theratshack.net

Ok, I’m sure you’ve seen the ads, and with a little bit of speculation and a lot of time reading news sites prior, I think I have the answer.

The commercials are on a green background with a power plug that smiles and the number 23 appears on it. Soon after, 8-11 appears below it as if it’s some kind of date.

I’ve read numerous posts on CNN, Reuters, TheRegister and several others that the Feds were shooting for a “230 miles per tank” goal for fuel efficiency and I believe that one manufacturer is going to launch something on August 11. (two days from this posting)

It is my theory, backed up with many other people’s theories and compounded by news articles from reputable sources and CNN that this is a new viral ad campaign by GM/Chevrolet of the launching of their new Hybrid or EV vehicle, the Volt.

Of course, this is speculation.

So here’s what I know.
www.whatis230.com was registered July 30, 2009 and isn’t set to expire until July 30,2011.

Here’s the WHOIS information:

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain Management
Online Trademark Protection
Online Channel Protection
AntiPhishing Solutions
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


Ok, so we get it, they're trying to hide their identity. So on to the network mess. A traceroute reveals some interesting information... They're hosted at Rackspace!

5 te-0-1-0-5-cr01.dallas.tx.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.91.193) 32.591 ms 32.847 ms 33.409 ms
6 rackspace-bbr.dfw1.comcast.net (75.149.228.130) 33.721 ms 32.073 ms 31.999 ms
7 edge3-backbone1.dfw1.rackspace.net (72.3.128.250) 30.491 ms 20.043 ms 19.916 ms
8 vlan905.core5.dfw1.rackspace.com (67.192.56.229) 36.017 ms 36.210 ms 36.226 ms
9 67.192.56.71 (67.192.56.71) 24.688 ms 25.253 ms 25.364 ms


A DNS search reveals that whatis230.com's IP is 72.32.147.137 and according to their HTTP headers are running Linux w/Apache 2.2:

#1 Server Response: http://whatis230.com
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Set-Cookie: X-Mapping-caklakng=65BE8C9EE459FADABC27AA1230B712F3; path=/
Content-Length: 2912
Date: Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:49:36 GMT
Connection: close
Last-Modified: Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:41:53 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100


An examination of their site yields this javascript. I don't know javascript, so feel free to interpret:

$lt; script type="text/javascript" >
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
< /script>
< script type="text/javascript" >
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-10035141-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview('WHATIS230 | HOMEPAGE | INDEX');
} catch(err) {} < /script >


It looks like google code, but I don't speak JS fluently.

So, what do you think it is? I welcome any thoughts, comments, etc.

I was on a smoke break at work talking to a coworker who was talking about his site. I was listening kinda half-assedly when he said that his site was making a load of money. When I asked him about it, he said that Google was doing advertising and depending on the options selected, you could make money off of advertisements on your site.

Now, the instant he said “advertising”, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I started getting concerned. I had horrible flashbacks of popups, annoying flashy add banners, Flash based advertisements (like the ones that haunt CNN, and definately did not want that mess. But as I asked questions, he told me that the advertisers that did that were all the wrong ones and that advertising on my site is as non-invasive as the typical Google Ad-words advertisements that you see in Gmail and other Google sites.

I’ve always been very skittish about the “A” word as I, like so many other millions of people do not like getting the advertising two by four across the face when browsing a site looking for information, but I have to say that I was intrigued by the thought of my site one day being able to pay for its own hosting.

I’ve thought about it and although I have remained ad-free for the last seven years, I have been wanting to see if I could at least make the $10 needed to host the sites I own so that way I could keep theratshack.net alive and running for the many years to come.

But since this is not just a simple “Let’s do it!” thing, I want to reach out to the people that actually browse the site. What do you think?

I will be testing the Google advertisements and seeing what impact they have on my site, both from a usability standpoint and from an administration standpoint. I want the advertisements to be subtle and not interfere with the site’s use. I have already come up with the following list of things I want to ensure continue as I go through this change:

With this in mind, I want you to know that this is an experiment and hopefully the results are positive and do not impede nor hinder my site’s operation, navigation or accessibility.

The only question I have is would this classify as selling out or do you think it’s a good way to make some extra cash, even if all it does is pay for the hosting (or less?)

I’m interested in your comments!