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

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

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

Nous l’avons exposé à de multiples reprises l’ordre d’affichage des pages dans les résultats des moteurs de recherche est sujet à l’effet de plusieurs facteurs (liens entrants, densité de mots-clefs, localisation géographique, etc), et ce quelque soit le moteur, ainsi l’un qui était quasi-inconnu : l’âge du nom de domaine.

Logo Live SearchSi l’on soupçonne que Google par exemple en tient compte pour classer les pages présentes dans son index et les afficher en un ensemble cohérent à l’internaute ayant saisi une requête, cette croyance touche à la quasi-certitude s’agissant de l’usage que Microsoft (pour les besoins de son binôme MSN/Live search) fait de cette information.

En effet, selon le site anglophone SEO by the Sea, Microsoft aurait procéder à un dépôt d’une demande d’enregistrement du traitement de cette information pour les besoins de ses algorithmes, la société part en effet du constat que quand un site est lié à un domaine populaire et digne de confiance, ce lien doit apporter plus de valeur qu’un lien depuis un site qui est moins populaire et digne de confiance, et la “dignité de confiance” peut logiquement s’analyser par rapport à l’ancienneté du site.

A une éventuelle question de savoir pourquoi un domaine ancien devrait obligatoirement être considéré comme plus digne de confiance qu’un autre, Microsoft a une parade toute faite : Le coût d’achat d’un nom de domaine a diminué de façon significative au cours des dernières années et un spammeur de moteurs pourrait en profiter pour acheter un grand nombre de sites et de l’interconnexion des sites en même temps pourrait naître une amélioration artificielle du classement dans les pages de résultats d’une partie ou de l’ensemble des sites.

source enaty.com

L’Américain Chris Clark avait payé le nom de domaine pizza.com 20 dollars en 1994. Il vient de le vendre aux enchères pour 2,6 millions de dollars… Voici les autres noms de domaine les plus chers de l’histoire.

L’Américain Chris Clark a vendu aux enchères pour 2,6 millions de dollars le nom de domaine pizza.com. Il avait payé l’adresse 20 dollars en 1994, selon le New York Post.

Chris Clark et sa famille ont célébré la vente en… mangeant une pizza. Selon le quotidien, il pourrait acheter 1,3 millions portions de pizzas.

Chris Clark voulait réaliser un site pour un livreur de pizza mais le contrat n’est jamais tombé. Puis, après l’annonce de la vente du site vodka.com pour près de 3 millions, il a eu l’idée de mettre le nom de domaine pizza.com aux enchères sur le site Sedo.

Voici les autres noms de domaine les plus chers de l’histoire

1.- Sex.com Vendu pour 11 - 14 millions de dollars le 19 janvier 2006. Acheté par Escom LLC

2.- Porn.com Vendu pour 9.5 millions de dollars en 2007

3.- Business.com
Vendu pour 7.5 millions de dollars en 1999

4.- Diamonds.com Vendu pour 7.5 millions de dollars

5.- Beer.com
Vendu pour 7 millions de dollars

6.- AsSeenOnTv.com
Vendu pour 5,1 millions de dollars en janvier 2000

7.- Shop.com
Vendu pour 3.5 millions de dollars

8.- Wine.com Vendu pour 2.9 millions de dollars en septembre 1999

9.- CreditCards.com Vendu pour 2.75 millions de dollars en juillet 2004. Acheté par Austin

10.- VIP.com Vendu pour 1.4 millions de dollars en septembre 2005. Acheté par Leisure and Gaming

source eitb24.com

“It’s too late to make big money in domaining… I wish I had been around in 1995, 2001 or 2005″.

That’s a very common complaint heard among today’s domainers. Who wouldn’t want to reach back through time and join the forefathers of domaining when they were just laying the foundation for their future domain empires?

In 1995, the Internet was just beginning to attract mainstream attention. In 2001, the dot com crash liberated tens of thousands of top domains. And as recently as late 2005, you could have registered tons of LLLL.com domains and sold them early this year for big bucks.

So, is it really too late?

Not at all. Just ask Michael B., a Bangkok-based Danish journalist, who snapped up the following LLL.com domains on Afternic last week:

ZLI.com - $500
PQT.com - $571
LLJ.com - $603
WJA.com - $735
RLU.com - $900

Michael paid a total of $3,309 for these domains. But their actual market value is in the mid five figures!

Who sold these domains at such a low price? iREIT, a “next-generation Internet media company that acquires, develops and monetizes high-quality domain names and web properties”.

Last week, iREIT listed a small part (10,000+) of its portfolio on Afternic. NameBio reported on the fact this Monday, but by then most bargains were already gone.

Was iREIT aware of these LLL.com domains’ market value? Probably not. Someone at iREIT for whatever reason made a decision to sell these domains (and quite a few others, such as say.org and gut.org) at a very low price.

That’s not a one-time event. In fact, it happens all the time. Not everyone values their domains as much as domainers and potential end-users do. Many individuals, companies and even large corporations let valuable domains expire (or sell them for peanuts) simply because they no longer have any use for them.

As a domainer, you just have to be at the right place at the right time. That might be called “luck” by some, but in reality it boils down to hard work, actively working your market, keeping an eye on prices and trends, and having sufficient liquidity to make sure you can grab a bargain before someone else does.

It takes just a couple of deals like this to be able to retire. Michael could sell these five domains for $50,000 any day of the week. If he finds a few comparable deals in the future and keeps reinvesting his profits he’ll be a domain millionaire in no time.

source DailyDomainer

The AFNIC recently registered the first thirteen domain names under .wf, upon request from the French Government and Wallis & Futuna local Authorities.

Within the context of broadband now being available in Wallis & Futuna, this move aims at supporting the development of local Internet use.

This first group of domain names gives symbolically birth to .wf, while talks about the marketing of this ccTLD (country-code Top Level Domain) are about to start.

The AFNIC is also in charge of .pm (Saint-Pierre & Miquelon) and .yt (Mayotte) which registration policy is still to be discussed upon the local Internet communities and in accordance with the regulatory framework set by February the 6th, 2007 decree, issued by the French Government.

As a result, the AFNIC joined the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association (www.aptld.org).

source AFNIC

QR codes (Quick Response) have become the rage in Japan from being used as tracking codes in machine assembly to being used in visiting cards or even tomb stones. Now, in the first large test in the United States, online guides Citysearch and Antenna Audio are rolling out the technology in San Francisco. More than 500 restaurants, shops and businesses reviewed by Citysearch are placing printed bar codes in their windows. People who have special software from Scanbuy Inc. loaded on their cell phones can simply take a picture of the code and their phone’s Internet browser will immediately take them to the restaurant’s corresponding Citysearch page. Users will be able to decide, based on the Citysearch reviews and other information, whether to step inside for dinner or keep walking down the street. Right now, if you want audio information for the Transamerica building or a review of Cafe Claude in San Francisco, the Web address is very long. But with one click you can go directly there. That surely is one way to solve the navigation issue of how to get information on your handheld without going down eight layers on a Web site. Scanbuy hopes the pilot program will prove to cell phone carriers that the bar codes work. Scanbuy would like to start embedding the software in future phones, perhaps by the end of this year, eliminating one hurdle toward its adoption. For now, users have to download the ScanLife software to their phone. About 70 phones currently support the software, and users will have to pay cellular data charges when they access a Web page.

However this technology isn’t without its own pitfalls. How would charging users for information about services offered be beneficial to business? Why do consumers have to shell out on data charges, when the same thing can be put up in writing? Would you like to visit a restaurant by the street that has passers by constantly clicking towards your table by the window?

source NewLaunches.com

The New York Times has an interesting story about Steve Marshall, an English travel agent who lives in Spain, sells trips to Europeans who want to go to sunny places, including Cuba, and in October found about 80 of his web sites stopped working, thanks to the United States government.

“The sites, in English, French and Spanish, had been online since 1998. Some, like www.cuba-hemingway.com, were literary. Others, like www.cuba-havanacity.com, discussed Cuban history and culture. Still others — www.ciaocuba.com and www.bonjourcuba.com — were purely commercial sites aimed at Italian and French tourists,” reported The Times.

It turns out Mr. Marshall’s Web sites had been put on a US Treasury Department blacklist and, as a consequence, his American registrar, eNom Inc., had disabled them. Mr. Marshall said eNom told him it did so after a call from the Treasury Department; the company, based in Bellevue, Wash., says it learned that the sites were on the blacklist through a blog, further notes The Times.

Mr Marshall told The Times “he did not understand ‘how Web sites owned by a British national operating via a Spanish travel agency can be affected by U.S. law.’ Worse, he said, ‘these days not even a judge is required for the U.S. government to censor online materials.’”

And the reason – “Mr. Marshall’s company had helped Americans evade restrictions on travel to Cuba and was ‘a generator of resources that the Cuban regime uses to oppress its people.’ It added that American companies must not only stop doing business with the company but also freeze its assets, meaning that eNom did exactly what it was legally required to do.” But Mr Marshall says he is not interested in American tourists as “they can’t go [to Cuba] anyway.”

Professor Susan Crawford, an ICANN board member and “visiting law professor at Yale and a leading authority on Internet law, said the fact that many large domain name registrars are based in the United States gives the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, control ‘over a great deal of speech — none of which may be actually hosted in the U.S., about the U.S. or conflicting with any U.S. rights.’”

To read more on this disturbing issue, see the full article in the New York Times at www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/us/04bar.html

source DomainNews