Instra Corporation, a world leading domain provider is proud to be one of the first registrars accredited with the .ae Domain Administration (aeDA), the new registry operator of the .AE domain namespace.

aeDA has officially announced 3rd Aug 2008 as the official launch date of their Registry-Registrar Domain Name System, … more

The United States Government has said it has no intention of giving up its oversight role of the authoritative root zone file, the file that stores the database of how domain names are reached on the internet. … more

The 2008 publication of the Macau Information and Communications Technology Survey which was released this week showed that the internet penetration rate has increased sharply, but experts said local internet resources were still weak.
Published by the University of Macau’s (UM) Macau Internet Research Project, the survey reported that as of the end of 2007, the local penetration rate of internet reached 64 percent in which the “digital divide index” continued on the fall from 0.32 in 2006 to 0.28 in 2007.

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Request For Information: ICANN Seeks Expressions of Interest from Registrars to Receive Bulk Transfer of Names from De-Accredited Registrar #1 Domain Names International, Inc. dba 1dni.com

As the result of the de-accreditation of #1 Domain Names International, Inc. dba 1dni.com (IANA ID 101), ICANN is seeking Statements of Interest from ICANN-accredited registrars that are interested in assuming sponsorship of the gTLD names that had been managed by #1 Domain Names International, Inc. dba 1dni.com. … more

ICANN’s Contractual Compliance Department publishes its second semi-annual Registrar and Registry Contractual Compliance Audit Report. This report summarizes ICANN’s audit activities from October 2007 through June 2008. During this period, ICANN conducted three registrar contractual compliance audits and one registry contractual compliance audit. ICANN conducted each audit by following consistent audit procedures established before each audit commenced. This report contains details regarding the audit methodology, findings, observations and conclusions. … more

There has been a lot of interest in the international media regarding the International Olympic Committee’s disclosure “that some of its officials had struck a deal with Beijing organisers, allowing the Communist authorities to block sensitive internet sites” as reported by The Times. … more

Effective August 1, 2008, Bentley will transition out of his operational role at Sedo, but will remain close to the company in a non-operative role as Strategic Advisor.

“Together with Sedo’s founders, Matt has played an important role in helping Sedo become the recognized, global domain marketplace leader it is today,” said Tim Schumacher, CEO and co-founder of Sedo. “Matt will no doubt continue to be a tremendous asset to Sedo in his new advisory role. We thank him for his years of dedication and wish him success in his future endeavors.”

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Having a domain name which has been penalised or delisted by search engines in the past can damage rankings, an article has revealed.

Talking to Practical Ecommerce, Chris Stump from Onlyhammocks.com revealed that despite months of search engine optimisation just a few of his hundreds of pages had been indexed by Yahoo!, Google and MSN, and those were appearing well down in search rankings.

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A report from Google has counted there are more than one trillion unique URLs, as opposed to domain names, reports IDG. Google openly admit they do not index every one of these pages “many of them are similar to each other, or represent auto-generated content … that isn’t very useful to searchers,” wrote Jesse Alpert and Nissan Hajaj, software engineers in Google’s Web Search Infrastructure Team. … more

ICANN is posting the summary [PDF, 85K] and final report [PDF, 561K] of the Independent Review of the ALAC submitted by Westlake Consulting. These documents will be available shortly in multiple languages.

ICANN is seeking public comment on the report. Details on the public comment forum can be found here. … more

London, United Kingdom — The internet’s latest and most personal domain extension has seen huge popularity after public launch. At 4pm (GMT) July 17 the public were given the opportunity to register the new .ME domain name extension. Over 5,500 .ME domain names were registered within the first two days of public launch by UK accredited registrars, making it the second most popular registration country, second only to the US. … more

Ethoca has seen firsthand how the effects of e-commerce fraud extend well beyond the loss of a physical product or dollar amount,” said Andre Edelbrock, CEO, Ethoca. “We’re pleased that the Global Fraud-Fighting Community is broadening to protect digital distribution markets and encompass the experiences of Sedo’s global consumer base. We hope Sedo’s leadership in digital property will propel other forward-looking businesses in this area to join the fight.”

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Contestants on TV’s Dragon’s Den may face a tough grilling from Duncan Bannatyne et al, but there’s one important question that has never been asked on the programme.
Domain name company Sedo has claimed that while the Dragons focus on issues such as financials and product patents, they don’t ever think about domain names.

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For many years, the Internet community has been developing and enhancing a Domain Name System (DNS) security technology called DNSSEC.

ICANN’s strategic and operating [PDF, 480K] plans call for ICANN to be operationally ready to deploy DNSSEC at the root level and work with relevant stakeholders to determine how this should be implemented. With input from many stakeholders, ICANN has prepared a document describing this path to operational readiness for signing the root. … more

The Sedo auction for Villas.com has just closed with the name selling for €305,000, making it the eighth biggest sale to date in 2008 according to Domain Name Journal’s Year to Date sales chart, assuming money changes hand. The auction was contested by two bidders once the bidding got past €155,000.