• Learn Chinese (long term goal)
• Improve English (permanent task)
• Improve Link building and other SEM skills
• Learn coding for Android (this year goal)
• Attend at least one conference and find more like-minded people

So, that is my top goals for year 2011.

Hi,

I set up a profile where I can post photos, connect and share.

Do me a favor and confirm our relationship here
.

Thanks,

Notice how personal it look? But it is not personal – both my mother and the person sent this email are not english speakers. Still, she got convinced that it was the senders intention to invite. When clicking on the link, account is created.
Another email example :

xxx xxx wants you see this tiny youtube video. Launch

The link opens a page with a big button and checkbox that you agree with the rules. When pressing confirm you are sent to a page where you see no video, but can send something back to the person… What you do not know, your account is already created: The links have your emails encoded and you do not need to provide password ( although you are asked to enter it later). This is deceptive from FANBOX.
The worst is that from these points onward people are pushed to provide fanbox with gmail account details to import and spam contacts. They understand what they have done only after their contacts start getting multiple spam messages like the ones above to join (and help spreading) this spam site.

The company behind this runs SMS.ac. They are known about their spam tactics before.
I would recommend staying away from FanBox and never providing mail account details to any 3rd party service you do not know. It is best to use separate password for gmail account as well. If you have registered an account, or know someone who was careless enough, please warn them to delete the account. It can be done by going to account settings menu (skip every step) and choose delete account. You will have to enter a reason for that.

However, I strongly disagree with him. Gutenbergs invention was created for the same reason electronic books are: faster copying and distribution. It had not sucked the “life” from books compared to ones handwritten on pergament, it had given a new life to them. The books are alive only in the minds of the reader. A much bigger problem is a lack of books that are worth reading, though.

The issues with lack of sufficient attention span on IPAD are real. But there are kindle and other dedicated readers (I wish to purchase a kindle soon, even if there is no free data transfer for Kindle in Lithuania or other Baltic states now). Electronic reading brings books for new generation of people, which want to stay mobile and still want to have a good read.

Personally, I read some books on my Nexus one, some books on my PC. I do not have an urge for paper versions of many of the books. They are unnecessary. The majority of red ones will not be open ever again. But some I will reread, most often more than once. I want to have them close to me. I am not a paper fetishist.

That is one of the reasons I love Kindle store, as I can download the book to various devices (theoretically). I can enjoy reading them and I do not need to think where I will move them when there is no space in my apartment. And I can read them anywhere, at my pace. My attention span is sufficient to read for hours getting bored as long as book is good. One should stop reading crap on any medium, though.

Also, there is a huge misconception that there are “necessary reads”. Is reading “War and Peace” a must for new generation? No. One has to read books that touches one intellectually or emotionally. Skipping some of the classical books is not a sin. Reading against ones will is.

There are groups of people that will suffer from electronic books. These groups include librarians, book printers and some of the sellers. The process is slow, but it is there. It is not a bad thing – some professions got extinct or changed in the past. However, noone wishes to be in the generation of change on the losing side.

There is still space for paper books. Noone tells you to burn them. And if you enjoy reading paper versions more, you should read. Just do not get too attached to medium, rather than content of the book. Forcing people using specific medium is bad, mkey?

And remember – you should pay for good books. I do, even if I could download them from torrents. You should support authors you like. And they will support your brain with good and valuable read.

This issue made me wonder how widely spread Android phones are in Lithuania. There are couple sources of data that can provide some insight.

Admob statistics does not show Lithuania in country list. Also, to get a statistically relevant insight some conditions should be met. That is, there should be enough users to run Admob enabled programs, which are not the ones that are pre-installed. The whole East Europe is responsible for 2.2% Admob clicks, which means that Admob is not strong in these markets yet.

Infusecreative.com data is not accurate enough. The pages lithuanians visit might not have clicky web analytics installed. This is seen from very spiky curves of both iphone and android usage. However, it is seen that iphone has some real market share, as there is a clear difference between Iphone and Android usage.

The main information source is App Aware – an application that lists software installed nearby and the phones used. This show couple of phones that use both App Aware and are in Lithuania, in its capital mostly. There are some older models here as well (Hero, for example), which were never sold through mobile networks here. Sure, not all of Android users have App Aware installed.

Conclusion? Putting together information, gathered from clicky and App Aware, I would say that Androids are not widely spread here yet, and exact numbers are hard to come by. Judging by clicky, Androids are 1/10 of iphone market, but I would expect an significant growth once more Android smartphones are sold in Lithuanian directly rather than through foreign eshops.

Now I have looked for solutions. GPS.lt has a nice list of current and forthcomming speed camera maps in Lithuania, however they target different, more mainstream navigation applications like Tomtom or Garmin. Thus I took some time to convert the list of coordinates listed there to KML file. This format is understood by Google earth and NDRIVE. The locations are not 100% accurate, but in most cases the trap locations are good. I have marked planed Lithuanian traps as (FUTURE) under their names. They can be deleted from KML file, but I would suggest not to – they are already in planning and should open quite soon.

To add Camera list to NDRIVE, upload the file to your phones SD card under directory NDRIVE/speedcameras . Then choose import from Ndrive. Thats all. It should work the same on other NDRIVE platforms.
If have any additions to speed camera list, or any suggestions, please drop me a mail. The list will be modified in the future, as not everything is done already. I am planning on fixing camera orientation properly.

The Lithuanian speed cameras KML file can be downloaded here. (Link fixed)

Lietuviškai :

Lietuvos greičio kamerų sąrašas KML formatu. Tinka google Earth ir NDRIVE navigacijoms. Ačiu GPS.lt.

Some think that killing Flash is a good thing. HTML5 would be adopted faster if there were no flash. Computers are safer and more stable when they do not need to rely on third party plugins to display web pages. And all technologies are bound to die or evolve to something else.

However, this is not a question of technology only. This is question about keeping users and money. Adobe has two important and related technologies that compete directly with Apple. That is flash and Adobe Air. Flash allows implementing rich internet applications that are not dependant on Apple Itunes store. Air allows content delivery that can not be controlled easily. That will not be allowed by Jobs.

Frankly, I do not see why Adobe should fight for Iphone and Ipad market now. There is a lot of room for Adobe elsewhere: PCs, Macs, other mobile platforms. As long as Adobe focuses on Iphones, they will do crappy job elsewhere. Forget them for a while – do a superb job on Androids, on PC’s and later you might come back to Iphones as well. You will be forgotten if you will focus on this defeat. For now, Adobe can not gloat that it has way to develop fully cross-platform applications anymore. The biggest advantage is killed and might never return.

There is a lot of things that has to be done by Adobe to change and adapt to new world. Still no official Flash in Android Market. Adobe Air or mobile Air applications should be made available for Android and other mobile platforms. Make it easy for developers to monetarize flash applications as well and you will get a share of the gaming market money. I see very little movement to this direction. Can you make a cross-compiler from Cocoa to Flash as well?

The problem is that if Adobe waits, nothing of this will be possible. No one will believe that Flash is better than HTML5, no one will believe that Air is something better than other platforms. And it will be harder to return. Maybe even impossible.

Update

I have read this article by John Gruber recently. It has very good arguments why Apple will not allow Flash – based (or other intermediate layer) application development in the future. Adobe needs to move on. It is time to focus on other things to do, and work in other markets.

There are some paid alternatives. For example, CoPilot by ALK Technologies is quite good and reasonable application for android. The single drawback is that it is not available in my country.

However, recently I found a free solution for this problem. The application is called Nav Launcher . Apparently, Google maps do not work in Canada as well, so some people there created a version that uses modified google maps. It works worldwide. It does 2 things. First, it creates a nice launcher for custom google maps in navigation mode. Second, it allows choosing which maps to launch : native or modified. Native maps provide navigation in USA only.

To enable installation of Non-USA navigation, you will have to enable installing from third-party sources. To do so, go into settings->Applications and mark Unknown sources checkbox. This will allow nav launcher to download and install Brute Maps, which are based on Google Maps 4.0.

There is another small issue. I am still running Google Maps 3.4 on my Nexus one, as maps 4.1 is available in USA only (maybe in some other countries). This is quite depressing, as I see no reason for Google to limit availability of free applications that should be the same worldwide. I am quite sure that I would be able to install it through VPN if I really wanted that. Though question remains… why such artificial limitation?

Overall, I am unhappy that Google does not want dollars from many world countries though their app store. This limits developers as well, because there is a huge market for local apps outside USA and UK as well. These applications will have different specific country-related needs.

The solution is either using .htaccess hack for redirecting feeds to your feedburner account (If the request is not from feedburner itself) or using different plugins. I am now testing FD feedburner plugin. Apparently it uses api differently and has no problem with integration with WP.

This brings up annother issue: why wordpress is not downward-compatible. It is nice seeing software updated periodically, however it is a nightmare to search for new plugins when old ones stop working.

By the way, WordPress updater is quite nice. I loved that i had so little work to update my blog software.

After lots of screaming and slapping yourself the question comes what to do next. So, a quick check list:

1. Fix the reason you lost the domain. Update your credit card details, change the email for all of the domains to the one you actually read. 
2. Evaluate and start using what remains from domain. Launch the site under new name or decide what you want to do with all the content. If you feel better, make an excuse that this was a strategy all along and the former name sucks no longer reflect what you are or do.
3. In case that the domain still points to your server, make 301 redirect to new website. The best way is to use .htacces and point old content to new content directly and not just to the new domain. This is a very likely scenario in case of court order. Also, it helps with double content problem later on.
4. Do the link search for your old domain. In some cases you might be able to update address to the new one. In some cases it is not possible. But you have to try. 
5. Check ALL your sites for the links to the old site and update it to new one. Doublecheck the site again. Many people forget this issue and they might give a backlink or two to the people who stole their precious name.
6. If the competition lauches a site on the lost domain, check with your legal departament. In some cases it is illegal to do so, in some dont. This was a case when poker site bodog lost their domain due to a court order in brand name case. Make life for competition as difficult as possible.
7. Promote, promote, promote. 

You will not regain popularity easily. But there is a hope for comeback.

Any other ideas what to do?

This post was inspired by very careless actions of some of our competitors.

Anyway, I am happy that calculations are (almost) done, and i need to fix one or 2 numbers, and file the info to the tax office. Had a lots of headaches.

Recently I got an email to another box that friend is looking for me on facebook. The name is even Lithuanian, however… I do not know that person. And even if I log in into my account and use the link, there is no results. And it is not the first fake letter I get in my mailbox from Facebook to convince me joining them, though previous ones were for some people with foreign names. Perhaps they are trying to become better at targeting the people.

I can say I am unhappy with such turn of events. I do not think that ANY internet service should cheat you into joining them, as it is lame. I even consider quiting my other account.