21 Jan 10 Chinese Domain Scam Alert!

Over the years I’ve seen many scams running on the net. Ranging from the ever annoying chain mails to the ever popular Nigerian Sting – Internet fraud is all around us. Lately, I’ve been hit by a new type of fraud attack, a domain registration fraud attack – mainly located in China and Hong-Kong.

As you may know, I’m the owner and CEO of a company called GreenfieldTech, dealing with Asterisk and VoIP application and platform development. Now, we operate world wide and render services to some of the world biggest brand in the telecom industry. So, we take our copyright and brand very seriously, when we receive an indication that someone is or may be infringing our copyright or brand, we take a stand for it.

So, today I’ve received this email:

Dear CEO, 

We are a domain name registrar centre in HongKong,and in charge of the registeration in
Asia, We have something important need to confirm through your company. 

We received a formal application from a company called "Hempus International Holdings
Ltd" applying to register 

Internet keyword :     greenfieldtech 

Domain names :

 greenfieldtech.asia    
 greenfieldtech.cn    
 greenfieldtech.com.cn    
 greenfieldtech.hk    
 greenfieldtech.in    
 greenfieldtech.mobi    
 greenfieldtech.net.cn    
 greenfieldtech.tw

In China and also in Asia on January 21 2010. During our auditing procedure we find out
that the alleged "Hempus International Holdings Ltd" has no trade mark,Intellectual
property, nor patent even similar to that word. As authorized anti-cybersquatting
organization we hereby suspect the alleged "Hempus International Holdings Ltd" to be a 
domain grabber. Hence we need you confirmation for two things:

First of all, whether this alleged "Hempus International Holdings Ltd" is your business
partner or distributor in China.

Secondly, Whether do you need to protect the intellectual property right which should have
belonged to you?. (The alleged "Hempus International Holdings Ltd" will be entitled to obtain
a domain not needed by  original trademark owner.)
If you are not in charge of this please transfer this email to appropriate dept.in order to
deal with this issue better, please let someone who is  responsible for trademark or domain
name contact me as soon as possible.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
 Confidentiality Notice: This is a letter for confirmation. If the mentioned third party is
 your business partner or distributor in China please DO NOT reply.  We will automatically
 confirm application from your business partner after this audit procedure.we have to notify
 you,and our registration organization are  not responsible for any dispute questions about
 trade mark,intellectual property nor patent after they succeed in registration.hope you can
 understand.thank you.
 ____________________________________________________________________________________________

Sincerely,
  kaka.xu

Sponsoring Registrar:sk holdings company ltd 
 Web:www.sk-dns.org/www.asia-gov.com
 Tel:00852-95660489 / 00852-95660103 
 Fax:00852-30696940

Email:kaka.xu@skdns.org/

Address: 3A, Units 20/F, Far East Consortium Bldg, 121 Des Voeux Road, Central, Hong Kong

kaka.xu

2010.01.21

So, this is obviously a scam, as when I searched the alleged company, I couldn’t find anything. However, the term “International Holdings Ltd.” had produced many scam alerts and related information popped up everywhere. Now, bear in mind that this is the 10th time them past 2 months that I’m receiving such emails. So, I’ve formulated the following response to them, and you are welcome to use it:

Dear Kaka,

Thank you for contacting us in regards to this matter, to be completely frank with you,
we’ve received over the past 2 months a similar request/demand from various Asian registrars
in China/Hong-Kong. Through our contacts in the far-east, we’ve concluded that your
request/demand is fraudulent, and that the company you indicated doesn’t even exist.
Please note that your approach to us claiming that someone wants to infringe our copyright
and brand had been noted and passed to our legal department. In addition, we’ve forwarded your
email and general company information to various SPAM, Abuse and Security teams that are in
contact with us around the world (mainly, [Mention your really BIG business partners and
large customers here - also through in some ISPs in the far-east, specifically China). Should
your company register ANY of the below mentioned domain names or keywords, following this email,
we shall be forced to follow legal actions in accordance to the laws of the state of [Put your
country here] and other countries where our company has representatives or local business
engaged partners.

P.S.

[Always add a personal note - and refer to something in the mail they sent, for example]

On a personal note, when sending emails to anyone in Israel, I would suggest that you choose a
different name, other than Kaka. Kaka in Hebrew is directly related to the bodily function of
purging waste – also known as taking a dump in the toilet.

Tags: Asia, China, Domain name registrar, economy, GreenfieldTech, HongKong, Intellectual property, internet, Israel, Law, Microsoft, Trademark, violations, Voice over Internet Protocol

18 May 09 Asterisk’s New Friend in Israel – Cellcom

Since early 2006, an ever increasing competition between the local PTT carriers in Israel, had introduced an unlikely friend to the Asterisk community in Israel. While Cellcom, one of Israel’s largest cellular carriers, isn’t closely associated with the PSTN market – it’s entrance to the local PTT market, especially into the E1 PRI market, had introduced the most unlikely friend to Asterisk.

Cellcom’s highly aggressive marketing techniques, rapid deployment of skillful sales agents and a highly motivating sales campaign – had yielded a migration of many customers from the local PTT carrier (Bezeq) utilizing Analog lines with traditional PBX systems, to low cost, PRI circuits provided by Cellcom, with low cost Asterisk based IP PBX systems.

Now, coming 2009, Cellcom had sprung up a new marketing campaign for their new service line: all-in-one Internet access and telephony service for your home. The service is rendered via the utilization of an OPTION GlobeSurfer II devices, allowing you to connect your home wireless network and an analog phone directly to the device.

So, why is Cellcom becoming a better Asterisk friend? very simple, the usage of the GlobeSurfer II device, in an SMB environment is the ideal companion for a small time Asterisk installation – in the office. Each GlobeSurfer devices allow us up to 2.4Mbps of downlink Internet with 384kbps of uplink – and a dedicated phone line. All of this, for a low cost of 29$ per month (give or take a few dollars). By all standards, that price is lower than any of the high-power uplink Broadband connections in Israel – thus, this is an ideal choice for a small office. Now, all that we need to facilitate an office of 4-6 people, is to have two of these units, get a router that can support multiple (2 or 3) Internet uplinks – walla – we have the perfect office communications suite. Another added value is that our office is now truely mobile – we want to move offices, no problem, takes 10 minutes to move the offices and start working again. Now, the only thing that’s missing from the mix is the availability of static IP addresses on the link, and you’ve got a serious potential looking at the new PTT killer in Israel – Wireless Internet and telephony to go – at a price you can afford.

Other questions that remain are:

1. Will Cellcom allow for a single mobile number/landline number to be associated with multiple SIM card gateways such as this, allowing for office redundancy and maybe in the future true IVR capabilities?
2. Will Cellcom allow its customers to aggregate more bandwidth in the future, allowing for true VoIP services to operate using these units?
3. While the units are fully capable of rendering up to 7.2Mbps downlink and 2.4 Mbps uplink, Cellcom is limiting these to 2.8 Mbps downlink and 384kbps uplink – will they increase that in the near future?

All things considered, I believe that this unit will make Cellcom into a new contender in the market, allowing for new residential services and competition to exist – in other words, the heat in the Israeli residential and SMB market in on – let’s get cooking.

Tags: 3G networks, Analog Telephony, Asterisk, Cellcom, internet

05 Nov 08 Creative ideas for start-ups… maybe…

Michael Eisenberg is a well known VC partner (Benchmark Capital) and an avid blogger. In one of his recent posts, Michael refers to 8 different approaches to raising a start-up company, in the midst of an economic crisis. The full blog entry can be found at his blog, however, after reading it myself, I would like to comment on it. The below section will also be commented to Michael’s blog for reference:

“Everyone in the company is a salesman – Your R&D team should be selling too”

This is an interesting approach, however, R&D people are R&D people because usually they don’t do sales well. Actually, most of the R&D people I know are the worst sales people I’ve ever met. To be honest, in my previous position, our R&D Manager basically screwed a 500,000$ deal that we worked on for 6 months, because I said something in the form of: “It’s possible to do, however, I can’t really say what would be required to do so.” – R&D people can easily sell products that are closed, not products that are under development. As start-ups are constantly in the development phase – this is a BAD idea.

“Hire sales people on commission only”

YES! This is a great idea, although, it means that you’ll need a hell of a lot more sales people to manage. When a sales person works on commissions only, it means that while he’s selling your stuff, he’s selling other stuff too. It requires a certain degree of finesse and agility to be able to manage such a team, but the general idea is good, actually it’s GREAT!

“Virtual company”

Michael’s idea of a virtual company isn’t new, dozens of companies around the world utilize this methodology. However, this methodology sometimes requires quite some resources. For example, according to Michael, the utilization of sites like oDesk and rent-a-coder may assist in your quest to lower general spending. That is true, however, it automatically poses a problem. Let us imagine that I develop a service that is made of 3 distinct areas of expertise. I hire all coders from oDesk, now, I need to remotely co-ordinate them all, so that the code I’ll get is manageable and well documented. If not, the end result will a running service that becomes stagnant, as no one can go into the code and continue its development (seen it happen to 2 of my customers, both start-ups).

“Choose Self-PR over paid search”

Hmmm… I can’t really comment on that, as I practice it – and can honestly say, it’s very hard.

“Focus on product”

Killer applications in the web are a must, if it’s not a killer – your service is dead in the water. Killer services like PokeTalk have a great potential to become the next big thing, but they highly rely on the company’s ability to market the product correctly within the available channels.

“New distribution channels”

Michael talks about the creation of affiliate programs – that’s not as simple as it sounds. Many companies made a shitload of money out of building distribution channels and affiliate program management systems – affiliates are a wonderful idea as long as you are capable of managing these in a proper manner (See my comment about commission only sales people).

All in all, Michael surely has some valid points, however, these require delicate work and proper management in order to work right – if executed improperly, will not only end in failure, may also send you down debt country.

Tags: Business, economy, Eisenberg, Google, internet, Michael, Startups

18 Feb 08 Mandriva Flash – THIS THING ROCKS!

Ok, I usually don’t get really excited about distributions, after all, I did spend the last 10 years inside different Linux distros – so getting me excited about something won’t be an easy task. However, this time something took me a little by surprise, mainly, something that comes from a distro that I really used to love in the past.

Mandriva (Formerly Mandrake + Connectiva) had brought on to the world a distro that is bootable directly from a DiskOnKey. Well, this isn’t a new thing, I’ve created one my self a while back. The thing that I liked about this one was that it is jam packed! It booted without any problems on my IBM T42 Notebook, bringing up a cool KDE 3.5 Desktop is less than 2 minutes – which is really fast for my notebook. The 3D desktop effects work like a charm, and even the wireless network worked immediately – all in all – a very satisfying experience.

The key it self is a 4GB Disk-On-Key, with enough space to have you work on any Internet Cafe computer, and still keep your data inside a /home that has around 300MB of storage space. For a developer like myself, this environment gives a very portable computer to take with me, while I travel or when I’m on customer location.

I’ve tried booting it on several different PC hardware environments, mainly notebooks and Internet Cafe POS computers, they all worked in a more or less similar manner (well, apart from that Internet Cafe that was using old P2 computers – what a shit place!). I loaded onto my home directory on the key my Asterisk sources, and here I was sitting in a coffee shop in Tel-Aviv, working no Asterisk on a public computer – I don’t know what it means to you, but to me it means a great deal. I hope they come out with a 8GB or a 16GB version of this key, as that will enable more to be done, turning this tiny little gadget into a really portable development lab.

It doesn’t really matter if you’re a computer geek, or just an average Joe on the street, no one, and I really mean no one can stay un-affected by the 3D desktop. The slick look and the smooth operation of the environment on a modern PC leaves almost any spectator breathless.
Most of the reactions I’ve gotten in the Cafe were: “DEAR GOD – WHAT IS THAT? CAN I HAVE THAT IN VISTA?” – always ending up with a big fat “NO – YOU CAN’T – GO LINUX”.

Ok, need to move now, I don’t think the Internet Cafe attender here will like me booting something else but his silly little XP and bypassing all his Billing system – well, have to go now.

Tags: Asterisk, Cafe, Connectiva, Disk-On-Key, Distribution, internet, Linux, Mandrake, Mandriva

19 Nov 07 The kid operates IE, the father is a greedy SOB…

I guess that in every parents mind, their child is always a genius. The child may actually be the stupidest person on the face of the planet – however, for the parents, the child is a genius. I think this way of thinking is somewhat a constant across the universe, however, in Israel – adding the “Polish Mom” syndrome into the equation and you get a highly intense environment believing that what ever the child says, be it as moronic as a toon, is considered sheer genius. (more…)

Tags: Asterisk, computer scienve, genius, greed, internet, Skype, VoIP