The IE Domain Registry (IEDR), who manages the .ie ccTLD, this week announced a 5.8 per cent price reduction for registering or renewing a .ie domain name, with effect from the 1st January 2008. This latest price reduction represents the fifth annual consecutive price reduction introduced by the IEDR, reducing the price of a .ie domain name by 48% since 2003. … more

- How Insiders Leverage the AGP to Avert Domain Name Investment Risks

The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) is announcing the release of a study on drop-catching. Drop-catching is an enabler for other domain abuses such as tasting, kiting and typosquatting. Large registrars and others that have the means to test domains on a large scale have harnessed this technique and built a business around taking advantage of ICANN’s Add Drop Grace Period (AGP). … more

MySpace has won a dispute over the domain name myspace.co.uk despite it being registered six years before MySpace was founded. The reason, as outlined in Out-Law.com, is the website for myspace.co.uk “led to a ‘parked’ page with adverts for social networking sites including MySpace was taken to be evidence of an abusive registration and the domain name was given to MySpace.” … more

The never-ending spiral of people with mobile devices continues, and the latest prediction is that one million people worldwide will be accessing the internet form a mobile device at least once a month according to a report on the IDC Internet Commerce Market Model, version 11.1 in PC World.

Another report, 2007 Western European Mobile Communications, covers developments in western Europe’s mobile communications market in 2007. The report notes the “3G subscriber base has shown extraordinary growth and in coming years it is expected that consumer reticence to use services will be overcome as operators introduce flat-rate charging models.” The report costs US$995. … more

Sedo.com LLC reports it has made a minority investment in DomainsBot, an Italian Internet domain name search company according to a story in Mass High Tech/Biz Journals. The story says the amount paid has not been disclosed, but Sedo does not plan to take a board seat at DomainsBot and will not have a management role. … more

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. … more

This week sees the Domain Name System (DNS) celebrating its 25th birthday. When it was established 25 years ago, and eight years before the World Wide Web, there were only a few hundred machines connected compared to around 130 million today. … more

For those who can read Portuguese, the fourth edition of the .pt DNS newsletter is now available here [pdf].

Following the recent announcement from Google that they will no longer allow monetising of domain names less than five days old, ICANN have taken their own steps to end the practice. ICANN are looking at a proposal to start charging the annual ICANN fee on registrar domain registrations.

“Domain tasting has been an issue for the Internet community and ICANN is offering this proposal as a way to stop tasting,” said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO. “Charging the ICANN fee as soon as a domain name is registered would close the loophole used by tasters to test a domain name’s profitability for free.” … more

ICANN’s Nominating Committee seeks applications for six leadership positions

The Nominating Committee for ICANN is looking for volunteers to help it with the global task of coordinating the Internet’s unique identifiers.

“The Internet is the most powerful communications tool in human history — and the incredible story is how much of this has been accomplished by dedicated volunteers,” said Hagen Hultzsch, Chair of the Nominating Committee (NomCom). “ICANN’s work coordinating the Internet’s addressing system is at the foundation of the Internet and its future — and we are always looking for people who want to make a contribution.” … more

The Sydney Morning Herald and Age (Melbourne) newspapers profile Rick Schwartz giving publicity to domaining. The article gives a lot of prominence to the few hours of work Rick actually does for his “millions of dollars in annual income from his 6000-odd properties.”

Rick says he is shocked more people have not got into buying and selling domain names, or the rivers of gold flowing through domaining. “I have a great lifestyle because the dollars come in the same whether I work or not,” Schwartz told the newspapers in an email interview that came about after selling iReport.com to CNN for $US750,000 this month. … more

(Announced at DomainFest Hollywood) Have you ever registered a domain name from GoDaddy or Register.com with the intent on building a website? Chances are that you never found the time or money to actually make that website a reality. A new company out of Seattle is looking to change what you do with your registered domain. EVO Landing (’EVO’) has announced the release of its domain development platform, which aims to create value and traffic for your domain while making you money. … more

9292.nl is first numeric domain name to be assigned.

SIDN, the .nl registry, has announced that purely numeric .nl domain names will be available to everyone from 28 February 2008 12.00 hrs (CET). Numeric domain names are names made up entirely of numbers (e.g. 1234.nl), or of numbers separated by hyphens (e.g. 12-34.nl). In the first few days after registration begins, SIDN expects a ‘landrush’ of people racing to get the ‘best’ combinations. The registry has therefore put special measures in place to prevent its systems becoming overloaded. Full details of the start-line arrangements can be found at www.sidn.nl. … more

James Koole from Tucows writes up what he and Bill Sweetman observed during days two and three of DOMAINfest last week. In addition to the auction, Bill attended a number of sessions over the last few days and they give some notes to summarise what was presented. They cover the SnapNames auction with bookmarks.com the big seller for US$310,000; John Berryhill looks at domain names and the law and warns domain holders to be wary of vague approaches to buy a domain name; a summary of the domainers town hall meeting with Frank Schilling (this man is everywhere at the moment) with a few words on Moniker’s Monty Cahn’s insights on the strength of the domain name industry. … more

Nominet have announced you can now register for the live EPP service that is scheduled to launch on 4 February 2008. If you register before the actual launch date you can be sure that you will be ready to use the service immediately. … more