Domain Name News received a “press release” today from Thomas Rucker of Madunia GmbH. In the emailed article, he refers to the sunrise auctions of .asia domains as “shady” and “dubious”. Rucker’s claims that the CEO of Pool.com, Richard Schreier, is benefiting from the company’s relationship as auctioneer of the .asia domains.

[Update]: DNN has received a response via our comments from Pool.com’s CEO, Richard Schreier, which we have now quoted below.

Pool.com was contracted by the .asia registry to auction all domain names that received multiple applicants during the .asia landrush period.

Rucker points out that the CEO of the company that auctions these domains likely would have inside information on the top bids placed on these names. Rucker has discovered that Schreier is also the owner of several other companies in Europe which have acquired some of the premium keyword .asia domains including Porn.asia , Dating.asia and Insurance.asia. Rucker has documented his opinions and findings on this matter at the site dotasia-complot.org View the emailed “release” after the jump.

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In an email sent out today, Moniker.com has announced a re-auctioning of a batch of .mobi domains purchased recently from the TRAFFIC domain auction in Florida. The domains have now been placed back on the market by the winning bidder.

Note: I was not a .mobi buyer or bidder.

The buyer/bidder of these .mobi names at TRAFFIC wants to sell the domains at cost due to other financial obligations. Here is a list of the premium names sold at TRAFFIC to one bidder that now wants to sell them for cost .

Since you were a .mobi buyer/bidder in our most recent Traffic auction I am sending this email in regard to the .mobi names. We are giving you first shot at them but we need you commitment at of above the prices below.

These are available for purchase (on a first come -first serve basis) at these prices below thru this Friday November 9th.

Domain Venue Price

News.mobi Live $110,000.00
Shopping.mobi Live $55,000.00
ZIPCodes.mobi Live $8,000.00
elections.mobi Silent $3,000.00
jewelry.mobi Silent $15,730.00
move.mobi Silent $3,000.00
price.mobi Silent $3,993.00
weightloss.mobi Silent $3,000.00

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced the renewal of Neustar’s contract to manage the .US registry. The .US domain is the country code top-level domain for the United States (usTLD), but has always played second-fiddle to the more popular .com extension.

The contract involves a three-year agreement with two one-year options. The NTIA is part of the Department of Commerce and is responsible for the development of domestic and international telecommunications policy for the Executive Branch.

“Neustar’s bid met our selection criteria and we are confident of its abilities to manage the .us domain space. NTIA takes seriously its responsibility to ensure the stability and security of the .us domain for the benefit of the nation’s Internet community,” said NTIA Assistant Secretary John Kneuer. “Therefore, we will continue supervising administration of the usTLD to achieve those goals, and will work closely with Neustar to support the domain’s growth, particularly in the second-level kids.us space.”

[Press Release]

The live domain name auction at the TRAFFIC conference sparked a seemingly renewed interest in .mobi domains. There were 13 .mobi domains at auction and all 13 domains sold. Many of these domains were priced with a $1 starting price which spaked multiple bidders and rocketed up the prices. Several unfamiliar faces were seen bidding. However, some very familiar faces including Xavier Buck from Eurodns, reps from Anything.com, Jakob Knightley from NameDrive.com and reps from Tidewinds.com were active in the bidding. The thirteen  .mobi domains reached nearly $650,000 in sales

I tried spotting all the bidders during the auction, but I was only able to get a visual confirmation on some. If my eyesight and notes from the event are 100% correct, some of the top bidders on the .mobi domains were :

Poker.mobi - $150,000 - Anything.com
Ringtones.mobi - $145,000 - NameDrive
Email.mobi - $50,000 - Xavier Buck
Podcast.mobi - $25,000 - Tidewinds

The other domains were sold for the following amounts

News.mobi = $110,000 - Phone-in bidder
Scores.mobi - $33,000
Buy.mobi - $32,500
Cab.mobi - $17,500
Cash.mobi - $12,500
PDA.mobi - $8,000
ZipCodes.mobi - $8,000
Bill.mobi - $3000

It might be just a fluke, but Microsoft Messenger is blocking .info sites from appearing when users send messages back and forth . More on this story here.

Sedo has just announced the closing of the highest .INFO sale to date. Travel.info sold today for $116,000.

From the Press Release :

Sedo recently announced they have closed the highest .INFO sale to date, with Travel.info selling for $116,000 USD.   This comes at a time when .COM sales are reaching record sales prices and is great news for domain investors. As the secondary domain market begins seeing higher sales values for domains with alternate extensions to the .COM, better returns on investment can be expected for all  top-level domains (TLDs), including Sponsored TLDs, such as .MOBI and even Country Code TLDs such as .CO.UK and .US.  Other notable .INFO sales include newspaper.info for €13,550, or roughly $18,500, booking.info for $11,500 and names.info for €8,100, or about $10,500.  

“As the 6^th largest TLD on the Internet today, .INFO has become a natural place on the Internet to both place and find information about important subjects, like travel,” said Roland LaPlante, vice president and chief marketing officer for Afilias, the registry for .INFO domain names. “The record setting sale of travel.info highlights the value of .INFO as the go-to TLD for information and underscores its increasing prominence in the global domain market.”

I don’t know about “natural place” since it is afterall referred to as an alternate extension. It’s still a good sale and should be a nice boost for more .info sales. Congrats also to Travel.com who is likely to benefit greatly from this as well

According to reports I’ve read scattered throughout the web (like the iphone atlas ) , the coveted new Iphone comes equipped with a “.com button”.

The keyboard is dynamic. When using Safari, for instance, there is a “.com” button.

Another source IphoneNewsBlog also reports:

- keyboard has a .com button for easy url input when in safari

Not such a good thing to hear for all these .mobi folks (or any other extension for that matter). I am going to guess that the iphone will be customizable and/or hackable for geeks to make the modifications to override this but for avg Joe internet user this means more traffic for the .com

I got the tip on this story over at domainstate