The Com/Net Production environment will be taken offline on Sunday, August 24, 2008 UTC (Saturday, August 23, 2008 EDT) for a scheduled maintenance.

Date: Sunday, August 24, 2008 UTC (Saturday, August 23, 2008 EDT)
Time: 0100 hrs - 0145 hrs UTC (2100 hrs - 2145 hrs EDT)
Duration: 45 Minutes
Purpose: Routine Maintenance

Podgorica, Montenegro - July 22, 2008 – The .ME Registry officially opened for live, real-time registrations July 17, 2008 and was met with huge international demand. More than 50,000 new domain names were registered in the first two days, with the first “live” name registered being: yusu.me.

“While English speaking countries led the way in registration volume, many non-English speaking countries such as Germany, China, and France made a strong showing,” said Predrag Lesic, the registry’s executive director. “We believe this bodes well for the international success of .ME as the only domain that is all about YOU! .ME is a domain space that offers personalized names for your products and services, or your personal presence on the web, including email, in a more generic way than any other.”

Top 10 Countries of .ME Registration by Percentage:
1. United States 50 %
2. United Kingdom 11%
3. Germany 9%
4. Canada 5%
5. China 3%
6. France 3%
7. Netherlands 2%
8. Australia 1.5%
9. Israel 1%
10. Spain 1%

“The .ME registry performed extremely well and was able to accommodate the high demand for .ME domain names,” said Ram Mohan, Afilias’ Chief Technology Officer. “Afilias’ registry system performed reliably, recording new create requests in under 21 milliseconds and processing more than 5,000 names in the first minute of open registration. In total, the registry seamlessly accommodated more than 60 registrars vying for .ME names.”

The registration process for .ME began in May with the Sunrise period for trademark holders. Land Rush for the general public to register names began in June. In total more than 30,000 domains were applied for in Sunrise and Land Rush periods, and more than 50,000 new registrations were adding in the initial days of live, real-time registration.

Angelina Jolie has shown that she is not just an accomplished actress but also a savvy domainer.

The 33 year old superstar celebrated the birth of her and Brad Pitt’s twins, Vivienne Marcheline and Knox Leon, by registering a total of 50 domain names (including 4 .mobis!), increasing her total number of domains owned to a respectable 258.

Domains registered by Angelina Jolie on July 12, 2008:

viviennemarchelinejoliepitt.biz, .com. .eu, .info, .mobi, .net, .org, .us
knoxleonjoliepitt.biz, .com. .eu, .info, .mobi, .net, .org, .us

viviennejoliepitt.biz, .com. .eu, .info, .mobi, .net, .org, .us
knoxjoliepitt.biz, .com. .eu, .info, .mobi, .net, .org, .us

viviennejolie.com, .net, .org
knoxjolie.com, .net, .org

viviennepitt.com, .net, .org
knoxpitt.com, .net, .org

knoxleon.com, .net, .org
viviennemarcheline.com, .net, .org

A number of domainers snapped up some of the remaining combinations that were left unregistered by Angelina:

knoxleonjolie.com, .net, .org
viviennemarchelinejolie.com, .net, .org

knoxleonpitt.com, .net, .org
viviennemarchelinepitt.com, .net, .org

viviennemarcheline.info, .mobi
knoxleon.info, .mobi

If you want to do your part to honor this month’s most famous newborns, don’t despair!

Still available (at the time of writing):

knoxjolie.biz, .eu, .info, .mobi, .us
viviennejolie.biz, .eu, .info, .mobi, .us

viviennepitt.biz, .eu, .info, .mobi, .us
knoxpitt.biz, .eu, .info, .mobi, .us

viviennemarchelinejolie.biz, .eu, .info, .mobi, .us
knoxleonjolie.biz, .eu, .info, .mobi, .us

viviennemarchelinepitt.biz, .eu, .info, .mobi, .us
knoxleonpitt.biz, .eu, .info, .mobi, .us

viviennemarcheline.biz, .eu, .us
knoxleon.biz, .eu, .us

If you or someone you know is expecting children in the near future, consider that there may be no better gift to set aside for your child than his or her own domain.

source DailyDomainer

The .ASIA Registry is scheduled for maintenance on 2 August 2008 between 15:00 - 19:00 UTC.

During the maintenance, you may expect the following:

SRS: Not Available
Web Based Administrative Interface: Not Available
DNS: Available; names will continue to resolve normally.
WHOIS: Not Available
OT&E: Available

The Com/Net Production environment will be taken offline on Sunday, September 28, 2008 UTC (Saturday, September 27, 2008 EDT) for a scheduled maintenance.

Date: Sunday, September 28, 2008 UTC (Saturday, September 27, 2008 EDT)
Time: 0000 hrs - 0400 hrs UTC (2000 hrs - 0000 hrs EDT)
Duration: 4 hours
Purpose: Hardware Upgrades

The Name Store Production environment will be taken offline on Friday, July 25, 2008 UTC (Thursday, June 24, 2008 EDT) for a scheduled maintenance.

Date: Friday, July 25,2008 UTC (Thursday, July 24, 2008 EDT)
Time: 0100 hrs - 0400 hrs UTC (2100 hrs - 0000 hrs EDT)
Duration: 3 hours
Purpose: Routine Maintenance

Paris, France – Sunday, 22nd June, 2008 – Telnic Limited, the Registry Operator and Sponsoring Organization for the new sponsored top level domain (sTLD) .tel, today announced details for launch at the ICANN meeting in Paris. Sunrise applications from national trademark owners will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis as of Wednesday, 3rd December 2008.

.tel enables you to store, update and publish all your contact information, web links and keywords directly on the internet under your own unique domain name. Simple, fast and accessible from any device, .tel provides a new internet standard to take full control over how and where people reach you. The .tel delivers:

– integration of any and all means of communication (i.e. Phone numbers, IM, VOIP, email, social media)
– real-time publishing of your contact information on the internet
– full ownership of your published data
– protection of your private data, only viewable by people you authorize
– simple structured navigation to easily reach the most relevant information
– high speed global access optimized for mobile devices
– multi-language, search engine-friendly structured information and keywords

“Thanks to its rich functionality and open specifications, .tel will open up new opportunities for registrars, resellers and developers alike,” explained Justin Hayward, Communications Director at Telnic. “We’ve been working hard over the past years to make sure that everything we’re delivering to the industry will enable it to take advantage of this new ecosystem.”

As well as announcing its launch, Telnic unveiled its new website – www.telnic.org – for people to find out more about .tel. The Telnic website hosts comprehensive videos, information, policies and procedures for registrars, resellers, developers and IP owners.

source telnic.org

The Com/Net Production environment will be taken offline on Sunday, June 29, 2008 UTC (Saturday, June 28, 2008 EDT) for a scheduled maintenance.

Date: Sunday, June 29, 2008 UTC (Saturday, June 28, 2008 EDT)
Time: 0100 hrs - 0145 hrs UTC (2100 hrs - 2145 hrs EDT)
Duration: 45 Minutes
Purpose: Routine Maintenance

The Name Store Production environment will be taken offline on Friday, June 27, 2008 UTC (Thursday, June 26, 2008 EDT) for a scheduled maintenance.

Date: Friday, June 27,2008 UTC (Thursday, June 26, 2008 EDT)
Time: 0100 hrs - 0500 hrs UTC (2100 hrs - 0100 hrs EDT)
Duration: 4 hours
Purpose: Routine Maintenance
Environment: .TV, .CC, .Jobs, and Name Suggestion

Please note that during this maintenance period, the Name Store Manager Web Tool will be offline.

Dublin-based dotMobi, backed by Ericsson, Google, Microsoft and Nokia, said Friday it has bought the assets of Mowser, the 1-year-old mobile browsing firm that threw in the towel in April.

Financial Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Mowser, based in San Mateo, California, provided a service to help create mobile versions of web sites.

In April, co-founder Russell Beattie, bemoaning Mowser’s inability to raise funding and declining growth, called an end to the company’s development and warned that the service “could disappear in the future.”

In the blog posting, Mr. Beattie that the he had expected development of the mobile web in the West to follow the upward trajectory of Japan and Korea, but “now I’m sure it isn’t going to.” In explaining why he was giving up the ghost, Mr. Beattie said he had maxed out his credit cards, had his car repossessed twice and was deeply in debt to family and friends.

dotMobi said it planed to integrate Mowser’s technology into business and consumer mobile development tools as well as dotMobi’s creation tools.

dotMobi is a consortium that promotes the growth of Internet use on mobile devices. Other backers include Samsung Electronics, T-Mobile and Vodafone, joint venture partner with Verizon Communications in Verizon Wireless.

In a statement, Trey Harvin, chief executive of dotMobi, warned that content owners need to maintain control of their content.

“At its heart, Mowser is a PC website-to-mobile website content adaptation engine,” he said. “dotMobi has been vocal against ‘blind’ content adaptation because it doesn’t allow site owners to have control over their content. dotMobi believes that brands and businesses should always have the final say over how their material is presented, and that the content should uniquely take advantage of the capabilities of a mobile device.”

author : Ken Schachter
source RedHerring.com