Domaining .NZ

A volatile few months coming

2011-03-03T23:35:00.001+13:00

The Domain Name Commission has released their February newsletter with .nz domain name stats for January 2011. January saw 7423 new registrations with a net growth in .nz of 2729 compared with 7317 / 3161 for December 2010. It's easy to see this as New Zealand being on holiday in January, but when compared with the figures from last year where they were 6509 / 1949 in Dec 2009 and 7093 / 2931 in

Christchurch Earthquake Community Response

2011-02-26T12:22:00.000+13:00

Following this week's major earthquake, a dedicated volunteer team of Internet people, web masters, programmers, and computer savvy helpers have built the Christchurch Earthquake Community Response site to coordinate help efforts. If you need help or can offer help, please go there.

Christchurch Earthquake: Are Your Domains Safe?

2011-02-25T12:17:00.001+13:00

In the .NZ domain space, your domain registrations are passed through to the central registry that is managed by the New Zealand Registry Services (NZRS) company. NZRS has a main data centre and a hot spare in a geographically remote data centre. Their status page lists the main and hot spare as being up. If I recall correctly neither of these servers are in Christchurch. If your registrar goes

InternetNZ donates $50,000 to Red Cross

2011-02-25T11:49:00.000+13:00

In a press release, InternetNZ says: "InternetNZ (Internet New Zealand Inc) has today donated $50,000 to the New Zealand Red Cross in support of those affected by the Christchurch Earthquake. This is one step the organisation has taken, and there will be further action. It is clear that cash is needed right now and an immediate donation is one of the best ways to help, backing those organisations

NZ Post vs Yellow Pages settled

2011-02-25T08:44:00.001+13:00

In my previous post Cybersquatting court case NZ Post vs Yellow Pages I reported how a trademark and passing off case between the YP Group and New Zealand Post included some domain names. Last night in some informal discussions I was having before the Internet NZ members consultation meeting I heard from another interested watcher of the case that it had been settled out of court and the

Cybersquatting court case NZ Post vs Yellow Pages

2011-02-22T16:02:00.002+13:00

Update 25 February 2011 - I'm informed that the case has since been settled out of court.From the "I don't like you playing in my back yard" file. According to the Herald: "New Zealand Post's new directories business Localist is suing Yellow Pages Group over allegations Yellow breached the Fair Trading Act by buying up similar web addresses and Google adwords in a deliberate attempt to divert

Another advantage of owning a .NZ domain name

2011-02-04T18:10:00.000+13:00

Interesting piece of chatter on the Internet NZ mail list today. Apparently the US government has seized a Spanish owned .ORG domain name, despite the Spanish courts having ruled that what the company owning the name is doing is perfectly legal under Spanish law. Long time readers of this and my other blogs will recall that I have long advocated owning the domain name with the extension most

.nz Dispute Resolution Service Policy Review

2011-01-19T19:28:00.000+13:00

The Domain Name Commission (DNC) has announced a consultation on their Dispute Resolution Service that will run until the beginning of April this year.They are proposing three minor changesa change where the term Mediator will be defined,Increase the fee for Expert determination from $1800 to $2000 (+GST)Increase the fee for appeals of Expert determination from $6,600 to $7,200 (+GST)All fairly

Google Analytics illegal in Germany?

2011-01-14T18:25:00.001+13:00

According to reports, the state privacy commissioner in Hamburg, Germany, has decided that Google Analytics should be illegal."The free internet service Google Analytics gathers detailed information about website visits via a user’s IP address, sending the data back to Google servers in the United States for processing. "According to the paper [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung], Caspar and data

Advice to the new domainer

2010-03-27T10:50:00.000+13:00

I just wrote this at Digital Point forums in reply to a post "Domainers... do they make money?" This is a lightly edited version of my reply. It seemed too good to leave as a reply that will soon be buried in history so I've copied it here. Domaining isn't one business, it's several different businesses. Some domainers buy domains to use for the revenue they generate while held, some buy

.NZ domain registration wholesale fee reducing by 16% in July

2010-03-23T12:01:00.000+13:00

InternetNZ has announced a reduction of the wholesale fee for .nz domain names from NZ $ 1.50 + GST per month to $1.25 per month ($18 to $15 per annum per domain name) from 1 July 2010. The fee was last reduced in July 2007 and before that in July 2004. While there is no obligation on registrars to pass on the wholesale fee reduction to customers, InternetNZ President Frank March says he "

.NZ IDN Sunrise Registration Period

2010-03-21T13:09:00.000+13:00

Background As previously reported here and here the Domain Name Commission (DNC) has been preparing policies on introducing a limited set of international domain names (IDNs) to the .NZ space to allow the supporting of the Māori language language. This requires adding the 5 macronised vowels ā, ē, ī, ō and ū to the English alphabet. Policy They have now written and published the IDN Sunrise

New Kids on the Block

2010-03-20T23:38:00.000+13:00

When I first started acquiring domain names back in 2005 I was approached by someone who'd been in the game a lot longer than me & one of the things he said was that over the years he'd seen a lot of people come into the game and drop out. He advised me that New Zealand domains are hard to market and I listened. I've never really tried actively marketing my portfolio, sure I occasionally get

Surviving the recession

2010-03-20T23:24:00.000+13:00

I pretty much dropped out of domaining during the worst of last year's recession and am only just starting to get back into it. For a while I thought I'd have to ditch a considerable percentage of the portfolio, but I just managed to keep it together and came out with the portfolio largely unscathed. Parking still doesn't pay very well and I still don't see myself back in domaining in the

One Hundred Smart Companies who Understand Generic Domain Names

2010-02-28T16:39:00.001+13:00

Memorable Domains in the UK has a page up of 100 Smart Companies that Understand the Concept of Generic Domain Names The list has 100 companies (mostly UK) and the generic domain name they use to promote themselves. Each of them has made good use of a generic domain name that exactly matches either their primary business, or one of their main products or services, and many of these are

How and when to buy generic domain names

2010-02-14T12:18:00.001+13:00

When and how should you buy an existing generic domain name for your business?In Branding on the Internet I discussed what you should call your web site, the short answer is it should match your business name, the longer answer is in that article. Part of the branding article was about using additional “Generic” or product related domain names for extra qualified leads to your web-site, hopefully

DNC Consultation: Second Level Domains Policy Review

2009-11-01T11:41:00.004+13:00

Some top level domains (.com, .tv) allow people to register a name immediately before the top level domain. Other top level domains provide a restricted number of names immediately to the left of the top level domain such as .me.uk, .com.au, .co.nz and allow registration only at the third level. These limited number of second level names are known as second level domain names. Some registration

Expired or Not? The strange case of Dick Smiths

2009-11-01T00:43:00.003+13:00

On Friday night Expired Domains was showing the auction on the domain name dicksmiths.co.nz as finishing then. From Saturday morning it's been showing as finishing in 2 months time.Looking at the whois for the domain name it showsdomain_dateregistered: 2005-03-27T18:42:14+12:00domain_datebilleduntil: 2009-11-27T18:42:14+13:00domain_datelastmodified: 2009-10-30T11:19:13+13:00domain_datecancelled:

How to change ownership of .NZ domains

2009-01-05T23:24:00.004+13:00

There are three main "players" in a domain name. The registrant (the nominal owner), the registrar who sells the owner the domain name and the hosting service that provides web and mail services for it. When you buy a domain name, the owner definitely changes, and depending on the deal you strike, the other two players may or may not change.Buying .coms is easy. You transfer them to your account

Profiting From The Coming Recession

2008-10-08T21:41:00.002+13:00

I won't say it was a first, but I received a very thought provoking unsolicited commercial email today. Not normal spam, but somehow my email address had got on a legitimate company's marketing list.To an extent nearly everyone in an Internet business is dependent on advertising for our respective businesses' income. It doesn't matter if that revenue is from CPC/CPA marketing, building websites

Beware of free DNS services

2008-10-07T22:22:00.005+13:00

Businesses come in all shapes and forms. Many small businesses are sole traders, often working on a shoestring budget. When businesses of this size first create a web presence it is often done on free services like Geocities or Blogspot. Sometimes this is because they are trying to minimize costs, and sometimes it is because they wandered into a web presence by accident. Although I am an IT

Branding on the internet

2008-04-19T21:08:00.008+12:00

It doesn't really fit here because it isn't directly related to domaining, but I've just written an 1800 word article giving my opinions on Internet branding, or more precisely selecting a domain name for a business. I've posted it to my ¿Que? blog.The article covers selecting a name, the importance of identifying the name with your business, and some common pitfalls to avoid.

No change to .nz registration fee

2008-04-17T00:03:00.000+12:00

The DNC has announced that the wholesale fee for .nz domains will remain NZ $1.50 per month ($18 per annum).The fee is reviewed annually and the decision is to leave it unchanged this year.The registration fee is the major source of income for Internet NZ and among other things is used for public good projects such as advocacy to improve the internet in New Zealand.

More on IDNs

2008-04-16T23:44:00.000+12:00

Since writing yesterday's entry on Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) I've done a bit more thinking.Is there any history that gives a guideline as to what may happen?Many, if not all, common Māori words are registered in the .co.nz space, and also in the .com world. The .com registry has permitted IDNs for a long time so I started investigating that. With the help of NZ History's 100 Maori

DNC Second Consultation on Internationalised Domains Names

2008-04-15T23:31:00.002+12:00

Originally domain names could only contain the ASCII letters A-Z, digits 0-9 and the hyphen. When countries using other alphabets, and accented characters started to have domain names, a mechanism had to be found to support them. The solution "Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs)" supports this requirement.Unfortunately as some character sets have letters that look like the latin letters, they