Recently in Domains Category

• Letting people choose their country, and automatically pulling in regional search information such as counties or states

• Picking the best available domains - of any extension - and sticking them up the top in a Best Picks box

• Improving the search so it second-guesses where you are going and gets there before you

• Doing a mash-up with Google Maps data or Maxmind's GeoIP tools

• What do you think of the service?

• What do you think of the ideas above?

• Do you have any ideas of your own that you think would make Dropped.ie better?

From: whoiscompliance@enom.com [mailto:whoiscompliance@enom.com]
Sent: 06 January 2010 00:03
To: info@xxxxxxxx.com
Subject: Whois Day 60 / Freeze Notification Letter - Immediate action required for domain xxxxxxx.com


Dear xxxx xxxx,

As your registrar of record, eNom, Inc requests your immediate attention regarding your domain, xxxxxxxx.com.

eNom, Inc, as a US-based company, must comply with US laws.
These laws prohibit us from providing services to Cuba, Iran, and Sudan ("Sanctioned Countries").

Based on the information available to us, some or all of the "whois" contact information for
your Domain is within a Sanctioned Country. As you may know, the "whois" contact information
for a domain includes the billing contact information, the registrant contact information,
the administrative contact information, the technical contact information, and, if applicable,
the auxiliary billing contact information for the domain.

Therefore, we have concluded that your Domain may be controlled by a person located in a Sanctioned Country.

Effective immediately you are no longer permitted to perform financial transactions for your Domain.
Features such as registration renewal and auto-renew have been disabled until you update your contact information.


Kind regards,

eNom Compliance

Email address: whoiscompliance@enom.com

• Upload a scan using the link in the email we sent you
• Via fax to +353 (0) 1 4811 763
• As an attachment via email to sales@blacknight.com (Preferably JPEG)

• The offer is only applicable to the first 99 orders with the coupon code
• The offer will expire on December 23rd 2009 when the IEDR close for Christmas whether we've received 99 orders or not
  
• The offer only applies to 1 year domain registrations OR transfers ie. you cannot use it to register a domain for 2 years
• No we won't apply the discount if you haven't used the code, so please don't ask.

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

• mobi
• info
• org
• tel
  
• cm (Cameroon)
  
• me (Montenegro)
  
• fm
• im (Isle of Man)
  
• be (Belgium)
  
• gg (Guernsey)
  
• je (Jersey)
  
• co.nl (alternate to .nl, which is for Netherlands)
  

• my.tel - which allows you to manage your .tel easily from your mobile
• Superbook - which polls your iphone's address book for any .tel entries and then brings up the full contents (very cool!)

Image via Wikipedia

• transfers
• renewals
• one or two character .im domains (premium)

1. Whether adequate opportunity exists for registrants to redeem their expired domain names;
2. Whether expiration-related provisions in typical registration agreements are clear and conspicuous enough;
3. Whether adequate notice exists to alert registrants of upcoming expirations;
4. Whether additional measures need to be implemented to indicate that once a domain name enters the Auto-Renew Grace Period, it has expired (e.g., hold status, a notice on the site with a link to information on how to renew, or other options to be determined);
5. Whether to allow the transfer of a domain name during the Redemption Grace Period (RGP).

1. com
2. net
3. org
4. info
5. biz
6. mobi
7. name
8. museum
9. pro
10. cat
11. aero
12. asia
13. coop
14. jobs
15. tel
16. travel
17. edu
    
18. gov
19. mil
20. int

• cultural / special interest groups - like the Basques or Breton
  
• city domains - New York, Berlin, Paris are all pitching for their own tlds (.nyc, .berlin, .paris)
  
• commercial - too many to even begin naming
  
• other - single registrant type applications for example if BMW were to get .bmw
  

• Mobile switcher to detect mobile visitors and provide an appropriate experience
• Base mobile theme for quick-and-easy XHTML-MP compliance
• Extended mobile themes so you can unleash your mobile creativity
• Transcoding and device adaptation to optimise the mobile experience
• DeviceAtlas integration for world-class adaptation
• Mobile admin panel for when posts can't wait
• Mobile ad widget to make you some money (you can choose between Adsense and Admob)
  
• Barcode widget to help users bookmark your blog

On days like today I wish I had a Blackberry or an iPhone...

Telnic, the guys who run dottel, have made available some new applications for users of Blackberry and iPhone.

If you have either device you can grab the software on the Telnic downloads site (mobile accessible)

I'd love to know how people get on with the software and am almost tempted to get myself an iPhone or Blackberry just to try it out ..

• Reverb Studios
• Black Dog
• PuddleDucks

• Outlook
• iPhone
• Windows Mobile
• Blackberry

• .tel does not support "normal websites"
• You cannot specify your own nameservers - all .tel domains will be hosted by Telnic

We suspect there's going to have to be at least three, and I suspect four, rounds of the application guidebook before it's ready for finalization.  And if you follow all the consultation steps that we need to do to follow those rounds and the meeting schedule, as I said in a release last week, the first step -- we could not expect to have applications before December, and it may well be February (2010)

Our major findings are:

1. Phishers continue to target specific Top-Level Domains (TLDs) and specific domain name registrars, and shift their preferences over time. Metrics that measure the pervasiveness of phishing in TLDs provide a valuable way to identify exploitation by phishers who register domain names.

2. Anti-phishing programs implemented by domain name registries can have a noticeable effect on the up-times (durations) of phishing attacks. We see some direct correlation between the efforts of several large gTLD and ccTLD operators and the amount of time that phishing sites remained live within their TLDs.

3. Phishers are engaged in the large-scale use of subdomain services to host and manage their phishing sites. Such attacks even account for the majority of attacks in certain large TLDs.

Image via Wikipedia

A lot of the questions we get asked on a regular basis are about moving your hosting without downtime and without too many headaches.

If you leave switching provider until the last minute it will be painful, so please don't!

We'd recommend people to look into changing their hosting provider BEFORE their current hosting subscription expires.

We've got a couple of simple articles on our site to help guide you through the process:

Guide to Moving Hosting Provider

and of course a

Transferring Domains

If you follow the steps outlined by us you shouldn't have too many headaches.

However, there are a few things that people need to take into account.

• Email - make sure you download it from your previous provider
• Email accounts - make sure you set them up on our servers. There is no way for us to know which email accounts you were using with another provider.
• Website content - make sure you have a recent backup from your previous provider.
• Databases - If your site uses databases (MySQL or others) the connection strings / parameters will need to be changed and updated to reflect the settings on our servers. You'll also need to ensure that you have a recent backup of any databases you were using.

Image via Wikipedia

• $7.02 US
• £3.92 Sterling

Image via Wikipedia

1. discover.asia (US$112,111)
2. sex.asia (US$ 83,334)
3. buy.asia (US$73,000).

Image via Wikipedia

At the midpoint of 2008, there were 168 million domain name registrations across all
of the Top Level Domain Names (TLDs). This represents a four percent growth over the
first quarter of 2008 and a 22 percent growth over the same quarter last year. The base
of Country Code Top Level Domain Names (ccTLDs) totaled 65 million domain names,
a four percent increase quarter over quarter and a 27 percent increase year over year

• co.uk - general / business - no restriction and the most popular
  
• org.uk - non-profit - no restriction
• me.uk - individuals - no restriction
• ltd.uk - UK Limited Company - restricted - UK company details
• plc.uk - UK PLC - restricted
• net.uk - restricted - only open to UK ISPs
  
• sch.uk - restricted - only open to UK schools

We've added a couple of more Flash tutorials to the support section of our site.

The new tutorials cover using the control panel to manage DNS, change nameservers and use the autoinstaller (Application Vault) to setup applications like Wordpress or Movable Type.

You can now easily manage your domain's DNS settings including setting up both masked and unmasked forwarders via the control panel.

Any IE domain name registered via our new system is also fully manageable ie. you can update its nameservers without our intervention.

So if you suffer from insomnia you can update your nameservers in the middle of the night if you want to (bear in mind the IE Domain Registry does not reload every 5 minutes, so you won't gain much by doing that!).

We've been talking to a lot of our clients about the new control panel system over the past couple of weeks and the feedback you've been giving us has been really helpful.

Feel free to let us know what you think - we don't bite! Honest!

Is there some part of the control panel that you find confusing?

Why not let us know and we'll get a new tutorial done up for it.

One of the things that people really really hated about our old order system was the lack of a bulk order option for domains.

Our nice new shiny order system solves this issue once and for all!

You can now order up to 100 domains at once via our new bulk order system.

We're also adding support for more TLDs to the website order system. We don't want to play email ping pong with you anymore than you do!

Earlier today our developers were doing some housekeeping on IE domains.

What we were doing was updating some of the technical contact details to maintain some level of uniformity.

While this change had zero impact on the domains themselves and only affected the WHOIS data, the registry's system still sent multiple emails to registrants confirming the changes.

Unfortunately the wording of the emails may have been a bit confusing!

In any case, now you hopefully know what that was all about!

If anyone has any queries please feel free to contact us

A few weeks ago Krishna De and I spent an afternoon recording a series of short podcasts on hosting, domain registration, seo and related topics for the PodCamp Ireland series.

Krishna De has given me permission to use and abuse the hosting tip series, so I will probably make them available from here shortly (I'm still trying to find an embeddable mp3 player that I actually like!)

If people like this kind of thing it shouldn't be that hard to organise more of them....

We announced a while ago that multi year .ie registrations were going to be available soon. Wednesday last week this went live, you can now register an IE domain for upto 10 years. Currently we're allowing 1-5, and 10 years, we'll change this in a week or two once things settle down.

The second thing to announce is that you can now change the name servers of your newly purchased .ie domain names via our customer control panel (Playfully referred to as CCP by our support team) by clicking on "Billing" > "Domain Management" and then click on any .ie domain. One small niggly bug remains, for domains that are transferred into us from another reseller or the registry themselves can't yet be updated. This should be enabled in a week or so, it's a minor code fix on our end.

So to summarise, you can now register a .ie domain for upto 10 years and you can update the nameservers for your newly registered .ie domains via our CCP (without needing to ask us!).

More coming soon!

To celebrate the launch of our nice new shiny hosting platform we've slashed the price on domains by about 33%.

We were charging € 8.25 for a .com, whereas now we're charging a mere € 5.99.

And don't forget our fantastic price on IE domains - a mere 24.99 € !

When you combine that with the value of one of our generous hosting plans you get a deal that is truly hard to pass up!

Our new control panel makes managing your domains child's play.

The IEDR, the people who look after the IE domain space, have announced the introduction of multiyear registrations of IE domains.

The change comes into effect at close of business Wednesday and will allow us to offer IE domains for periods up to 10 years, namely:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 year registration periods.

This change will not affect domain renewals or transfers, so if you already have a registered IE domain you cannot append years to its registration period at present.

The IEDR have said that they are looking into rectifying this at some point in the not too distant future.

Image via Wikipedia

While most people have been very positive about the new website and the new hosting plans there seems to be one area that is causing confusion.... logins.

Sorry about that!

If you placed an order for hosting or domain registration (apart from VPS) prior to Friday 8th August you can login here with your email address and password.

For all orders placed after Friday afternoon you should login here.

If you want to host a domain you already bought with us on the new shiny hosting system there is no issue. It's just a matter of updating DNS :)

And if you have any issues or queries please do let us know!

Image via Wikipedia

If DNS is not setup correctly your website(s) will not display, or if your ISP's DNS is having issues you won't be able to visit websites either.

Of course there are also nasty things that can happen if DNS is exploited.

If you want to be sure that your provider's dns is setup correctly then you can use a handy little tool provided by IANA.

You can read more about the tool and what it does on the ICANN site

If you've just gone to our website you may notice that it's changed. Not just a minor overhaul, but a full redesign (SpoiltChild) with CMS magic (2Bscene) and various other things integrated (Blacknight internal).

The new hosting plans offer:

• More space
• More bandwidth
• Single login
• More features
• More databases and database technologies

We will be migrating client billing accounts and domains into the new billing system as soon as we can (ie. over the next few weeks) but there is no magical way to move hosting from our old systems.

I'll be posting a bit over the next few days in more detail about the new plans and what we're doing that's different.

If you have any issues or simply want to give us feedback please do.

Just a quick reminder!

If you want to make your voice heard about how the IE namespace is managed now is the time.

The public consultation period closes this Friday at 5.30pm, so head on over to the ComReg site and let your voice be heard.

One of the downsides of a free market is that people can and will change their pricing.

Verisign will be upping the registry prices on both .com and .net on October 1st 2008, while .org will push theirs up on November 9th.

We'll be keeping an eye on how this pricing affects us and will let you know if we need to adjust our pricing accordingly.

This weekend is a bank holiday weekend here in Ireland and in many other countries across the globe.

While I wish the weather was as nice as in my fantasy photo (see above) unfortunately it's raining heavily here.

Our sales and accounts teams will be back in the office again on Tuesday morning.

Technical support will be available over the long weekend, as usual, via the helpdesk.

If you have a dedicated server or colocation / transit services, please refer to the "out of hours" support details. If you don't have them for any reason let us know.

Enjoy the long weekend!

We're happy to announce that we've finally enabled dotmobi (.mobi) transfers.

If you have a .mobi domain registered elsewhere you can transfer it to us for the low cost of € 10 (ex-vat).

Similar to .com and many other domain extensions, .mobi uses the EPP system, so you will need to ensure that you have the EPP key from your current registrar before you initiate the domain transfer on our site.

Quite a few of our clients will have received emails over the last couple of days about their domains' contact details.

The text of the email is similar to this:

Dear Domain Holder,

This message is a reminder to help you keep the contact data associated with your domain registration up-to-date.

As of October 31, 2003 we are required by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to send you this reminder by the Anniversary date of each registered Domain Name that is subject to the terms and conditions of that organization.

Below is a list of domain names with your email address listed as the registrant or administrative contact. The current contact information associated with the domain may be verified by following the link provided.

If any of the contact data is inaccurate, it must be corrected. If you need assistance in accessing your account to make these updates, please reply to this email. If the contact data is accurate, no further action is required to comply with this notice.

Please remember that under the terms of your registration agreement, the provision of false Whois (contact) information can be grounds for cancellation of your domain name registration.

It also includes a reference to the domain and a link to a page showing you the current details.

If the details aren't correct you can update them via your billing control panel quite easily and if you need assistance please let us know.

Keeping your domain details up to date will save you headaches, so do take the time to verify that it is all up to date.

Image via Wikipedia

The idea behind the new policy (PDF) is to help stem online fraud and cybercrime of various kinds, however the policy document itself is very ambiguous in its wording.

While ambiguity might be a good idea in certain contexts it's not a good idea when it can affect people's businesses and income.

Both myself and several other people have gone on the record about this, but ICANN seem to have approved the policy change regardless.

Image by el frijole via Flickr

According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog (via), the latest firmware release for both the iPhone and iPod Touch includes support for other domain extensions; namely .net, .edu and .org.

The inclusion of .edu is an odd one. Either they're targetting a LOT of US students or there's something very odd going on. What's odder still is that they've completely excluded dotMobi (.mobi) as well as .info and .biz. Surely adding support for .mobi would have been more logical on a mobile device than adding .edu?

Image via Wikipedia

I personally own a very eclectic mix of domains including a .kz (Kazakhstan), but I know that that kind of madness isn't for everyone!

While catching up on RSS feeds this morning I came across a short piece about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. While most of the press are focussing on their newborns the writer in question had spotted that Ms Jolie, or someone acting for her, had registered a bunch of domains related to the twins.

That's good going!

It's never too early to register a domain name. Registering your child's name, for example, means that they'll have their own little slice of cyberspace when they're ready for it.

In the case of the Jolie - Pitt babies it's a little different, as they were bound to attract plenty of online interest for the next few years, so registering the domains now will save them a lot of headaches (and money) further down the line.

So when should you register a domain?

When you want to. When you can. When you feel that you should.

Worst case scenario, your idea doesn't blossom and grow and you let the domain expire.

One of the things to come out of the recent ICANN meeting in Paris may have slipped "under the radar" due to the media attention for new TLDs.

Pir, the organisation that manages the dotOrg registry (.org) was granted permission to implement DNSSEC.

DNSSEC, in simple terms, adds a level of security to DNS and can help prevent spoofing. While the implementation of DNSSEC has been discussed at length by many people over the last couple of years it's only with PIR's move that we may see it becoming a reality.

You can read more about what they are doing and why over on the official PIR blog.

Blacknight Solutions, Ireland's leading internet services company, is now accredited to sell .co.nl domain names. By registering a .co.nl domain name, for example myname.co.nl, registrants have the opportunity to reach a wider audience, particularly in The Netherlands.

Domain names with the .co.nl extension can be registered by anyone anywhere, unlike the .nl country code that requires a contact point in The Netherlands.

"Becoming an accredited registrar for .co.nl domain names allows us to give our clients an even wider range of options for registering domain names", said Blacknight CEO Michele Neylon.

"It extends the level of service we can offer our clients, making Blacknight Solutions a one-stop shop for all a businesses' internet hosting and domain name requirements."

With over three million .nl domain names already registered, obtaining your preferred .nl domain name can be difficult, however with this new extension, it will be much easier.

To ensure our clients get the .co.nl domain of your choice, Blacknight Solutions suggests contacting us as soon as possible to discuss requirements.

The .co.nl domain name extension was launched at the ICANN meeting in Paris held from 23-26 June, 2008. To ensure every person and every company has a fair chance to register their own .co.nl domain name, there will be a Sunrise process, as outlined below.

During this Sunrise period, every owner of a .nl and/or a valid trademark registration has the exclusive opportunity to register the international variant of their domain name within the defined Sunrise periods:
Sunrise 1: Grandfather period - commencing date Q3 2008
During the Grandfather period, owners of a .nl have an exclusive right to register their .co.nl as well. This implies that a registrant owning mydomain.nl, will be the only entity that has the opportunity to register mydomain.co.nl during the Grandfather period.

Sunrise 2: Registered Trademarks - commencing date Q4 2008
Domains that were not registered during Sunrise 1 (Grandfather) can still be claimed by trademark owners during the second phase. These applications will also be reviewed by a Verification Agent.

Multiple eligible applications of the same .co.nl name received during the 2nd Sunrise period will be assigned on a first come first served basis.

Landrush/ Go live - commencing date Q1 2009
In the Landrush phase, application requests can be made by the general public without restriction. They will be accepted on a first comes first served basis.

(Mentioned dates are merely indicative. Specific dates will be communicated two months before the actual launch)

The Irish communications regulator, Comreg, has opened a public consultation period about dotIE (.ie), which I mentioned last week.

This follows on from a study conducted by Comreg into stakeholder attitudes towards the IE namespace and the current registry operator, IEDR.

We get a lot of people complaining to us about the IE domain registration process, so now is the time for them to make their opinions known.

You can download the consultation document and submit your feedback via email or more "traditional" methods.

I'll be submitting a detailed set of answers to Comreg before the August deadline.

Last week's ICANN meeting proved to be incredibly busy, both in terms of number of attendees and the number of announcements made.

From our point of view there were a number of topics that are relevant and important to our business and I'll be posting about some of these in the coming weeks both here and on my personal domain blog.

Last Thursday morning I was on the panel for a workshop on IPv6. There were four of us on the panel talking about our experiences from very different angles. If nothing else I definitely feel that I learnt something from it.

Of course the big announcement of the week was in relation to new Gtlds. Unfortunately a lot of people seem to have cherrypicked from the announcements and now seem to think that all sorts of crazy domain extensions will now be available. They won't. (I'll follow up on this over the next few days).

As John mentioned on his blog, ICANN have finally taken steps to mitigate "domain tasting". It won't stop it outright, but it should curtail it quite a bit. It will also have the handy side-effect of stopping Network Solutions' practice of "holding" domains for "clients", as they won't be able to do it without incurring a fee.

The Afilias team were at ICANN Paris in full force and held a drinks reception to celebrate the launch of dotme (Montenegro).

Closer to home (relatively speaking), Telnic announced their launch timeline. They've also started rolling out demo applications so that both users and developers can get a "feel" for the things you can do with a dottel domain (.tel).

The next few months should be an interesting time for the domain industry!

ICANN's 32nd International public meeting opened in Paris yesterday morning.

There are several hot topics on the agenda and judging by the crowds of people at last night's welcome cocktail, attendance levels are good.

If you're interested in finding out more head over to the meeting's official site where you can find details of meetings, talks, presentations and more.

The areas that are bound to attract attention this week are quite diverse and encompass topics such as new TLDs, the launch of .tel (dottel), Whois (again!), registry failover, the registrar agreement and both IDNs and IPv6. (Can you say "acronym hell"??)

Of course no ICANN meeting would be complete without an equally busy social agenda and last night's welcome cocktail at La Defense (photo above) was no different. Wednesday's gala dinner is being held in yet another famous Parisian landmark (more on that Thursday I hope!)

At 12 today the IE Domain Registry will do it's latest domain deletion run. If you're on the lookout for a "tasty" IE domain then check the deleted list anytime after 12.

You never know what you might find!

What's the catch?

There is no catch.

Do dropped IE domains cost more?

No. They cost exactly the same as any other new registration. We're currently charging a mere € 21 (ex-vat)

Do you know if a particular domain will become available today?

No. We can only see which domains we are billing contact for will become available and when. If you are interested in a particular domain we'd recommend checking its registration status. If the domain is showing "suspended" instead of "active" then it's probably going to drop off very soon.

How often do the IE Domain Registry delete domains?

Every two weeks.

Where can I get a list of dropped IE domains?

There's a list of them on our site here.

Why would I register a dropped domain?

There are a lot of reasons why dropped domains can be attractive.
In some cases it can simply be a case of a relevant domain. In others you might be able to pick up some traffic quickly, as an established site might have links pointing to it.

Due to maintenance being conducted by Eurid, the organisation that manages dotEU, we will be unable to process new registrations or updates to EU domains this Saturday, May 24th.

Eurid are expanding their infrastructure and migrating servers etc., to a new data centre. As a result of this they've decided to take the registry backend offline for upto six hours on Saturday starting at 8am Irish time (9am Belgian time).

UPDATE: All services should be working as normal

Every time I write one of these "heads up" posts I silently hope and pray that it will be the last. Of course it never is.

At present there are two scams doing the rounds.

Our "friends" in Domain Registry of America are still sending out letters to thousands of domain holders. As I've said before - dump the letters if you get them. You can read them if you want, but you're better off simply ignoring them completely.

Another, more disturbing, scam is being sent around by EU Business Services Ltd promoting the "EU Company Directory".

The devil is in the details, so if you look at the fine print you will find that signing off on a "simple" listing will set you back close to 1000 euro! I think I've personally received about 6 emails from these people about their "wonderful service" in the past few days. Do yourself a favour - bin it!

Basically they're doing the same thing as Euro Business Guide. They're probably the same people.

Every time a new TLD launches the registry operators have to come up with ways of distributing "premium" names.

Premium names are the "super" domains that are usually dictionary words or close to them. These domains are easy to remember and easy to get to. The most heavily demanded ones are usually related to the adult industry, so it's not surprising to see that there is always a heavy demand for sex.tld (where tld is the TLD in question)

In the case of dotEU Eurid ran a couple of "sunrise" periods, which were open to trademark and other prior rights holders ie. entities that had a valid claim on a name via a trademark or other method. Even though dotEU has been up and running for some time there are still plenty of legal battles being fought over the sunrise domains.

With dotAsia they have opted for a number of sunrise periods as well, but they also added in an auction scheme to make it more "interesting". If more than one request was made for a domain name in landrush then the domain is automatically put into an auction which is being managed by Pool. What makes it all the more interesting is that some people are suspecting foul play.

Personally I find the entire system of auctions quite confusing and frustrating, as I've ended up bidding against myself for at least one name. I won't be able to use the domain until someone wins the auction!

Oh well... hopefully dotTel will do a better job of their launch!

As of a few minutes ago we have dropped the price of IE domains across the board.

No special links or coupons required.

ALL IE domains are now 21 euro ex-vat for both new registrations and renewals.

We've also got a list of the latest dropped IE domains, so you can grab a previously owned domain - nothing wrong with secondhand domains!

I'm delighted to announce that the IE zone rebuilds are now more frequent.

The new zone rebuild times are:
10:00, 12:00, 17:00 and 22:00

AND it is set to rebuild 7 days a week, 365 days a year!

This is a major improvement for IE domain holders, as now updates, changes and new registrations will be processed much more efficiently.

Today is a historical day for the IE namespace, as it has finally breached the one hundred thousand domain barrier.

The graph below shows growth over time

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the namespace to double again in size.

Compared to some of our EU neighbours 100 thousand domains is a very small number. The UK registry, Nominet, handles in excess of 100 thousand new registrations every month!

Of course it's a bit unfair to draw parallels between the UK and Ireland.

While there have been considerable improvements in the registration process many registrants still feel that the process is quite arduous compared to that of .com.

In many ways the biggest improvement was the introduction of an API, which allows companies such as ourselves to send registration requests, updates and deletions directly to the registry.

In real terms that means that as soon as you place an order for an IE domain on our site (and pay us) it gets sent into the registry's queue.

So, if you do a WHOIS lookup you'd see:

% Application Pending - There is currently an application being processed for % the domain name you have requested. If unsuccessful, the application would % expire on the date above.

While the technology has improved some of the policies haven't, which leads to many of us having a certain love/hate relationship with the namespace.

Personally I have mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand I've been more than happy to support the growth of the IE namespace over the last few years.

The relaxation of some of the rules has made it significantly easier to register domains, but there is always room for improvement.

On the other hand I can appreciate the frustration felt by many registrants.

Being forced to provide the infamous "supporting documentation" for each and every new domain name could be seen as having a very negative impact on the growth of ecommerce in Ireland.

Whether that perception is valid or not is debatable.

If you have a valid reason to register a domain name providing the documentation shouldn't be that arduous a task.

Unlike .com there are still literally thousands of excellent names available. If you have a look at some of the recently deleted domains you might find inspiration.

Want to setup a photography business? Album.ie is currently available to register

Or maybe you are an ET fan? Alien.ie is up for grabs, or at least it was when I looked a minute ago!

One of the strong points of the IE namespace is also its perceived weakness.

Being a "managed" registry end users should have some comfort and security when they interact with a website using the .ie extension. Security, however, is not without its price.

In the .com world it is arguably "too easy" to register a domain, provide false details and setup a scam. If you want to do the same thing in IE namespace you'd have to be willing to put in a lot more work!

At times I feel like I'm a broken record. I keep finding myself saying the same thing to people, possibly using different words or turns of phrase, but the message is essentially the same.

If you register a domain name and pay for it you have certain rights. Of course you also have certain obligations, but most of them aren't particularly cumbersome.

What I wrote last year still hold true.

Basics:

You are entitled to access to your EPP key for your .com without paying a fee. Registrars should provide that to you in a timely fashion.

If you want to transfer the billing of a .ie domain you DO NOT need to deal with the original IEDR reseller. If you only want to move the hosting you DO NOT need to move the actual billing.

If you want to move your hosting you should be able to do so.

Unfortunately there are no clear guidelines from ICANN mandating how resellers should handle things, so you may need to refer back to the actual registrar that the reseller is using if you run into issues.

We recently had yet another issue with a particular UK company that refuses to handover clients' domains without levying a wholly unreasonable fee. If that happens to you you should try reporting them to their upstream registrar who may be in a position to take action against them.

Another "old chestnut" is the unreasonable locking of domains by some registrars after a domain has changed hands. While the argument that it is to prevent "hijacking" holds some water it's also rather "convenient" for them, as they often get another year's registration fees from clients as a result of the restriction.

ICANN recently clarified a very important policy point - inter-registrar transfers. Hopefully this will be on the agenda at the next ICANN meeting, which is scheduled for June in Paris.

The key point raised is worth repeating here:

A registrant change to Whois information is not a valid basis for denying a transfer request.

One very large US based registrar has been denying transfers for a long time based on this. I won't name them, but it doesn't take a lot of work to find out who they are.

We have finally launched the first set of new products and services that we've been working on for months.

As of last night Blacknight VPS hosting is open for business.

The new VPS hosting is the perfect solution for people who want to run custom setups without incurring the costs of dedicated hardware.

For example if you want to experiment with JSP, Ruby on Rails, Light HTTPD or want to install custom DLLs on Windows.

With a VPS you have full control. The only limits are your imagination and your credit card limit!

What's a VPS?

VPS stands for virtual private server.

It's hard to put it into really simple terms, but it's a way to give you the control and flexibility of a dedicated server at a fraction of the price.

What are Blacknight offering?

We're offering a full range of Windows Server 2003 64 bit and Centos 5 (Linux) based virtual servers.

Can I get a control panel for this?

Yes. All VPS servers come with the Virtuozzo Power Panel which gives you control over the basic operations of your VPS.

If you're not comfortable managing your server over SSH / RDP then you can opt to get Plesk as well.

What about other linux distros?

We'll be adding other popular Linux distributions in the coming weeks. For the moment we're offering the most popular alternative to RedHat Enterprise

Will you be offering Windows Server 2008?

We intend to offer it as soon as it is viable ie. fully supported and tested

The entire system is securely hosted in one of Ireland's leading data centres, Interxion in Dublin, Ireland.

In the last few months we've mentioned a lot of upgrades and improvements to our network. Part of the reason for doing all this was to make way for the rollout of our Parallels network.

If anyone has any feedback we'd really love to hear it.

Let us know in the comments or if you'd prefer discretion email management@blacknight.com

We informed you some time ago of an upcoming upgrade to our billing / control panel system.

You will probably receive an email from us later today regarding our billing system.

The text of the email is below:

Dear XXX

As you may know we are currently deploying a new billing and control panel system.

In order to facilitate the migration we would appreciate your help.

Please follow the link below to create your new control panel login.

NB: We will not ask you for any personal information at any time.

To create your new control panel login, please visit

Should you encounter difficulties please contact support@blacknight.com

--
Regards
Team Blacknight
http://www.blacknight.com

Once you get this email you will be able to setup your new login for our new billing system which will be going live very soon.
If you have any queries or issues please let us know.

NB: This change affects ALL Blacknight clients

Verisign, the company that manages the .com registry, will be increasing the price of .com domains by 7% again this year.

The price increase affects all registrars.

We'll be keeping an eye on how pricing develops and if this involves any change to our own pricing we will let you know.

Journalists call from time to time asking me to talk about various internet related topics. Most of the time the publications or shows are "general interest", so you can only talk about very general things.

Last night, however, was quite different, as I was one of the guests on "Domain Masters" which is broadcast and streamed weekly at 7pm EST (11pm in Ireland, midnight CET)

The show's host last night was my good friend Jothan Frakes who is one of the domain name industry's gurus.

Although I was very nervous (which probably showed!) we had a nice chat about Blacknight, domains and the internet industry.

If anyone wants to hear the show there should be an mp3 version available on the WebmasterRadio site at some time over the next couple of days.

UPDATE: The Mp3 from last night is now available on the site http://www.webmasterradio.fm/Internet-Marketing/Domain-Masters/Geo-Domain-Expo-and-BlackKnight.htm

UPDATE 2: Of course if I provided proper hyperlinks people might be actually able to use them!
So here you go: Show details including podcast

If you're not an existing Blacknight client this post isn't going to be that interesting or relevant to you, so you might want to move along...

The short version of this post:

We'll be emailing you to get you to choose a new username for the new control panel and billing system. The email will be clearly identified as coming from us and we won't be asking you for any sensitive information (ie. it won't be a phish!)

And for those with more patience ...

As some of you know we are currently working on a new shiny hosting system which is going to make your lives better and cure the world's ills (marketing speak gone mad! I know!).

If you can get past the marketing blurb one important fact remains. We will be moving away from Modernbill before too long. While it has served us well over the last few years our relationship has had its ups and downs, so now it only seems fair that we part our ways.

Now we know that migrating people to new systems can be disruptive and we also know how annoying it is when you're forced to use an insanely complicated username and password pair.

So our little elves (forgive the terrible metaphors!) have devised simple solution.

If you are an existing client of ours you will be getting an email at some point in the next few weeks. Within that email will be the basic details you need to choose your new username for the new billing system. It will all be quite painless we hope (and pray!).

In any case if you have any questions do let us know.

When is this going to happen?

I can't give a fixed date just yet, as we're still ironing out some issues and I hate making promises that I can't deliver on.

DomainFest draws to a close this morning with the farewell breakfast which I won't be attending.

The first SnapNames Live auction produced some interesting results, though not all domains found buyers. (I reported some of the results on my domain blog - for full results check DomainNameNews )

I'll be heading back to Ireland this afternoon via London, so I should be "back in circulation" on Monday (if not sooner!).

Registration for this year's DomainFest will be opening in little over an hour's time at 10am PST.

The organisers of this year's event are expecting over 600 delegates to attend over the event's three days.

Personally I'm looking forward to the live auctions being held tomorrow and Wednesday.

The following article was published earlier today in Washington Internet Daily. It is reproduced here with the publisher's permission. I posted a related article on my domain blog earlier this week.

Registrar Network Solutions could face legal action over its practice of locking in domain names that are searched but not bought, Michigan attorney Enrico Schaefer said Thursday. The action violates consumer protection laws banning deceptive business practices, he said. There's no indication on Network Solutions's website that use of its free availability search prevents other registrars from offering the name, he said. "We are considering a class action," Schaefer told us. Network Solutions defended the process as a shield for customers against other front-runners.

The practice, "domain name front-running"(DNFR) may differ from the term in its best known sense. In November, .uk registry Nominet published a paper on its experience with DNFR, calling it a "technique believed to exist, but so far unproved, whereby one person monitors the activity of a second person who is planning to register a domain name and the first person then registers the domain name before the second person." Nominet concluded that DNFR "in the most common sense of someone tracking your actions to register a domain just before you can, does not exist."

DNFR is under investigation by ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee, which in October issued an advisory on the practice and is assessing the resulting comments, an ICANN spokesman said. The panel defined DNFR as "the opportunity for a party with some form of insider information to track an Internet user's preference for registering a domain name and preemptively register that name." It preliminarily found insufficient evidence that any party involved in the registration process engages in DNFR. Nor did it set standards for judging whether monitoring name availability is acceptable or not.

Network Solutions' ploy is "more nefarious," said Michele Neylon, managing director of Irish hosting and domain registration company Blacknight Internet Solutions. He agrees with Nominet that DNFR, in classic form, doesn't take place. But Network Solutions automatically registers names that prospective buyers query on its site and warehouses them preventing them from being offered by any other registrar and ensuring that consumers are stuck paying Network Solutions's often higher prices, Neylon said.

Network Solutions Vice President of Policy Jonathon Nevett responded Tuesday to the allegations, calling the practice a security measure meant to allay customer concerns about DNFR. The measure kicks in when someone searches for an available domain but decides not to buy it immediately after the search, he said. The registrar puts the name on reserve, during which time it's not active and Network Solutions doesn't monetize traffic to it, he said. If the name isn't bought in four days it's released to the registry and made generally available for registration, Nevett said.

The effort also tries to "take an arrow out of the quiver of the [domain] tasters," Nevett said. They’re the largest front-runners, buying search data from ISPs or registries, then tasting names for profitability, he said. "Some folks might not agree with our approach, but we are trying to prevent this malicious activity from impacting our customers," Nevett said.

"This is definitely front-running," said Ross Rader, director of research and innovation at registrar Tucows. Network Solutions has "put some lipstick on it and put another name on it by claiming that this is a consumer protection measure," he said. Either way, it's using availability and Whois search data for purposes other than the actual buying process, he said.

Existing DNFR data are believed to stem from ISPs selling log files of DNS data to buyers who parse the materials for Whois queries. They then use the information, and the five-day grace period registrars have to cancel a registration for a full refund from the registry, to front-run in various ways, said Tucows President Elliot Noss. Network Solutions is using others' bad behavior to excuse its own, he said, when the focus should be on ISPs’ selling
DNS data for inappropriate purposes, he said.

Network Solutions alleges that registries are selling availability or Whois data to third parties, Rader said. In a recent blog on the Tucows site, company Marketing Vice President Ken Schafer quoted a Network Solutions spokeswoman as saying that the registrar believes some registries or ISPs or both may be selling search data to front-runners. If Network Solutions has specific knowledge that registries are doing that, "they should do the right
thing" and come forward with it, Rader said.

However the practice is labelled, it raises strong consumer protection issues, Schaefer said. The registrar is essentially "tricking" consumers into using its free search tools without telling them they won't be able to buy the name queried from anyone but Network Solutions, he said. No one has contested front-running in court. The practice is new and loss of a single domain typically doesn't generate enough damages to justify legal action, he said. But suits against registrars engaged in front-running are "viable and likely inevitable," he said.

Network Solutions informed ICANN when it launched the process, an ICANN spokesman said. ICANN is looking into the matter to see whether it complies with the registrar accreditation agreement, he said. -- Dugie Standeford

Reproduced by permission of Warren Communications News, Inc., 800-771-9202, www.warren-n