Different interest groups are always calling for a new domain name extension, there has bee an long campaign by pornographers to .xxx , the Welsh for a .cymru , even Cornwall wants its own domain extension. Some of them have succeed, for example .cat for Catalonia region of Spain, .la for Los Angeles in USA.
The latest call for a domain name extension for a specific people or language comes from the new Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, who called for Russia to be assigned .rf domain extension (RF stands for Russian Federation), he does not want the .rf domain extension in English, but in Cyrillic.
Mr Medvedev is promoting Russian as a global language, he argued that 300 Million people worldwide uses Russian language media, having a .rf in Cyrillic will further help in raising the profile of Russian as a language used globally.

Join domain name discussions at UK WW

Transferring a .uk domain name has realised on a cumbersome paper based system for years. Today, the domain name authority for .UK domain name space, Nominet announce the paper based transfer system is being replaced by a modern online transfer system to make transfer or any of the domain name in the .uk name space such as .co.uk , .org.uk, .me.uk much easier and quicker to transfer.
According to Nominet ” The new registrant transfer process in online services will replace the current paper based system on 25 June 2008.  The new transfer fee for the online system is £10+VAT, a significant reduction from the old fee for the paper based transfer which was £25+VAT.

The first step to searching for a new domain name or even finding whois or any other information about an existing domain name begins with a lookup. You have to go to a site with the desired domain lookup tool, then do a search. There is now a far easier way do do a whois search or any other domain name related searches, thanks to Richard Kershaw, who has created a domain lookup extension for Firefox browser.

Kershaw’s Firefox domain look up extension enables you to perform ‘one click’ domain searches at the site of your favourite registrar, right from your browser. The tool, once installed in your browser support keyboard shortcuts making the search process even faster.

You can find out more about this tool from Kershaw’s interestingly name website; quality nonsense, a direct link to the domain look up too can be found here.

Google is finally cracking down on the domain tasting gravy train, this is the practice where domain registrar takes advantage of the 5 days grace provided by domain name registry to delete registered domain name and get a refund of the domain registry fees.
Several companies are said to use (some will argue that its an abuse) this five day grace period by registering thousands of domain names, slap Adsense on the domain for that five day period generate lots of money and then cancel the domain name at the registry and get a refund plus make a killing on the Adsense clicks, one company was reported to have made over $3 million a month using this practice.

Its was reported that Google will be announcing that Adsense adverts may not be placed on domain name that are five days old or younger to stop the so called domain tasting abuse.

Perhaps a coincidence perhaps new ICANN Chairman, Peter Dengate Thrush just want to demonstrate that he has hit the ground running on assuming the Chairmanship of ICANN but many important decision that has been on ICANN back burners seem to have been implemented recently, a good example is the   speeding up of the development of IDN domain name, and a more recent example is the announcement of the appointment of  Iron Mountain Digital as escrow provider to the 900 or so ICANN-accredited domain name registrars. The speeding up of the appointment of the escrow provider is probably not unconnected to the collapse of Register Fly.

According to Iron Mountain Digital, the escrow program will protect registration data for the 90
million domain names supported by the over 900 ICANN- accredited registrars. This agreement solidifies the security and stability of the Internet’s domain name system by safeguarding the data
associated with registered domain names in secure escrow accounts managed by Iron Mountain Digital.

In other words, should a registrar go belly up, the chaos that follows the demise of Registry Fly will be minimised because domain name registration information is help by a third party which is Iron Mountain Digital,