Corporate Blog

Dot-net and dot-com: The domains that define the Internet

31 December 2013 18:49:44 +0000

Define your ideas on the domains that define the Internet.

With all the hype about new top-level domains (TLDs) entering the market late this year and early in 2014, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that most people still prefer to register new domains under the dot-com and dot-net TLDs. In fact, about 83% of the domains we host are either dot-coms or dot-nets. And there’s good reason for this: they are still the most widely-recognised TLDs out there, considering they have been around since 1985. That’s almost thirty years!

While some people — mostly people advocating use of less known TLDs — talk about domain depletion in dot-com and dot-net, we register new domains for clients in these name spaces every month. The fact is, domain names based on company names and/or locations are and will continue to be available to imaginative business owners. Besides, even though you might sell widgets, widgets.com isn’t necessarily the best domain for you; it may very well be widgetsgalore.com (reflecting your full company name), or widgetsvancouver.com (reflecting your location and market). Many of our clients register more specific domains like these as they better identify who they are and the markets that their companies serve.

If you’d like help selecting and registering a new or additional domain for your business, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help you.

Tags: domain registration, domains
Categories: Interest
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iCash.ca domain on auction

29 December 2013 01:18:35 +0000

We are selling the domain iCash.ca, and it is currently on auction until Thursday 2 January 2014 at 15:11 EST (20:11 UTC, 3:11 pm Eastern Standard Time). (See the World Time Server to calculate the time in your time zone.) The minimum bid to surpass the current bid, which has met the reserve price, is US$1050. Please visit the auction website, run by the domain brokerage Sedo, to place your bid.

Because the reserve price has been met, according to Sedo rules the domain will sell at the end of the auction, so if you want to buy it you need to bid on it now.

With the ubiquitous “i” prefix everywhere these days, iCash.ca could be used to promote a banking app for mobile phones — the iPhone in particular, of course.

If you have any questions, please contact NinerNet support. However, please note that all bidding and payment transactions (including escrow) must take place through Sedo on their website.

Tags: apple, branding, domain sales, domains, dot-ca domains, iphone
Categories: Announcements
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Christmas and New Year hours and wishes

24 December 2013 22:25:28 +0000

It’s the end of the year again, and a fitting time to thank you once again for the custom that you have given to NinerNet in 2013. This year was challenging in some respects, but looking at things from the positive side the challenges were the result of growth. Some of that growth continues to be the new business that you, our existing clients, continue to refer to us, and for that we are most grateful.

Looking forward to 2014 we, as always, have plans to expand and improve the services we offer to you. Some of the new services will involve “private clouds”. We have avoided the buzzword “cloud”, bucking the industry trend in recent years, but with the news that broke this year about pervasive, worldwide, government surveillance — especially through big hosting companies based in the USA — we’re getting more enquiries about setting up a cloud-type infrastructure for in-house use only, and on servers outside the US. Look for an announcement about this in 2014.

On a wider scale, 2014 will see the introduction of new top-level domains (TLDs) and stronger enforcement of the requirement to use real and working contact data for domain registrations. Early in the new year we’ll be contacting you about the latter. As for the new TLDs — a TLD is the part of your domain to the right of the last dot (e.g., .com) — early registration for some of these are underway. Their introduction has been controversial, but they may see use in certain regions and niche industries. At this time they would appeal to only a limited number of our existing clients, but we’ll be providing information about them early in the New Year too (although we can immediately register in some of them). Some examples of new TLDs include .bike (e.g., example.bike), .clothing, .construction, .contractors, .diamonds, .enterprises, .guru, .holdings, .singles … and so on. Eventually there will also be a .africa too. Please be aware, though, that there are already scams involving fake registrations in these new TLDs, so if you get spam about these please keep that in mind and ask us if you need guidance.

Finally, our offices will be closed over the Christmas break for routine business, but support continues to be monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We will re-open on Monday, 6 January.

We wish you and your family, business, organisation, employees and/or colleagues who celebrate it a very happy Christmas, and all the best for the New Year.

Tags: domain registration, domains, facebook, google, new services, scams, service hours, support
Categories: Announcements
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Deletion of domains by Zamnet continues

14 June 2013 14:32:22 +0000

Not satisfied with having deleted 37 per cent of domains earlier this week, it appears that Zamnet continue to delete even more domains! Today we find out that domains that were still working on Tuesday have now been deleted, causing more clients to scramble because their email and websites have suddenly stopped working. This brings the percentage of domains deleted without warning due to Zamnet’s incompetence to 42 per cent … almost half! When will this stop?!

We encourage clients affected by these arbitrary and unannounced interruptions to their business to file a complaint with the Zambia Information and Communication Technology Authority. (UPDATE, 2013-06-28: The complaint form disappeared shortly after we posted this. Try their “Complaint Handling” page instead.)

Tags: domain registration, domain renewals, domains, dot-zm domains, zamnet
Categories: Notices, Updated posts
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Massive, unannounced deletion of dot-zm domains by Zamnet

11 June 2013 11:15:39 +0000

Over the last few days it has become apparent to us that Zamnet’s accounting department — just as Coppernet’s did almost three years ago — awoke from a long hibernation and realised that a chunk of active domains hadn’t been paid for. As a result, 37 per cent of the dot-zm domains hosted by NinerNet that are (or were) registered with Zamnet — which includes .co.zm, .org.zm and .sch.zm domains — were deleted by Zamnet, taking them off the Internet completely. One client tells us that Zamnet informed them, when they enquired, that they were supposedly four years behind! (UPDATE, 2013-06-28: Another client tells us they had not been invoiced for their dot-co.zm domain in thirteen years! They’ve since switched to a dot-com with “zambia” tacked onto their name, as so many people do to avoid the hassle and expense of registering a dot-zm domain.)

It seems unlikely to us that so many Zamnet customers had simply ignored their invoices for several years. It’s more likely that they were never invoiced. In fact, our own domain (ninernet.co.zm) came up for renewal over a month ago, and we still have not received an invoice. Perhaps Zamnet are too busy disabling over a third of the country’s Internet infrastructure to send out invoices! (CORRECTION, 2013-06-28: Oops, seems we hadn’t updated our records correctly. Zamnet [when they do invoice] bills for domains every two years. Ours does not expire until next year. Our apologies for the incorrect statement, although it doesn’t really change much!)

Screenshot of Zamnet home page, 11 June 2013

Other countries take the management of their ccTLD (country code top-level domain) far more seriously than this. They have published rules and procedures governing what exactly happens after a domain expires. They also operate a WHOIS service so that the public can look up “who is” the owner of a domain and the dates that it was registered and will expire. Zamnet and Coppernet, as co-stewards of the dot-zm ccTLD — an odd arrangement that we are not aware of in any other country — do not provide any such information, at least to the public. In fact, judging by these arbitrary and cavalier mass deletions carried out by both companies, they don’t even have any such policies! They just seem to make this up as they go along.

Screenshot of ZICTA home page, 11 June 2013

You would think that — given that deleting 37 per cent of the country’s domains has all of the appearance of a planned and concerted effort — Zamnet would, at the very least, post a prominent notice on the home page of their website. However, there is no such notice as of posting this. (Click on the thumbnail at left to see.) I’m also not aware of any notices posted in newspapers. So much for their laughable slogan: “Nobody delivers IT better.” Right now, more than a third of their customers are not getting anything delivered, and it’s clear that their slogan doesn’t apply to the delivery of invoices.

And where is ZICTA in all of this? You’d think they’d be interested in the disabling of 37 per cent of the country’s domains, but there’s nothing posted on the home page of their website either! Maybe a few complaints via their complaint form might get their attention. (UPDATE, 2013-06-28: Hmm, the complaint form disappeared shortly after we posted this. Try their “Complaint Handling” page instead.)

Please note that, if you did not register your dot-zm domain through NinerNet, we do not know when it is scheduled to expire and we cannot help you in dealing with Zamnet. We don’t know how effective it would be to request an update to the contact information for your domain so that we can monitor it, from an administrative (not technical) point of view, but if you’d like to try we’re certainly game to assist and cooperate. Let us know if you’d like to try.

Issues such as these mass and arbitrary deletions, as well as the entire dot-zm ccTLD going down occasionally, are the two main reason we discourage clients from registering dot-zm domains. This is unfortunate, of course, but clients expect their online services to actually be … online! It is also the reason that we created the alternative ccTLD for Zambia: dot-zam.co. They’re only K66 per year (as opposed to hundreds for a dot-co.zm and hundreds more for a dot-com.zm) and don’t require paperwork.

Tags: domain registration, domain renewals, domains, dot-zm domains, zamnet, zicta
Categories: Notices, Updated posts
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Price increase for dot-co.za domains

4 June 2013 11:52:29 +0000

The dot-co.za registry has announced a price increase of 50% for registration and renewal of dot-co.za domains, effective 1 March 2013. As a result, we too must increase our prices, and this will be effective immediately.

The new prices are live on our rates pages. Please check there for the new rates in your currency.

We appreciate your understanding.

Tags: domain registration, domain renewals, domain sales, domains, dot-co.za domains, rates
Categories: Notices
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Domain renewal scam warning

22 March 2012 12:25:40 +0000

We have had a new domain renewal scam brought to our attention. The example we have seen includes the following wording (changed to preserve our client’s privacy):

Domain Name: EXAMPLE.COM

To: Client Name

Your order #12345678 has been received and is currently processing. Registration includes SE submission for EXAMPLE.COM for 12 months. There is no obligation to pay for this order unless you complete your payment by Mar 25, 2012. SE Services provides submission services and search engine ranking organization for domain owners.

Failure to complete your search engine registration by Mar 25, 2012 may result in the cancellation of this order (making it difficult for your customers to locate you using search engines on the web).

Here is a redacted image of what the email might look like:

Domain renewal scam email.

Clicking on the links takes you to a website that looks like this:

Domain renewal scam website.

While this email carefully avoids any mention of the expiry or renewal of your domain registration, the intent is clearly to fool and scare the recipient into thinking that their domain registration is about to expire so that they click one of the prominent “PROCESS SECURE PAYMENT” links and complete the payment process. If you do this, your domain will not be renewed, and you’ll be out $75 (in this case) for services of dubious value that you may or may not actually receive. Additionally, you might be opening yourself up to identity theft and/or the abuse of your credit card information.

In fact, if you have already fallen victim to this scam, we suggest that you contact your credit card company immediately, and check to ensure that your domain is “locked” and still registered to you and under your control.

Some of the domains associated with these emails and websites are the following:

annualurldom.com
iglobalmerchantservice.com
urldomannual.com

NinerNet attempts to protect our clients from these kinds of domain-related scams by having a policy of “locking” (as mentioned above) all domains under our management that can be locked. However, you should still be cautious before acting on any emails not from NinerNet (or your actual domain registrar if it’s not NinerNet) regarding any domains you have registered, especially if they attempt to scare you into taking action.

Please contact NinerNet support if you have any questions about emails regarding your domains, and we will help you.

Thank-you.

Tags: domain locking, domain registration, domain renewals, domains, scams
Categories: Warnings
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Beware the walled garden

30 September 2011 23:59:24 +0000

There’s an interesting article on the website of The Guardian entitled Facebook accused of removing activists’ pages. It’s particularly interesting to read in light of the post I made back in February referring to an article entitled Navigation Nightmare.

Having a website shut down is not a new experience for many people. Reasons range from the technical (you’ve exceeded your bandwidth allocation for this month) to the political and censorial. However, it’s always possible to move your website to a new web hosting company if you’re dissatisfied with your current hosting company.

Not so with “walled gardens” like Facebook.

If Facebook closes you down, this is probably the situation in which you’ll find yourself:

You won’t have a copy of your website. (Yes, a Facebook group, page, profile, etc. is a website.)
You won’t have access — even temporarily — to back up your data.
Even if you have managed some sort of back-up in some form, what can you do with it?
You’ve lost your address, the one where everyone knew where to find you. All links to you will be broken, and there’s nothing you can do to fix them.
You’ll lose your “friends”!

If your web hosting company shuts you down, this is probably the situation in which you’ll find yourself:

You have a copy of your website and database. (You do, right?)
Unless you’ve engaged in outright illegal activity, you can probably talk to an actual person at the hosting company and arrange temporary access if you need something.
You point your domain to a new hosting company.
You upload a copy of your website.
You’re back in business. Some people might not even have noticed that you were down.

Facebook and other walled gardens serve a purpose. Just don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, especially a basket that is not yours!

Tags: branding, domains, facebook, hosting transfer
Categories: Interest
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Domain iCash.ca up for auction right now

20 March 2011 01:27:21 +0000

We have, over the years, acquired a number of domains which we have not yet used for anticipated projects. One of these — iCash.ca — is currently in a seven-day auction which ends on Thursday 24 March at 18:55 EDT (15:55 PDT, 22:55 UTC). (See the World Time Server to calculate the time in your time zone.)

With the ubiquitous “i” prefix everywhere these days, iCash.ca could be used to promote a banking app for mobile phones — the iPhone in particular, of course.

If you’re interested in acquiring this domain, please place your bid at the Afternic website by Thursday. Thank-you.

Tags: apple, branding, domain sales, domains, dot-ca domains, iphone
Categories: Announcements
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The Navigation Nightmare

23 February 2011 07:49:42 +0000

There’s a very interesting (if several months old) article over on the website of a company named Sedo, written by the company’s CEO. Sedo, founded in Germany, is a company that brokers the sale of domains that have already been registered.

The article, though, isn’t really about their business. It’s about a variation of one of several — maybe even many — misconceptions about what the Internet is. Ask different people the question, “What is the Internet?” and you’re likely to get almost as many answers as people you ask. These days you might get an answer like, “Facebook is the Internet,” or even the other way around: “The Internet is Facebook.”

However, even if you realise how absurd those statements are, you might still be caught up in all of the hype that are Facebook, Twitter, and various other social networking websites, and technologies du jour. I’m not discounting these services; they exist, and they have proven their worth and reach — the latter especially during these days of unrest in north Africa and the Middle East. But the fundamental difference between these services that are built on the Internet and the Internet itself — clearly illustrated just by that very statement — is that Facebook and Twitter can go away. On the other hand, until the human race evolves the ability to use telepathy and manage it to communicate with dozens or millions of people around the world, the Internet (or some variation of it) is likely here to stay.

Something else that’s a bit ironic about the way people perceive companies like Facebook and Apple, and how those companies perceive themselves, is that this is a classic example of “back to the future”, or maybe “forwards to the past”. Back before the Internet moved out of the science laboratory and into the public realm, there were a couple of online services named AOL and CompuServe, and many smaller services called bulletin board systems (BBS for short). You couldn’t navigate outside of those “walled gardens“, and companies would set up the forerunners of what would later become websites within those walled gardens, accessible by using a “keyword” given out in advertising. The Internet knocked down those walls, but companies like Apple and Facebook are (ironically) building them again — essentially blocking the view and the freedoms created by the Internet.

Unfortunately the archived version of this article on the Sedo website lacks an important table that illustrates what I think is the key to understanding the main point of this article, so I’m providing both a PDF version of this article, and a link to the stripped-down article on the Sedo website:

Navigation Nightmare: The Deadly Danger of Facebook, Twitter, Google and the iPhone, by Tim Schumacher (Sedo website)
Navigation Nightmare: The Deadly Danger of Facebook, Twitter, Google and the iPhone, by Tim Schumacher (PDF version with tables and illustrations, 263 kB)

Enjoy, and if you have any questions about the information in this article, feel free to contact me through the NinerNet website.

Craig

Tags: apple, branding, domains, facebook, google, iphone, twitter
Categories: Interest
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