The internet’s Domain Name System is 25 years old this week.

Paul Mockapetris, chairman and chief scientist at Nominum, is credited with inventing the DNS in 1983.

Mockapetris shared his thoughts on the technology during a ceremony at the Oxford Internet Institute, discussing how it came to be, its impact on the internet and where it is headed.

What started as a small project that few thought would be such an important aspect of communication, the DNS is now part of the internet’s underlying infrastructure and provided an alternative to typing numerical IP addresses for every domain name.

“The DNS is the database for internet communication technology and, with billions of people using it everyday and millions of companies and organisations with registered domain names, the technology is ubiquitous in the developed world,” he said.

“It continues to spread around the globe, and has given us the flexibility to change the way we communicate.

“As more people come online they need rapid, intuitive and safe DNS services that do not require technical expertise.”

Mockapetris added that one of the greatest achievements of the DNS is its ability to adjust to the world’s changing needs.

When the DNS was created, eight years before the introduction of the World Wide Web, a few hundred machines were connected to the internet.

Today more than 130 million are connected, and this number is expected to grow substantially as the majority of the world’s population gets online.

Source VNUnet

The Barbados Government, through its Telecommunications Unit and with the agreement of Cable &Wireless (Barbados), will take over the administration of the .bb ccTLD from February 18 according to a public notice on the government’s Telecoms Unit website dated 10 January 2008.

The notice says ccTLDs “are usually administered by or for respective governments.” In the case of .bb, Cable & Wireless (C&W) assumed the administration of the “.bb” domain name from the University of Puerto Rico in 1996. Then in 2001 a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Government of Barbados and C&W (Bartel) Ltd. and C&W (BET) Ltd. provided for C&W to continue to perform the role of administration of the “.bb” domain name until such date as determined by the Government.

With the liberalization of the telecommunication sector in Barbados, consideration had to be given to the continued administration of the domain name registration. The Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL) had advised that the management of domain names involves government entities, academic entities, NGOs and the private sector. Should Government take over this function, training of staff is essential.

There was an exchange of correspondence between the Telecommunications Unit and Cable & Wireless in relation to taking over the administration of the “.bb” domain name, including the training of staff. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Switzerland was also approached re: training of staff in the various aspects of this area – legal, administration and technical, but was unable to assist.

The government says the intention is to operate a semi-restricted ccTLD and let the Corporate Affairs and Intellectual Property Office handle the legal issues, which are an integral part of domain name administration. The Inter American Telecommunications Commission (CITEL) had advised that it is the role of governments to provide a clear, coherent and predictable legal system. The main element of legal responsibility relates to duty of care and protection against issues such as defamation, infringement of copyright and/or trademarks, misappropriation of intellectual property and unjust enrichment. A semi-restricted system is where it is necessary to have a local representative with a formally-constituted presence (tax number, registered company etc.).

To read the public notice in full, see the Telecoms Unit website at telecoms.gov.bb

Source DomainNews

Google is planning to add a new technology to its popular AdSense program by the next month. This technology will facilitate detecting domain kitting, a common practice that the experts consider as questionable. Numerous Internet marketers are earning profits in the domain registration space business presently.

‘Domain kiting’ is very popular among the domain registrants. It is a practice to play with the standard five-day grace period at the beginning of the registration of an ICANN-regulated domain. This five-day grace period actually helps the registrants who mistyped domain names they acquired from being stuck with the wrong domain.

The gaming with ‘Domain Kitting’ is increasing at a faster rate. Registrants repeatedly delete a domain name during the grace period and re-register it without ever paying for it. They do this again and again in order to make profits and generate good money from the number of advertisement hits the successful domains get.

Such types of successful domains become capable of generating considerable amount of online advertising revenue for the simple reason that that these domains remain active in search engines, such as Google. This situation helps the registrants to makes millions from partners that taste domains with ‘AdSense for Domains’.

This game of ‘Domain Kitting” spoils the chances of fair deal and transparency for the genuine business owners. The honest registrants who intend to make use of a particular domain name for the legitimate business reasons do not get the desired domain names because these are already tied up with the kitting.

From February 11 onwards, Google will install a system for preventing registrants from making ad revenue from kited domains using AdSense for Domains. Google however, will not disclose the details of this new addition.

Google has always discouraged the practice of ‘Domain Kitting’. “If we determine that a domain is being kited, we will not allow Google ads to appear on the site”, said the official spokesperson of Google. The company anticipates that such a policy in place would make positive impacts both on the users as well as the domain purchasers around the globe.

Quashing the ‘kitting’ business has some business interests of Google involved. There might be some lawsuits filed in near future against the vendors who enable the ‘Domain Kitting’.

Domain Kitting ‘ is quite different from the ‘Domain Tasting’. Tasting is actually a facility given to a prospective purchaser to ‘taste’ the domain for five days and then buy the domain, according to Danny Sullivan.

Google has clarified that it is not targeting the “Domain tasting.” But the industry specialists observe that the new system from Google will definitely affect the ‘tasting’ also. The tasters who are earning huge profits and think that this is a perfectly legitimate business process will also create a backlash for Google, many experts feel.

Source propeller.com

Three weeks ago we brought you the news about Reddit users making fun of Network Solutions’ domain front running. They checked domains like Networksolutionsisstaffedbyterrorists.com, which the service immediately registered. Although this was funny news, the problem itself isn’t. Last year, CEO and founder of GoDaddy Bob Parsons explained on his blog how big the problem is:

The domain name tasting and kiting industry is alive, well and running rampant. The practice of domain tasting and kiting continues to rage out-of-control. In February 2007, 55.1 million domain names were registered. Of those, 51.5 million were canceled and refunded just before the 5 day grace period expired and only 3.6 million domain names were actually kept. With the exception of just a few names, 93.5% of those names were registered simply to see how much advertising revenue – paid by big search firms like our “do no evil” friends at Google – will generate when they are associated with a one page Web site and related links.

As you can read, Parsons wasn’t really fond of the way Google made the practice of domain name tasting profitable. That will change now, and Google will gain some ‘do no evil’ points. Because the number one in online advertising will make it harder for the front running companies to show up in the search results. Over the next few weeks, Google will look up names that are repeatedly claimed and dropped in a five-day period. They will be excluded from the Adsense program, so that they won’t generate advertising revenue.

“We believe that this policy will have a positive impact for users and domain purchasers across the Web,” Google spokesman Brandon McCormick told to the Associated Press.

Fighting side-by-side with Google are Yahoo, Dell and BMW, who have filed federal lawsuits against domain name tasting companies that conflicted with their trademarks. It’s not hard to imagine that all these major companies will be able to ban out the shameless act of domain front running.

And to make the story even better, you can still have fun with the ‘mindless monkeys‘ at Network Solutions.

[WebTipr: David Petherick, United Kingdom]

Source TheNextWeb

Not that we needed it, but the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) expressed its appreciation for all those bloggers out there by releasing the new top level domain .BLOG.

blogforsaleThe massive increase in Internet traffic due to blogging made it unavoidable to label the 2.0 style journalists and writers. The new domain will become available on April 1st, 2008. I think we can say that April will be a great month for cybersquatters.

The question is though, who will use the new domain? Some predictions that immediately popped up when I was reading the announcement:

• Naturally, tech blogs will battle for the technology.blog, political blogs for politics.blog, humor blogs for humor.blog and so on.
• Some of the big guys will probably register theirname.blog, if they’re fast enough. Nobody wants brand squatting problems like ReadWriteWeb had recently. Yet not all of them will make that effort. Their ranking position in Google, Technorati and Alexa is all based on their old domain. .BLOG is just a fancy thing to own.
• New blogs will use the new domain, yet their influence is marginal. Only few fresh blogs know to attract a large audience (We hope we’re one of them).
• Companies will move their corporate blogs to the new domains, or finally decide to start one. We’ll see domains like Startbucks.blog, Sony.blog and Ford.blog.

But this is just my opinion, looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this new domain. What will you register?

Author : Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Source TheNextWeb.org

Hackers have launched a website which allows users to construct phishing pages for social networking and webmail sites.

The site was found by researchers at security firm FaceTime, and targets networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Google’s Orkut, and webmail services including Hotmail and Yahoo Mail.

The page allows would-be hackers to build a special email which can be sent to one or more victims.

The user selects an email template and a site to target, then designs an email greeting card which is sent to the victim. The e-card leads to a phishing site impersonating the domain.

Any log-in credentials stolen by the site are then forwarded to a page which can be accessed by the user.

“It tells you numerous pieces of information, including the number, date and type of account compromised, so the budding hacker can keep a running total of their exploits,” wrote FaceTime malware research director Chris Boyd in a company blog.

The researchers contacted the company hosting the site, which was initially taken down. However, a FaceTime spokesperson told vnunet.com that the site was back online at 1:30pm Pacific time on 28 January.

Boyd advised users to be wary of any apparent social networking or webmail site linked from an email greeting card.

“If in doubt, right-click the live link in the email and check what domain it points to,” he wrote. “Otherwise, you might end up on a hacker’s rapidly growing trophy list.”

Auteur : Shaun Nichols in California
Source VNUnet

We would like to inform all our users that based on the decision DNS Working Group determined at their latest meeting took place on December 13th, 2007 the policies and rules in regards to foreign applications are changed.

In accordance with the modifications, “.tr” registration applications which are made based on the foreign originated documents by individuals or legal entities established abroad, applicants are requested to prove that the phrase/name/letter string chosen as the domain name is either used in Turkey by the rightful owner (or the authorized company/individual) or they are in business venture to do so.

In other words, applicants must prove a business activity in Turkey (at least they are in business venture to do so) or have business relationship with a company which is present in Turkey (distribution agreement etc.). Otherwise, from the above mentioned date onwards it is not possible for a foreign individual or company to register “.tr” domain name.

Source nic.tr

Brussels, 25 January 2008—By the end of 2007, the number of registered .eu domain names in Poland had grown to 102,138, a staggering rise of 48.64 percent compared to the year before, according to recent statistics from EURid, the organisation that manages the .eu Internet top-level domain.

Marc Van Wesemael, the managing director of EURid, commented on the numbers: “It is very pleasing to see the growth of .eu domain names in Poland. I am convinced that we will see even further growth of .eu domains in Poland in 2008 due to the strong economical growth in Central Europe.”

Marcin Ilnicki, the manager of Polish timber manufacturing and transport and shipping service company Iltrans, says that his company has been using .eu since 2006 and testifies to its advantage: “We registered a .eu domain name due to its international character. As a result we met many new partners throughout Europe; from England, France, Belgium and Germany.”

Other countries that saw a significant increase in registrations of .eu domains were Lithuania and Finland. Registrations in Lithuania grew by 48.46 percent and in Finland by 39.91 percent.

Since April 2006 it has been possible for anyone living within the European Union to register a .eu domain name. So far more than 2.7 million .eu domain names have been registered, making .eu the third-largest European top-level domain.

Source EURid

I wrote about “dot travel” on my blog in the past, and just for the record, personally I still believe in the original dot travel concept, as well as the purity of the dot travel domain extension for travel and tourism related web addresses. However, I was saddened when I read the press release below, and I realized that the dot travel concept may have been killed by greed and short-term vision.

.travel to release nearly 300,000 destination names.
.travel domain registrar, EnCirca issued a .travel advisory regarding the release of nearly 300,000 reserved destination names. Effective with the new relaxed eligibility policy, the .travel registry is planning to release thousands of reserved place names, such as cities, iconic cultural sites and world heritage landmarks. These .travel domain names are ideal for search engine marketing since keywords in domain names are given extra weight in search engine rankings. Destination management organizations and tourism boards had until December 21, 2007 to secure their destination names from EnCirca before they are released for public registration.
(For Immediate Release - Travel News Distribution, December 2007)

To track back, in January of 2006, Ron Andruff and his business partner Cherian Mathei launched dot travel officially to the global travel and tourism industry in New York , after many years of collaborating with industry leaders and ICANN. The concept was a brilliant one, which had the potential to open up tourism for smaller destinations and small medium enterprises, even in areas of the world that do not have the big advertising budgets or brand awareness. It also had the great potential to bring a bit of order into the mess of finding travel-related information on the Internet (now the biggest category on the Web). Furthermore, by making online travel more consumer friendly and reducing browsers’ frustration, this initiative would have helped grow a stronger tourism industry world-wide.

Every great concept makes or breaks with the execution. I believed in the founding team as Ron focused his efforts in building relationships with the industry to embrace this new domain name and tried to make travel and tourism organizations understand that this is THEIR domain. As CEO of Tralliance, his organization was responsible for the administration and marketing of dot travel both to the industry and to the consumer. It was critical to get critical mass and industry buy-in prior to marketing to consumers as the value proposition (being able to type in any destination and travel supplier followed by dot travel into the browser address bar and being directed to the official website of that respective organization). Exciting projects were underway in Canada, China, Africa, Asia, Brunei, Egypt, and the Caribbean to name the biggest initiatives. Canada for example, led by the Canadian Tourism Commission and the Travel Industry Association of Canada went out to engage the tourism industry to register their relevant place names in order to build a value proposition for consumers to find Canadian destinations, landmarks, parks, and heritage sites by just typing in the destination followed by dot travel - not only was Canada.travel positioned as being consumer-centric online, but also better able to increase tourism revenues and awareness to smaller destinations and tourism businesses. The “Canada Model” was cited by many nations as a best practice to follow. China.travel on the other hand was designed to be a monumental task to index all Chinese tourism businesses for the first time, and put them online.

Ron also set up an organization (TTPC) that independently from Tralliance was responsible for the protection of the policies and rules of the authentication process - the crown jewels of the concept. The authentication process made sure that only the correct owner of a brand was able to register the respective domain name(s), and that destination, heritage sites, countries, cities, etc. (called place names) were protected from for a period of time (and major destinations such as countries were protected forever). These registered and authenticated domain names were then fed into a database that populated an online directory and search engine.

A brilliant idea and all seemed to go so well….but what happened??? Operating a venture like that is not cheap obviously, and even though it is a good cause, it still required investors. The Globe.com, an operator of several internet and technology ventures agreed to invest in Tralliance, and at some point gained majority interest. Nothing wrong at that point - but that unfortunately changed when The Globe unexpectedly decided to operate Tralliance and take control of the execution of the .travel concept by pushing Ron and his team out. A very aggressive business practice led to the sale and registration of domain names that were not in line with the authentication process. Letters and calls both to Ed Cespedes, the new CEO of Tralliance, Michael Eagan, Chairman of The Globe, and Birger Bachman, Chairman of TTPC unfortunately did not result in any action. The train was going down the rails, and one could foresee the crash. Other passionate board members of TTPC distanced themselves from dot travel when they realized the sudden change in execution, led by the new management. Probably with good reason, since Labigroup (owned by the CEO of .travel) agreed to buy 25,000 .travel domains a year from the registrars of .travel.

On December 20, 2007, the Company, through its subsidiary, Tralliance Corporation (“Tralliance”), entered into a Bulk Registration Co-Marketing Agreement (the “Agreement”) with Labigroup, under Tralliance’s Bulk Purchasing Program available to entities committing to a minimum purchase of 25,000 “.travel” domain names within one-year. Labigroup is controlled by the Company’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Egan and our remaining directors own a minority interest in Labigroup. Under the Agreement, Labigroup committed to purchase a predetermined minimum number of “.travel” domain names on a bulk basis from an accredited “.travel” registrar of its own choosing and to establish a predetermined minimum number of related “.travel” websites. As consideration for the “.travel” domain names to be purchased under the Agreement, Labigroup agreed to pay certain fixed fees and make other payments, including but not limited to, an ongoing royalty calculated as a % share of its Net Revenue, as defined in the Agreement, to Tralliance. The Agreement has an initial term which expires September 30, 2010, after which it may be renewed for successive periods of two and three years, respectively. Labigroup has paid Tralliance the sum of $262,500 under the Agreement to date. (Source: Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington D.C, December 20, 2007)

Just one clear example:
tours.travel - registered by Labitrav on December 20th, 2007, just hours before the opening. Labitrav (Labigroup it is mentioned in the SEC filling) it is also based in Fort Lauderdale, such as Tralliance. The result will be just another domain name with a valuable domain extension, but without the powerful authentication. So if you wanted to type in ABCdestination.travel , you may now land on the website of an aggressive link farm site or a company that has nothing to do with ABC destination, instead of the official ABC destination site – without having to find out the correct (possibly dot com) domain name, or sifting through millions of search results on your favorite search engine. And the dot travel directory, a searchable database of authenticated domain names, which was supposed to become the purest source of relevant travel information online, is now cluttered with irrelevant, inappropriate links offering little value. Gone the dream of order in online travel. The opportunity to build consumers’ trust shattered.

But who is to blame in the end?

* Is it Ron Andruff and his founding Tralliance team, for needing an investor that unfortunately had a different agenda?

* Is it Ed Cespedes and Michael Eagan from The Globe, the new Tralliance Management: for trying to make money quickly off a great concept, but in their haste destroying the value proposition?

* Is it the TTPC Board of Directors under chairmanship of Birger Bachman, for not guarding the “crown jewels” and therefore letting the value proposition dilute, and for not listening to the outrcrys from the travel industry?

* Is it ICANN, the governing body of Internet domain names, for not taking back the dot travel domain name when the strategy went into a different direction?

* Is it the global Travel and Tourism industry, for not embracing the dot travel domain name extension fast enough, that motivated the new Tralliance Management to open registration up to make money?

* Is it the UNWTO, the World Tourism Organization, and travel trade associations all over the world (such as PATA, DMAI, ASTA, NTA, etc.), for not stepping in and get more involved to make dot travel a UNWTO priority earlier?

* Is it National Tourism Organizations and Destination Marketing Organizations for not encouraging their industry partners and members more aggressively to register their names?

* Or is it maybe even the Consumer for not embracing the dot travel domain fast enough to show value to doubting travel organizations?

In any case, I don’t think anybody is to blame and everybody is to blame at least a little bit (some more than others obviously, you can make up your own mind…) - but it just confirms how hard it is to execute a concept, as brilliant it may be – if there is not one entity responsible and in control of the outcome, and if one of the driving forces has agendas that are more self-centered than for the long-tem benefit of the global travel and tourism industry. However, it is clear that a lot of passionate travel and tourism professionals came together with the best intentions to make the online travel landscape more consumer friendly. Dan Luzadder, a Travel Weekly reporter wrote a couple very well researched articles that provide further background information on the developments behind the dot travel concept: Tralliance is changing dot-travel rules in a bid to expand traffic (Dec 27, 2007 - www.travelweekly.com/articles.aspx?articleid=59739 ), and Masters of the domain – the future of dot travel (Sept 11, 2007 - www.travelweekly.com/articles.aspx?articleid=58063 ).

To close, nevertheless I believe that dot travel domain name is still a powerful domain name, which will not go away. The domain name is pure, and at least for English-speaking markets and search engines brings tremendous value. That has very little to do with the concept overall, however it is obvious that if the concept could have been executed, the use of the domain name for travel organizations would have been a lot more powerful - simply because the consumer would have seen the value proposition. It’s a little bit like Google – a superior search engine technology became the most powerful Internet company, not by spending billions in advertising but just by being consumer centric. But still, Ontario.travel is still a more powerful domain name that OntarioTravel.net, and Canada.travel is easier to remember than CanadaKeepExploring.com - or is it not?

So is there hope, or is the concept dead without any possibility of revival? Well, I think everything is possible, but a true miracle would have to happen – driven by the global travel and tourism industry, and ICANN itself to save the travel industries opportunity to bring order and trust to online travel. In the meantime however, I predict the decline of new truly authenticated dot travel domain name registrations, and a decline in renewals…

Hopefully there can be lessons learned. Any future initiative designed to build consumers’ trust – whether it be around relevance, quality, “greenness” or authenticity had better anticipate the threat of greed and short-termism and have developed plans to mitigate same. All the more reason to encourage greater global collaboration and standard setting.

Source Hospitalitynet.org

Outdoornetwork.com is pleased to announce the launch of three new mobile sites, www.WeatherReports.mobi, www.Tides.mobi, and www.LunarTables.mobi, which are all designed specifically for viewing weather related data on a cell phone or PDA. OutdoorNetwork Corp. is the first in the industry to have a comprehensive mobi site with dedicated weather forecasts, which includes a unique search feature to find tide and buoy locations when their zip codes are not known. All three sites have the weather forecasts specific to the zip code, city/state, or by geographical region.

Each of the three new sites has information that will provide a broad range of benefits to the user. These include data on sunrise, sunset, high/low tides, moon phases, peak feeding times, and solunar tables, which will be particularly helpful for boaters, fisherman, and hunters. Data for nearby locations is also readily available.

“We are extremely excited about all the unique features these sites will provide the outdoor enthusiast since no one else on the web can offer them all in one place, especially on a site that they can easily access from their cell phone or PDA. This will revolutionize the way boaters, hunters, and fishermen get their information,” said Tom D’Azevedo, owner of OutdoorNetwork Corp.

The advantage of a using a .mobi site as opposed to a standard website (.com, .net, .org) is that it is specially formatted for use on a cell phone or PDA. This benefits the user in a variety of ways. It enables access to information on the web without having the additional clutter of unnecessary or irrelevant information which cause slower downloads, difficult navigation, and as a result, increased cellular fees.

The weather center on www.Boats.org is being revamped to include drill downs and other enhanced features. One such feature is the ability to locate tidal stations by zip code as well as on a map. Within 60 days, all of the sites will include an additional live database with wide-ranging information for lakes and rivers that show current water level conditions and other useful data to make boating safer.

Boats.org is owned by OutdoorNetwork Corp., which also owns a network of over 500 other marine and outdoor related websites including www.Boats.net, RVPartsus.com, SurplusOutboardParts.com, PrimoCigars.com, and YamahaOutboardParts.com.

Source PR-USA.net