A new service called Trumpia is taking annoying spam to the next level. Users of the service can enter contact information including cell phone numbers, email addresses and even instant messaging ids for anyone they want to “Blast” (the term the service uses).

Blasting involves sending a single message to every device /service of every contact you enter. This, the web site indicates, is to ensure that there is no way that your contact will miss your message. Sounds more like the ultimate spam tool to me or just a new way to truly annoy your friends.

Yesterday, I noticed something peculiar when I accidentally misspelled the Microsoft domain name when entering it into my web browser. Instead of typing “microsoft.com”, I mistakenly typed “microsoft.cm” and instead of landing on the Microsoft.com home page I ending up on a site called Agoga.com.

I tried a few other well known domain names, replacing the .com with .cm, and got the same results – the Agoga.com web site.

Checking on the .cm top level domain I found that is the official domain name for the West African nation of Cameroon. Upon further investigation, I found that the mastermind behind the Agoga.com domain name is a Canadian resident named Kevin Ham, a famous domain squatter. It appears that he has made a business arrangement with the Cameroon nation to share in profits from ads placed on the Agoga.com site. And who hosts the ads - no other than the Yahoo! Publisher Network.

This reminds me of when the registry service VeriSign redirected nonexistent .com and .net domain names to the Site Finder search engine. ICANN forced VeriSign to quit the practice; however, ICANN has no regulatory control over two-letter country codes. The countries themselves get to decide what is ethical business practice and what is not. Makes you wonder if “Agoga” is nothing more than the Cameroon word for “sucker”.

Microsoft announced they were producing a “flash” copy/clone/ripp-off (call it what you want) and since then has recieved an unjustified amount of hype.

I don’t understand the hype? All they are doing are creating another bulky (probably buggy and insecure) clone of a tool we already have! The hype problem stems from Techcrunch’s coverage of the product which is obviously there because Microsoft is one of the blogs advertisers!

Correct me if im wrong but this is going to go down the same path as ASP. Only Government and Microsoft sites are going to use it. Actually, it looks as if Microsoft isn’t planning on using it anytime soon!

Update: I just received an interesting email from a reader that makes a very important point. I quote “although this is a cross browser tool, do you really believe Mac users will start developing using SilverLight”.  I think not!

You cant own a random a random 128 bit number but thats exactly what the entertainment industry is trying to do. In fact, according to the AACS im not allowed to publish this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 (oops my fingers must have slipped).

Im failing to see the sense in how a corporation can own a “random” number and stop anyone from publishing or even knowing that number. So in effect, im breaking the law just by knowing that number.

If you want you can go and grab your own 128 Bit numbers here.…did I mention they were random.

Is it just me or is the entire notion of trying to prevent people from having access to a random number completely rediculous.

p.s - If I hear another person say that Digg got “hammered” over the entire affair, I may just chuck a blogging hissy fit. They did the right things, how bout you show them some support you tossers!