ICANN IDN ccTLD Fast-Track Process

October 2, 2008 in Domains, Internet | Leave a comment

ICANN has just written to all the Goverments of the world seeking an expression of interest for IDN ccTLDs.
Each country manages its own ccTLD; the United Kingdom has .uk and China has .cn etc. The existing domain name system is predominantly ASCII based.  IDN ccTLDs will allow part of a domain name to the right of the dot to be written in languages not based on the ASCII character set.

Some countries have been very keen to implement IDN ccTLDs and ICANN has been working on testing their implementation. ICANN has now reached the stage where it is seeking expressions of interests from Governments which would like to be included in the fast track process.

Once implemented this will be a huge step in the development of the internet and will significantly increase the number of domains the Domain Name system will be able to address.

The annoucement can be found here
http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-02oct08-en.htm

Moniker live domain auction sells ~$3,000,000 of domain names

September 25, 2008 in Domains | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Even in uncertain financial times Moniker has in the last few minutes just completed a live auction with 101 names selling ro $2,966,000

Read the rest of this entry »

How to profit from domain names

September 23, 2008 in Domains | Tags: | Leave a comment

MSM takes a look at the domain for sale .biz In an article titled How to profit from domain names the London Times looks at a couple examples of quick domain flips for profit.

“Two years ago Mark Richards noticed that no one had registered the .com and .co.uk addresses for “latelicence” and “latelicense”. He bought the domains for £20 and sold all four as a package one month later for £6,000.

“And Peter Savage whose best return was http://www.fastpizzapizza.com. He registered the address for $20 after watching the success of Pizza.com, which sold in April for a record $2.6 million. A month later he sold his address on Sedo.co.uk, the website marketplace, for $5,600, earning him £3,122.

Update on auctioning .info sunrise domain names

September 11, 2008 in Domains | Tags: , | Leave a comment

ICANN has written back to Afilias confirming it does not see any signifcant competition or security and stability issues with Afilias’ request for a Phased Equitable Reallocation of Non-Compliant .INFO sunrise Domain Names and has requested Afilias submit a proposal for Public Comment. The Proposal and the Public submission will then be submitted to the Board for consideration.

ICANN letter to Afilias
Re: Proposal #2008008, Phased Equitable Rellocation of Non-Compliant .INFO Sunrise Domain Names (.pdf)

.info domain name registry applies to auction .info domain names

August 28, 2008 in Domains | Tags: , , | 1 comment

Afilias the company which run the .info gTLD have submiitted an application for new Registry Services to ICANN. The application is called the Phased Equitable Reallocation of Non-Compliant .INFO Sunrise Domain Names (pdf) and is a request for the Registry to be allowed to allocate names to developers and/or auction domain names which have remained suspended since the launch of .info in 2001.

Most if not all of the names in question show a registration date between 25th July 2001 to 27th August 2001, usually have a status marked “HOLD” and “TRANSFER PROHIBITED”.  Any many of these names have the Registrant Name marked as “Afilias Ltd / Sunrise Pending Reallocation”

7,000,000 .org domains registered

August 26, 2008 in Domains | Tags: , | Leave a comment

PIR.org who run the .orgistry announced yesterday that more than 7,000,000 .org domains have been registered.

From the PIR.org .org press release

“This is a significant milestone for .ORG, as it has consistently grown 20% percent year over year since its management by Public Interest Registry,” says Alexa Raad, CEO.  “.ORG continues to be the domain of choice for individuals and organizations who seek to brand their efforts under a globally trusted and respected address.”

16,500,000 homes have internet access in the UK

August 26, 2008 in Internet | Tags: | Leave a comment

Almost 16.5 million households in the UK now have internet access, an increase of 1.2 million since 2007, the latest official figures show.  The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the new figure represented close to two-thirds of UK households.

The BBC has more

Animation for computer games and films is becoming lifelike

August 19, 2008 in Software | 1 comment

Lifelike characters are beginning to appear in films and computer games as technology advances it is allowing facial expressions to be modeled in minute detail.

The London Times has a short animation example video

How big is the web? Hint – Google has 1,000,000,000,000 URLs

July 27, 2008 in Internet | Leave a comment

The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Google blog has just posted that now in 2008 they have crawled 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) unique URLS with several billion pages being added each day.

Top 10 British Brands

July 21, 2008 in Internet | Leave a comment

The top 10 British brands have been publish by YouGov in their Brand Index Survey today 

  1. Google
  2. Microsoft
  3. Mercedes-Benz
  4. BBC
  5. British Airways
  6. Royal Doulton
  7. BMW
  8. Bosch
  9. Nike
10. Sony

The British Guardian has more details