If you look at the House of Reps grilling of ICANN, there was an underlying theme of “security”, so this appointment doesn’t exactly come as a shock.
Beckstrom spent less than 12 months in the Department of Homeland Security, where he was the Director of the National Cybersecurity Centre. Now ICANN is plugging him as an Internet Security expert! Oh, give me a break!
I don’t believe that less than 12 months in a bureaucratic job puts you in the “expert category”, particularly when you resign after “after learning that orders were canceled for computers, network equipment, furniture and office space in Arlington slated for his group.”
Beckstrom is touting himself as this honest, straight talking guy, so lets see if he does the right thing and cancels these proposed gTLD’s. Action speaks louder than words.
Its been reported that Former Green Bay Packers lineman, Tony Mandarich, allegedly posted up a website under his ex-fiancée’s name. The site apparently features lewd content including sexually explicit videos and pictures of the woman.
The unintended star of the site, Sharra Ferbrache, brought her case to court in Maricopa County, claiming the content shared between Mandarich and herself should have remained private.
Ferbrache is apparently seeking to have the sight shut down in addition to damages for invasion of privacy, emotional distress and other charges.
According to Future Laboratory and Gandi.net, most (two thirds) of web users feel that a .anything domain will infiltrate the web with futile domain names such as .god.
Since ICANN made the announcement last October that would allow any organization in 2012 with $185,000 to apply for a generic domain—speculation has stirred the internet community.
The liberalization of domain names was suggested to encourage diversity but is clearly creating much apprehension instead. According to Tom Savigar of the Future Laboratory, the change is seen as being “a daunting change to the internet.”
The exact numbers indicate that of the 1,000 people who were polled:
65% believe the changes would cause pointless domain names to bombard the web
60% didn’t feel it would improve the web
46% feel it would complicate things
Some web users (18%) think ICANN should be responsible for leading the new look while another 18% think it should be left to the website hosting companies. Another 13% would give it to the UK government and 12% say leave it up to society.
Other opinions foresee future improvements. Joe White, Chief operating officer of Gandi.net claims “The current plans for liberalization reflect a great opportunity to get the domain space in order. ICANN now has the opportunity to set clear guidelines and enforce a higher standard of practice with new TLDs so they are not littered with spam and faulty extensions. This could be the beginning of the great clear-up of the future internet.”
As for the estimated two thirds of the population that is unaware, ignorance is bliss.
CEO and founder, Bob Parsons was recently quoted as saying that Godaddy is “committed to making a difference in the community.” A recent donation to the YMCA demonstrates this commitment. When approached with a request for a meager donation of $1,000, the company raised the bar with a more liberal offer–$50,000. Domaining companies take note!
Go Daddy has an estimated 6.6m customers and 35m domains to manage. The recently named “Best of the Best” business (by Ranking Arizona) also appears to be immune to the effects of the recession. With expansions including 345 people being hired this year, and an estimated 125 open positions—Go Daddy is bucking the trend.
Speaking of Godaddy, they just announced the support of .MX domains. “We realize many of our customers will want a dot-MX domain,” said Bob Parsons. “We plan to help them get it the same way we do everything at Go Daddy — easily and affordably.” This current pre-registration is set to end on July 31, though general registration starts Sept 1.
This one is hot off the press and will be of interest to all those Aussies in the .au space, as well as those wanting to diversify their portfolio. Both Netfleet (new .au marketplace) and Netregistry have formed a joint venture. Here’s what they bring to the table:
Netfleet reports that it has 7,500 quality domain names and has sold more than $40k of domains in the few months its been operational. That’s quite good for a new site – especially in the .au space.
Netregistry has a customer base of 250,000 businesses. Its privately owned and has 80 full-time staff including developers, engineers, service and support specialists.
CEO of Netregistry, Larry Bloch made an interesting comment that resonated with me – “most people do not even realise that domain names are now tradeable assets so it’s a question of creating the industry as well as satisfying the demand.”
The other comment that reflected both the infancy of the industry and the opportunity, was made by David Lye, GM at NetFleet “its not enough to have hundreds of thousands of listings, but we also need to have a steady stream of transactions which will in turn help the market find a footing.” Its good to see some real business logic being applied to the domaining industry.
If you haven’t checked out the Netfleet marketplace, go over and take a look.
We all knew it was coming. ICANN has released their Add Grace Period Policy and as a direct result registrars are looking at changing their pricing models.
Here is an extract from the new ICANN Policy:
“During any given month, an Operator shall not offer any refund to an ICANN-accredited registrar (hereinafter referred to as “Registrar”) for any domain names deleted during the AGP that exceed (i) 10% of that Registrar’s net new registrations (calculated as the total number of net adds of one-year through ten-year registrations as defined in the monthly reporting requirement of Operator Agreements) in that month, or (ii) fifty (50) domain names, whichever is greater, unless an exemption has been granted by an Operator.”
In an email to me yesterday, Dynadot stated “Due to this change, we may have to raise grace deletion fees substantially or remove grace deletions altogether.” This really means “We don’t know what we are going to do yet”. It will be interesting to see what some of the larger registrars do, in particular Moniker. Lets wait and see.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham has reported that “more than 280 Internet domain names have been registered relating to Hurricane Gustav, some of them using words like charity, relief, and support.”
Gary Warner reported that Godaddys Registration Privacy service has domains such as:
What will these types of domain names be used for? Who knows. There is a big difference between investing, speculating and outright fraud. Lets hope these people do the right thing.
Given that Gustav is a bit of a fizzer, compared to Katrina – perhaps people have blown their money? What do you think?
It’s been reported that Adobe is sending letters to people using the word AIR. James Whittaker, creator of the freshAIRapps.com says he was on the receiving end of a letter.
“You may not incorporate the Adobe AIR trademark, or any other Adobe trademark, in whole or in part, in the title of your Developer Application or in your company name, domain name or the name of a service related to Adobe AIR.”
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As we suspected, 
This one is hot off the press and will be of interest to all those Aussies in the .au space, as well as those wanting to diversify their portfolio. Both 
CEO of Netregistry, Larry Bloch made an interesting comment that resonated with me – “most people do not even realise that domain names are now tradeable assets so it’s a question of creating the industry as well as satisfying the demand.”
We all knew it was coming. ICANN has released their 
