Dear "One born every minute Co.,Ltd"

Working in a company that's spread around the world, with thousands of domain names under our control, we're not immune to the occassional registration spammer from some internet cafe in the Far East.

Most of them in the same format...

Dear [insert any old name here],

We received a formal application from a company who is called AoMeiXin Investment Co.,Ltd are applying to register "[insert domain we've picked up using a whois bot]" as their domain name and Internet keyword in China and also in Asia on August 6, 2008. During our auditing procedure we find out that the alleged Meiao Investment Co.,Ltd has no trade mark, brand nor patent even similar to that word. As authorized anti-cybersquatting organization we hereby suspect the alleged Meiao Investment Co.,Ltd to be a domain grabber. Hence we need you confirmation for two things,
First of all, whether this alleged Meiao Investment Co.,Ltd is your business partner or distributor in China.
Secondly, whether you are interested in registering these domains. (The alleged Meiao Investment Co.,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.
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.

Bst Rgs
Mark Li

Registration Commissioner
Tel: +0086-10-82771675-602 +0086-10-82772510-602
Fax: +0086-10-82771640
Email: mark@bj-hkzc.com.cn
Http://www.bj-hk.com


The most annoying thing about these people is that they just seem to use the same email template, modify a few bits and pieces, and send it out ad nauseam. They all even share same grammatical and spelling mistakes. Personally, I find it slightly offensive that they think I'd be stupid enough not to notice....

Some fun stuff here about this http://successfulsoftware.net/2008/04/19/chinese-domain-scam/ In fact, there's lots of fun stuff on all sorts of forums on the interweb - just Google it.

I've been getting 2 or 3 a week now from our business around the Group, and our legal teams have drafted up a rather pithy email response which we send out. See, lawyers *do* have a reason to be on this earth after all.

Trade shows

Just back from Internet World 2007 in Earl's Court. There are days I wonder why I bother with these events - full of sales people who seem to be more interested in looking at your name badge (busy working out the "company name x job title = budgetary control = purchase /15% = my personal commission [optional licking of lips and rubbing of hands]" equation).

Interesting to see some of our existing suppliers there, and worrying to see so little technical innovation. More worrying than any of that though was the truly horrible sight of consultants, agencies and vendors trying to talk up the hype around web 2.0. Seriously, look... over there, on the horizon - those sails over there... that's the ship leaving port. Some of the seminars were pretty relevant, giving guidance to webmasters on how to incorporate some of the social stuff, how to build trust etc. However some of the tat on offer was truly shocking (pretty much anything with "next generation" or "2.0" in the title kinda missed the boat *points at horizon again*).

I'm not sure what I was most uncomfortable with - that digital professionals aren't familiar with the basics of this stuff yet (and can kinda see through all the hype), or that companies are still lazily bandwagonning (see "portals" in about 1999) and looking at social networking content as almost a replacement for innovation and new ideas. I would have thought we'd moved on a lot and people would want to see real world examples for UGC and ways to use online social networks, other than trying to surreptitiously "blog-flog" the latest gadget/pizza/car.