Hello everyone,

After a first month in which over 50 domains of various TLDs with prices ranging from a $10 to $4,000 were sold on NDX Market, we have now released our new homepage with NDX Market at the forefront.

We are also delighted to announce our partnership with BuyDomains and Dotcom Agency, two of the industry’s finest .com portfolio owners as well as NameRich, pioneers in the .cn space. These partnerships ensure a great quality of domain for potential investors using NDX Market.

Our quick searches at the bottom of the homepage allow you to instantly find domains matching specific criteria, such as “BuyNow price under $50″, “.de domains with traffic stats”. Unlike other sales platforms where you have to painstakingly search for domains, we like to show you domains worth your time and money at the click of one button. With NameDrive’s BuyNow prices, you know that you can pick up a domain right now without having to negotiate with the domain seller.

With over 500,000 domains listed for sale, set to double very shortly and our offer of no commission on domains sales continues through June, so now is the time to list domains on NDX Market and also benefit from our first rate domain parking service as well.

Looking forward to seeing you on NameDrive soon!

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Mister B

Hi everybody,

Welcome to the news roundup. This week ICANN flexes its collective muscles while Mexico unleashes .mx (to the max!). There’s also news of a new Google tool that might prove useful to any webmasters out there, much speculation (including some about Yahoo, who have been rather invisible in the news recently) and a .tel domain that could save your life. With so much excitement, it’s a good job the weekend is here.

Have a good one

Mister B

ND Weekly - Word

ND Weekly #88
ICANN Terminates Five Domain Name Registrars
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has sent termination notices to five domain name registrars for failure to pay fees. Of the five to be de-accredited, only one has registered domains under management: Maxim Internet Inc.

ICANN is seeking a registrar to take over about 5,000 domains registered at Maxim Internet. It warns that contact data for the registrants is in an inconsistent format.

ICANN sent a breach notice to Maxim on March 30. Since that time the company has notified customers it was shutting down. In ICANN’s termination letter to Maxim, Director of Contractual Compliance Stacy Burnette wrote:

‘Using the primary contact information provided by Maxim, ICANN staff transmitted an e-mail message to you and left telephone messages for you inquiring about Maxim’s intentions to remain an ICANN-accredited registrar. After failed attempts to reach you, observing that Maxim’s website was no longer operational on 1 June 2009, receiving an electronic mail message from a person claiming to represent Maxim in its “close down” on 3 June 2009 and receipt of other electronic mail correspondence from you referring to the “closing” of Maxim, ICANN concluded that Maxim is insolvent.
More…

Kentucky Asks for More Time in Online Gambling Case

The Commonwealth of Kentucky has asked an Appeals Court for more time to respond in a highly publicized case concerning its failed attempt to seize 141 online gambling domains.

A Motion for Enlargement of Time is being requested in order to file a Reply Brief.

The Commonwealth claims in the Motion that it “Mistakenly believed that the last Appellee Brief was filed on June 3 and thus calculated a due date for the filing of a Reply Brief on Thursday, June 18, 2009, only to be informed by the Clerk of this Court that such a Reply Brief was due on June 17, 2009.”

On January 20, The Kentucky Court of Appeals issued a ruling prohibiting the seizure of the Internet domains.

In a 2-to-1 majority opinion, the court ruled for the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association (iMEGA) in its suit against Judge Thomas D. Wingate (No. 2008-CA-002000-OA), by blocking the seizure orders issued by the Franklin (KY) circuit court judge for the domain names, all related to Internet gambling (Commonwealth of Kentucky, Franklin Circuit Court, Division II, 08-CI-1409).
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Google.com Finally Adds Domain Change Tool
Google has recently released a tool which allows webmasters to communicate with Goole when they are trying to change a domain name. This is to try and help ease fears that when a website changes their domain name they won’t lose their Google ranking.

This tool, named the change of address feature allows you to verify two domains in Google Webmaster Tools and then tell Google that one verified domain is moving to another verified domain.

There is complete documentation on how this works at this Google document. Plus, you should 100% read the moving your site guidelines before making such a move.

One issue is that the change of address feature seems like it is currently not working. Scott Clark posted in Google Webmaster Help that when he tries the feature, it returns an error that reads, “Hm. Something isn’t right. We’re checking into it now.” Googlers said they are looking into the issue and hopefully it will be resolved shortly.
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Is Google Losing Its Touch?
Lately we are seeing more and more evidence that Google maybe loosing its grip on the search field. One of the main reasons for saying this is because we are seeing huge problems in the UK results at the moment.

Basically a huge volume of USA based sites are being filtered through and its something that actually looks veryworrying. Google or Matt Cutts have yet to say anything about what has happened, but I can assure you that its something UK searchers do not want to see especially for product related terms.

As an example if someone searched for “Buy computer games” or another product related term they do not want to see results that are USA based, it just doesn’t make sense.

For almost every product related search you will notice that we are seeing a gradual decrease in volumes. This shows that users are just not searching like they used too. But another interesting fact is that if you search for brand names on Google trends such as “Ebay” or “Amazon” you will notice a great rise in overall volumes.
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Go Daddy .MX Domain Pre-Registration Debuts
Scottsdale, Arizona - (The Hosting News) - June 17, 2009 - Domain registrar, Go Daddy, has made available its newest offering - .MX domains extensions, available for pre-registration, as the country code top level domain (ccTLD) of Mexico.

The .MX domain was only offered to a few select institutions in the last two decades. Now, Mexico is offering the extension for use worldwide. Interest in .MX domain extensions is bound to be muy caliente! Consider this…According to Internet World Stats, the number of Spanish-speaking Internet users has grown 619 percent in the last eight years. Today, more than 130 million Spanish speakers use the Internet - making it one of the top three languages on the Web.

Go Daddy opened registration for sub-extension .COM.MX in May. Now, anyone who owned a sub-extension prior to March 1, 2009 can participate in pre-registration for a .MX domain at GoDaddy.com. Go Daddy is known for having industry-best personalized customer service. With bilingual customer care representatives already on staff and more being hired, Go Daddy is ready to serve the needs of interested takers - in both Spanish and English.
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SOS1.tel: The One .tel Domain That May Save Your Life This Holiday Season
BIARRITZ, France, June 19 /PRNewswire/ — In advance of the annual holiday period where many people travel to countries in search of sun or excitement, KFA Technologies today announced that it had created a new .tel domain to help people get near-instant access to emergency services worldwide from any device connected to the internet, including mobile phones - SOS1.tel (http://sos1.tel/).

“SOS1.tel is probably the most ambitious .tel site ever created so far,” explained Francois Amigorena, founder of KFA Technologies. “It gathers the emergency phone numbers of 134 countries worldwide and takes full advantage of the competitive edges of .tel technology.”

Travellers now simply need only to memorize SOS1.tel to be able to access contact information on PCs or mobile devices to the relevant emergency services in the country they are in, simply by typing it into the browser. .tel domains are not websites, which means that the data sent back is very quick and also low cost to access.
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Pfizer gets back domain names
New Delhi: Drug firm Pfizer has managed to retrieve two domain names from one Samir Kumar, who failed to prove that the disputed domains were not registered to make money. As per the information available with WIPO, Geneva-based WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre ordered the transfer of the two domain names - pfizer.org and celebrex.org to the pharma firm after Bangalore-based Samir Kumar failed to prove that the disputed domains were not registered in bad faith.

Kumar, who registered disputed domain names on March 14 this year, failed to prove that he has the legitimate authority to register the names and there was no bad intention in this regard. Pfizer and its subsidiary firm G D Searle had jointly challenged the registration of domain names by Kumar at WIPO stating that it was confusingly similar to their trademarks on which the companies have rights.
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Yahoo Domain Sale was Win-Win
When Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) sold the domain name Contests.com on Tuesday, the mood was upbeat. It was a relatively big domain sale from a big company for a lot more money than the seller anticipated.

I was surprised to see some people questioning the sale. Larry Fischer made some fair points. TechCrunch went a little overboard, suggesting this was more than just a simple decision to sell an unused domain. (People who read the TC article took it a step further. Two commentors thought it was some sort of inside deal as a favor to the buyer. Gotta love conspiracy theorists.)
Here’s my take: it was a good domain sale. The seller got more than they required and the buyer probably would have paid more.

Yahoo set a reserve of $150,000 and was willing to take that much. The buyer was determined and probably would have gone higher had an internet bidder not pulled out at $360,000. But is $380,000 that bad for this domain?
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Is Yahoo Becoming a Domain Name Clearing House?
Yahoo is apparently looking to unload a little dead weight in the form of valuable domain names. The floundering company got rid of the seemingly valuable name contests.com last night for the fairly rock bottom price of $380,000.

TechCrunch seems astonished by this number, suggesting that the company should have gotten something more in the neighborhood of the $3 million dollars Candy.com’s owners walked away with. What’s more important here is the mere fact that Yahoo actually sold the domain.

After all, big companies tend to hoard domains–just in case the company should ever see fit to use it. That Yahoo sold it via auction seems to indicate that the company is perhaps even more strapped for cash than any of us suspected.
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Australia: Call To Trade Mark Owners To Have Their Say - New Proposed Generic Top Level Domains
The domain name space is set for a dramatic change when the new proposed generic top level domains are introduced (gTLDs). The changes will allow the creation of new domains, for example .your trademark or .your company name. The stage is therefore set for conflicting interests in choice and use of such new domains on a global basis. Trade mark owners currently have an opportunity to consider the proposals for the new domains and have their say.

Trade mark protection has been identified as one of four major “overarching issues” to be resolved before the new gTLDs are introduced by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)1.

Under instruction from ICANN to draft a report offering solutions to the potential for trade mark infringement in the new gTLDs, ICANN’s Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) team (via its expert Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT) team) has completed its ‘Final Report on Trade Mark Protection in New gTLD’ (the Report).
More…

Thanks to the following sources:
http://domainnamewire.com
http://www.gambling911.com
http://www.webhostdir.com
http://www.seotops.com
http://prnewswire.com
http://sify.com
http://www.mondaq.com
http://www.hostingtech.com

While browsing the internet instead of working this morning, one of my Mister B contacts pointed out this rather interesting story on the BBC website.

I’m not sure how IE7 can be shipped without a browser, considering it is a browser, but I suppose we can never be surprised by what Microsoft will do next. How should I navigate to Bing! without a browser on my IE7?

What’s next?
Apple to launch ipod without MP3 Player?
Godaddy to allow registrations without domain names?
Mister B to post artciles without wit and grace?

The mind boggles.

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Mister B

Hi everybody,

Here’s your weekly slice of news from the wonderful world of domaining. More conflicting reports on the online ad spend downturn/increase, depending on who you listen to and what your reference point is, as well as an interesting comparison between Google search and Microsoft’s new Bing! search engine, based on eyeballs. Human eyeballs. As usual, you read it here first (unless you’ve read it already).

Have a great weekend!

Mister B.

ND Weekly - Word

ND Weekly #87
New top-level domains could cause .trademark chaos
Wrangles over domain squatting are nothing new, but opening up top level domains raises some interesting issues of ownership. Who should decide who has the right to a certain domain, and will they really add much to the navigation and identity of the web?

The Future Laboratory and the domain registrar Gandi.net asked 1,000 people what they thought of the liberalisation of web domains - 65% of people said they think it will litter the internet with pointless domain names, 60% didn’t think it would improve their internet experience ad 46% think it will make things too complicated.

The range of domain names is only as limited as the imagination of the people who order them, but many possibilities bring their own challenges. It will be a powerful tool for brands - the Guardian could have the .guardian domain, Nike could register.nike and the Eiffel Tower could register .eiffel.
More…

CrapShoot: Man Rolls Dice on Casinos.org
To be fair, it was early this morning that I first saw an arbitration filing for the domain name Casinos.org at WIPO.

I rubbed my eyes. This must be a joke, right? Perhaps there was more to the story, I thought. I looked up the history of the domain, and it appears to be owned by the same person for a couple years. Something just didn’t seem right.

I emailed the owner of the domain to ask him what was going on. It’s no joke, he said. Someone had filed to get the generic domain name Casinos.org from him.

According to WIPO’s domain dispute database, the complainant is “Rimbault”. What’s his claim to the domain Casinos.org? Well, he owns a decidedly inferior domain name: C-a-s-i-n-o-s.org.
More…

Google recaptures $761 from Facebook nemesis
After it was successfully sued in small claims court by a man who says he invented Facebook, Google has appealed the decision, returned to court, and persuaded a judge to return its $761.

In March, famous Facebook nemesis Aaron Greenspan sued Google in a North California court, claiming that Google terminated his AdSense account without explanation and failed to pay him the $721 he was owned for ad clicks on his website. A judge ruled in favor of Greenspan, awarding him the $721 plus $40 in court costs.

As Greenspan says in a recent piece on The Huffington Post, a Google paralegal soon sent him an email indicating the Mountain View Chocolate Factory was poised to cut him a check. But after Greenspan recounted the suit and questioned the company’s practices in an earlier Post post, Google decided to appeal.

Apparently, Google succeeded in getting the ruling overturned. According to court papers, the company is no longer required to pay that $761.
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Online Advertising On The Up Across Europe
A recent report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe) and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have collected details for online advertising spending across 19 European markets. The study, which covered the year up until 31st December 2008, showed that the online advertising spending for the whole of the European market totaled €12.9bn which was a 20% rise on year on year figures from 2007.

The smaller markets in the emerging nations such as Slovenia, Poland and Austria had the largest increases in growth of 77%, 60% and 45%. With the more established markets, the Netherlands, France, UK, Germany, Sweden and Italy with 9%, 18.5%, 19%, 19%, 19% and 20% respectively.

Search is the strongest online advertising format in the European market, with the strongest year-on-year increase of 26%. This was a percentage of 43% for the total of online advertising expenditure across the 19 countries. Classifieds ranked next with 17.4% expansion year on year which contributed to a 26% share of advertising spends.
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Bing ‘better’ than Google for advertisers
We’ve had the $100m ad campaign, a porn scandal, denials, and an initial surge.

Increasingly, though, it’s looking like a search engine really is just a search engine and that there’s very little to differentiate Microsoft’s Bing from Google - other than one’s personal taste.

One user research specialist, though, reckons Bing will offer one important online constituent what they want - eyeballs. They are, of course, advertisers and businesses online.

User Centric claimed that sponsored links attracted a greater amount of users’ attention in search results returned in Bing than in Google - 42 per cent versus 25 per cent per search.

Related searches in Bing also attracted more attention than in Google - 31 per cent compared to five per cent. Bing displays related searches on the left-hand side of the screen, while Google returns related searches beneath the search results towards the bottom of the page.
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Phorm raises £15m to expand targeted online advertising service
The company, which scans an individual’s browsing history and uses the data to deliver bespoke advertising on member websites, placed the shares with institutions at 450p, a discount to its 535p closing price on Tuesday.

Phorm has faced scrutiny from privacy-rights groups, the Government and European Commission over data privacy. This followed revelations that BT ran two secret trials using its software without seeking its customers’ permission in 2006 and 2007.

BT denied the trials breached privacy laws. It said no customers’ IP [internet computer] addresses were not divulged and it had no way of knowing who was taking part in the trials in 2006 and 2007. The UK government also ruled it had not breached privacy laws.
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Online Growth Opportunities in the Down Ad Market
The ad market has been brutal - the decline has been steady and hit 15.1% in Q1 according to Bernstein Research Ad Tracker. No sector grew including online which was a first. And while many, including ZenithOptimedia, still predict growth in online ad spend this year, even they have cut their projection in half to 4.5%. However, there are strategies for companies to make money in online advertising. It is key for online marketers to monetize their business - now more than ever.

As the article points out, many believe that the ad market is beginning to stabilize. If so, this would be welcome news but does not address the losses many have suffered in the first two quarters this year. The follow up comments to the article are perhaps the more interesting. 3 ways to now make money in advertising: 1) grow share, 2) increase ads on a page boosting numbers, and 3) expand reach to expand your piece of the pie. I would add a fourth and that would be disruptive innovation. Perhaps it will be what will help online marketers expand reach but it is a unique approach requiring its own discussion.
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AOL Buys Two Companies Specializing in Local Online Media
Time Warner Inc.’s AOL unit has acquired local online media companies Patch Media Corp. and Going Inc. as part of a broader strategy to build the company’s position in the relatively fast-growing local online advertising market.

The acquisitions come as Time Warner moves to split off AOL into an independent company and AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong, who joined the company in April, is working on putting together a new structure and strategy, in which local content is one major push.

Patch creates technologies and operates Web sites to help local communities publish news and information. Going lets users share information about local events.

Mr. Armstrong wrote in a note to employees that the two companies will help build on the local efforts AOL now has in place, such as its MapQuest mapping site.
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TNS: Online Ad Spend Increased 8% in Q1
While most advertising sectors were pummeled during the first quarter, spending on Internet display ads jumped 8.2 percent compared to this time last year, according to a report released today by TNS Media Intelligence.

Internet display advertising was one of only two advertising sectors to post year-over-year gains in spending. The other category showing a gain — nationally syndicated TV shows ranging from Seinfeld to The Oprah Winfrey Show — posted a mere 0.2 percent increase in spending.

The TNS numbers conflict somewhat with a report that the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers International released last week. The IAB-PwC study showed a 5 percent year-over-year decrease in online advertising spending in the first quarter, and a 10 drop in online ad spending compared to the fourth quarter of 2008.
More…

Thanks to the following sources:
http://www.guardian.co.uk
http://domainnamewire.com
http://www.theregister.co.uk
http://www.bdrecruitment.com
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.glgroup.com
http://online.wsj.com

The eagle-eyed of you will have noticed that our Homepage is proudly proclaiming that our 0% commission on domain sales on NDX Market are is being extended through June.
We have been selling an average of 1 domain per day for the first 30 days of NDX Market, so it’s a great chance to try out our system while there are still no fees for using our transfer service.

We will be releasing a new-look version of our aftermarket very shortly which will lead to an increase in domain sales and offers, so get your domains listed and make those sales!

Mister B

Hello everybody,

Another week, another news roundup. Some interesting coverage of ICANN’s stint at Capitol Hill from DomainNameWire, as well as some scaremongering about various scary internet threats (including what appears to be a domainer conspiracy theory to down the missing Air France jet). Most odd.

Have a great weekend!

Mister B.

ND Weekly - Word

ND Weekly #86
Congress Beats Up ICANN
It wasn’t pretty.

For better than two hours today, members of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet took turns ripping into Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and its President/CEO Paul Twomey. If nothing else, ICANN’s experience on Capitol Hill today will give it all the more reason to try to get out of U.S. oversight. In addition to discussing the Joint Project Agreement, members also discussed the introduction of new top level domain names.

The hearings started with committee members spending two minutes on opening remarks. You can generally divide the members’ into three categories:
1. Well informed about subject matter
2. Didn’t know subject matter and admitted it
3. Didn’t know subject matter but read their staff notes and pretended like they knew about it
More…

New Domain Names In The Future? Call It a Definite.maybe
The non-profit corporation responsible for overseeing the Web’s domain-naming rules came to the Hill today, partly to push forward an agenda that it’s time to expand the type of Web addresses beyond the familiar “.com” and “.org.” But don’t expect to be able to register “your.name” as a Web address anytime soon.

Paul Twomey, president and chief executive officer of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, in testimony before the House subcommittee on communications, technology and the Internet, said that raising the number of domain names would benefit Web users by allowing for more competition. Twomey listed possible domain names tied to geographic areas, like “.nyc,” or topics, such as .sport.”
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Air France Crash Raises Questions About Domain Name Registration
(Updates with a new re-direct for flight447.com, extension of the domain ownership for another 9 years, and the removal of an eBay listing for AirFranceLawSuit.com)

As investigators seek to unravel the fate of Air France flight 447, there’s been speculation online about an unusual domain name registration made some two years prior to this week’s plane crash, flight447.com.

The mystery of the Air France flight that disappeared this week deepened after news agencies on Wednesday confirmed a previous Air France flight from Buenos Aires to Paris was the target of a bomb threat just days before. That plane was inspected and arrived without incident.
Now it has emerged that someone registered a domain for the missing plane’s flight number on September 30, 2007.
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$3M Candy.com Sale Gives Domain Name Industry a Boost
Candy.com sells for $3M. Here’s what it means.
It’s official, according to seller Rick Schwartz: Candy.com has sold to G&J Holdings for $3 million (and may include some royalties). But I’m not going to write about how great Rick is; I’ll leave that to other people (and Schwartz does such a good job of it himself). Instead, I’m going to make a few observations:

1. I like the online candy sales business, and this is of course the perfect domain name for it. This really came down to a make vs. buy decision for the buyers. They could spend $3 million on branding or buy this domain name. Was it a smart move? Only time will tell. But I sure like the ring of calling up a potential business partner and saying “This is Joe with Candy.com”. Instant credibility.
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Security Tightened for .org Domain
The Public Interest Registry will announce today that it has begun cryptographically signing the .org top-level domain using DNS security extensions known as DNSSEC.

DNSSEC is an emerging standard that prevents spoofing attacks by letting Web sites verify their domain names and corresponding IP addresses using digital signatures and public-key encryption.

DNSSEC is viewed as the best way to bolster the DNS against vulnerabilities including the Kaminsky Bug, a DNS flaw discovered last summer that allows a hacker to redirect traffic from a legitimate Web site to a fake one without the user knowing.

“DNSSEC is a needed infrastructure upgrade,” says Alexa Raad, CEO of the Public Interest Registry (PIR). “It has passed the threshold of being a theoretical opportunity to being a practical necessity. The question then becomes: How do we make it work?”
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Typo’d Google domains in Top 10 malware exploit sites
Misspelled versions of two popular Google services are among the Top 10 sites hosting exploits for use in drive-by malware download attacks.
On the heels of two massive drive-by attacks — ten of thousands of hijacked sites launching attacks via the browser — Google released a list showing that malicious hackers are typo-squatting on its domains to evade detection and to keep malware sites alive for long periods.

The list contains domains referenced by hacked Web sites. According to Google, all domains on the top-10 list are suspected to have compromised more than 10,000 web sites on the Internet.

Google scans its index for dangerous Web sites and, according to Niels Provos, the company’s automated systems found more than 4,000 different sites that appeared to be set up for distributing malware by massively compromising popular web sites.
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The Incredible Mutating Domain Appraisal Scam

First Pozde.com. Then TropicalNames.com. Then NameOrange. Now the latest domain name appraisal scam has moved to FlyAppraisals.com. It’s all the same scam and the same scammers.

You get an email offering to buy your domain name for some percentage of the appraisal price:

‘We are interested to buy your domain name DOMAIN.COM and offer to buy it from you for 65% of the appraised market value. As of now we accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal companies.’

The email lists three appraisal companies, two of which are legit and one is the scammer’s. The scammer’s appraisal service is the cheapest, so many people opt for it.
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Google Is Top Tracker of Surfers in Study

When asked about online privacy, most people say they want more information about how they are being tracked and more control over how their personal information is used. Those consumer expectations are rarely in line with the data collection practices of Internet companies, which often collect information about their users not only on their own sites, but also when those users visit other sites across the Web.

Those are some of the central findings of a new privacy study conducted by a group of graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, which was released late Monday. The students at the School of Information — Joshua Gomez, Travis Pinnick and Ashkan Soltani — studied consumer expectations by looking at sources like complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission and data collected by the state of California and a privacy group. They analyzed company practices using Ghostery, a browser plug-in that detects cookies, Web beacons and other types of trackers that allow third parties to gather information about Web site visitors, often without their knowledge.
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Cyber crime headache for banks to worsen
Australian banks are facing an even greater threat from cyber criminals following plans by ICANN, the internet’s domain name system manager, to dramatically expand the number of top level domains (’.com’, ‘.gov’ etc) beyond the current 21 generic names.

According to e-commerce community advocate NetChoice combating internet scams and phishing attacks will be much harder if ICANN goes ahead with its proposal to allow anyone to apply for any string as a top level domain (TLD).

Under the proposal, if an application were successful, the applicant could then sell second level domains within their TLD.

For example, if the following three TLDs were successfully registered: .bank, .sydney and .melbourne the Commonwealth Bank would need to register commbank.bank, comm-bank.sydney, commonwealthbank.melbourne, and other variations to combat phishing scams.
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Grady Burnett of Google AdWords to join Facebook news

Grady Burnett who was head of Google’s AdWords division earlier, is now joining Facebook.
Burnett joined Google in 2006. He headed Google’s self-serve AdWords division, the pay-per-click, search-term-based advertising that’s the company’s primary source of revenue.

Burnett led the AdWords office since it opened in Ann Arbor in 2006.
Burnett will oversee Facebook’s online advertising sales, which are the self-generated campaigns created by users and seen on the right side of profiles. The self-generated campaigns are believed to account for most of Facebook’s revenue.
Burnett also oversee Facebook’s inside sales and will report to COO Sheryl Sandberg.
More…

Thanks to the following sources:
http://domainnamewire.com
http://washingtonpost.com
http://www.wired.com
http://www.pcworld.com
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com
http://blogs.zdnet.com
http://www.brokernews.com.au/

Hello everyone,

Yet another fascinating round-up of news from the world of domains, including names before the WIPO,the web’s most dangerous keyword, and some interesting facts about spam!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Mister B

ND Weekly-Word

BlackBerry Wins 101 Domain Names in Single UDRP Case
When it comes to getting bang for your buck in domain name arbitration, Research in Motion may have just set the bar. In a single UDRP case filed at World Intellectual Property Organization, the BlackBerry maker won 101 domains (and was denied 10 others).
BlackBerry filed the complaint against Georges Elias, who registered all 111 domains at GoDaddy. Elias’ imaginative registration spree included domains such as alwaysbetonblackberry.com, blackberryonice.com, and onceyougoblackberryyouwillnevergobackberry.com (no joke).
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Sedo advises susanboyle.com price tag of $25,000
A Texas artist called Susan Boyle has been advised by online domain name auction house Sedo to sell her web address for $25,000 (£15,600), a newspaper has reported.
In 2002, Ms Boyle set up the domain name susanboyle.com to display her artwork, the Guardian noted.
But since the success of Scottish singer Susan Boyle on ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent, Ms Boyle has been inundated with offers to buy her domain name.
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Majority Of Domain Names Used By Phishers Are Legitimate
The majority (81%) of domain names used for phishing are legitimate domains that have been hacked, according to a new report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG).
Among 30,454 phishing domains, only 5,991 domain names (18.5%) were registered by phishers. The rest of the small percentage of the domains used in phishing belonged to subdomain resellers such as ISPs and other online services.
“Phishing most often takes place on compromised Web servers, where the phishers place their phishing pages unbeknownst to the site operators,”" says APWG.
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Yahoo: We Will Do A Deal With Microsoft For “Boat Loads of Money”
Yahoo’s CEO, Carol Bartz said Wednesday she would be open to striking a search deal with Microsoft if they offered “boatloads of money.”
“If there’s boatloads of money and the right technology involved, we’d do a deal, sure,” Ms. Bartz said at the All Things Digital conference. “It’s that simple.”
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First .Tel UDRP Will Be Important
Dispute over osram.tel will test new top level domain.
Osram GmbH has filed the first ever UDRP dispute for a .tel domain name, going after the domain Osram.tel.
This should be an interesting case because of the differences between .tel and other top level domain names. In a UDRP, the complainant must prove three things:
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Experts: Gumblar attack is alive, worse than Conficker
The Web site compromise attack known as Gumblar has added new domain names that are downloading malware onto unsuspecting computers, stealing FTP credentials to compromise more sites, and tampering with Web traffic, a security firm said on Thursday.
The Gumblar attack started in March with Web sites being compromised and attack code hidden on them. Originally, the malware downloaded onto computers accessing those sites came from the gumblar.cn domain, a Chinese domain associated with Russian and Latvian IP addresses that were delivering code from servers in the U.K., ScanSafe said last week.
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The Web’s most dangerous keywords to search for
Which is the most dangerous keyword to search for using public search engines these days? It’s “screensavers” with a maximum risk of 59.1 percent, according to McAfee’s recently released report “The Web’s Most Dangerous Search Terms“.
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Spam now 90 percent of all e-mail
Spam now accounts for 90.4 percent of all e-mail, according to a report released Monday from security vendor Symantec. This means that 1 out of every 1.1 e-mails is junk. The report also notes that spam shot up 5.1 percent just from April to May.
Symantec’s May 2009 MessageLabs Intelligence report reveals other disturbing trends, as well. Rather than just hijack disreputable Web sites, cybercriminals now favor older and well-established domains to host their malware.
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Google wins back domain from Surendranagar boy
Internet search engine giant Google has won a lawsuit against a 17-year-old schoolboy from the state, who had acquired a domain name, googblog.com.
To get the rights of the blogsite registered in the name of Herit Shah from Surendranagar, Google had moved the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a specialised agency of the United Nations, on March 26, 2009.
This week, WIPO, which works for developing a balanced and accessible international system in the field of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), ordered Herit to transfer the domain ownership to the US-based Internet giant.
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Microsoft ‘Bing’ Would Bring New Life to Old Domain
Microsoft’s planning to relaunch its Live search engine under the name “Bing,” a recent report suggests. Bing will debut with a massive ad campaign costing upward of $100 million, the folks at AdvertisingAge claim, putting both the “Live” brand and the “Kumo” codename into Microsoft’s big brand graveyard.
But what is “Bing,” anyway? Its definitions vary from “a heap or pile” to “a blackish sweet cherry.” Its Web site, though, has a slightly more colorful palette. Sure, bing.com is coming up mainly blank as of now — but not too long ago, someone else had a thing for Bing.
More…

Thanks to the following sources:
http://domainnamewire.com
http://www.globalgold.co.uk
http://www.domainnews.com
http://www.thedomains.com
http://news.cnet.com
http://blogs.zdnet.com
http://www.indianexpress.com
http://www.pcworld.com

Hello everyone,

Here is another exciting round-up of news, with interesting
developments in China and Africa, and plenty of tips on how
to get the most from your domains.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Mister B

ND Weekly-Word

Google Releases “Bid Simulator” Tool In Beta
Google has just introduced a new beta Bid Simulator feature on selected Adwords accounts.
Using data from the past seven days, the bid simulator calculates where AdWords would have placed an ad at a different maximum CPC, how many clicks an ad would have received at those simulated positions and how much those clicks would have cost.
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Domain names ‘must be memorable
New domain names must be memorable and easy for web users to type, according to one expert.
Chris Lake of Econsultancy said that the process of choosing the perfect domain name can be a complex one as there are a number of different factors to consider.
Other issues businesses and individuals should look at when looking to purchase a new domain name include length and whether it is available with a range of suffixes rather than just .com, he said.
It should also be unique and match the brand name of the company in question, while being easy for others to pronounce.
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The .ME Top Level Domain Hits a Quarter Million Milestone
The fastest growing country code top-level domain is .ME. The .ME Registry just announced that the extension has hit a quarter million domains registered.
“This is the kind of reaction we always knew we would elicit with dot-ME,” says Predrag Lesic, executive director of the .ME Registry. “Dot-ME has become an Internet phenomenon.”
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.tel Continues Momentum With Over 200,000 Domains Registered
Telnic Limited (http://www.telnic.org), the registry operator for the new communications-focused .tel top level domain (TLD) nominated for a 2009 World Technology Award and InfoCommerce Group 2009 Model of Excellence Award, today announced that over 200,000 registrations of domains had been received within two months of General Availability.
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What Makes a Top Level Domain Successful?
Consider what the benchmark for a successful domain name is.
In light of yesterday’s news that .me has hit 250,000 registrations and .tel has already reached 200,000, a number of people are asking if that makes these TLDs successful. Michael Berkens asked a similar question today.
My answer is that it’s way too early to say they are or are not successful.
I’m sure that GoDaddy/Afilias/DotMe had goals for the launch of their domains, and I have no idea if they’ve been met. Telnic certainly had its first year goals mapped out as well. But many TLDs fall off after an initial rush of speculators and trademark holders run in to register their domains.
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Nigeria takes control of the .ng domain name
Nigeria has assumed control of the domain name, .ng, after a successful transfer was effected last week.
The Nigerian Internet Registration Association took over the responsibility for the local management of the internet name.
President of the internet association, Ndukwe Kalu, speaking in Lagos during the weekend, said “the landmark transition took place at exactly 4pm GMT May 13, 2009, with the historic handover of the country code top level domain (ccTLD) that will enable NIRA manage the domain name on behalf of the nation’s internet community.”
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Slow Africa TLD growth blamed on lack of policies
The domain name business in Africa is being stymied by a lack of policies to spell out the role of registrars and other potential players, according to industry insiders.
Top Level Domain registries are held by private entities with no guidelines on how to involve registrars in selling domains locally or on marketing models they can employ.
The private-public partnership model involving governments, private sector, academia and civil society in management of TLD registries has been viewed as an appropriate model, but a lack of clear guidelines has stunted growth.
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Questioning Domain Name Expiration Notices
If you own the domain for your website, there’s a really good chance you’ve received mail from various domain renewal groups, urging you to renew your domain before it expires. While the expiration notice may appear legitimate, there’s many companies seeking to profit from domain owners that don’t know the actual cost of renewing a domain, or are unaware of when their domain is set to expire. Be careful when renewing your domains, don’t be a victim of price gouging and questionable domain transfer and renewal techniques.
More…

Chinese regulations target rising cybercrime
China has targeted cybercrime in three new sets of regulations issued this month as the activity starts to look like an established industry in the country.
China has targeted cybercrime in three new sets of regulations issued this month as the activity starts to look like an established industry in the country.
Cybercrime in China has grown such that attackers often divide the labor needed to design malware, distribute it and turn the resulting access to remote PCs into monetary gain, security analysts say.
More…

Thanks to the following sources:
http://www.234next.com
http://www.webpronews.com
http://sev.prnewswire.com
http://domainnamewire.com
http://www.infoworld.com
http://www.planetc1.com
http://news.idg.no
http://www.globalgold.co.uk
http://www.thedomains.com

Mister Blogs Tip of the Day #5

While explaining the sales tax situation on NDX Market to one of my trusty colleagues, I thought the explanation might help others out there in ND World who are looking for extra info regarding sales tax and how it concerns them on NDX Market.

So, without further ado, here is the basic breakdown:

- Tax is only applied when the seller is acting as a company. If the seller is trading as an individual, sales tax does not come into play.

- Unlike Sedo, the buyer pays the sales tax on top of the purchase price, the seller doesn’t take the tax out of his sales price.

- Whenever sales tax is applied to the buyer’s final price, it is always clearly shown when he is making an offer.

- Tax is normally applied if the seller is a company in Europe and the buyer is an individual in Europe.

- It is also applied if the seller is a company in Europe and the buyer is a company in the same country - i.e. seller is a company in the UK, buyer is a company in the UK.

- The tax is determined by the seller country. So if the seller is in Germany, it’s 19%, in Poland, 22% etc.

- When the buyer pays for his domain, if tax is applied, he pays the final sales price plus the sales tax. When the transfer is completed, the seller is paid the final sales price plus the sales tax which he must then declare to the tax authorities in his country.

- If the seller is acting as a company outside Europe and the buyer is an individual inside Europe, the sale is subject to sales tax in the buyer’s country. This is added to the final sales price and the seller is responsible for declaring the sales tax in the buyer’s country.

- We have focused on EU sales tax as the laws governing this are very strict. We obviously can’t provide tax support for every transaction - e.g. between Australia and Thailand, so if the seller is operating outside the EU, it is his responsibility to know whether any sale he makes needs to have sales tax deducted for the transaction and, if so, calculate this as part of his final sales price.

There are some other factors to consider, but this is the basic breakdown of how sales tax works on domain sales. I hope the info helps.

Mister B