Category Archives: Internet

Libyan Domain Registry shuts down vb.ly

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violet blue

 

Libya has shut down the popular adult URL shortening service http://vb.ly citing violation and non-adherence to Libyan Islamic Shariah law. Since this domain is not hosted in Libya and if you are wondering what Libya has got to do with it, note that: .ly is the top-level Internet country code for Libya and it is registered with Libyan Domain Registry.

Cyber world is abuzz with the action of the Libyan Domain Registry for this action as this can have ramifications on various such domains with catchy names like justin.tv, radioindigo.fm .tv is owned by the Tuvalu, while .fm is owned by Micronesia A similar service called About.me is about to be launched as well. There were pre-registrations for the About.me services, .me is the top level domain for Montenegro

Because of the popularity of the .ly domains for their shortness and familiarity with the word which sound like sil.ly or high.ly they generally carry a high registration price as well. Owners of vb.ly have claimed that they had recently renewed the annual registration by paying a huge sum.

What exactly prompted Libyan NIC to delete the Vb.ly is not very clear but based on writeup of the blogs of Ben Metcalfe & Violet Blue, who own the vb.ly domain it appears that the above picture with bare arms, a bottle, and the words “sex-positive” were cited as obscene, offensive and illegal and that they were “promoting an illegal activity” with the link shortener. Although the website is a single page and serves no content, it is popular for shortening of adult content all over the world.  One has to also note that Libya’s NIC has also said that any domains with less than four characters are under scrutiny prompting questions on the likes of URL shortening services like bit.ly. Following is the notice put up by the registry of Libyan NIC for those wanting to own the .ly domains.

 

Libya NIC .ly Announcment

The famous three of the .ly domains are bit.ly, which is default URL shortening service used by Twitter (Twitter is about to launch its own URL shortening service soon http://t.co), ow.ly used by Hoot suite web service and 3.ly which claims to be the shortest URL shortener in the world.

 

Have you tried the Google Wonder Wheel,Not yet enabled for Google India

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Google Wonder Wheel is an awesome improvisation on search from Google by showing related search terms in hub and spoke model with the results on the right hand side for easier resolution of the searched query. The searched query item is at the center and if you click on one of the offshoots or the spokes, the clicked item now becomes the hub of the related search queries. The results are refreshed on the right hand side every time you click on one of the search items in the spoke. Here is the introductory video from Google’s Engineer, Adam on the Wonder Wheel:

Google wonder wheel is currently not available on Google India’s Search Page and hence you will need to go Google.com and enter the search parameter, at the left hand side of the page, click on More and then select Wonder Wheel and your Wonder Wheel is ready to roll on 🙂

 

 

WonderWheel

 

I searched for Phishing Attacks SMS as shown below in the snapshot. The search key word is at the center while related search terms are pointed outwards. Once you click on one of these populated search terms, the corresponding results are
refreshed on the right hand side, while the focus now shifts on the clicked Search term.

 

 

 

Wonder Wheel Google Search