As reported earlier, the Australian registrar Melbourne IT has acquired the Verisign Digital Brand Management Services unit for $50 Million USD. Verisign’s Digital Brand Management Services manages the domains for about 2,000 corporate client such as Microsoft.

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TechCrunch recently reported that Network Solutions, has been hijacking unassigned sub-domains and using them for link-filled landing pages to increase their revenue.

Win Betteridge, the webmaster for GotGame.com, was the first to find out what was going on.

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UPDATE : Within minutes of running this story we are receiving reports that the http://www.Nigger.com page has been taken down, while http://nigger.com may still be up. I’m guessing DNS will propogate throughout the day and this page will no longer show by day’s end.

Nigger.com, a domain name containing likely of one of the most controversial and overtly racist words in the English language is currently owned by the NAACP. The domain name which was likely set by the organization to not resolve has been “taken over” by the domain registrar Network Solutions.  Digg this story

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Tucows has announced a new service that gives people the chance to own their own name – on the internet.

In 2006, Tucows purchased NetIdentity, a business offering email and web addresses for many of the more popular American and European names. Tucows announced today that it has over 150,000 domain names in its private portfolio including 39,000 different surnames, which covers 65 percent of the North American phone book.

These surnames are the foundation for the new Personal Names Service, which allows individuals to have control over their own names. For example, John Smith could own john@smith.net as his email address and John.Smith.net for his web address – making his online identity easy for friends, clients, and business associates to remember. At the same time, however, anybody else with the last name Smith could also own their own personalized package, assuming the first name hasn’t already been taken.

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In our on-going coverage of the NSI front running story, we’ve received this letter minutes ago from NSI staff

I wanted to follow up with you and provide some information regarding some improvements we are making to our customer protection measure. Throughout the launch of this effort we have made, and continue to make, improvements to our protection measure. Below are some of the things we are implementing in the near term:

1) We have changed the current webpage to which reserved domain names resolve to a general under construction page. Additionally, all new reserved names after tonight will not resolve to any page at all.

2) This week, we will be making enhancements that will address the concerns related to disclosure of zone file and DNS server information of the reserved names. This should address some of the concerns recently raised.

3) Very soon we will remove our customer protection measure from our WHOIS search page, so that no domains searched on this page will be reserved. We will continue to reserve, however, domains searched from our homepage.

-Susan Wade

When asked if the home page will notify customers that their searches will result in domains being reserved Wade responded “Our customers are notified in their account manager account. We are also looking at other opportunities to let them know.”

Wade responded earlier to Andrew’s questions on Domain Name Wire and Andrew had made many of the suggestions mentioned in a follow up article on his site as well. Looks like NSI is taking this matter very seriously, as they well should based on the public outcry.

Network Solutions employees, including Vice President of Policy and Ethics are diligently working on PR damage control after the inevitable public backlash from allegations of domain name front running.  NSI employee responses have been spotted on Domainstate, Slashdot.org and Digg.  Additionally, DomainNameWire has a direct response from the head of PR at NSI and CircleID is citing a response from VP, Jon Nevett .

The company believes that this solution helps in combating “actual front running” and helps their customers by reserving the domain name.  This “solution” does nothing however to prevent another registrant from picking up the domain name. If the orignal searcher comes back 10 minutes later to register the domain, another user could still purchase this domain.  The only thing this solution seems to be preventing is fair trade as another registrar is being prevented from selling the domain name to a potential customer.

Godaddy.com announced a sponsorship deal with Hendricks Motorsports to be the primary sponsor for the #5 car for six events in 2008. The car will make it’s first race appearance in April driven by one of Nascar’s most popular drivers, Dale Earnhardt Jr. The car will late be driven by legendary driver Mark Martin and Canadian racer Ron Fellows. GoDaddy will also sponsor the #5 car on an associate level for the entire season. The car designed by Dale Earnhardt, Jr. was unveiled on Tuesday on the Godaddy website. Godaddy is one of the most aggressive marketers in the hosting and registrar space.  Godaddy also sponsors Indy car driver Danica Patrick and has placed prominent advertising in the past three NFL Super Bowl games.

The Godaddy car will be seen racing at the following events in 2008.

Date Location Driver
4/5/08 Texas Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
5/9/08 Darlington Mark Martin
8/2/08 Montreal Ron Fellows
8/9/08 Watkins Glen Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
8/16/08 Michigan Mark Martin
9/27/08 Kansas Mark Martin

Australian domain name registrar, Domain Central announced that they have received the Australian Technology Fast 50 Award from Deloitte. The company placed 6th overall in the Technology category and was noted for their rapid growth rate of 1,055% over the past three years.

[From company press release]

While the public wholesale registrar Tucows (TSX:TC, AMEX:TCX) has been offering a parking program for its resellers for a while, it has recently switched its parking platform to Skenzo. For the parking program, Tucows offers a 50-50 split of all net advertising revenue with the reseller. The registrar will also pick up some selected domains after expiry instead of letting them drop or making them available via their Domain Auctions. What makes Tucows’ program unique is that the company will also share 10% percent of the revenue with the original reseller, if a domain that has been picked up is sold at a later time.

[via Press Release]

Godaddy.com has released the final list of domain names to be auctioned off in their new Signature Domain Auctions beginning November 6th. The list of 30 domains was compiled from submissions from the Godaddy website. Godaddy put up a page about the Signature Domain Auctions earlier this year and have been vetting submissions and preparing for the release since the announcement.

The auction list includes several one-word .com domain names and one 2-letter .com domain, YB.com . There are also six .mobi domains included in the auction. The addition of the .mobi domains comes as no surprise with the release of the Signature Auction being on the heels of 13 .mobi domains selling for high prices at the TRAFFIC auction in Florida.

Godaddy is typically known as a low-cost retail domain name registrar. Godaddy currently runs an after-market auction selling expiring domains at TDNAM.com and has partnered with Fabulous.com to sell domains through the Domain Distribution Network. The addition of the premium domain auction to the Godaddy offerings shows a concerted effort to aggressively enter the domain name after-market.

In a previous press release on the Godaddy website, Bob Parsons, founder and chief executive of the domain name registrar talked about the auctions

“We’ve said it many times - domain names are real estate of the 21st century,” said Bob Parsons, Founder & CEO of GoDaddy.com. “We wanted to give people a chance to secure some prime Internet space through a fast-paced, easy to use auction.”

and in the recent release about the aucitons he says

“We have some impressive domain names in this auction. We were inundated with submissions for listings, but selected only the most memorable and coveted. We also worked to provide a good variety of names for a wide range of price points.”

The format to these auctions seems to be different than most domain auctions. According to the press relase “The domain names will be auctioned one at a time. There is no time limit to each auction. Once the bidding stops, the auction ends. A moderator will be on hand in a live-chat setting to answer questions potential bidders may have. ”

It’s never been a problem for the domain auction sites and events to get domain submissions for auctions, as Parsons found out, but sorting through and finding good domains at good prices is a daunting task. A great list of domains with good reserve prices and an efficient, trustworthy auction platform is a sure fire way to get professional domain investors interested. Looks like the Godaddy team has a good list which makes for a good start in that area, hopefully the reserves are reasonable to increase the interest level.

One interesting advantage Godaddy has in entering the premium domain auction space is their scale. The most important job for an auctioneer is to market the auctions in order to get as many bidders as possible. As the #1 domain registrar, Godaddy has a huge end-user customer base to market these domains to, which might provide an interest level not seen at other domain auction sites or events. It will be interesting to see how these auctions turn out with the different format, potentially larger pool of bidders and currently unknown reserve prices.

Here is the list of domains to be auctioned :
1x.com
Apartments.mobi
BargainBuy.com
BeautyCounter.com
BestPhone.com
BestService.com
Bob.com
Campaign2008.com
CollegeFootball.mobi
Dentists.mobi
DietAids.com
Earl.com
Even.com
ForeignTravel.com
Grapes.com
HDTVShop.com
Homes.mobi
HowToInvest.com
Maillist.com
Media.mobi
MobileSecurity.com
Moving.mobi
RoadWork.com
Smoked.com
SportUtility.com
TopBeaches.com
TravelUpdate.com
VirtualServer.com
WhyHybrid.com
YB.com