In 2008 Jothan Frakes held an impromptu survey for registry service providers for new gTLDs at the ICANN meeting in Paris. The results were then consolidated into a matrix and published on the Names At Work blog by his friend Antony van Couvering – unfortunately DNN could not locate the information on the site today. Now, two years later and a bit further into the introduction process for new gTLDs- ICANN has published the 4th revision of the Applicant Guidebook for New gTLDs – Jothan Frakes has started a follow-up survey.

The first survey also seems to have had a big part in funding of the new gTLD service & consulting company Minds + Machines, which Frakes was part of. Now that he is not with the company any more, he can once again collect data in an independent survey of the registry services industry.

The survey will run until August 4th, 2010 and service providers (for ccTLDs & gTLDs) interested in having their information included can participate here: Registry Service Provider Survey

[Via Jothan Frakes' Blog]

The parent company of Minds + Machines, Top Level Domain Holdings [AIM: TLDH] reported their revenue for the period to the end of April with £32,000 ($49,000), with a loss of £462,000 ($708,000). The company is pretty much in a holding pattern until the release of the new gTLDs by ICANN and is expecting finalization of ICANN’s new gTLD Applicant Guidebook by November and is hoping for the opening of the first round at the ICANN Meeting in December. The company still has almost £4m in cash and equivalents and appears to have been bootstrapping operations. One of the former key-employees, Jothan Frakes, is not with the company any more. Potential threats to the company could be further delays of the release of new gTLDs through litigation.

[via DomainIncite]

This morning ICANN release the much anticipated version 3 of the applicant guidebook for new TLDs and opened the corresponding Public Comment Forum.The release of the new documents detailing how interested parties can apply for the much discussed new TLDs goes hand in hand with an overhaul of the corresponding website.

In a first review, Jothan Frakes of Minds + Machines notes that Module 2 – 2.1.1.4.1 (p14), rule i alpha 3 codes from ISO 3166-1 could mean that Apple needs to get permission from China before applying for .MAC (due to the similarity to Macao) and .GEO would need permission from Georgia to start up their new TLD.

As mentioned yesterday, a group of businesses — mostly consisting of registrars, new gTLD candidates, and new gTLD consultants — sent a letter to ICANN urging the Board of Directors to initiate the new TLD system without further delay. While 61 businesses endorsed the letter, the Internet Commerce Association (ICA) declined the invitation  replying that “ICA would not be serving its members responsibly if we joined in a call for ‘full speed ahead’ when multiple critical details remain in flux.”

“We have yet to see ICANN’s 3rd version of the Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAG) for new gTLDs and have no idea what changes and additions it contains,” stated ICA Counsel Philip Corwin. “…ICANN has also repeatedly stated that it will not open the application window until all the overarching issues related to new gTLDs have been adequately resolved, and ICA supports that position.”

Additionally, “ICA cannot be a signatory to any letter that endorses the IRT [Implementation Recommendation Team] process or its recommendations, much less one that implies they are an improvement over current rules such as the UDRP.”

ICA Counsel Philip Corwin received the request to endorse the draft letter from Jothan Frakes of Minds+Machines.

[via ICA]

Former Vice President Gore, who often took barbs about his misconstrued statement about ‘inventing the internet’, can now partially lay claim to inventing a new domain name. Al Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection have announced  their intentions to join a group of other “internet entrepreneurs, leading scientists, ecological and philanthropic groups, and environmentally conscious high-profile individuals”  in applying for a new domain name extension, .ECO. The domain name will still need ICANN approval however before becoming a reality. (more…)

Two new registry consulting & services companies – Minds + Machines and Central Registry Solutions – were launched at ICANN Mexico City to help anybody interested in starting a new TLD work through the process from beginning to end – saving time, money, and confusion along the way. (more…)

As part of VeriSign’s (VRSN) 2001 purchase of eNic Corporation (operator of the .CC registry) the company became the owner of a patent application, which has now been granted on March 4th of this year under patent number 7,337,910 b2.

While the original patent application, at the time written by eNic’s CEO Brian Cartmell and eNic’s CTO Jothan Frakes, was used in order to resolve and offer non-existent domain names for registration, it would also cover Verisign’s Sitefinder application, implemented in September of 2003, causing any unregistered .COM/.NET domain to resolve to a parked page. VeriSign, was ordered by ICANN to cease the practice shortly after they introduced it.

The patent could potentially be used in order to request licensing fees from the operators of the .CM wildcard or DNS providers and ISPs whose nameservers respond to failed DNS queries.

Note: I’ve been on vacation, so this might be old news to some people.

A recent article at GulfNews.com talked about new TLDs and positioned domaining in a negative light. As in past mainstream media coverage, legitimate domain owners weren’t called cybersquatters this time around. Instead, domaining was singled out and defined in the article, and using quotes and info gathered from Paul Twomey, CEO of ICANN, the article implied that domaining was part of an overall problem with rolling out new TLDs. The quote from the article that upset domainers was :

While many would welcome the ability to have domain names in their native languages, there is a number of downsides, Twomey said, including cyber-squatting, typo-squatting and domaining.

DomainBits covered the story early on and spoke with ICANN reps who then provided a response from Twomey :

In no way did I say or suggest that domainers were a negative force in any way and certainly did not refer to them as “a downside.”

Enter Jothan Frakes. Frakes apparently knows the reporter at Gulf News and was able to provide him with more details and a better understanding of the domain space. Thanks to his “ambassador” work, a follow-up article came. Prepare for Battle Over Domain Names, included more information about domaining and what it entails and addressed the issue of how the good gets mixed with the bad.

Interestingly, the reporter still claims Twomey portrayed domaining negatively :

Twomey has since said he said nothing negative about domainers. Well, we’re going to have to agree to disagree there, although Paul’s words were not as critical nor as directed as some websites portrayed them.

We all know words can be twisted, things can be misunderstood and quotes taken out of context, yet one has to seriously wonder what really was said by Twomey in that conversation and what the CEO of ICANN really does think about domainers and domaining.