Photo - Dona.com

Francois Carrillo is the promoter of this new domain registrar. His previous history in the domain industry includes Domaining.com.

Carrillo says that if you get hit with a UDRP complaint, then the insurance you get will help free legal help for an initial estimation of your chances of winning the dispute.

The insurance includes special rebates for hiring attorneys from a list. Your legal expenses will be reimbursed if you win the UDRP. The cost of a UDRP legal defense is heavy. There are no insurance premiums to be paid, so it seems to be a value added offer for domain buyers.

An ordinary investor registers a domain under the assumption that it has no issues and you own it fair and square. It should not cost you anything more in legal fees to make sure you continue to own it.

A couple of points merit further discussion. DONA.com will be donating 30 percent of all its profits to the Internet Commerce Association. The ICA lobbies for the domain name industry in Washington and defends its interests with ICAAN.

The second point worth noting is that DONA.com’s domain registration rates are not rock-bottom rates for domain investors. DONA.com is a reseller for Enom.com. The rate for a .com, .net or .org domain registration or transfer is $11.15. There is the novelty and value of the UDRP insurance and the donation to the ICA. All said and done, it is still a fair deal.

Photo - Verizon (wikimedia)

The results are unambiguous – As of 2012, the new domain name strategy is credited with providing Verizon with 93.2 million extra visitors to Verizon’s main websites over three years. Also, they claim 321,000 additional confirmed sales, totaling millions of dollars in new revenue per year.

The strategy was simple enough to implement, as suggested by FairWinds to Verizon. All they had to do was give up low quality domain names, recover high quality domain names, remap domain names to the most relevant Verizon content, and converting new visitors to new sales.

In total, due to a leaner portfolio and also establishing more efficient registration fees, Verizon is now saving nearly $2 million every two years in domain name expenses.

The second part of the strategy was recovering high value domain names associated with the brand and company name. Around 66 percent of the traffic that was being diverted from Verizon’s main websites was being lost because of just 0.5 percent of the total number of existing domain names that were infringing on Verizon brands

After enforcing the new strategy, Internet users now navigate directly to Verizon websites when they enter domain names in the address bar, rather than being diverted to a pay-per-click site and then clicking on an advertisement, which costs the user time and Verizon money.

Sarah Deutsch, vice president & associate general counsel of Verizon Communications, said in a press statement that “The work we have done with FairWinds set us on the path to maintaining a lean, effective domain name portfolio, and our ongoing work continues to keep Verizon focused on domains that will have a positive impact on our bottom line.”

Codenow which can be accessed via CodeNow.com is an API focused learning center and can provide you hands on training in developing and deploying API in minutes. Learning how to code an API consume lots of time and it requires asking permission from API developers and also using a specialized syntax platform or software but with CodeNow, you can learn to code in the browser and run it live for a real time result and checking of your codes.

CodeNow has split screen, the left pane is where you do the actual coding while the right pane lets you view the results. You can also run the code in a virtual machine or a development kit platform and share the results of your codes in a link or decide to keep it for yourself.

Learning to code is your best weapon in the digital age. Most of the high paying jobs being offered belongs in the IT industry like software engineering, quality testing, web programming and these jobs requires you to learn to code. CodeNow.com offers a seamless environment and user friendly workspace that is perfect for beginners and novices and those who wants to venture into the API and apps development industry.

The website is currently in beta test but it is open now for reservations and you can submit your email to be shortlisted as new beta testers or receive a notification once the website is officially launched.

Cyber squatting

Candidate Trey Radel’s campaign arm “Friends for Radel, Inc.” has purchased domains that should belong to opposing candidates.

For example, chaunceygoss.com, chaunceygoss.net and chaunceygoss.org belong to the Radel campaign, which is using them to put out negative information about opposing candidate Chauncey Goss.

The home page on Chaunceygoss.com accuses Chauncey Goss of living in Washington DC and working for the federal government for the past 11 years and only moving to Sanibel, Fla. just before announcing his candidacy for Congress. This is followed by a link that details America’s debt and fiscal challenges.

No doubt a lot of people get their information about candidates online these days. But here’s the thing – if you search for “Chauncey Goss” on Google, the main sites in the top ten are all legitimate, including gossforcongress.com.

Chaunceygoss.com is not even in top 100, so the Radel campaign is cyber-squatting for nothing in return, in terms of online traffic. They may still be using email to direct visitors to the faux-site, but that would probably make this domaingate scandal an even bigger violation in the FEC’s eyes.

Chauncey Goss, who is the son of former Congressman Porter Goss, has his own website at gossforcongress.com. The Goss campaign is exploring its legal options regarding this cyber-squatting by Radel, and may also complain to the FEC.

Radel has also purchased domains that should belong to other rivals including Brian Owens, Gary Aubuchon and Paige Kreegel.

So what does the whitespace means for the new design of google + and will it be an integral part of its remodeling? The whitespace is actually a feature of the new google + and it is called Responsive Web Design. The whitespace makes the design adoptive to the browser and automatically adjusts its spacing to fit in the browser and unlike Facebook where it has fixed width and spacing and does not depends on the browser’s layout. Basically, the new Google design changes its layout and re-sizes itself when you maximize or adjusts your browser while Facebook just looks the same.

The question is: What will Google + do with the vast whitespaces? Time will tell. Maybe Google will be adding features time to time to fill up the gaps but according to Google the Whitespace they basically just wanted the social networking site to be responsive to the browser.

Although a lot are skeptic with the Whitespace and doubtful whether it would help google + in the battle of social networking site supremacy I personally think the the responsive browser design is a good idea. I like the fact the Google Plus is more focused on contents rather than advertising like Facebook. I also think that the idea is revolutionary and will also be perfect for websites as well and not just for social media sites which have dynamic contents. It would be a great feature for ecommerce sites and other types of websites to have the interactive navigation and responsive layout like google +. If you have not seen the layout yet then head over to Google plus and maybe it is time to revive your interest to the fledgling social site again.

Photo - Brannans.com

The auction, held using proxibid software, had great potential to rock the domain name market but did not really up to the hype.

It left a lot unsold, and that doesn’t mean one of “the lots” put up for sale.

Out of the 184 domains that were available at the auction, all but 8 ended up unsold with the reserve price unmet. California.com, with a reserve range of $3-4 million, was one of the domains whose reserve price was not met.

Digital.com likewise went a-begging with a reserve range of $1-2 million. Also on the list were Connecticut.com, InstantCash.com and MusicVideos.com, all with a reserve price range of $500k – $1 million. Even Redmond.com didn’t find a buyer for the reserve price range of $50,000 to $100,000.

The eight domains which did find buyers snagged a total of $34,000. The one which got the highest bid was BalletShoes.com, with a reserve price of $5,000-$10,000, which sold at $13,250. The winning bid for BoozeCruise.com was $8,250 (reserve $5,000-$10,000) while hu,net which did not have a reserve price was sold at $6,250.

There are two ways to look at this first auction on Brannans.com. You could appreciate the fact that Brannans managed to put up such high quality domains for sale that buyers didn’t have pockets deep enough to bid for them. This bodes well for the future, as more deep-pocketed buyers and sellers gravitate towards Brannns.

On the other hand, the practical results – $34,000 in auction proceeds, is really on the lower side given all the hype. If it continues like this, the next domain up for auction will be Brannans.com.

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