I am going to have to make a determined effort to update this blog more often. I always feel better when I am writing. Anyway, just as an update: I am currently in New Delhi in the Maurya Hotel following a busy conference week. I’ll be heading to the airport soon to go to Paris, where I hope to meet up with various folk that are integral to the next two conferences coming up both in June: the OECD ministerial in Seoul, followed immediately afterwards by the next ICANN meeting in Paris.

But in between, and for Thursday and Friday this week, I will be at Domainpulse in Vienna giving a talk partly about my book, Sex.com, and partly about the history of making money from domain names. You can see the full programme here. It should be interesting: Wolfgang Kleinwachter, Peter van Roste, Sabine Dolderer, Patrik Faltström, Daniel Karrenberg plus a number of people I have yet to meet and look forward to doing so. If you’re going, see you there.

Kevin Murphy, a British IT journo based in the US, has done a review of my Sex.com book on his blog.

He likes it. Which is nice since he is one of roughly three journalists in the world who understand the domain name system and its history. You can read it all here.

I like the opening line: “This is easily the funnest tech industry book I’ve read in a long time.”

I’m still don’t know where things are at with the US publisher, or this bloke in New York was interested in making a screenplay out of the book, or if I’m ever going to make any money from the book. Still, what does it matter in the wider scheme of things? I managed to write a book and people seem to enjoy it.

The tagline for my book on the Sex.com saga has to be with the publishers on Thursday i.e. in two days.

We – meaning me and the publisher – are still undecided so here is your chance to have some fun and help me out. There are a list below of the sort of variations we came up with a few months ago – they are also on the poll on the right. So, please, vote but also please offer your suggestions and variations. And do so quick. A signed book and a beer to whoever nails it…

Suggestions so far:

• One domain, Two Men, Twelve Years and the $65 million battle for the Dubious Jewel in the Internet’s Crown.
• Two men, one prize, 12 years and counting…
• The first great battle of the digital age
• The feud for the internet’s most desired domain
• The brutal battle for the Internet’s hottest property
• The incredible story of the digital era’s most bitter feud
• The $65 million battle for the most valuable word of the Internet age

There is something seriously wrong with 123-Reg – previously the best domain purchasing company in the UK.

Today, I have moved my JaysonBlair.com domain and hosting deal from them for the simple reason that… the website had completely disappeared! The hosting deal must have come to an end and yet somewhere, somehow it fell through the cracks and 123-Reg failed to tell me. I was so gobsmacked I have shifted everything over to GoDaddy.

This isn’t the only time I’ve had trouble with 123-Reg recently either – and I can see from looking on the Net that I’m not alone.

123-Reg’s support – ever since Pipex took them over, and then again recently while Pipex is going through some strange changes – has gone from bad to absolutely pointless.

I had to kill my blog with them and shift hosting because they were so completely useless and unhelpful. I hit a bandwidth limit, but rather than be informed, they just killed it. I was happy to pay for more bandwidth – which I did – but it didn’t work and they basically said they didn’t care. So I moved my hosting.

I also shifted the hosting for my Sexdotcom.info site, because they were so unhelpful and so restrictive with their hosting deals. And I don’t think I’ll bother renewing my hosting deals for my other sites when they come for renewal either (assuming of course that 123-Reg bothers to tell me).

It’s not just me and it’s not just hosting either. There is an extraordinary post on the influential UK mailing list at Deleting.co.uk entitled “R.I.P 123, is this the end for 123-reg?” The complaint was very worrying: “I registered a domain several hours ago with 123-reg.co.uk, the money was taken, yet the domain is still not registered. Anyone can go and register it.”

And again on the My Two Cents blog, Shari says, no, shouts “BOYCOTT 123-REG.CO.UK!” She has also shifted over to GoDaddy because: “My password needed to be reset since early June so I could renew a domain for my husband! And what happens?? 3 MONTHS LATER and the LOSS of my husbands domain to finally get it reset!!! Talk about BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE! I emailed them several times a day since June and FINALLY 2 weeks ago they reset my password… but 2 MONTHS TOO LATE!”

Something has gone very, very wrong at 123-Reg and it is directly impinging on its core technical functions. What a way to squander a reputation. I’m simply not going to stay with a company that I can’t trust to look after my domains or hosting deals.