I’ve always wondered who picks up the best handregs. How “expert” are each of us at buying a fresh $8.00 name? Well consider the gauntlet thrown.

We at IDNTools are teaming up with Elliot’sBlog to find the best handregger out there.

For fun, the contest is limited to the best IDN handreg — so for many of you, you have two weeks to learn how to register an IDN. For the IDN pros, it is your time to shine and try to show the newbies a thing or two. To make this painless, submissions of names are free, you can submit as many as you want, and the winner gets $150.

This is also your chance for personal recognition. And if you lose, hey, you could be good at non-IDN handregs or could have had an off week, so there is no shame.

The details of the contest and what is considered the “best” domain can be found on ElliotsBlog here.

Go get ‘em. And if you have any questions about IDN handregs, leave a message for me in the comments and I’ll walk you through it.

Will you lose your adult names? Will they be censored? Will there be new competition? It is all up for grabs this week, as ICANN discusses the potential for a .xxx TLD. The stated purpose of the TLD is to safeguard children from pornography, and to provide an extension that serves as a label. This label can then be screened and filtered easily, drawing comparisons to a rating on a movie.

What is left unsaid, is that this invites a discussion on web censorship, and whether adult .com names will be censored in the coming years — if .xxx is truly a replacement for rather than an addition to the current adult web ecosystem.

As background, this week ICANN is very much expected to discuss the future of .xxx domains as part of its ICANN 37 conference in Nairobi, Kenya. On February, 21, 2010, an independent review panel ruled against ICANN for denying the ICM registry’s application for a .xxx gTLD. The result is that ICANN is under pressure to move forward with the new gTLD or risk being faced with a lawsuit.

Whether .xxx names are released, whether they are censored and whether adult dot com names might be restricted is all TBD.

Ron Artest of the L.A. Lakers is known as a rough and tumble defensive stopper hailing from New York City, and has never been thought of as a linguist…until now. Artest played small forward for the Chicago Bulls, Indiana Pacers, Sacramento Kings, Houston Rockets and L.A. Lakers and is infamously known for his role in instigating a brawl in the Palace of Auburn Hills when a drink was thrown at him.

Artest’s proudest moment was winning the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2004.
Love him or hate him for his grit, he is a savvy marketer.

In an attempt to reach out globally to fans in other countries, his new haircut spells “DEFENSE” in Hebrew, Japanese and Hindi letters.

He posted the following pictures of his international hairdo to his Twitter account:

*CircleID has a nice post about ICANN’s upcoming Nairobi agenda. Key items expected to be on the agenda are:

a. New TLDs— a discussion of what the “EOI” (expressions of interest) process will look like for pre-registering new gTLDs. ICANN provides more information on this here.

b. IDN ccTLDs – a status update on which countries that have applied using the “fast track” and where they are.

c. The .xxx extension- will it proceed and when.

*A great interview was posted to RG.ru. Andrei Kolesnikov, the Director of the Coordination Center for .RU notably commented that he expects the .РФ (.RF) domain to be launched in Fall 2010 given some entangling trademark holdups.

*Chef Patrick announced DNCruise. It is a domaining cruise leaving Miami, Florida on October 11, 2010, which is timed to synch with the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. event in South Beach (link).

“In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs,” said John Herlihy, Google’s Vice President of Global Ad Operations.

Herlihy gave a talk at the Digital Landscapes Conference in Ireland, and shook up the crowd according to the Ireland-based tech journal SiliconRepublic, when he said that the desktop is on its way to the grave.

What does this mean for the Internet and for domains? This is a tremendous opportunity for mobile developers, as there will be a rush to get one’s site properly formatted for all popular mobile devices. For the domain owner — if you are developing a large project think about how the site would resolve on a mobile device, especially if your target is Japan.

The Huffington Post even noted in response to the story: “Our programmers are working on products from a ‘Mobile First’ perspective. That is in fact a major change. Every recent product announcement we have made – and of course we have a desktop version – is being made from the point of view of it being used on a high-performance mobile phone on all the browsers that are available.”

David Castello needs no introduction. He is one of the patriarchs of the domain industry. He along with brother Michael owns CCIN (Castello Cities Internet Network) and the well known sites PalmSprings.com, Nashville.com, and Acapulco.com among many others. In the Q&A below, David tells IDNBlog about his thoughts on IDNs and the parallels he sees between the current IDN market and the early days of domaining.


Q: What do you think of the current and future value of IDNs?

A: The value of any domain is roughly equivalent to the old saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The only other gauge is intuitive traffic, but that can also be limited in scope. Different things are relevant to different people. We bought Nashville.com in 2003 for a (then) hefty sum and we never asked about its traffic because we knew what we wanted to do with the name. The value of IDNs will be perceived by investors and endusers the same way. And in many ways their future looks bright.

Q: How do the critics of IDNs remind you of your early domain investing days?

A: When my brother Michael begin acquiring names in 1995 many people laughed and told him, “Why are you wasting your time? These names are free. That means they’re not worth anything.” When I came aboard in 1997 they said, “Why are you wasting your time? These names cost only $100. That means they’re not worth anything.” In the Spring/Summer of 1997 we picked up Bullion.com, Rate.com, Cost.com, Traveler.com, Kennel.com , etc simply because people thought it was a waste of money to spend $100 on those names. However, we knew from the beginning the reasons those names would have fantastic practical value (which is why we ended up developing them). There is only one major vision a domainer needs to be successful – you have to pick names that will have practical usage with the masses or an enduser (the biggest mistake is to buy a name simply because you think another domainer will want it). It’s the same today with IDNs and I believe those with practical vision will do quite well.

However, I am starting to notice a difference between now and then, and IDN owners need to be careful. From the beginning, Michael and I were very confident about the future value of our names. And confidence is contagious. If someone criticized us, we never fired back and simply explained our reasons for our beliefs and investments in our domain names. On the contrary, I am finding many IDN owners to be quite thin skinned and they tend to get upset and unprofessional if their reasons for investing in IDNs are challenged. In the investment world this instantly raises a major red flag and IDN owners need to relax because they’re sending out the wrong signals.

Q: What words of caution would you pass on to IDN investors regarding trademarks and UDRPs?

A: Don’t blow it off. It’s the equivalent of standing on the deck of the Titanic and saying, “So what? It’s only a little iceberg.” I have no doubt that some of these IDNs will be challenged and lost. To think otherwise is to have your head in the sand. I believe Geos and Generics are your safest bets.

Q: What do you think of those who say that an ASCII.com (aka English.com) domain holder should be entitled to all IDN.com equivalents?

A: This will depend on TM law and how unique the word is to the masses. If it’s a Generic I’d say you’re in safe territory, but some IDN investors sound awfully naïve when they say, “There is no English/Latin equivalent in this language’s characters” as if that logic alone will stop a major corporate legal department from coming after them. Believe me, if a major international trademark owner thinks they are legally entitled to your IDN due to any type of infringement they 100% will try to think of a way to take it.

The new Chrome Beta browser has an autotranslate feature built-in, which is sophisticated enough to autodetect if you visit a page that is not your preferred language, and if so, it will prompt the user and ask if it should translate the visited page. (See The Register ).

What are the implications? The IDN cynic could say that language barriers are getting torn down. In subsequent versions of Chrome, autotranslate may eliminate a business’ need to put up a site in multiple languages in order to attract a global audience.

As an IDN investor, I would need to counter by pointing out that autotranslation tools are still plagued with errors while native languages will be valuable on the Internet for many years to come. Even as browsers advance in their autodetection and autotranslation technology, a native brand in a native language will be tremendously valuable.

As for the future? No one knows, but the recent changes to Chrome beta are a potent reminder of the way our web experience is filtered through the eyes of a browser.

What do you make of VeriSign’s plans for IDN.com to be unlocked as IDN.com-in-IDN? Fantastic news for natives who will get more IDN.IDN developed sites, and for IDN investors whose digital property will increase in value, right?

Though this news seems to unquestionably be “good news”, some domainers have focused on a downside that was also mentioned. For each .com-in-IDN an activation fee might be required.

Some took this opportunity to tease IDNers about this potential “IDN tax” and the possibility of paying double reg fee to reach natives. The retort of course is that such taunts fail to understand that many IDN portfolios consist of names that are well worth double reg-fee, especially if IDN.IDN is activated.

From a policy perspective, an increase in reg fee is never a good thing as it stifles the development of the Internet at the hands of creative, bootstrapped entrepreneurs.

In this case though, if double reg fee is what it takes to get IDN.IDN activation done, it is still well worth it.

Note: Whether unlocking IDN.com-in-IDN occurs, whether an IDN.IDN activation fee is implemented, and whether activation fee is double-reg fee or any other number has not yet been definitively determined.

Speculation abounds in connection with Rod Beckstrom’s visit to China over the next few days. The visit is expected to address China’s ICANN application for the “dot-China” ccTLD written in Chinese script, as reported by PCWorld.

China was not among the countries approved to move forward passed the String Evaluation phase yet.

Moreover, China’s intent to censor the web has been crystal clear over the past months. First, CNNIC disallowed individuals from owning a .CN domain. Then came the Google scandal. Google was hacked and subsequently stopped censoring its results in China as an act of defiance. Many insiders expect it to just be a matter of time until Google is banned in the country.

I hope that Beckstrom uses his upcoming visit to directly address both the status of Chinese IDN ccTLDs and the country’s censorship.

Rick Latona has done an excellent job of developing out Vino.com. But “Vino” means “Wine” in Spanish. Does that mean that Rick should be obliged to relinquish his Vino.com domain to the owner of Wine.com? That’s silly isn’t it. “Vino” is a different word and brand than “Wine”.

It is similarly unprecedented to suggest that the owners of “יין .com”, which means “Wine” in Hebrew should have to hand over their domain to the owner of “Wine.com”. After all, it is an entirely different word.