Domain names

Shifting my domains to Heart Internet

December 20, 2006

Following some very irritating problems with 123-Reg and its parent company Pipex, which, it turns out stem from the company trying to consolidate and cut costs – I have started shifting my domains to another company.

Who’s the other company? Well, thanks to reader Andrew, it is Heart Internet. Heart Internet is set up by the same two blokes, Jonathan Brealey and Tim Beresford, that set up both WebFusion and 123-Reg and have sold both of them on.

There’s clearly an interesting story there but it looks as though Brealey and Beresford live for the entrepreneurial buzz and so have set up yet another company offering high-quality, simple, low-cost domain purchase and hosting. And my experience of the company so far has been good.

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ICANN Board discussion of biz/org/info contracts

December 11, 2006

On Friday, the ICANN Board approved some controversial renewal contracts for the .biz, .info and .org top-level Internet domains.

In a press conference a few hours later, chairman Vint Cerf urged the reporters to read the transcript of the discussion. That transcript isn’t up yet but I figured that Cerf was right about listening to it, so I have knocked up an MP3 of the 45-minute discussion and posted it below.

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Pipex on determined route to self-destruction

December 1, 2006

Pipex is one of the UK’s biggest Internet companies and it appears to be on a determined route to self-destruction. I have already started shifted my domains and hosting deals.

I’m not a business journalist so I haven’t really bothered to follow Pipex’s business, although they do appear to be going for the bulk mainstream audience of Internet users. And the result for my perspective has been that the very best company in the UK for domains – 123-Reg, which is now owned by Pipex – has gradually been destroyed by corporate shenanigans.

I first wrote about 123-Reg’s problems two months’ ago. I got a nice call from Pipex’s PR people and was assured that everything was fine but you need only look at the continued stream of comments on the blog post to see that if anything the situation is getting worse.

But the past week has shown that the problem really does lie with Pipex the parent company.

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Guardian article on IDNs. Wait for the complaints…

November 24, 2006

I forgot to mention yesterday that I had an article on IDNs in The Guardian: “How engineers tamed the internet’s Tower of Babel“, which was basically an attempt to explain one of the other sides of the Internationalised Domain Names by referring to Patrik Fältström’s comment at the IGF that the technical side of things had now been agreed.

The article actually started out as coverage of the domain “£.com” but rapidly led to covering the issue of symbols on the Net, hence IDNs. I might post up my original article here as I had to cut out a lot of stuff in the rewrite focussing on IDNs. I might as well get that info up. I tried to use £.com to get across to English readers the concept of approving some “symbols” and not approving others. I think I managed it but not as clearly as I had hoped.

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Domain name madness all around

October 19, 2006

So earlier this week I received not one but two emails offering to sell me back a recently expired domain of mine – back2black.com – for a very reasonable $199.95.

I had decided to let the domain go, and I had never actually put up a site at the domain, so its shows how sophisticated domainers have become in exploiting the millions of dollars that expire every year – some in the full knowledge of their owners, many not.

Of course the email told me it was a “Limited Time Offer…!!!” – and we all know why that is – because if Webnamesolution.com doesn’t hand it back within five days, it isn’t going to get its $6 back. All of this of course neatly fits into the hot news of the moment: domains and their rightful owners.

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Wayne Rooney wins dotcom namessake

October 13, 2006

England and Man United footballer Wayne Rooney has won his domain namessake WayneRooney.com at WIPO, although the decision is yet another dodgy one in terms of the domain name rules.

Welsh actor and Everton fan Huw Marshall registered the name back in April 2002 when he saw Rooney in the youth team but never got around to building a website. When Rooney then did the unforgiveable and moved from Everton to archrivals Manchester United in August 2004, Marshall decided the treachery was such that he would sit on the domain and do nothing with it.

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Buy your .mobi domain in an hour

September 26, 2006

The latest new top-level domain – .mobi – is opened up to everyone in just under an hour, 3pm GMT, 10am in New York.

It is an attempt to build a mobile Internet and a number of big boys are behind it including Ericsson, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, T-Mobile and Vodafone. It’s pretty uninspiring at the moment but just wait for the next generation of phones with a hardware tie-in.

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TomCruise.com and the system that just has to change

July 24, 2006

Tom Cruise has, unsurprisingly, won TomCruise.com from WIPO. And, unsurprisingly, he won it off Jeff Burgar who is notorious for having registered hundreds of celebrities names back in 1996 and used them to redirect to his Celebrity1000.com website.

Jeff sometimes fights these cases, sometimes not. This time he did and he exposed, yet again, how flawed the UDRP system is and why, with domain names again worth millions of dollars, this is an extremely important system to sort out.

ICANN has, for one reason of another, delayed a review of UDRP for at least five years, despite dozens of people arguing – and pointing out in clear terms – why it has to be done. It is vital that that review is now carried out as soon as possible.

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Tom Cruise wins TomCruise.com

July 23, 2006

Tom Cruise has won his domain namesake, TomCruise.com, from notorious cybersquatter Jeff Burgar.

Burgar contested the complaint and paid for a three-person panel at domain name arbirtrator WIPO to decide the issue. In the end though, they decided for the movie star and against Burgar – who is a regular at WIPO judgments, having registered hundreds of famous peoples’ name which he redirects to his Celebrity1000.com website.

The decision comes as no surprise to anyone who follows the uniform domain resolution policy (UDRP). But Burgar, – indisputably the most infamous domain name registrant – once again highlights flaws and inconsistencies in the UDRP model.

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It’s a cybersquatting extravaganza!

July 28, 2000

You wait for a cybersquatting decision all day and then three arrive at once. Continuing the tradition of leftfield WIPO decisions though, the one loser out of the three was the only one whose name was actually used in its true form.

And so Sting – you know, that bloke with the high-pitched voice out of The Police – has been told it’s no go for www.sting.com. Just as well because the actual owner registered the domain in 1995 to set up his gaming site. His nickname is Sting and he reckons he has just as much right to it as Gordon Matthew Sumner (Sting’s original name). Not that WIPO agrees with this assertion, but it did have to point out that the word “sting” is in fact a pretty bloody common one and so Gordon was pushing it a bit. (Looks at though he’ll have to stick with his Compaq-sponsored site at www.sting.compaq.com.)

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