October 2009 Archives

I'm currently in Seoul, South Korea, for the ICANN meeting. Officially the meeting doesn't start until tomorrow morning, however the venue hotel has been buzzing for the last two days.

If you're not familiar with how ICANN works then a lot of the meetings may seem terribly confusing, as the ICANN community loves its acronyms!

Over the weekend there have been quite a few meetings involving the GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organisation).

Topics being discussed include new gTLDs (ie. new domain extensions such as .gay, .sport,.nyc etc.,), IDN ccTLDs (see some of my previous posts) and the usual mishmash of updates on existing policies. 

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• ICANN Seoul - Less Than A Week Away (blacknight.com)

People get confused by DNS and apart from email related issues it probably accounts for more technical support issues than anything else.

The problems and the issues may not go away anytime soon, but we thought we could help people resolve them quickly with a simple online tool

Enter "My DNS Check"..



Based on the DNS Doctor provided by Centralnic, My DNS Check lets you check your domain name's DNS configuration quickly and easily.

We'll be adding more features to the tool based on YOUR feedback, so let us know what you'd like to see and we'll try to add it.

The ICANN meeting in Seoul will be starting next weekend and we will be attending.

The agenda will, as usual, be varied with topics covering the many different areas of internet policy, current topics and the future.

I love being able to organise discounts and deals for our clients. It's fun.

So this latest offer is really exciting.

It's not a mere discount - it's actually 100% free!

Spinnaker Pro, who offer a range of email marketing services, have teamed up with us to give our clients 1000 free email credits.

Simply signup here and use the coupon code: blacknight

A couple of us were at The Irish Web Awards last Saturday night in Dublin.

The event, which was organised by Mulley Communications and sponsored by Realex Payments, was very enjoyable and hopefully we'll be able to go again next year.

Unlike a lot of other award events which are highly commercial in nature, the Irish Web Awards are very much "community" run. With some awards you get the feeling that only "big" agencies get to enter their "pet projects" and unless you "conform" you don't stand much chance of winning.

The Irish Web Awards are quite the opposite and it shows in the list of winners.

You'll find a very wide range of sites on the list of winners. While they may not appear to have anything in common they do - they're all run by people who are passionate about what they do.

The event itself was very informal compared to the "traditional" awards ceremonies that I've been to. And just because it was informal does not mean that it was not as professional - in many respects the awards were better organised than a lot of the other  ones I've been to over the years.

A large number of our clients were shortlisted for various awards and I was delighted to see that so many of them won. And even those who didn't win had already received recognition by making it as far as the shortlist.

Thanks to the organisers and sponsors for organising it all and hopefully we'll see you at it next year!

If your site is using .info as its main domain then you could win up to $7500.

Afilias, the company that runs .info, is running a competition for .info website owners to celebrate excellence.

Further information and entry form is available on the awards site.

Here's the official press release:

DUBLIN, IRELAND - October 7, 2009 - Today, Afilias announced the opening
of the 2009 .INFO Awards. The awards, first created in 2006, rewards the
best professionally created .INFO Web sites from around the world. .INFO
Site owners are able to submit their .INFO site for consideration until
11:59 p.m. on October 23, 2009.

Sites will be judged in two parts. First a panel of judges, to be
announced in mid-October, will create a shortlist of final contenders
based on select criteria. These criteria include: presentation of
content, functionality of the website, design, usability, and
originality. The shortlist of the top ten best sites will then be
published at www.info-award.info on November 2, 2009, at which point
members of the public will be allowed to cast their vote for their
favorite site. Public votes will be combined with judges scores to
determine the final top three winners.

Prizes for the awards include: US$7,500 for the first place winner,
US$5,000 for second place, and US$3,000 for third place. All winners
will be announced in November and will be notified directly via e-mail.

For more details or to submit your .INFO site for the 2009 .INFO Awards,
please see www.info-award.info.

About .INFO
.INFO was the first generic, unrestricted TLD to be launched since .com
and is the largest new TLD launched in over 25 years. Registrations in
.INFO first became available in 2001. Since then, .INFO has grown to
become the fourth largest gTLD in the world with over 5 million domain
names registered. Domains are currently available in ten
Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) scripts. A directory of great .INFO
sites is available at http://www.info.info/directory. For more
information on .INFO please visit www.info.info

About Afilias
Afilias is a global provider of Internet infrastructure services that
connect people to their data. Afilias' reliable, secure, scalable, and
globally available technology supports a wide range of applications
including Internet domain registry services, Managed DNS, and services
in the RFID and supply chain market with its Afilias Discovery Services.
For more information on Afilias please visit www.afilias.info.

We've been running so many "silly" domain deals in the last few weeks that I almost overlooked one - our price slash on .info domains!

What you get?

.info registration for €4.95

Which registration periods are covered?

One year registration only.

How long is the offer available?

Until December 31st 2009

Is it applicable to ... ?

No. It's only applicable to one year .info registrations.

How much will renewal be?

Renewal prices will be based on our prices at the time of renewal

What is .info?

Info is a generic top level domain extension - currently the 4th largest in terms of volume after .com

Which sites use .info to promote themselves?

There's a directory of .info sites here which is a good starting point

How are you able to do this?

Blacknight is an ICANN accredited registrar and so we're able to negotiate pricing directly with the registry operators


Don't forget - we're also running specials on .eu, .mobi and a few other domain extensions at the moment, so if you want to "dabble" a bit online then why not do it without spending too much money?

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• Dotmobi Price Slash (blacknight.com)
• DotInfo Now Live On Blacknight (blacknight.com)
• Cheap EU Domains - What Would You Do To Get One? (blacknight.com)
• DotCM Now Live (blacknight.com)
• Blacknight Solutions the Largest Irish Seller of .EU Domain Names (blacknight.com)

We like giving away cool stuff to people. It's fun!

So we're going to be giving away a few tshirts via Twitter and Facebook.

Simply follow our Twitter account or become a "fan" on Facebook and keep an eye out for competitions over the next few days. They'll happen at random times throughout the day (and possibly the night)

You could win one of these:



Of course if you don't have the patience to compete just click on the tshirt image and you can order one online ..

We've talked about our fixation with coffee in the past.

We've since discovered, to my horror,  that not all of our staff actually drink coffee, but prefer tea.

Needless to say both the coffee and the tea drinkers need mugs to drink out of.

So today we took delivery of some new mugs.

These aren't your "common" or "garden" variety mugs. No. These are serious mugs.

See photos below:

The photo shows a couple of the mugs before they left Owen "mugmaker" Dearing's workshop in Oregon.

So how did we end up with these custom mugs?

How come we got handmade mugs all the way from Oregon?

I was looking for something "original" and "cool" to put our branding on. I was hoping to find something that would combine originality with affordability, though I wasn't overly disappointed when I failed to find a solution. During the process I came across Owen's site and I really liked what I saw. I bookmarked it and continued on my way.

As I continued my research I kept finding myself coming back to Owen's site, because there was something truly special about what he was doing.

Owen's business isn't massive and it most definitely isn't "faceless".

When I sent him an email asking about shipping details to Ireland and a few other things I got back a very helpful and friendly reply from him.

So I decided that it would be a nice idea to get a few of the mugs for the Blacknight staff. They're attractive and functional and it's a nice way to say "thanks" to them all for their hard work (it will also make it easier to track down people who don't clean up after themselves!)

Owen, who strikes me as  a very cool guy, kept me updated on the progress of the mugmaking via email and Twitter.

Here are shots of the mugs before they were glazed and fired (a process that took more than 24 hours!):


And another one:

Owen also does Twitter mugs, so I simply had to get one of those as well!

The only problem now is that the mugs are so big that you end up making a double coffee to fill them!