Sometimes, being an Internet Evangelist is a tough thing to do.  For somebody who lives the Internet lifestyle every day, sometimes I see and offer ideas and solutions that people don’t want, don’t understand or are even afraid of.

Evangelist

The Evangelist spreading the word

Recently, I was contacted by an older person, and he explained to me some things that he was doing, not really a job, but a passion of his.  Currently, he was doing it because it was something that he loved doing, but he was hoping that somehow he could make some money out of his passion.  When I looked at what he was doing, I instantly became very interested, because I could see a lot of potentials for actually making some nice money on the net with what he was already doing in another venue.  He could keep up with what he was doing now, and expand his horizon on to the Internet, where making money in his niche would actually be rather simple in my opinion.

As I sat down with my new friend and started explaining to him where I thought he should be headed with his niche, I could tell that he was getting very excited.  Later, though, after we went our separate ways, he started calling me with questions.  From the questions he asked, I knew instantly that he didn’t understand a thing that I told him.  Now, I was faced with some choices.

1. I could continue helping him, but instead of him doing it, I would have to do it myself, or offer some pretty extreme hand holding.  Either of these options would require a lot of my time.  If I give him my time, that means that I am not working on my own projects.
2. I could just let him go on trying to implement my suggestions in his own way, although I know that what he does will be wrong, and won’t make much (if any) money for him.

Honestly, I am of mixed feelings on this right now.  I feel that this fellow cannot be taught to do it himself, yet I don’t have enough of my own time to donate to him and take him where I know he wants to go.  So, what do I do?

A number of years ago, I had another American friend who lived here in Davao.  He and I were very close.  We thought in the same way, and we had similar interests.  It was to the point that we didn’t even have to finish our sentences, we both knew what words were coming next.  We both considered ourselves to be Internet Evangelists.  Often times, actually almost everytime that we found a person that we thought would be receptive to hearing our guidance or wanting our help, ultimately it never worked out.  Either we were talking right over the top of their heads, or they didn’t trust us.  You see, when you get very excited about helping people, it is my experience that the person you are trying to help ends up getting suspicious.  They think that you must be trying to rip them off, because “why would somebody be so excited to help?”

Well, when you are an evangelist of any type, it is in your blood that you want to help people, and you want to spread the word of whatever it is that you are evangelizing about.  That’s what evangelism is all about.

So, I am still unsure.  What do you think I should do to help this new friend?  Or should I help him at all?

Well, you see, Google checks your IP address to find out where in the world you are, and they give you the Google site that is appropriate for your location.  Since I am living in the Philippines, when I first go to Google, it takes me to Google Pilipinas, the Philippine Google site.  And, on top of that, the results of my search are in Tagalog!  Since I don’t speak Tagalog, this can be a bit of a problem!

Also, the search results are skewed to the country that the site is located in.  So, if I search for something, it gives me Philippine results first.  Well, that’s not really what I want.  I prefer the US results, or even better, I want the best results no matter where in the world they are located.

Click on the link in the red circle to get Google's main site

Thankfully, though, there is an easy fix for this, and it is something you only have to do one time and forget about it (unless you get a new computer, or somehow start out with a fresh browser or something).

In the image above, you see Google Philippines home page.  I have circled in red where it says “Google.com in English.”  If you click on that link you will go to Google’s main home page (US based), and from that point on, every time you go to Google, the US page will come up for you, unless you change it.

So, it’s very simple as you can see.

Happy Googling!

There are a couple of issues, though, that I am not completely happy with.  In the scheme of things, though, they are manageable, and can be worked around.  Both of these issues are DNS related.

For those of you who don’t know what DNS is, basically it stands for “Domain Name System” or “Domain Name Server” (there is debate in the Internet community over which is correct).  Basically, the way DNS works is that the Internet really works by a series of numbers (IP addresses), although for the common person, we remember Internet addresses by words instead.  For example, this site is “MindanaoBob.com” but when you type that name into your browser, the DNS system goes into play and converts that name into a series of numbers.

These numbers are dynamic and change often.  For example, if I moved this site to a different server, the IP address of the site would change, but the name that you and I know would remain the same.  Thus, the Domain Name Server needs to have a table that coordinates what numbers are tied to what names.  Also, if a new site comes online, you won’t be able to access it until the DNS system is updated.

Some systems update many times per day with new DNS information. Some systems update once a day.  It’s rare that any Internet Service Provider updates less than once per day though.  Unfortunately, SmartBro’s “ShareIt” system seems to be using a different DNS server from the regular SmartBro service.  One site that I go to regularly recently moved to a new server, and they have a different IP address.  Well, the update happened 4 days ago, but SmartBro’s ShareIt service is still going to the old server.  Yes, I’ve clared my cache, I’ve refreshed, etc.  But, still, DNS is not updated after 4 days!

Normally, I like to use a service called “OpenDNS” to do my DNS lookup.  When you use OpenDNS (or any other non-ISP provided DNS service) then you are basically bypassing the ISP, so SmartBro would be out of the loop completely for the DNS lookup.  However, in the WiFi router that you are required to use for the service, you cannot change the DNS addresses!

Wait!  There is one other way to do it.  I can change each computer individually to use OpenDNS.  That is a bit of a pain to do, but I did it.  You see, if you can change the router, then every computer using that router for Internet access would automatically be using OpenDNS, but if you can’t change the router, then you can change each computer individually, which I did.

Oops!  Another problem.  You see, SmartBro has things set up so that many users all use the same IP address, instead of each person logged on to the system having their own IP.  I don’t care for that, but that is an entirely different discussion.  Anyway, somebody else who uses the same IP address that I use, has already used OpenDNS to set up site filtering for everybody who uses OpenDNS with the same IP!  So, a whole bunch of sites that I want to visit have been deemed “inappropriate” by this person who has appointed himself as the “Network Administrator” for the IP address that I use!

So, I have gone to option #3.  I found some other highly reliable DNS servers that are also open to the public.  I’m not going to say who I am using for DNS service, because I am not 100% certain that they know that they have their DNS service open to the public!  However, if you do a Google search for “public DNS server” you can get a lot of lists of DNS servers that are publicly accessible.

So, I’ve worked around the DNS issues with SmartBro ShareIt service.  Not perfect, but workable.  Let me say, as far as speed goes, though, I am extremely happy with this service.  Even with these DNS issues, I would not change providers at this time.  I do wish, though, that the modem/router that Smart provides were more robust and allowed more user changeable settings.