November 2009 Archives

Just because it's on the internet does not mean it's free. You may be able to access plenty of content online at no cost, but that does not give you any right to (ab)use it as you see fit.

Unfortunately when it comes to images a lot of people seem to think that you can just grab an image from a site and reuse it.

You can't.

The only exception to this would be if the rights holder has given you permission to use their images, designs or other content.

So what are your options?

Basically there are three:

1. Ask the rights holder for permission to use their content, be that images or other content. There is, of course, no guarantee that they'll grant you permission
2. Use images and content that is licensed under Creative Commons or similar style licenses. There are several different types of license available and each one has different terms and conditions. If you do go down that route it can be incredibly enriching, but remember to respect the content provider's rights. Read the license terms carefully and respect them.
   
3. Use stock images. While the "big boys" may be able to pay out hundreds of Euro for a single image we know that most people can't, so please read on ...
   

We've arranged a very nice little deal with one of the leaders in stock imagery - Fotolia

If you signup for an account with them using our special link you'll get:

• 3 welcome credits for FREE
• A 20% bonus on your first purchase

In order to get the special deal signup using the link from us and make sure that you complete the signup fully ie. confirm your email address and provide full contact details. If you're concerned about privacy have a read over their privacy policy.

The "freebies" should appear on your account either automatically or within one working day.

Since I'm a strong believer in "eating our own dogfood" we'll be using stock images from Fotolia on our sites in the future as well.

We've been running a series of discounts and promotions on a variety of domain extensions for the last couple of months...

We've now added a $random factor into the equation. Well "equation" might not be the best word.. Let's just call if the "mix".

At completely random times throughout the day (and night) we'll be cutting the price on some domain extensions.

In some cases we'll literally be giving away domains for FREE (gratis, no charge etc)

In other cases we'll charge a Euro or two for a domain.

In all cases you're going to get a fantastic bargain.

So how will you find out about these promotions? (Or maybe we should call them "extra promotions"?)

Simplest way is via Facebook or Twitter.

Depending on the promotion it might be time based ie. a particular cctld extension being set to a specific price for 30 minutes OR they might be based on units ie. the next 50 .com domains or whatever.

We've organised another domain name promotion in our massive end of year domain madness.

Register OR transfer a .be (Belgium) domain name for a paltry €3 (€2.99 to be precise, but we'll overlook the 1 cent!)

Belgium is famous for its beer, food, comic characters (think TinTin) and for being at the heart of the EU.

How do I get this discount?

Simply order a .be (or several) domain via our website. The discount will appear when you add the domains to your shopping cart ie. during the checkout process

Do I need a coupon code for this offer?

No. The discount will appear in the checkout



Who can register a .be domain?

Anyone.

Are there any restrictions on registering .be domains?

No

How long can I register a .be domain for?

One year

Need some inspiration? Try this site

Looking for other great offers on domain names? Check out our full list of current domain discounts

UPDATE: New version of the image courtesy of Forbairt

IDN domains (internationalised domain names) . It's a really horrible acronym, but once you get past that, the actual concept is a lot more interesting.

If you follow the technology press you'll have seen quite a lot of coverage of IDN domains in the last few weeks, as ICANN announced during the recent Seoul meeting that they'd launch them on 16th November 2009 (today).

The ICANN blog reports that they've already received 6 requests, representing 3 different languages. Reports coming in suggest that Egypt has expressed interest in launching an IDN in Arabic, Bulgaria is applying for a Cyrillic script one, Russia will have lodged an application for at least one as well (or are in the process of doing so..)

What does this mean?

For the moment it's hard to say, but the launch of IDN domain names is a step along the path towards a more multicultural and multilingual internet.

The more people who have access to the Internet then the better it will be for everyone ..

Related articles by Zemanta

• Putting The Accent Back Into Domains - IDNs In EU (blacknight.com)
• Egypt launches Arabic web domain (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Learning About CIS, Central and Eastern European Domains (blacknight.com)
• First Arabic domain name registration to begin shortly (thenextweb.com)

While I was at the ICANN meeting in Seoul, South Korea, Pinkard Brand from DotMobi did a short video interview with me about .mobi and the mobile web:



You'll have to excuse the audio quality towards the end - there's a motorbike or something which is a bit distracting!

If you haven't already got your mobile web address then you should grab one now! (We're having a sale on them!)

I'm just back from the ICANN meeting in Seoul, South Korea.

I had planned on posting with updates during the week, but, as you can see, that didn't happen.

Why?

Simply put - it was an incredibly busy meeting, both in general and for me personally.

I'm now back in Ireland struggling to get over jetlag and also trying to process all that happened over the course of the week.

If you've been following the mainstream media then you'll probably have heard about the big announcement regarding internationalised domain names ie. domains using non-Latin character sets.

But what else happened?

New TLDs, which ICANN made a big announcement about in Paris, are still delayed. Early in the week it became apparent that the delays were going to become longer and longer. ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom would not provide any concrete answers when asked about deadlines. However some light did appear at the end of the tunnel when the board met on Friday.

Other topics that were getting a lot of attention included DNSSEC and compliance.

On the DNSSEC side two things are obvious:

1. It's going to be introduced
2. Most registrars won't support it immediately or anytime soon

Compliance and more amendments to the registrar agreements with ICANN are "on the cards".

ICANN's compliance team are working hard on removing "bad actors", but there is still a lot of work to be done and there is a lot of pressure to make even more changes to the contracts. Whether all the changes people are asking for are really warranted or not is another matter entirely.

I'll cover the various topics separately in the coming days ....