.is and ns2.1984.is.. At ISNIC, you can also simply choose 1984.is or X.is from their drop down menu of selected services and it will automatically fill out the name servers for you.

Setting up Google Apps for Business (hosted exchange email) MX records 

If you’re like me, you want to send and receive emails at your brand new .is domain. There are some really good places to high quality email such as Rackspace, FastMail, Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps for Business.

All of these fine services will ask you to point your MX records to them. For example, the MX records Google wants you input in your DNS service is here. I know some of you may have a thing against handing over your precious data to the likes of Google and Microsoft, so consider independent ones like Rackspace or FastMail for sure.

For all of these email services, the process is pretty much the same, in that you just need to change the MX records in 1984.is (DNS service) to Google Apps (or other).

And that’s pretty much it. You registered your new .is domain, found a DNS service, associated them together, forwarded the .is domain to your web host and set up an email service for it. Enjoy!

Links I found useful setting up my .is domain: 

 

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