If you ever needed a reminder that both personal and corporate branding is crucial, just ask Akbar Zeb.

Fox News reported:
“A high-ranking Pakistani diplomat reportedly cannot be appointed ambassador to Saudi Arabia because in Arabic his name translates into [an adult] phrase.” (link: www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,584807,00.html)

I do not speak Arabic. But Akbar (أكبر) roughly means: more, great etc. And Zeb (زيب) means, well, you can figure it out. Apparently Zeb wasn’t too surprised as he has run into this problem before when Pakistan wanted to appoint him as the ambassador to the United Arab Emirates but he was rejected for the same reason.

How will the UAE censor its forthcoming IDN ccTLD (.امارات meaning .Emarat in Arabic) in light of previously “censoring” this poor man?

The jury is still out for the best videogame of 2010. But it looks to be Heavy Rain. The narrative genre is that of a psychological thriller, the visuals are captivating and the number of permutations there are to the story truly makes this a choose your own adventure game. You will get absorbed into the life of Ethan Mars, the lead character, who is an ordinary architect and father. Unfortunate events lead him to try and track down a killer who leaves origami beside his dead victims.

But for domainers and Internet enthusiasts, what is truly revolutionary is the way that Heavy Rain is using the Internet. After I saw the trailer below and all other Heavy Rain trailers on YouTube, I decided to participate in the Heavy Rain 4 Day Challenge (it is not too late to play). The point of the challenge is to track a bunch of clues around the web to uncover part of the mystery of the Origami Killer who is featured in the game.

Here was my journey so far (***WARNING: 4 DAY CHALLENGE SPOILERS AHEAD***):

-Uncovered the anagram that is the killer’s Twitter account (@perfectfolds)
-Found related news clippings
-Used PicExaminer to uncover hidden messages
-”Talked” to an eyewitness at a crimescene using a novel YouTube feature (see video here)
-Found the Twitter account of an eyewitness (@sleeperinthesun)
-Went to a number of other interactive sites featuring animations or downloadable evidence, which were created specifically for the game

As a bottom line, remember that interactivity is the main advantage the Internet has over print media. Chef Patrick and Morgan Linton are pushing the envelop with video and more innovative uses are sure to come. Plus the trailer below is an absolute must see for anyone with a pulse:

Jeremy Schoemaker (aka Shoemoney) is one of the smartest guys on the web. He made his first killing on the Internet through a pioneering ringtones site, Next Pimp. He then founded the eBay based ad widget, AuctionAds, and later became a famous affiliate marketing blog personality.

I’ve always thought that affiliate marketing and domaining were a natural fit. Affiliate marketers know how to monetize but don’t know how to get traffic without big ad spends. Domainers are able to get traffic but don’t know how to monetize it.

Match made in heaven? I think so. I decided to learn from the best, and decided to take the plunge and learn directly from Shoemoney. He just rolled out a video based Shoemoney System. The first couple of videos start with the basic building blocks in Internet marketing, Shoe gives away his personal email address to answer questions, and he hosts a series of live chats. I’m always eager to learn, especially from someone like Shoemoney. The more I watch the videos, I’d say that the series below is definitely worth looking into.



Note: As I’m a big believer in Shoemoney, I am a paying subscriber of the ShoemoneySystem and an affiliate of the system.

The names Медведев.рф (Medvedev.rf) and Путин.рф (Putin.rf) are among the many reserved IDN ccTLDs in the forthcoming .рф extension. Why does this not surprise me? Could you imagine a political dissenter owning Putin’s domain?

A recent Russian report noted that approximately 7,000 domain names have been reserved so far. From that amount, roughly 7% is reserved for government applications. This is a sizable percentage, though it is consistent with what others in the ccTLD market have been doing. See the .me reserved list here for instance.

However with Russia, domain investors and Internet entrepreneurs are especially wary that the Russian ccTLD will be highly regulated, similar to the regulation of Russian print media. Maybe, the best thing Russia could do is allow (Putin).рф to be released to the public. Putin would then have to deal with some blogger’s criticism but he would show that in Russia, the Internet will be free.

This domain cartoon, Chinese deliveryman and all, is based off of the tales from IDNForums. Enjoy.

The Russian extension, .РФ, is expected to be transferred to Russia in late March. Russia’s eagerness to move forward with this process quickly was apparent ever since the country filed an application for this IDN TLD just hours after applications were first accepted on November 16, 2009.

The director overseeing the .РФ TLD, Andrei Kolesnikov, noted that there might be some technical and administrative issues leading to further delays. In particular, he mentioned the trademark minefield as there are many competing trademark holders who are applying for the same name in the .РФ ccTLD (link here). Russia’s trademark system allows many different companies to register the same trademark as long as they operate in different categories of business. This is similar to the U.S. For instance, “Apple Banks” and “Apple Computers” could both have trademark claims to the term “Apple” when used in their respective spaces, banking and computers. When it comes to registering domains, both these companies (if their trademarks are registered with Russia) can lay a claim to яблоко.РФ (apple.rf). This is why Andrei Kolesnikov decided that when there is competition between several trademark holders who are applying for the same domain name, the domain will be awarded to the first applicant (link here).

It is nice to see Russia moving along quickly with the .РФ IDN ccTLD, which should raise awareness of the IDN.com market as well.

One of the leaders in beating Captchas is XRumer. XRumer is a spam tool that posts comments in forums or on blogs. The point of XRumer is to saturate forums and blogs with spammy links to “Site A” in order to increase the search engine rank of “Site A.” XRumer reportedly can even defeat the advanced Captchas used in Gmail and Hotmail (link here), and XRumer is only one of many advanced Captcha circumvention tools.

Unfortunately, there haven’t been any big strides forward taken by the Captcha industry and adopted by the mainstream to beef up security. One of the better Captcha concepts involves identifying rotated 3D images (here), but it too seems a long ways away from actual implementation.

If we are to buy valuable domains, and develop valuable sites, we need good security and it is too bad that the Captcha space leaves much to be desired.

The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) has asked ICANN to postpone a decision on the “Expressions of Interest” (EOI) process for new gTLDs until after the ICANN Nairobi Meeting, which begins on March 7, 2010.

The news was first reported by DomainNameWire, which cited a letter in which the GAC Chairman Janis Karklins said that the period of community feedback was too brief. The draft EOI for the new gTLDs was in fact available since December 18, 2009 (link here).

The EOI process also came under heavy fire by Michael D. Palage (article here), in particular for “allow[ing] gTLD slots to be transferred [which] will create an artificial market where ‘insiders’ with deep pockets will be able to make a ‘quick buck’–just as has happened with ‘domain name tasting’ and other anomalies in artificial DNS markets created by ICANN . . . ICANN needs to engage the global Internet community and the GAC on the specifics of this important public policy issue to explain its costs and benefits.”

While some domainers such as Greg McNair were not excited about new gTLDs to begin with (here), the possibility and implications of IDN gTLDs has electrified the IDN industry for a while and these potential delays are disappointing.

Update: There is a nice thread on this here.