Domisfera

On February 7, 2008 dotMobi reported that he had contacted all the winners of the disastrous auctions conducted by Sedo December last year. According to dotMobi of more than 70 involved less than 10 rejected the proposal for allocation of premium domains.

By having the majority support of the community affected, dotMobi went ahead with this proposal which was basically to be paid the highest price reached by domains (in the original auction or extensions thereof) or nothing (domains would stay in dotMobi).

On February 13, 2008, Caroline Greer of dotMobi has clarified in relation to the question made by Domisfera that "As regards publishing a list of domains and final prices arising from the December auction / settlement, this is not something that dotMobi has done in the past and there are no plans to do so."

It has been more than 5 months after the conclusion of the auction and 3 after dotMobi began the allocation process. It is time to know what happened to these premium domains.

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Few days ago, an inhabitant of Aspe (Alicante, Spain) called Faustino Gomez, anticipating the Government of Spain, registered .es domains with the initials for the new ministries created by the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación mcei.es (Ministry of Science and Innovation), Trabajo e Inmigración mtei.es (Labour and Immigration),  Ministerio Educación, Políticas Sociales y Deporte mepsd.es (Ministry of Education, Social Policy and Sports) and Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio mict.es (Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade).

It is logical that the Government had registered the domain before making public the names of the Ministries. This is not the first time that something similar happens with issues of government (and this is all Domisfera can disclose…) 

Now it turns out that the Government wants these domains and in many ways it has been noted that Faustino was only willing to lend them to the Spanish Government for four years in exchange for a transfer of water from the Ebro river  to Valencia, Murcia and Alicante. Really  this is not true, it’s an ironic joke of the owner towards the media. Although Faustino did not want to talk to the media and publicly give his version, Domisfera has been able to establish telephone communication with him and has confirmed that the real interest was to show the Spanish Government  mismanagement and lack of foresight. 

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Yun Ye was born in June 1972. He was only 32 years old when he sold his portfolio to Marchex.

He earned his bachelor’s degree at Brandeis University (Mass.), a very good (and expensive) institution. A complete course today costs between $20,595 and $56,855, health insurance apart. They have a whole building devoted to computer science and a curriculum, today’s quite attractive. He was there between 1992 and 1995, obtaining the graduate cum laude in Computing and Economics. He managed to be on Dean’s List each semester.

In 1995 went to study at the University of MaryLand, which also pointed to the ACM (Association for Computer Machinery), one of the leading associations in research, development and collaboration. In 1998 got the Master in Computer Science.

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Back in late January, Red.es (.es domains Registry) made public the distribution of the number of domains managed by Registrars, but without giving the name of any Registrar.

Domisfera in an independent and unofficial way has extracted from the total of 833,551 .es domains registered (until February 2008) the distribution of domains, including the names of the Registrars.

(The data are shown below are not 100% accurate because they have been collecting over the past month and Inter-Registrar domain transfers are continuous)

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American Airlines, the largest airline in the world has launched a version of its site for mobile devices. Through aa.com you can reserve, cancel or check the status of flights and see the offers or promotions available.

American Airlines has an excellent domain in the king extension of Internet, widely known (receives 1.6 million hits daily), easy to remember and easy to type on a mobile device. Aa.mobi it is not possible because the minimum number of characters 3.

However, American Airlines obtained the domain americanairlines.mobi on October 2 last year through a lawsuit filed with the National Arbitration Forum (American Airlines, Inc. v. Michael Nakhleh). That ruling was recovered with a defensive character and not to use it, as evidenced by the fact that not even have bothered to be redirected to aa.com.

Certainly, the marketing people of dotMobi have lost a great opportunity to publicize the extension and was being better known and used by the general public (outside the industry domaning).

So Domisfera asked Mr. Pinkard Alan Brand from dotmobi about this case. When he came back from Easter holidays, his response (also published by himself in DomainNameWire) was:

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The latest statistics domain Latinoamericann aiming to measure the impact of policies for the Information Society in the development of Latin American ccTLDs throw the following details until February 29, 2008.

In February ccTLDs that had a higher percentage growth were: Costa Rica .cr (6.72%), Peru .pe (5.33%) and Bolivia .bo (4.44%). The case of Costa Rica is explained by the announcement and the opening of registration of second-level domains. Peru continues to grow due to the opening of IDN domain name registration and second level that has already done in previous months. The case of Bolivia is linked to an aggressive marketing strategy in order to pay for the domain names in installments.

This month highlights the negative growth (-21.22%) .do domains from the Dominican Republic due to the cleansing of records unpaid. Domains .cu of Cuba remain at its usual line had decreased by 0.35%. The .sv domains of El Salvador having had a profound process of purification, have restarted a process of growth.

The largest increases in absolute values of the past month are for Argentina .ar (26,031), Brazil .br (9,854) and Mexico .mx (3,679). These positions are filled by the same ccTLDs that last month, with a higher increase in registered domains.

Latinoamericann could not obtain data from Trinidad and Tobago .tt or Barbados .bb. In the case of Barbados has been a process of redelegation before and while it was possible to perform a whois and view data registered domains this is no longer feasible under the new administration.

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I recently saw that Cuba had only 1,434 .cu domains registered. 12.75 domains per 100,000 inhabitants. It is one of the four last ccTLDs in Latin America by number of domains registered. Globally ranked 49, ahead of Algeria (.dz domains).

The first drawback is the price. Although for entities located in Cuba is cheaper (222.7 Cuban pesos in the first year and 151 from the second) for non located on the island price is $350 for .com.cu and $600 for .cu domains. Both prices are for registrations and renewals.

The second drawback is that they can not register domains individuals, they can only do legal persons. If they are foreign in addition must meet these conditions:

(1) The application shall be made through agents residing in the Republic of Cuba authorized thereto.
(2) Data on Administrative and Financial Contact will be those for the Agent.
(3) Data from the Technical Contact may correspond to the Agent, a national entity or a foreign entity.

When submitting a certification trademark or other distinguishing marks issued by a foreign registration office, the document will be endorsed by the Cuban Office of Industrial Property.
If not, requires a prior Trademark Search. The process lasts for a month and cost about $100. 

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Published in .cu (Cuba) | 1 Comment »

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Colombia is the fourth largest country in South America, with a population of about 43 million.

Any person or foreign national can register a .com.co, .org.co, .net.co or .nom.co by 160,000 Colombian pesos (80,74 $) for a period of two years. The renewal fee is the same and is also biannual. It is also necessary to send a series of documents (scanned by mail, by fax or registered mail):

1) The number of their identity card, in the case of individuals and the Tax Identification Number (ILS) if they are legal persons with Colombian or foreign branch in Colombia. If they are foreign should provide the number of their identity card or tax identification of the country of origin.

2) The signed letter of responsibility where swears that the data provided are true, which was not violate the rights of any third party or brand and empowers the University of the Andes to cancel the domain if missing some of the set policies.

3) If it’s a company, it must provide the certificate from the Chamber of Commerce and whether it is an embassy, a letter from the ambassador in letterhead paper.

The minimum length of the domain is 2 characters and a maximum of 63. It is not possible to register IDN domains.

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On January 15, Nic.es gave the new. Until now the annual renewal of .es domain was determined and is conditioned by a fee. This was reflected in the Order of fees under the Ministry of the Presidency. Finally, the two Ministries involved (the Ministry of Industry and Tourism and the Ministry of Treasure) had given the go-ahead to move forward with the new instruction from the General Manager of the public corporation Red.es.

Until this instruction, renewal bound by a year of .es domains was in the Order of Taxes which is a standard range of the law which stated that the form of payment of a registration of a domain was a fee. Now all this has changed, renewals and other operations to register .es domains will be regulated with a public rate.

All this is not something trivial. In short, the rate of price change will allow the registration and renewal of .es domains for more than one year and other registry operations since its entry into force on 15 January 2008.

Among other fees, these are the most interesting ones:

Published in .es (Spain) | Without Comments »

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