An interesting story in Slate.com last night highlighting the site Art.sy, but more generally the problem buying, registering 0r renewing an domain name with the .Sy extension, if your subject to US law. .Sy is the ccTLD for Syria which is run by an agency of the Syrian government, NANS. "On Aug. 10, 2011, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at the U.S. Treasury Department … [Read more...]
AFNIC Awarded New Contract To Run .FR Registry But Only After Open Bidding Results In Reduced Prices
I know that a lot of American's complain about the French, but in this case they got it right and we got it wrong. Like Verisign which operates the .com/.net registry under contract, AFNIC is the company that run's the .FR registry for France under contract from the government and has done so since 1998. Due to complaints, France opened up bidding for the contract to run the … [Read more...]
.ie Registrations Grew In 2011 By 13% To 173,145 Domain Names
The IE Domain Registry (IEDR), the not-for-profit public organization that manages Ireland’s top level Internet domain, .ie, issued its annual reported for 2011 on the .ie ccTLD. Among the financial and operational highlights for 2011 were: New .ie domain registrations were 39,398 (36,587 in 2010) – up 8% Total .ie domains at year-end of 173,145 – 13% increase year-on-year Registration … [Read more...]
One Surprising Finding From A Trip To The UK: A Lot of People Are Using .Com Too
I had never been to the United Kingdom until I had a chance to visit it for the Dot-Nxt conference which was then postponed until August. I have always heard, and was under the impression, that when you look around London and the UK, you will see ads mostly using a .co.uk address, however I found plenty of companies big and small using .com domain names, as much, if not more than .co.uk. On … [Read more...]
Oman Relaunches .om With the Support of ARI Registry Services
According to a press release today .Om is being officially relaunched today. .Om certainly has some typo potential and should be an extension brand holders and other high traffic sites keep an eye on. ""The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the Sultanate of Oman, with the support of ARI Registry Services, officially relaunched the .om country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) … [Read more...]
Nominet: .UK Hits 10 Million Domain Names
According to the BBC, .Uk just hit the 10 million domain mark. The 10th million domain name is swarvemagazine.co.uk which was registered by Steven Northam for a photography-based publication. Nominet who operates the .Uk registry, "described the news as a "mega-milestone". "It took charge of the top-level domain name in 1996 when there were 26,000 .uk sites." Nominet's chief executive, … [Read more...]
New Report: .Au Domain Space Brought Half A Billion Dollars To Australia’s Economy in 2011
According to a story tonight in Pcadvisor.co.uk, which cites a recent report by Deloitte. the .Au Domain name space has "generated big business in Australia and will continue to do so" The study commissioned by AusRegistry and the .au Domain Administration (auDA), is the first of its kind to assesses the true extent of the .au domain's influence on the Australian economy. "The key finding … [Read more...]