I posted earlier about the way that the main support@ezboard.com e-mail address has been bouncing merrily, despite ezboard/Yuku’s developer and an ezboard Help [sic] Forum moderator* saying they’d get it fixed.

Well there have been some changes now. That feedback link in the domain-wide footer has now been removed completely.

And Reg (Brian James, or “the Brain” as he’s being referred to in some quarters…) has been forced to admit he’s wrong - something he hates to do, what with that inflated ego of his. Having written:

“The e-mail address is valid. It should be working again shortly.”

he has now been forced to admit that:

“Yeah, I was wrong.

The e-mail infact does not work and it was my mistake. There was some miscommunication at the office.

http://www.yuku.com/help/ticket/

If you need to contact staff, use that URL.”

Don’t forget that according to the adverts they placed for developers and other staff, they work in one office together…

Of course, it might have made sense if someone had told Reg about the announcement posted over on ezboard back on 13 May 2002 where they said that the support@ezboard.com “is defunct”.

So I decided to look at how people can make contact with Yuku. Details are provided here for the meantime - ezboard does have a habit of changing things to suit themselves:
http://www.yuku.com/homepage/contact/t/Contact-Yuku.jsp

“You’ll want to contact us in different ways depending on why you want to reach us.

You may be tempted for example to use the Great Ideas e-mail to ask a question or to send a legal issue to the ads e-mail. But the fastest way for you to get satisfaction is to start at the right place to get your answer.

Now there isn’t a formal Yuku Help Community any longer, but as usual, ezboard haven’t chosen to correct the page.

So let’s have a look at those e-mail addresses. Firstly, we’ll look at who they’re registered with and who handles the MX (e-mail) records. Domain names are getting cheaper and cheaper to register with the normal cost around $10 when they’re not charged at zero as part of a hosting package. So let’s do a lookup on yukucorp.com:

Registrant:
 ezboard Inc
 564 Market Street
 705
 San Francisco, CA 94104
 US
 415 773 0400×255
 

Domain Name: YUKUCORP.COM

Administrative Contact:
 Labatt, Robert robertlabatt@ezboardcorp.com
 564 Market Street
 705
 San Francisco, CA 94104
 US
 415 773 0400×255
 

Technical Contact:
 Gakovic, Ceco ceco@ezboardcorp.com
 564 Market Street
 705
 San Francisco, CA 94104
 US
 415 773 0400×214
 

Record last updated 06-20-2005 01:48:44 PM
Record expires on 06-20-2007
Record created on 06-20-2005

Domain servers in listed order:
 NS29.1AND1.COM 217.160.224.2
 NS30.1AND1.COM 217.160.228.2

Yes, it seems that ezboard is using 1&1 for this domain. Nothing wrong with that, of course: indeed, I’ve been suggesting that people do as ezboard does and use someone else like 1&1 to host a proper message board system like I already do.

Except that this brings up an interesting question: has ezboard fallen out with Everyone.net? Surely the cost of a domain name can’t have come into it as any difference would be peanuts. Now we know from the e-mail bounces to support@ezboard.com that ezboard uses Everyone.net for that domain’s e-mail. And what would the big deal be if they had fallen out with them?

The simple answer is “Labrador Ventures“. Now as I’ve mentioned before, Sean Foote is on the Board of Directors of Everyone.net and the last time I was able to check ezboard’s web site, he was on ezboard, Inc.’s board too. He’s also a partner at Labrador Ventures where Robert Labatt’s wife is CFO.

So why would ezboard, Inc. ditch Everyone.net and go with an ‘external’ company for its e-mail? The same ‘external’ company that also handles e-mail for the domain name ezboardcorp.com.

Well at this stage it would be pure conjecture if I were to suggest that maybe ezboard, Inc. has outstayed its welcome in the Labrador Ventures camp, although that might be understandable given the cash burn that is Yuku - remember that Yuku has been in development since early 2005 at least and has yet to generate any income, apparently.

Banned for 'privacy violation'Or maybe ezboard, Inc. are worried about privacy concerns - which would be rich given their continuing libel about me. Yes, ezboard continue to publish untruths about me, despite my having asked them repeatedly for any shred of evidence to justify their assertions since June 2005 when they first libelled me.

*You can’t call the ezboard Help [sic] Forum moderators that when they’re dealing with Yuku, since the closure of the Yuku help [sic] forums.