ICANN and its Objectives

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Introduction

The GNSO council invoked a committee of the whole to address the question asked of it by the ICANN Board (resolution 2.151 see annex 1): "whether to structure the evolution of the generic top level namespace and, if so, how to do so." The committee met monthly by telephone conference between February and May 2003 and all but one constituency submitted written positions during this time. One fundamental question was the interpretation of the question asked. Some participants related the question to the statement on "taxonomic rationalization" made by the ICANN CEO in October 2002, and interpreted "structured" as meaning to them a top-down taxonomy with a pre-determined set of names chosen by ICANN. Others saw no conflict between the concept of a taxonomy and a bottom-up, demand-driven system. Many constituencies interpreted "structured" more widely meaning within a framework of objectives.

The Auction Rules are Not Aligned with ICANN’s Goals

The auction mechanism prepared by Power Auctions LLC for ICANN fails to address these core issues and align its Auction Rules to the Applicant Guidebook and ICANN’s own Bylaws to promote competition, innovation and diversity. ICANN itself even agrees that ” auctions are not perfectly aligned with ICANN’s objectives” but have been chosen as an allocation method because other alternatives would have “have more severe limitations and defects” (ICANN, Economic Case for Auctions in New gTLDs, 8th August 2008, Pg.1).

ICANN holds the power to adjust its auction rules to be consistent with its non-for profit status, its Mission and Core Values and to promote effective competition. ICANN should strongly consider aligning critical elements of its auction rules to level the playing field especially given the current status of the new gTLD Program which is dominated by Portfolio Applicants. For example, Google, Amazon and Donuts alone represent over 400 non-branded and generic gTLDs

Applicant Guidebook (AGB) that “most” contention sets being resolved “voluntarily” or “through other means before reaching auction stage” have not been met.

Conclusion

ICANN should implement Auction Rules that are consistent with its Bylaws, its non-for profit status and the Objectives of the new gTLD Program and the AGB to promote competition, diversity, innovation and consumer choice. Auctions should be simple to understand and quick to implement and not favor portfolio Applicants who can afford to lose in private auctions (since the contention losers split the final auction amount plus receive a 20% application refund of $37,000 from ICANN) in order to enrich themselves in preparation of ICANN auctions (where losers only receive a 20% application refund of $37,000 from ICANN).

It is clear that community-based Applicants who have restricted applications can not economically justify outbidding “open” Applicants who have a higher ROI since their “open” registration model generates more registrations and greater profit. For example, according to ICANN’s gTLD domain counts, the restricted .JOBS and .PRO gTLDs have a registration volume of about 50,000 and 150,000 respectively, while the open .INFO and .BIZ gTLDs have about 6 million and 2 million registrations respectively. Nearly all community-based Applicants have applied for only one gTLD and can not hedge their bets with other gTLDs. Furthermore, they run a serious risk of failure if they decide to overbid to win over an “open” Applicant since they would be unable to recover those monies. According to the AGB, Applicants are not allowed to “loosen” registration policies to spur an increase of domain registrations to merely attempt to break-even after a financially-devastating auction.

Digital Marketing Methodology

What is digital marketing?

Essentially digital marketing centers around the Internet which is both a powerful marketing medium and a communication tool. Because it is digital, campaign reporting is accurate and able to be pulled in real-time, enabling extremely quantifiable results.

Digital is also about creating content that is designed to appeal to your ideal customers, attracting qualified prospects to your business.

Advisor:
Susan K. Jones
(231) 591-2468
SusanJones@ferris.edu

If you have a strong interest in internet-based marketing activity, you'll find that digital marketing is the newest and most innovative marketing methodology used by business executives. The digital marketing certificate will enhance your skills in:

• Multi-channel marketing -integrating online and offline marketing with profitable results
• Selling online, and saving money and time for your company and your customers
• Managing databases in a digital world
• Mastering best practices in both business-to-customer and business-to-business digital marketing
• Creation and execution of internet marketing/advertising plans and campaigns

You will be provided with cutting-edge internet-based marketing skills that will help you not only in digital marketing, but in careers such as direct marketing, advertising, and professional selling.

Build your skills and resume

Each of the online marketing courses listed at left applies to at least one of the available specialization certificates or minor. Begin with a course or two and in no time you will have earned a new credential.

Prepare to Lead this Fast-Growing Field

Figures provided by The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) put the strength and growth of direct and interactive marketing into perspective as part of the American economy. According to the DMA, annual U.S. sales revenue attributed to consumer direct and interactive marketing topped $1 trillion in 2011, while business-to-business direct and interactive marketing sales amounted to $786.5 billion.

Summary

This research follows qualitative, descriptive approach. The company and respondents were selected as per convenient non-random sample selection method. General analytical strategy for this purpose is on theoretical propositions. There were four tests of validity conducted by this research. These are construct validity, internal validity, external validity and study's reliability, meeting quality standards of the study.

e-Commerce using woocommerce integration with master card or paypal

What makes an e-commerce platform?

While you can sell items through some integrations online with payment processing services, the ability to take a credit card and provide a transaction doesn’t mean that the solution is an e-commerce solution. E-commerce solutions have the following key features:

·       Product pages that provide multiple views and levels of product specifications, along with dynamic pricing capabilities and quantity adjustments.

·       Shopping cart — a page or object that contains all of the items added during the shopping session. Users can update quantities or delete items.

·       Checkout page — a conversion point where users can provide payment information and submit an order for fulfillment.

·       Account pages — the ability for a customer to set up an account, view orders, and manage pertinent contact, delivery and payment information.

·       Payment integration — the ability to accept and process credit card data, or integrate with a system like PayPal, Amazon Payments or Stripe that provides that service.

The WooCommerce eCommerce plugin for WordPress is an excellent choice for anyone who wants to build an online store with minimal effort and expense. The plugin makes setting up and managing an online store with WordPress much less daunting than you might imagine, and includes many great features to make your life easier.

PayPal Advanced

The PayPal Advanced extension adds a seamless integration with this payment gateway to your website, allowing your customers to enter their payment details right on your site, without leaving our store. 

This creates a much more professional impression for your online store as opposed to sending them offsite to enter their details. Customers don’t need a PayPal account to make a payment via this option.

You will need a PayPal Advanced Payments account and an SSL certificate to make the most of the features of this extension, but it will simplify PCI compliance, and allow your visitors to stay on site during the check out. 

Setting up the extension is pretty straightforward and can be done using the familiar WordPress and WooCommerce user interface.

Thankfully, WooCommerce also supports many other payment gateways, which means your eCommerce store can make use of the other options already out there. Also, while WooCommerce does support PayPal standard payments out of the box, this does involve sending the customer to the PayPal website to enter their payment details. 

Singleton Programming Design Pattern

What is the Singleton design pattern?

The concpet of restricting the instantiation of the a class to only and only to one object is called Singleton. As name suggests, it will restrict to create only one instance of a class. The calss will have a logic in place which will deny if the application will ask for more than one instance.

 

Code Lines

Let’s try to understand with an example:
We have an application which will bring the pay stub of an employee for current month. In a standarad system, there will be only one active salary account for the employee with the company. Because of this fact, we should only create one object of the employee’s salary account. In program, we are creating this object in a loop. So, what happens if we don’t have a design pattern which will restrict it to create more than one object. Application will create, rather overwrite an instance of the class.

Advantages

Accessibility

The most obvious advantage of the singleton pattern is accessibility. Consider the UIApplication class as an example. By importing the UIKit framework, the UIApplication singleton is accessible from anywhere in your project. Take a look at the following example of a UIViewController subclass.

Disadvantages

Global State

By creating a singleton, you're essentially creating global state. It's important that you're aware of this. A few years ago, Miško Hevery wrote a great article about the singleton pattern in which he explains why the pattern should be avoided. Miško emphasizes that global state is the main reason why singletons are harmful.

Dealing With Multithreading 

In the Android system, you can spin off multiple threads to perform different tasks. These threads can end up executing the same code block simultaneously. In the case of the Singleton class above, this could lead to the creation of multiple object instances, which violates the contract of a Singleton. So our Singleton code snippet method getInstance() is not thread safe. We'll now look at ways to make it thread safe.

A Singleton is an elegant way of maintaining global state, but we should always question whether we need global state. Singleton pattern offers several advantages over global variables because it does the following:

1.    Enforces that only one instance of the class can be instantiated.

2.    Allows control over the allocation and destruction of the object.

3.    Provides thread-safe access to the object's global state.

4.    Prevents the global namespace from being polluting.

Blue Whale Game

The Blue Whale Challenge and what it means
In this age of online gaming, it is not always possible to understand the implications of a
particular game when you begin to play it. We have always been aware of the dangers
inherent in online games, but so far, they have been restricted to possibilities of imbibing
violent behavior and warped understanding of reality. Today, however, things have changed
a lot; we have been exposed to implications that are greater and far more dangerous than
anything we have known or seen so far. The world has come to be aware of the Blue Whale
Challenge, an online ‘game’ that is being linked to deaths by suicide of scores of teenagers
and young adults around the world.

What is the Challenge?
The Blue Whale Challenge is reportedly an online ‘game’ that requires its players to perform
certain tasks, many of which involve self-mutilation and other dangerous activities. The final
task of this challenge requires committing suicide. Needless to say, this game has attracted
the attention of authorities across the globe, as almost twenty countries have been affected
by the same. The game attract mostly teenagers and young adults, people who are more
susceptible to online influences, and attempts to create an air of unworthiness and
uselessness around them. Some reports have surfaced that claims the game requires the
player to submit sensitive data before commencing, which the administrators then use to
blackmail the players in case they try to back out of the game. The veracity of this claim has
not yet been confirmed, but it has also given rise to the rumor that downloading the fame
injects malware into the system that infects files and steals sensitive data.

Budeikin’s arrest
The Blue Whale Challenge, since its inception of spread across the world, has stirred up a
number of controversies. A Russian man named Philipp Bedecking was arrested in Russia,
after which he confessed to have incited the suicide of at least 16 underage girls in his
country. He claimed to be one of the administrators of the game who set the task and
coordinated the completion of the same by the participants. According to Budeikin, he had
pushed those girls to suicide because he had deemed that their lives had no value in the
greater scheme of things. His arrest and subsequent confession caused widespread
concern in Russia, prompting the authorities to take notice and pass the suicide prevention
legislation.

Target demographic
The Blue Whale Challenge has since spread in many parts of the world, claiming many lives
and injuring many more. The key players are usually teenagers and young adults, that is,
people who are susceptible to influences from someone apparently powerful. Since
teenagers are mostly in a place in their lives that makes them feel out of place and unable

to fit in within their surroundings, finding acceptance is difficult at this age. And, when a
teenager finds acceptance, no matter how negative that is, he or she is likely to become
highly influenced and get under the spell of the accepting party. This mentality appears to
be the control switch that the administrators of the Blue Whale Challenge use.
Parental control
The Blue Whale Challenge points at issues far wider than young people committing suicide,
although that is a disconcerting matter in its own right. It points at the free internet usage of
young people and the dangers associated with it, which is, as it turns out, a far greater
social problem than we originally supposed. It is important for parents to monitor their
children’s internet usage, make note of what they are surfing and the kind of games they
are playing, and follow whom they are speaking to. The internet’s biggest advantage and
disadvantage is its scope for anonymity, and great harm can be done to unsuspecting
people from behind a screen armed with a keyboard.

Helpline for kids
The challenge points to yet another poignant social issue. In most families, teen angst is
usually dismissed as normal hormonal changes. The teenager naturally feels isolated and
angry, and it is very easy for them to fall prey to someone who makes them feel they are
useless, especially since this often corroborates with their viewpoints of themselves. Things
have, thankfully, changed somewhat in the wake of the Blue Whale Challenge. A website
has stated yet another online game called the Pink Whale Challenge, in which the
participant completes tasks that are aimed at motivation and boosting self-confidence. It is
important for letting these young people know that it is okay to feel lost, and to feel
misunderstood, and that family and friends are better confidantes than some controlling
entity sitting behind a computer somewhere.