The Canadian ccTLD, .ca, is the latest ccTLD to reach the one millionth domain name registration, reaching the milestone on Tuesday. Although a long way behind the 12 million registrations for .de and 10 million for .cn, it is still a significant landmark. … more

The twelve millionth .de domain name was registered on April 14 DENIC have announced. DENIC is the first ccTLD to reach this landmark, although China’s ccTLD, .cn, is closing rapidly having reached its ten millionth registration earlier this year. … more

On 18 April 2008 DENIC will host the 10th ENUM Day. The event takes places in the Le Meridien hotel in Frankfurt, Wiesenhüttenplatz 28-38 (close to Frankfurt central railway station). The ENUM Day begins at 10 a.m. and ends approximately at 4 p.m. Participation is free of charge. Please register for this event via our web form. … more

The World Group, web design firm Fortune Cookie and dotMobi, the company behind the .mobi domain for mobile web content, today announced the launch of a special joint venture: World Mobi Ltd.

This new venture brings together the travel industry expertise of the World Group, WEB Design from Fortune Cookie and the mobile domain names from dotMobi to create more than 600 city-based mobile sites for tourists around the world. … more

TOKYO — The number of registered Internet domain names that end with Japan’s country code of “.jp” has exceeded 1 million for the first time, totaling 1,003,285 as of March 1, Japan Registry Services Co said Tuesday.

The figure jumped by some 104,000, or 12 percent, over the past year amid increased use of weblogs by individuals and a growing number of companies promoting their products through their new websites, according to the Tokyo firm, whose chief task is domain name registration. When the Internet was in its infancy in Japan, domain names that end with “co.jp” for corporate use were most commonly used. (Kyodo News)

First Light Net, A Targeted Advertising Company, Recently Landed Fishing.net, the Latest in a Series of Domain Name Acquisitions; With the Purchase, First Light Net, Which Specializes in Advertising for Angling, Hunting, Sports & Outdoor Industries, Strengthens Its Foothold in the Growing Online Angling Market

… more

Last week ICANN began DNSSEC signing the IDN .test zones writes Richard Lamb on the ICANN blog. Richard writes that over the next few days, ICANN will be testing and carefully monitoring the system. It is not expected that DNSSEC or the testing will have any effect on normal DNS operations. However if any user experiences problems or feedback, these  should be reported to Richard at <richard.lamb@icann.org>. This deployment is intended to demonstrate certain capabilities and also provide both ICANN and those interested in DNSSEC an opportunity to gain further experience with this new technology. There are several comments on the blog posting. … more

What does the IDN wiki give us? by Tina Dam One topic that kept being misunderstood at the ICANN meeting in India was ‘what is the purpose of the IDN wiki’ – the example.test site that are actual IDN TLDs in the root. I’ll try to explain what is going on with the wiki and what it can and cannot be used for.http://blog.icann.org/?p=278

WASHINGTON, Feb 25, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — Senator Snowe’s Anti-Phishing Bill, Introduced Today, Will Combat Fraudulent and Deceptive Internet Practices That Harm Consumers and Businesses Alike

The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA), comprised of ten globally recognized brand-name companies, strongly supports the Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act (APCPA), introduced today by Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and cosponsored by Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Ted Stevens (R-AK).

… more

InternetNZ, whose role includes managing the .nz ccTLD, is looking to change its official name reports ComputerWorld. The official name - “The Internet Society of New Zealand” – is rather long as the article notes, and the organisation is not an official chapter of the international Internet Society, or ISOC. … more

The .cl ccTLD has passed 200,000 domain name registrations as of 27 January 2008 according to the Nic Chile website. … more

ICANN released the first version of a new ‘Dashboard’ that will offer measurements of ICANN’s performance in numerous areas across the organization.

“At this stage the ‘Dashboard’ has reports from Finance, IANA, and IETF request queue. We are looking for community feedback on this tool and will expand the reports available over time,” said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO. … more

The second article in this series by Shari Thurow – the first was called Understanding Search Usability – looks at what is described as “search behaviour realisation”, and understanding this “is a big step as it has multiple components applicable to SEO.” These steps are described as:

1. Identifying types of search behaviour
2. Understanding how these search behaviours are all related
3. Designing a web site that addresses all or most of these search behaviours. … more

Anyone who recently typed KNOL.COM into their browsers following Google’s announcement of their answer to Wikipedia, where specialists write encyclopaedia-type articles, will have found they went to a website for a cleaning company in the Netherlands that sells vacuum cleaners and steam cleaning equipment.

The owners of KNOL.COM are grateful to Google for the extra visitors, especially as their website didn’t crash. This is another example of a global company making an announcement and not ensuring they have the relevant domain name registered.

Whether domain names are property that can be subject to seizure to collect on a judgment is a question that has been asked in a Washington state court in the ongoing dispute between 1st Technologies and Bodog Entertainment Group SA (which does not operate the Bodog online entertainment businesses and websites). Bodog Entertainment Group does not think domain names are property. … more