A bunch of years ago I had an idea for an espionage/action/thriller story where a bunch of mercenaries planned a coup d'etat against the regimes of either Columbia or Cameroon for the sole reason of gaining control over the country's top-level domain registry and making billions off of typo-squatting .COM.

Truth did kind of mimic fiction (minus the coup d'etat part) when Kevin Ham cut a deal with Cameroon to wildcard .CM root. Well now Columbia has decided to overhaul it's .CO root level domain and open it up to second level registations for non-locals.

.CO is being marketed ostensibly as 'Associated globally with the words "COmpany," "COrporation" and "COmmerce"', but let's face it, the activity in this TLD is going to be driven primarily by the fact that it's a typosquatter's wet dream for .COM and a goddamn headache for everybody else with a net presence built mainly under .COM.

As we've observed before (here and then here), most registrars like to whip their customer base into a frenzy to "grab your name" under every TLD that tries to tart itself up as some pseudo-generic and trots itself out as the latest "must-have" domain. Most of them aren't "must-haves" and a lot of them are quite frankly, a waste of time and money.

So it is with a heavy heart I have to come out and say this. If you're operating a serious net presence on .COM, you probably should go out and get the .CO version of your name, as much of a royal pain in the ass as that is/will be. Not to mention expensive. The base cost on a non-Columbian Sunrise claim will be somewhere north of $250 (non-refundable) and for landrush there will be a small non-refundable "application fee" but the first year registration will be over $200. Then after landrush, the cost will settle down to a more digestible level, only about 3 times the wholesale base cost of an actual .COM.

Nice work if you can get it.

We don't want to make a bad situation worse, but we won't work for free either, so we'll try to keep our markup reasonable.

What I am interested in is what our members think of this. If you have a few moments, please take the following survey on whether you will participate in .CO. For each response we'll donate $1 to the charity of your choice.

Feel free to comment as well.



Continue reading ".CO Domain Registrations are Coming. Will You Participate?"

For members who want an advance preview into the new system, what follows are step-by-step instructions on how to move a domain from the current easyDNS interface to the new management platform.

The new platform has been live since mid-2009, many of the staff here have been running their personal domains off of here and we've had numerous beta users on board as well. Additionally, I've been running one of my personal email accounts through the new easyMAIL platform since last summer, and I felt confident enough to switch my mom's email to it a few weeks ago.

There are few things we are still smoothing out and filling in like some of the help docs and some of the new features.

But here it is, the shape of things to come for easyDNS.

Until you get the hang of the new platform, we strongly suggest that you start with a non-critical domain. Something that won't ruin your life if the unexpected happens.

There is also this introductory document which outlines the new features and what changes on the new platform. It is strongly recommended that you review that document first.

So without further adieu, here's how to move a domain to the new system....
Continue reading "How to Port a Domain to the new easyDNS User Interface"

We are pushing back the launch of the new website and user interface until April 12, for a few reasons - not the least of which is that we will be shorthanded through the month of March on a few fronts. (March break, time off with the kids, Confoo, etc).

What we will do next week is post instructions on how to start trying out the new platform in advance and begin talking about what's new under the new system.

This morning I had just dropped my daughter off at school when an ad came on CBC radio as I was headed to my workout, the gist of it was:

More and more consumers are headed online as the first step in their next purchase. Is your business positioned to cash in on this trend?

It sounded a little 1998-ish to me, but what really got me was the URL. These ads were from some online internet marketing company here in Toronto and the URL was......


Continue reading "Useless URLs, Episode 2: Internet Marketing Experts in Toronto"

We will soon be launching our new member interface, a ground up rewrite of the current members.easydns.com website. It has been a long time in coming, like all complex projects, it always goes over-budget and takes longer than expected.

The current user interface works, but it's pretty stale. There are so many layers of upgrades, fixes and plugins underneath the UI you see when you log in, that it's hit the point of diminishing returns: every time we add a feature or commit a bugfix, it seems to break something else. Despite the fact that most people dislike change, especially user interface changes, it is time to move on to the next level for easyDNS.



Continue reading "Big Changes Coming to easyDNS"