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Web developers and designers hate dealing with odd browser issues, so the more people that use standards compliant browsers the better.
In the case of Internet Explorer 6 it seems that people have to do lots of hacking around to get it to "play nice".
Blacknight Solutions, Ireland's leading internet services company, is now accredited to sell .co.nl domain names. By registering a .co.nl domain name, for example myname.co.nl, registrants have the opportunity to reach a wider audience, particularly in The Netherlands.
Domain names with the .co.nl extension can be registered by anyone anywhere, unlike the .nl country code that requires a contact point in The Netherlands.
"Becoming an accredited registrar for .co.nl domain names allows us to give our clients an even wider range of options for registering domain names", said Blacknight CEO Michele Neylon.
"It extends the level of service we can offer our clients, making Blacknight Solutions a one-stop shop for all a businesses' internet hosting and domain name requirements."
With over three million .nl domain names already registered, obtaining your preferred .nl domain name can be difficult, however with this new extension, it will be much easier.
To ensure our clients get the .co.nl domain of your choice, Blacknight Solutions suggests contacting us as soon as possible to discuss requirements.
The .co.nl domain name extension was launched at the ICANN meeting in Paris held from 23-26 June, 2008. To ensure every person and every company has a fair chance to register their own .co.nl domain name, there will be a Sunrise process, as outlined below.
During this Sunrise period, every owner of a .nl and/or a valid trademark registration has the exclusive opportunity to register the international variant of their domain name within the defined Sunrise periods:
Sunrise 1: Grandfather period - commencing date Q3 2008
During the Grandfather period, owners of a .nl have an exclusive right to register their .co.nl as well. This implies that a registrant owning mydomain.nl, will be the only entity that has the opportunity to register mydomain.co.nl during the Grandfather period.
Sunrise 2: Registered Trademarks - commencing date Q4 2008
Domains that were not registered during Sunrise 1 (Grandfather) can still be claimed by trademark owners during the second phase. These applications will also be reviewed by a Verification Agent.
Multiple eligible applications of the same .co.nl name received during the 2nd Sunrise period will be assigned on a first come first served basis.
Landrush/ Go live - commencing date Q1 2009
In the Landrush phase, application requests can be made by the general public without restriction. They will be accepted on a first comes first served basis.
(Mentioned dates are merely indicative. Specific dates will be communicated two months before the actual launch)
The Irish communications regulator, Comreg, has opened a public consultation period about dotIE (.ie), which I mentioned last week.
This follows on from a study conducted by Comreg into stakeholder attitudes towards the IE namespace and the current registry operator, IEDR.
We get a lot of people complaining to us about the IE domain registration process, so now is the time for them to make their opinions known.
You can download the consultation document and submit your feedback via email or more "traditional" methods.
I'll be submitting a detailed set of answers to Comreg before the August deadline.
Last week's ICANN meeting proved to be incredibly busy, both in terms of number of attendees and the number of announcements made.
From our point of view there were a number of topics that are relevant and important to our business and I'll be posting about some of these in the coming weeks both here and on my personal domain blog.
Last Thursday morning I was on the panel for a workshop on IPv6. There were four of us on the panel talking about our experiences from very different angles. If nothing else I definitely feel that I learnt something from it.
Of course the big announcement of the week was in relation to new Gtlds. Unfortunately a lot of people seem to have cherrypicked from the announcements and now seem to think that all sorts of crazy domain extensions will now be available. They won't. (I'll follow up on this over the next few days).
As John mentioned on his blog, ICANN have finally taken steps to mitigate "domain tasting". It won't stop it outright, but it should curtail it quite a bit. It will also have the handy side-effect of stopping Network Solutions' practice of "holding" domains for "clients", as they won't be able to do it without incurring a fee.
The Afilias team were at ICANN Paris in full force and held a drinks reception to celebrate the launch of dotme (Montenegro).
Closer to home (relatively speaking), Telnic announced their launch timeline. They've also started rolling out demo applications so that both users and developers can get a "feel" for the things you can do with a dottel domain (.tel).
The next few months should be an interesting time for the domain industry!
ICANN's 32nd International public meeting opened in Paris yesterday morning.
There are several hot topics on the agenda and judging by the crowds of people at last night's welcome cocktail, attendance levels are good.
If you're interested in finding out more head over to the meeting's official site where you can find details of meetings, talks, presentations and more.
The areas that are bound to attract attention this week are quite diverse and encompass topics such as new TLDs, the launch of .tel (dottel), Whois (again!), registry failover, the registrar agreement and both IDNs and IPv6. (Can you say "acronym hell"??)
Of course no ICANN meeting would be complete without an equally busy social agenda and last night's welcome cocktail at La Defense (photo above) was no different. Wednesday's gala dinner is being held in yet another famous Parisian landmark (more on that Thursday I hope!)
Image via Wikipedia
Blacknight, Microsoft and PollDaddy provided prizes, with us offering a year's VPS hosting to the winner!
We'll be liasing with Alan to ensure he gets to make full use of his prize :)
We've been toying with the idea of providing "live chat" on our site for quite some time.
We finally found a software vendor whose product fit our criteria, so we're now offering live chat on our VPS hosting site.
All conversations are routed over 128 bit SSL, so your privacy is assured.
We would, of course, ask that people not handover credit card details etc., via the live chat system.
Staff from sales, technical support and accounts are available from 8 am to 6 pm Monday to Friday to answer your queries.
Of course if anyone has any feedback to give us either here or via email (management@blacknight.com) we'd love to hear it.
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