http://mikeward.net Internet technologies Sun, 04 May 2008 20:00:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I'm always angered when I read about some shady outfit operating in a questionable ethical manner. Our industry seems to be plagued by a never-ending stream of these, and all registrars get a black eye from the activities of a small minority. An associate of mine, in the commercial real estate ... http://mikeward.net/2008/05/04/scare-tactics/ So long overdue, the domain tasting system that has been exploited by outfits like this, has finally been straightened out. ICANN has now voted to impose their twenty cent fee on every domain registered. Actually they're no longer going to be allowing registrars to be refunded the fee during the ... http://mikeward.net/2008/01/29/the-death-of-domain-tasting-finally/ A good post today by Jay Westerdal reminding us all how the availability of credit for house purchases led to an increase in the prices for homes by making them more affordable. Here is the article. Financing options do exist for premium domains, but for small business owners insightful enough to ... http://mikeward.net/2008/01/08/future-of-domains-look-at-housing-and-mortgages/ Tis the season for xmasgiftsquick.com and such - yes this domain was available at the time of writing this. People shop in their few minutes of free time in fear of forgetting to get things before the holidays. Loads of easy 10 minute gifts at places like cosmetics.pro for the ... http://mikeward.net/2007/12/26/seasonal-domains/ Let me take up the position that nobody wants to hear - Verisign deserves this increase and fought hard to win it as a consolation prize. They implemented a scheme whereby non-registered .com and .net domains typed in inadvertantly would resolve to what amounted to a basic parking page. Monetizing ... http://mikeward.net/2007/10/25/verisign-price-increases/ Nori - that quintessential sushi ingredient! Nori is technically laver, not seaweed, but if you've ever enjoyed sushi try to imagine what it would be like without this great wrapper. In Japanese cuisine nori is ubiquitous, shredded strips are placed on top of at least half the dishes there. Onigiri ... http://mikeward.net/2007/07/30/another-great-japanese-food-site/ Japanese web surfers have long complained that remembering English-language URLs was difficult. I can imaging if I had to try to remember some Kanji domain names! Since we are involved in IDNs, we have begun to publish some Japanese language sites with good results. We published a group of themed ... http://mikeward.net/2007/07/23/japanese-language-sites/ THNIC, Thailand's only registrar selling .TH domains will have competition soon, and plans to promote use of this little-used extension. Here is the article. Oddly there is no mention of IDN.th - what's up? The only domains that can challenge .com are country codes; locals learn over time to seek ... http://mikeward.net/2007/06/20/thnic-talks-up-th/ ???.com sold today for $42,250 and ???.com  sold for $36,194 These 2 Korean terms both mean handphone/cellphone - and they are the largest Korean language domain sale I've heard of. Of course, that always needs to be qualified with the usual disclaimer, "the vast majority of sales go unreported" That utterance ... http://mikeward.net/2007/05/20/big-public-idn-sale/ Read all about it, the domain name saga that is already legendary - and is still ongoing. http://www.sexdotcom.info http://mikeward.net/2007/05/14/the-infamous-sexcom-book-is-coming/