I just received an email from Snapnames regarding their TRAFFIC East event on May 20-23 in Orlando.

Some of the names that will go to auction are: Israel.com, Pay.com, Jackpot.com, Athlete.com and Hoodia.com. I’d love to get my hands on pay.com and hoodia.com!

What are your thoughts on this? Do the quality of the names, reflect the quality of the conference?

It’s about time someone went in there and shook things up. As someone who was using the Internet before ICANN existed, I’m really not that impressed with the progress made to date. There needs to be some credible reforms put on the table. Of course, I’m sure the consultant wont be a political appointment, and wont hold back in fear of a) getting the board off side and b) that he/she won’t get some sort of cushy job after his/her term ends.

So if you can jet set around the world interviewing the board and the consulting with “members of the ICANN community” AND prepare a draft report before the October ICANN meeting - you’ve got the job!

The joint venture company for the .ME Registry is called “doMEn, d.o.o.”. What an interesting choice of name! It has partnered with Afilias Limited and GoDaddy.

I can think of quite a few good .me names. For example: email.me, call.me, skype.me, about.me, ####.me, itwasnt.me, not.me. Before you get too excited, the registrar has already reserved a bunch of premium names.

Here is the rollout schedule:

1. May 1 15:00 UTC - May 6 17:00 UTC: Montenegrin Sunrise
2. May 6 17:00 UTC - May 20 17:00 UTC: General Sunrise
3. May 20 17:00 UTC - June 6 15:00 UTC: Quiet Period
4. June 6 15:00 UTC - June 26 17:00 UTC: Land Rush
5. June 26 17:00 UTC - July 17 15:00 UTC: Quiet Period
6. July 17 15:00 UTC: Open Registration

So, if you are a Montenegrin company or citizen, and you own a registered trademark or service mark prior to June 28, 2006, then you can apply for a 2nd level domain name during the Sunrise period. You can view the Sunrise policy here.

If you are not one of the 684,736 Montenegrin citizens, then you will just have to wait. The auction rules can make good bedtime reading.

Here are the third-level .me domains and what they are going to be used for:

.co.me - Corporations
.net.me - Legal providers of Internet services
.org.me - Civil organizations and associations
.edu.me - Educational institutions, such as primary and high schools
.ac.me - Academic and post-secondary organizations
.gov.me - State and Government authorities
.its.me or .priv.me - Personal use

I’m sure there will be a lot of discussion over this new TLD. Just wait for your favorite registrar to start sending you emails! Ohhhh its the next social media, personalized, landrush, extravaganza! Hang on kids, here we go again.

Unfortunately, there are those amongst us that can’t complain enough about parking revenue, backordering fees, adsense blah, blah, blah - and I’m tired of it! I don’t want to be around negative people, however I do want to set the record straight.

Here are a few dictionary words that will expire over the next few days:

April 23

altimeters.org
backboards.org
broodmares.com
defectives.org
ferrous.org
hairdrier.org
humanization.org
hymnbooks.org
lariats.org
paratroops.org
pooed.net
premolar.net
setsquare.org
starfruit.org
tensile.org
terrycloth.org
vaquero.org
zealotry.net

April 24

contortion.net
defecated.com
enthral.net
half-baked.net
meriting.com
militarise.com
motorboated.com
peasantry.net
reedit.net
spinally.com

April 25

deactivation.net
gipsies.net
goldfinches.net
moires.com
overmodest.com
prelates.net
presided.net
rebuttals.net
starchier.com
thrushes.net
tromps.com
trustfully.net
turtledoves.net
two-faced.net

April 26

mullein.net
no-no.net
perambulator.net
recommissions.com
tieback.net
titivate.net

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying that you will make a million dollars out of these names, but dictionary words are still around and yes, you can backorder them! Best of luck in the auction.

1. The General Manager of the Tucows Domain Portfolio (Bill Sweetman) allegedly said “not all of the expired names end up in the Tucows auction. Some names are renewed by the original registrant before they reach the auction, and some of the names are retained by Tucows for our own portfolio.” I’ll discuss more on this Tucows issue later.

2. I missed out on two names at a Snapnames auction. No - This time it was not halvarez or anyone else; in fact, it didn’t get to auction.

The first name was really good. I was watching it like a hawk and I thought I’d get this without any competition. It was coming from a Snapnames “Priority Partner”, so I knew it was not going anywhere else….. or was it?

The day it was supposed to drop the status was changed to “Backorder” and the expiry went to 2009. Yep, something was not right. I asked Snapnames what happened. They told me that that the owner renewed it the day before the name was due to be released to Snapnames. I did my own checking around and found that to be the case. Content similar to the previous site was back online under the previous owners name.

Well… I thought that I still had a fair few names on backorder…. then BANG, it happened AGAIN! (Or at least I thought it did.) The domain status was changes to “Backorder”. I checked the domain name and this time, it was parked. The old site was gone, there were two pop-unders and the site didn’t look all that appealing. The domain is currently sitting at the Afforda.com registry. When I visit their website and do a whois, I get “Request time out. Please try again.” Lovely!

After waiting a few days to hear back from Snapnames, it turns out that the 2nd domain wasn’t from their Pending Delete queue and Snap didn’t actually get it in the first instance.

For those that don’t know, auDA is a government endorsed entity that was formed in 2000, so administer the .au domain space.

To date, auDA has resisted attempts to open up the .com.au namespace so that anyone can register a domain name. In fact, their policies are just plain prehistoric. Around December 2007, auDA “suspended new registrar accreditation applications”. The auDA board minutes tell us that this was “due to a backlog”, however if you read on it also says “noted some challenges that have arisen recently, with more overseas-based applicants and existing registrars seeking multiple accreditations.” In other words - bunker down kids - those evil domainers are comin!

Policy

Last year, the auDA Names Policy Panel made a recommendation to the auDA board that the transfers policy “be relaxed”. In simple terms, the new policy says:

• You can’t register a domain name”for the sole purpose of resale or transfer to a third party“.

• You can’t transfer your domain name for the first 6 months.

• You can sell a domain name after 6 months.

• If you transfer it to someone else, then you “will be asked to disclose the sale method and price, on a voluntary and confidential basis”.

• auDA may “collect aggregated statistical data to improve access to market information for buyers and sellers.”

So, how is auDA going to enforce these rules? No, really. What’s in it for auDA to collect market data - apart from promoting domain name prices in a heavily regulated market?

How Do I Register?

Before you jump in and say “EUREKA - I’m going to get me some .com.au domains” - you also still need to qualify under the eligibility and allocation rules. This basically means you need to be Australian and/or have a company structure / ABN.

In any case, the media has gotten wind of this and is hyping it up to be an “open market”. While its step in the right direction, the restrictions are still a joke.

Perhaps the Australian Internet industry needs an industry body that represents those that want a free and open, commercial market? Should auDA even exist? What do you think?

Many people thought that Alexa ratings were flawed because their data was based on information from a toolbar and only a small portion of internet users had it installed. So what does “more source” actually mean? Well Alexa don’t provide any details except for saying “We now aggregate data from multiple sources”. My guess is that its probably clickstream data from various ISP’s.

Alexa are not making the old ranking numbers available and are slowly converting the historical traffic data, so right now only 9 months is available.

“Bob” is a GMail user and uses the Google search engine. Google knows:

1. What Bob is searching on via a cookie on his computer. (if he types a url that doesn’t exist into the Google toolbar, that URL gets sent to Google).
2. What domain names he visits (Search + Analytics).
3. Who owns those domains (Google is an ICANN-accredited registrar).
4. What pages he clicks on (Analytics) .
5. What ads he clicks on (Adsense).
6. The content of emails he receives (unlimited data retention from Gmail).
7. Who is sending Bob emails (via “content extraction”).

Of course, in the recent email from Google describing benchmarking, Google said they want to provide “you with transparency, control, and new services”.  I think this was a typo made by Google, they should replace the word “you” with the word “Google”.

Why share your data with Google? Well if you don’t share, then Google says that you you will miss out on “greater insight and flexibility” in new services and features such as the AdWords Conversion Optimizer.

If you decide to share your data anonymously, then Google will “remove all identifiable information about your website, then combine that data with hundreds of other anonymous sites in comparable industries and report them in an aggregate form“.

The other interesting thing about this, is that historical data is being included! Google includes data from up to a month before your opt-in date.

Looking into my crystal ball, I can see Google doing a similar thing to Alexa as well as offering Internet marketing reporting to corporates - similar to that of Hitwise Intelligence reporting etc..  For those that have not read one of these reports, its essentially a “Where does your site rank in your industry”.

Stay tuned….