What are your resolutions in 2011?

Me, I really need to flex my writing muscles again. The demands of kids and work have cut in to my time, but that shouldn’t be an excuse.

So, since I publish on five separate sites, I’m looking to generate at least 365 new posts in 2011 with Clicks&Bits serving as the repository and pointer list. I need to check, but in 2010, I’m guessing I was more along the lines of about one post every couple weeks over the five sites. I suppose Twitter was the biggest reason I stopped posting, much easier to through a thought out in 140 characters. If you want to follow me: @shartley for my personal stuff & @shawnhartley for my AdPulp-related audience.

How about other resolutions? I’ve never been big using the New Year to make resolutions, instead striving to improve throughout the year, but in the spirit of generating content and putting out some things to keep me focused:

• Lose weight. Doesn’t everyone list this? I’ve put on about 40lbs the last 3 years. I’d like to lose that to get me back to something I’m comfortable with, but could stand to double that loss (and get me back to my before-the-turn-of-the-century days.
• Get back on the mountain bike again. Before kids, and back-in-the-day I used to ride over 150 miles a week.
• Spend more time outdoors. Used to hike and camp, haven’t done that since I got married. I really need to get back in touch with nature.
• Disconnect from the machines (laptop, smartphone, email). Not sure if this is a symptom of the above or a cause of it. I don’t seem to have any issues unplugging for a few days here and there, but I do have a problem turning to the machines out of boredom.
• Get back to doing some design work. I’ve slacked quite a bit on both design and CSS development. Managing, business development and focusing on strategy have sucked away my design time. Need to get back to that, if at least to keep my knowledge level in check.
• Domain Names. I’ve mentioned a few times that I’ve slimmed my holdings. I’m not *planning* on growing this out again, but I do need to keep my eyes open for opportunities.

One down, 365 to go, eh.

The following list are the only 21 domain names in the format of visit(city/state/area).com/net/org which are available for registration. My geo list is comprised of all 50 states and the top 70 metro areas in the US. My definition of metro area is comprised of city name, airport abbreviation or common metro area name. All 120 .coms of my source list are registered. 21 available out of a total of 360 domains is indicative of pretty competitive market.

visittahoe.net
visitatl.com
visitsanfran.net
visitmsp.net
visitaustin.net
visitmesa.org
visittahoe.org
visitoakland.net
visitsanfran.org
visitwashingtondc.net
visitmsp.org
visitsf.net
visitnola.net
visitfresno.net
visitminneapolis.net
visitatl.net
visitfortworth.org
visitdesmoines.net
visitnola.org
visitarlington.org
visitatl.org

Buried in the I Was a Cybercrook for the FBI article on Wired:

The full scope of the problem is hard to judge, but nonetheless staggering. U.S. banks lost $546 million to debit card fraud in 2004, according to banking research firm Dove Consulting, and credit card fraud losses were estimated to be about $3.8 billion globally in 2003 according to The Nilson Report. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that 10 million Americans are victims of credit card fraud each year. The financial impact of identity theft remains untold.

Wow. That is a pretty big number to absorb.

MessageLabs released their annual MessageLabs Intelligence Report which details their analysis of email threats (spam, phishing, virus) in 2006 and trends to watch in 2007.

The report indicates that the annual average spam rate for 2006 was 86.2% with 80% of all spam coming from Botnets (autonomous systems) and 63.4% of all spam cam from new sources indicating that spammers are staying a few steps ahead of the spam fighters.

Email-borne viruses had a relatively light year, but Phishing attacks doubled over 2005.

For 2007 they see a further decline in virus rates but a strong growth in Ransomware – malicious software which encrypts files and documents by using a secret key known only by the extortionist. Spam will become increasingly targeted to vertical markets, especially Finance and Legal. The threats to Mac OS X will begin to see an increase in worm attacks as the popularity of Apple continues to grow.

I was going get this blog going on all the fun things about the web; SEO/SEM, advertising, web analytics, domaining & monetization, etc. But as a contributing writer to a few different blogs, I’ve realized that the last thing I want to do is create yet another time commitment.

What will follow on this site going forward will likely be a random smattering of stuff that will server as my digital notebook, but likely won’t make much linear sense. Apologies if more was expected.

Welcome to Clicks and Bits. Covering:

• Web Analytics
• Search (SEO/SEM)
• Web Advertising
• Domain Names

Thanks for stopping by.