Monthly Archives: April 2009

Mon 13th April 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
The ICA Comments To ICANN - The Internet Commerce Association, (ICA) of which we are a gold member, just posted its comments to ICANN on the 2nd draft of the Guidebook on the new gTLD’s, which as we keep telling you has issues which currently would impact domains you now own. The comment period closes today. You still have time to comment by e-mail your comments to: 2gtld-guide@icann.org.  Remember to check your e-mail as almost immediately you will receive a confirmation request from ICANN which you must reply to for your ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Dell Refused To Spend $750 A Month On Adamo.com - According to MSNBC.com Dell, Inc. refused to spend $750 a month to lease the domain Adamo.com prior to releasing new ultrathin laptop. Dell was offered the $750 a month deal by Bill Sweetman, General Manager of Tucows owned Yummydomains.com. “”””Yummy Domains General Manager Bill Sweetman said he initially approached Dell in February, about three weeks before the launch. Yummy Domains had noticed a spike in traffic after Dell gave a preview of the Adamo at the Consumer Electronics Show in ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
What Happens To BroadBand When The Price SkyRockets? - Time Warner cable has been talking about it for quite a while and now seems to have a plan in place to for a variable pricing, depending on amount of bandwidth a customer uses. The pricing could leave consumers paying up to $150 a month for Internet access. Here is the proposed pricing according to Engadget.com: A limited package for “light users” at 1GB/month, 768KB down / 128KB up, with overage charges of $2/GB/month. Road Runner Lite, Basic, Standard, and Turbo packages at 10GB / 20GB / 40GB ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Appraisal Scam Migrates to TropicalNames.com - Warning: avoid purchasing domain name appraisals from TropicalNames.com. The domain name appraisal scam — which was reborn with a different tact last month — has changed its target domain name appraisal service. A new scam email requests a domain name appraisal from TropicalNames.com. TopicalNames.com was just registered on April 2. Last month’s e-mails tried to get users to pay for domain name appraisals at a bogus outfit called Pozde.com. The emails offer ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New York: Deciding Between Domain Names and Trash Service - City points out an obvious reason why it may not want its own top level domain name. In comments (pdf) to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), New York City Senior Counsel Katherine Winningham says application fees for new top level domain names are too high: “Based on the current economic situation and its impact on governmental entities, [New York City] again wishes to voice its concern that the application, operational, and dispute resolution ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Smashing Pumpkins’ Corgan Understands Domain Names - Billy Corgan wants to get domain names before announcing new projects. What can major corporations such as Dell learn from Smashing Pumpkins rocker Billy Corgan? Secure your domain names before announcing new products. In a recent blog post, Corgan wrote that he’s working on a couple new bands and a solo project, but that he’s not spilling the beans until he secures the requisite domain names: I have notions to start 2 other bands and also release some more ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
It’s D-Day for ICANN Comments - Want to speak your mind? Today’s the day. If you have an opinion (and you should) about the second draft of ICANN’s plans to inundate the web with more top level domain names, today is the deadline to submit comments. As was the case last time, major corporations are waiting until the last day to submit comments. So far the trend seems to be that companies are saying “we submitted comments last time, you did nothing about them, so please refer to our previous ... read more ...
Sun 12th April 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
WebCam.com Sells for $1.02 Million - Domain name WebCam.com is top sale at Rick Latona auction. Rick Latona wasn’t happy with the live portion of his company’s adult domain name auction. But he should be feeling a lot better now that WebCam.com sold for $1,020,000 in the silent auction. Latona previously confirmed a $1 million bid on the domain name was valid, so it’s fairly safe to say this deal will be concluded. The silent auction sold a handful of other valuable domain names, some of which ... read more ...
Sat 11th April 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
Comment Period For ICANN Closing On Monday: Why You Need To Comment & Here’s Our’s - The public comment period for the second draft of the guidebook for the new gTLD extensions closes on Monday. What’s at stake? Much more than just the rules for the new gTLDs. What ICANN winds up doing on these new extensions, will impact all existing extensions, including .com’s. Why? Because all registries want the same treatment. You can’t even argue with this point. If a new registry for .whatever gets a contract that says they have the right to say, charge whatever the want for each domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Pol for Politicians? Easier Said Than Done. - Op-ed suggests .pol to avert political cybersquatting. But the devil is in the details. Matthew Sanderson, a political law attorney at Caplin Drysdale in Washington, published an op-ed in the Washington Post today suggesting a new .pol domain name. This domain name would be reserved for politicians as a way to avoid “political cybersquatting”, whereby people snap up domain names of politicians to grab internet traffic. The proposal makes sense on the surface, ... read more ...
Fri 10th April 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
ICANN Publishes Answers To Questions Submitted Remotely For Mexico City Show - Prior to the last ICANN meeting held in Mexico City, ICANN set up a system where you could submit a question concerning the new gTLD’s which might be asked and answered at the meeting. (You can read our post about this process here).  The questions were limited to 30 words, in twitter like fashion. ICANN has just published the results for this project. You can view all the questions asked, whom asked them and the response given by ICANN to the questions by clicking here. I haven’t reviewed these ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
WSJ: Microsoft & Yahoo In Talks On Ad Deal - The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft and Yahoo are discussing a deal in which they would sell advertising for each other. “””It is unclear whether the talks, which could produce a collaboration without a full-fledged acquisition or major asset sale, will result in an agreement.””” According the the Journal, one discussion concerns Microsoft selling ads alongside Yahoo’s search results and Yahoo selling some premium display, or graphical, ads on Microsoft properties. Of ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Warning: Godaddy Phishing Attack Underway - Over the last hour I have received about 10 message purported to be from Godaddy, which is in actuality a phishing attack. Like all phishing attempt the e-mail looks legit using Godaddy format, logos, etc, but of course are not real messages and under no circumstances should you click on the links contained in them. Here is the body of the message: “”””This notification is generated automatically as a service to you. Because of unusual number of invalid login attempts on you account, we had ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
WSJ: Yahoo’s May Lose 15% Of Its Search Traffic & Keyword Prices May Fall - According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo may lose up to 15% of its search traffic over the next 12-to-18 months after failing to renew deals with two computer makers. Yahoo was the default search tool on HP and Acer computers. However those deals expired last year and Yahoo’s failure to renew them, according to WSL, could cost Yahoo,  as much as 3% of U.S. search market share. In February, Yahoo conducted 20.6% of U.S. online searches, according to comScore Inc. Therefore if Yahoo loses 3% ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Next Big Thing: Vevo.com? - YouTube and Universal Music Group, announced today that they will jointly launch a premium music video website in the next few months, Vevo.com According to the press release, Vevo,com, “will be a premium online music video hub designed to offer higher-quality videos, as opposed to the typical grainy and often user-generated videos on YouTube.” Universal and YouTube will share advertising revenue generated by Vevo.com According to the release, Vevo will also serve as a syndication platform. This ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
J Lo Get’s Her Domains - In a Wipo action first reported by the domain bible, OK magazine, jenniferlopez.net and jenniferlopez.org were awarded to Mrs. Anthony. The domains according to OK, will be used by the Jennifer Lopez Foundation, “which promotes better access to healthcare for women and children”. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Terminates Parava Domain Name Registrar - Parava Networks and DropLimited.com get the boot. It’s all over for Parava Networks, a domain name registrar that manages valuable domain names such as Marc Ostrofsky’s MutualFunds.com. Yesterday ICANN sent a termination notice (pdf) to Parava, notifying the registrar that it is losing its accreditation. Parava received a breach notice in February for failing to pay its fees, not escrowing whois data, and not taking steps to correct invalid whois information. Parava’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tim Berners-Lee’s Thoughts on New Top Level Domain Names - Inventor of world wide web opposed to introduction of new TLDs. In 2004, prior to the approval and release of the .mobi top level domain name, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a paper explaining the dangers of the introduction of new top level domain names. George Kirikos recently discovered the paper and summarized it in comments to ICANN for its new top level domain proposal. Kirikos’ summary and comments are below, but you can also read Berners-Lee’s entire paper here. (The ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Changing Domain Name Backorder Rules - Multiple backorders will be accepted on domain names. GoDaddy has informed Domain Name Wire that it is changing the way it handles backorders for domains not registered at one of The Go Daddy Group’s domain name registrars. As early as next week GoDaddy will begin accepting more than one backorder on domain names. (Currently only one is accepted). If GoDaddy successfully captures the domain name and more than one backorder was placed, there will be an auction ... read more ...
Thu 9th April 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
PPC Study:A Generic Domain Doubles The Clicks On A PPC Campaign - Memorabledomains.co.uk, A UK based company, released a study (pdf) today, on the performance of using a top generic catergory killer domain in a PPC campaign and compared it to the the results to, using a lesser quality domains. Although the study is just a case study limited to one situation, it is still interesting, especially in the absence of a larger study. According to memorable domains: They tested three domains in an AdWords PPC campaign for electric bicycles. Ads featuring a generic domain ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
FaceBook Hits 200 Million Users Today - Wow Talk about the power of the Internet. Today according to a post on Facebook’s offical blog, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, wrote that Facebook will welcome their 200 millionth active user some time today. One site, 200 million users. It took the United States some 200 years to get the same number of people it took Facebook to reach in just a few. Started in just 2004, well after most of us registered our first domain, Facebook has gone from 1 user to 200,000,000. Think that’s impressive? Consider the  ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Olympics to ICANN: We’ll Sue You - International Olympic Committee threatens legal action against ICANN over new TLDs. In a sternly worded letter to ICANN (here), International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it reserves the right to “take action against ICANN for damages resulting to the IOC or the Olympic Movement from the implementation of the gTLD proposal.” IOC is concerned about the time and expense of protecting its brand as ICANN rolls out new top level domain names, such as .web. That IOC ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
FTC Guidelines Could Affect Bloggers - New guidelines target at endorsements and reviews. New guidelines from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission could have an impact on bloggers writing product reviews. The guidelines (pdf) were published back in November, and a comment period has been extended and is ongoing. The guidelines are related to endorsements and making sure they’re valid, as well as disclosing “material connections”. One example in the guidelines is a video game blogger who receives ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Silicon Labs Gets Its Name Back - Billion dollar company let domain name expire, but wins it back in arbitration. Last month Domain Name Wire wrote about Silicon Labs (NASDAQ: SLAB), a billion dollar company that let the domain name SiliconLabs.com expire. (The company’s web site is at SIlabs.com). Silicon Labs filed for arbitration at National Arbitration Forum. This week an arbitration panel awarded the domain name back to the company, and the name should be transferred within the next few ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
SmoothMove.com: Worst UDRP Decision Ever? - SmoothMove.com decision may not be worst, but it should be high on the list. My blood is boiling. I think I just read one of the worst UDRP arbitration decisions ever. Michael Berkens got screwed, and I hope he takes action. In this case, Berkens registered the domain name SmoothMove.com in 2003 and has parked it since then. All of the links have been generic in nature. Then along came Traditional Medicinals Inc, an herbal medicine company that happens to have ... read more ...