Dark Blue Sea, based in Brisbane, Australia and owner of Fabulous, have released an “investor presentation” that shows they have a portfolio of over 570,000 domain names, mostly .com domain names that they value at an average of $1,000 each. So this makes the company worth around $570 million. … more

The organisers of the upcoming T.R.A.F.F.I.C. EAST 2008 in Orlando, Florida have released some tentative information and details with more information coming in mid-April. Until then, there is a proposed schedule available to give people an idea of what is going to happen at the conference. Their framework shows the direction they are heading in and it will be updated as things progress. … more

ICANN is actively soliciting expressions of interest from organisations seeking to host the first ICANN International Public Meeting in 2009. ICANN has previously agreed upon the following location and date:

• 1-6 March 2009 | Latin America … more

Scotland’s push for independence from Britain has moved into cyberspace. The push for independence, a goal of the Scottish National Party, has been tempered by the country’s government not having a majority government. But newspapers such as The Sunday Times are reporting Alex Salmond, the first minister, is to lodge a formal request with ICANN for the gTLD .sco. … more

With three and a half days of bidding to go, US$2,505,000 has already been bid for the domain name pizza.com on Sedo in what is already going to be one of 2008’s biggest sales. … more

With the ban on advertising .au domain names soon to be lifted and selling Aussie domain names to become legal, the Australian eCommerce Network is organising seminars in April in Sydney and Melbourne to discuss the changes. … more

With the rules regarding transferring domain names down under about to change, Sydney’s The Sun Herald publishes a story to alert Australians of the changes.

The main change will allow trading in domain names and will most likely come into effect in June this year. However before any of the domain traders around the world start licking their lips in anticipation at the prospect of adding .com.au names to their portfolio, there are still eligibility requirements such as an Australian presence. … more

Could domain names be booted off eBay? This is a question that is not totally answered following eBay’s recent decision to stop the sale of digital goods on the auction site according to a recent article in the E-Commerce Guide. … more

The NIC.PR have announced that Internet users can now register .pr domain names using Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). The introduction of these new domain names now enables Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese speakers to establish web sites using words commonly used in those languages such as muñeca.pr, teléfonos.pr, garçon.pr, schön.pr, or amanhã.pr. … more

The .ME registry have announced the rollout schedule for the migration from .yu to .me. The process is as follows: … more

For those interested in the work of ARIN, they have released the agenda of their upcoming meeting, ARIN XX!, to be held in Denver Colorado in early April. … more

Could the slump in the American economy in particular, and elsewhere in the world too, be flowing through into the number of people clicking on Google ads?

ComScore “measures clicks on the four-line ads that Google runs next to its Internet search results. Clicks on such sponsored links rose 3 percent to 515 million in February from a year earlier, ComScore said Wednesday. In January, Google had no year-on-year growth, after a 25 percent increase in the fourth quarter over the previous year,” reported Bloomberg. … more

VeriSign have announced that as of October 1, 2008, they will be increasing domain name fees for .com and .net, per its agreements with ICANN. The registry fee for .com domain names will increase from $6.42 to $6.86 and that the registry fee for .net domain names will increase, from $3.85 to $4.23. … more

TEXADA Software sold its domain name systematic.com for US$400,000 this week. The domain name became unused upon consolidation of the company’s websites under the one umbrella of TEXADAsoftware.com. The company is a provider of equipment rental and mobile asset management software. … more

Fusu have announced they have sold their first domain name listed on their Exchange. The domain name, KPY.com was listed on Exchange during the public Beta cycle with a value of US$5,000 and found 14 investors buying 45% of the domain. In the trading, the market value of the domain rose to $5,800. … more