Options are good.

  A legend for the following table.

Free Options: Whether or not at least some of the conference calling features are free to use.
Max Conference size: From five active callers to a thousand.  What are your needs like?
Too free cost per minute, per attendee:  The providers that allow you the option of having a dedicated Toll Free 800 number will charge you a per minute fee for each caller.
Toll Free + PC Screen Sharing:  Some providers tack on additional prices per minute.  Some add flat rates per month or don’t charge at all.

Company	Free options?	Max Conf. Size	Toll free cost per minute, per attendee	Toll free + PC Screen sharing
FreeConference	Yes	150	$.10/min	+$9.00/month
AccuConference	No	Unlim. If over 50, pls call	$.079/min	$.099/min
FreeConferenceCall.com	Yes	96-1000	$.06/min	N/A
AT&T Conference Calls	No	N/A	$.085/min	$.12/min
Skype Conference Calls	Yes	5	N/A	N/A (screen sharing works only with other Skype users).
WebEx	Free trial period	25	$.33/min or $49/mo.	$.33/min or $49/mo.

Note: free conference calling by some services are paid for using traffic pumping (see wikipedia).

How do you know if a domain name is really available?

When you want to reserve a domain name, just typing it into the browser isn’t a good enough check to see if it is available.  Someone might have registered but didn’t set up any DNS or hosting for the domain.

To find out for sure if a domain name has been registered or not, you’ll need to visit a domain name registrar and do a search either through their registration process or through a whois lookup.

This is what returns for Niftygeek.com at Godaddy after doing a whois lookup.  I prefer to use the network solutions whois lookup but I used the godaddy whois lookup just for the heck of it.

I have to preface with a note that I registered this domain quite some time ago.  They send me notices every so often that the contact information has to be correct for the domain.  I didn’t do it correctly and I haven’t yet updated it.  I’ll should make that a priority to fix. [Note, I've since updated it to the correct contact information]

That said, here is the results from the whois query for niftygeek.com:

You don’t have to use the whois tool.  You can check if a domain is available simply by starting the domain purchasing process available on the home page of either Network Solutions or Godaddy.

As a side note, for more choices in price or different types of top level domains there is the complete list of Accredited Domain Name Registrars.  This is useful to have on hand when someone needs to register a .tel, .info, or .aero instead of a .com.  This will show you not only the list of registrars but when ones are allowed to let you register which top level domains (a top level domain means .com or .net or .org, etc…).

If you are registering a domain and you are not entirely sure what to choose, you could give domain tasting a shot.  Domain registrars are required to offer a five day grace period during which time you can get a full refund for the domain.  This is good to use for instance if you have ten options for your domain, but you would like to see if any traffic will naturally be going to one over the others.  The benefit should be clear there.  Free traffic!  Unfortunately, people abuse this to register thousands of sites at once to determine advertising viability to create useless websites.

An overview of DNS (short for Domain Name System) is a system for giving you different types of information on request about a domain name.

A request made to a DNS server about a domain name is called a DNS Query.  These requests happen any time someone sends an email or tries to load a web page.

As professor Sanford used to say (one of my B.C.C. College professors), people like names and computer like numbers.  People find names easier to remember.  Computers like numbers.  They’re easier to distinguish.

Any time you type a domain name into your web browser, this translation between a name to a number happens.  Your computer browser takes the domain name that has been entered and asks a DNS server where that web site is located.  DNS responds with a number.  A specific kind of number.  An ip address.

DNS does more than the name to number translation, but that’s a great starting point.

I type in yahoo.com and hit enter in my web browser –> Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari asks this computer’s DNS server for the IP address of that server –> The web browser makes a request to that IP address.

If all goes well, the web server is contacted by it’s IP address and responds with the page that I’ve requested.

Here is a typical browser request in a series of steps.

• You type in a domain name and press enter in your browser.
• Your computer checks a local hosts file to see if there is an IP address set for that domain name
• If not, it checks the DNS servers that your computer was assigned when it connected to the Internet.
• The DNS server checks its locally cached records to checks the DNS servers that are authoritative for that domain.
• An IP address is given back to your local computer.
• Your web browser sends the IP address, domain name, file requested, any post data, what browser you are using and a slew of other information at that IP address.
• If all goes well, the correct web page is returned to you by the web server at that IP address.

How many computers are involved in one web request?  Well, there’s your computer, the server with the web site on it, your ISP’s DNS server, the authoritative DNS server of the website.  If you take into account the number of servers it takes to keep all the records up to date for DNS, there are more, though I’m not sure how many.

Here is a youtube video describing and overview of a successful DNS request.  I think I could do better.  I’ll give that a try at some point.  Here it is for now.