The Internet can be a dangerous place, even for the professionals who live and breath it. Imagine the frustration felt by website owners after realizing their site has been compromised and attempts to infect its visitors, many of them potential customers.
StopBadware, a non-profit organization, founded at Harvard University in 2006, helps stop badware: viruses, spyware, and any other software that fails to respect a user's choice about how his or her computer or network connection is used. From the StopBadware website: “Badware is a threat to the open Internet, one of our greatest political, economic, and cultural shared resources. As an independent non-profit organization, our focus is singular: how to protect users effectively and responsibly from this threat.”
Request for Public Comments (deadline Jan 31, 2011)
StopBadware, is seeking comments from web hosting providers, security experts, and other interested parties on the first public draft of their new document: StopBadware’s Best Practices for Web Hosting Providers: Responding to Malware Reports.
Best Practices for Web Hosting Providers: Responding to Malware Reports (PDF | MS Word)
Comments or marked-up versions of the document may be e-mailed to contact <at> stopbadware <dot> org. The deadline for comments on this draft is Monday, Jan. 31, 2011.
About StopBadware
StopBadware originated at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society in 2006. In 2010, they spun off as a non-profit organization with the support of Google, PayPal, and Mozilla. Their board of directors, chaired by PayPal Chief Information Security Officer Michael Barrett, also includes Vint Cerf (Google), Esther Dyson (EDventure), Paul Mockapetris (Nominum), Mike Shaver (Mozilla), and our executive director, Maxim Weinstein.
It’s really easy to think of a domain transferred away from your reseller account to another registrar as just that – a domain. But every domain is attached to a customer, and those customers often take more than their domain when they leave for a competing registrar.
OpenSRS provides a few tools to keep you informed as to when your customers are moving their domains (and by extension, their hosting or other services). Armed with that information, you can take action when a transfer away is initiated to try to hold on to that domain and customer.
It’s an unfortunate part of being a domain registrar that we have to let you know about price increases coming up as a result of announced increases by the registries which operate those domain extensions.
Effective April 1, 2011 at 00:00:00 GMT, price increases for .BIZ and .ORG domains will go into effect at the registries. These costs are payable directly to the registry by OpenSRS for domain registrations and we really have no choice but to pass those costs along to resellers and, in turn, to consumers.
Here’s the breakdown for each top-level domain (TLD) involved:
Registry fee increase takes effect on April 1, 2011 at 00:00:00 GMT.
New cost for a .ORG domain payable to the registry is USD $7.21 (an increase of USD $0.46 from USD $6.75)
Total OpenSRS cost including ICANN fee and OpenSRS Management Fee will be USD $10.39.
Our Cost-Plus Pricing Model for gTLDs Provides Cost Certainty
Thanks to our Cost-Plus model for gTLDs, OpenSRS Resellers have complete visibility to our costs associated with domain names. It also means that, as with past registry cost increases, we aren’t going to use these registry price increases as an opportunity to raise our prices on these or other gTLDs by piling on increases for domains where our costs are not increasing.
We strongly believe that our transparent pricing model gives you comfort in clearly understanding how we approach pricing, and provides you with confidence in terms of what you can expect around pricing in the future.
Internet privacy is a big deal these days. Privacy breaches at various sites have exposed sensitive data like home addresses, phone numbers and email and more.
But for domain name owners, there’s another easily preventable privacy pitfall out there that could cause just as much headache as a major social networking site leaking their personal data.
There are thousands of home-based businesses launched every year where the owner fails to enable the Contact Privacy feature of his or her domain name, resulting in the publishing of their home address, phone number and email address the domain’s publicly searching WHOIS record.
There’s even a chance these businesses could be your customers.
It’s been our experience that Contact Privacy is not enabled because domain owners don’t realize that WHOIS records contain their personal information and viewable by the entire Internet.
Have you talked with your customers about Contact Privacy?
At OpenSRS, we know you’re busy with other things. Heck, domain names might even be the least of your worries. So we thought we’d make things easy on you and over the past few weeks, we put some effort into developing white label video, along with a one pager describing Contact Privacy.
They’re ready to use ‘right out of the box’, but if you’d like to brand them, or otherwise customize, tweak, and tailor to your business, you’re welcome to do that too!
To download or preview these resources now, visit our Contact Privacy page in the Marketing Resources section of the OpenSRS website.
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has started taking submissions for the 2010 .CA Impact Awards. This program is part of CIRA’s ongoing commitment to invest in Canada's .CA community. Submissions will be accepted between January 6, 2011 and March 25, 2011.
Winners will receive a cheque for $5,000 from CIRA.
The .CA Impact Awards celebrate hose people who are using their .CA websites to make a positive difference in the lives of those around them. The impact can be social, cultural, political, technological or economic. .CA Impact Awards are available in four categories: E-Learning, Small Business, Not-for-Profit, and Web Technology.
Tell your Customers about the .CA Impact Awards
CIRA intends to email all .CA registrants about the .CA Impact Awards on January 19, 2011. If you are a .CA reseller, help get the word out and share this news with your customers! Feel free to blog it, tweet it, post it on Facebook or create an email campaign.
Who knows, maybe one of your customers will take home $5,000 from CIRA!
OpenSRS Reseller ISOCNET is a Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky-based company which specializes in providing website design and development, web hosting, e-commerce solutions, and hosted email to small to medium businesses in the region.
A reseller since 2003, ISOCNET uses OpenSRS to complete its suite of Internet services, and to help turn domain registration and management from a headache for its clients into a value-added service and a great source of revenue for itself.
Started as an ISP, Grew by Listening to its Customers
Founded in 1996, ISOCNET started out as a local ISP offering dialup Internet access to customers in the area. They leveraged that early success and began offering email anti-spam and anti-virus solutions as well.
Those customers then started asking whether ISOCNET would be able to take care of all of their Internet needs and ISOCNET began offering a complete suite of Internet services like website development, hosting, e-commerce and collocation solutions.
Turning Domains from Pain to Gain
ISOCNET also identified an important piece of the puzzle in domain name registration and management – their customers were looking for an all-in-one solution provider who would take care of all aspects of their web presence. One of the biggest pain points customers identified was managing domain names.
ISOCNET turned to OpenSRS in 2003 to provide an integrated solution that offered the complete control they required. ISOCNET leveraged their partnership with OpenSRS to offer even more value to their customers and complete the service package their clients demanded.
A Trusted Partner
The payoff for their clients came in the form of peace of mind that their important domain assets were in good hands. For ISOCNET, the payoff was not just in the bottom line, but also in a client base that saw them as a trusted partner for all their Internet needs.
You've probably heard about New TLDs (top-level domains) – the single biggest expansion of the domain name system ever. With New TLDs, anyone will be able to apply for their own top-level domain extension – the part after the dot. It's expected that the Internet namespace will grow from just 21 gTLDs (plus 250 or so ccTLDs) to hundreds or even thousands of TLDs in the next few years.
That change provides immense potential. The possibilities are nearly endless, from .africa to .zulu and everything in between. The introduction these new domain extensions will obviously have a big impact on the Internet, and on resellers like you.
The conference will feature domain industry experts from around the world with a focus on understanding the potential impacts of the upcoming expansion of the domain name space.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interviewed .nxt Conference General Manager Kieren McCarthy for their radio show "Spark" this month and he did a fabulous job explaining it all. You can listen to the full audio interview at the CBC's Spark website.
OpenSRS is a silver sponsor of .nxt Conference and we'll be there to make sure that resellers like you have a voice in what's happening and also to help you identify and understand what impact New TLDs will have on your business. It’s clear that the introduction of New TLDs presents some great opportunities as well. For that reason, it's critical for anyone in the Internet space to follow what's happening with New TLDs.
On the Agenda
The conference itself will feature discussions on Internet policy, implementation, business models and marketing as it pertains to NewgTLDs.
Rod Beckstrom, ICANN CEO and President will deliver the keynote to kick off the event on Wednesday, February 9, 2011.
Elliot Noss, Tucows President and CEO, will participate in a panel discussion on Thursday, February 10, 2011. Adam Eisner, OpenSRS' Director of Domain Services, will be on stage on the afternoon of Wednesday, February 9, 2011, to talk about how applicants for New TLDs can work with Registrars like OpenSRS/Tucows to get up and running.
Registration is open to all interested people and the conference fee of $495 is quite a bargain when you consider the opportunities and take a look at the list of speakers and panelists already confirmed.
Many of the resellers we’ve spoken to agree that goMobi is a perfect complement to existing webhosting packages. Over the past couple of weeks, we had some fairly in depth discussions with interested resellers around how they might package and price the goMobi service. I wanted to share some of these learnings with you in this post.
If you look around, you’ll find the retail pricing for goMobi in the range of $5 to $9 per month with some service providers offering a slight discount when paid for a year in advance. Using an average price of $7, with a cost of $2.50, OpenSRS resellers can expect to earn around $50 in profit per account. That doesn’t take into account any fees you might charge your client for setup.
Some of the main consideration points our Resellers had about goMobi:
Will we offer the service on a monthly basis, or one year paid in full at sign-up?
Should we offer a discount for 1 year paid in advance?
Will we offer initial setup of the mobile site? Will we charge for it?
Does it make sense to bundle goMobi with an existing service, or sell if as a standalone product?
The answers our resellers came up with largely depended on the kind of business they run. If they’re an agency focused on web design, they might build the service differently than a webhost or Internet Service Provider. Each business has their own way of doing things, and we can’t pretend to have all the answers for you. But we do have some insight and high level ideas based on conversations and feedback from service providers in a similar position to you.
Payment Frequency
We bill you on a monthly basis for the goMobi service, but how you bill your clients for service is up to you. If you’re a webhost and already billing a client monthly for service, it might make sense to bill goMobi on a monthly basis as a line item on your client’s invoice. If goMobi will be part of a larger site design, say a complete corporate re-design that includes professional services, then charging upfront for 1 year probably makes sense and will have a negligible effect on the overall price.
Offering Initial Setup
The goMobi service is extremely simple to setup, but some customers appreciate having their mobile site setup for them based on their existing corporate site. If you’re an agency already designing the client’s main site, then setting up the mobile version is probably a no brainer. Charging a fee for setting up the mobile site is a relatively easy option that can help increase revenue. Remember, if the client would prefer to set the service up themselves, this is always an option, but we’ve heard from several resellers that clients are asking them to take this work on, despite the easy setup tools.
Discount for Term Commitment
We’re seeing this from most service providers. A reasonable monthly fee per month, with a discount if the client pays in advance for a year. All of the service providers we surveyed offered a yearly discounted rate and a couple didn’t even offer a monthly option.
Free Trial
It’s an easy foot in the door and an opportunity for the puppy dog close. Not much to say about this one, except that it seems to work with clients unsure about the benefits until they actually see their mobile site in service. And once they have it… they’re hooked!
Bundling
You know the old saying: “You can’t compare apples to oranges”. One of the best ways to sell a service is to make it difficult for interested prospects to compare your service offering to that of your competitors. One of the ways to do this is by bundling. If you’re an webhosting company, bundling goMobi into your packages adds a differentiator to your existing package. A client comparing your service package will be forced to consider the merits of the entire package when looking at your competitor.
Learn More
We have an upcoming webinar hosted by James and Le Quan that will focus on these ideas and others. If you’re interested in participating on January 27th, you can sign up for free here.
What do you think? Do you have a unique perspective or experience to share? The ideas above are by no means an exhaustive list and as we learn more, we’ll be sure to pass them along. At the same time, if you’ve had success selling goMobi, I’d love to hear your story!
We're giving away 100 absolutely free one-year subscriptions to the new OpenSRS goMobi service!
The first 100 OpenSRS Resellers to create their own goMobi site through OpenSRS and tell us about it will be credited a full year of goMobi service – that's a $30 value.
And remember that your first month of goMobi is already free, so it won't cost you anything to create your goMobi site and keep it for the first month even if you aren't one of the first 100 Resellers to submit your site.
Use Your New goMobi Site as a Great Sales Tool
Once you have your goMobi site up and running, make sure you show it off! That's really the very best way to demonstrate the value of the goMobi service. We know that once your customers see your goMobi site, and learn how inexpensive and easy it is to setup a goMobi site, they'll want one of their own.
Make sure you're ready: grab the marketing resources that we provide (in six languages) and you'll be all set to explain goMobi to them. There's videos, HTML templates, email copy and PDF sell sheets available for download.
Marketing goMobi Webinar
If you want even more help getting started selling goMobi, then plan to attend our Marketing goMobi webinar on January 27, 2011. We'll have two sessions – 9:00 A.M. EST and 2:00 P.M. EST – to accommodate resellers around the world. Go here for more information and times in your timezone, and to sign up.
Extra Bonus!
While goMobi doesn't require a .MOBI domain name, we have noticed that a lot of people are opting to use a .MOBI name to host their goMobi site and this new .MOBI domain promo gives you a great way to offer a bundle deal to your customers:
From now until the end of March, .MOBI domains are available at a registry cost of just $2.99. Full details on the cost break down and the terms of the promotion, along with the signup form are available here.
It’s that time again. The time when we ask you to tell us what you really think.
Last year we started asking our resellers to participate in our Reseller Satisfaction Survey. It’s a really quick survey that poses an important question: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague.”
Each quarter we were grateful to have several hundred resellers take part and tell us what they really think. Many of the survey results were positive and encouraging, some were neutral, and yes, some even had a bit of a sting to them. Those were the best ones, not because they stung, but because they offered an extremely valuable insight about how we’re doing with some of our reseller partners and an opportunity for us to make improvements to how we do things.
If you’ve been participating in 2010, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to tell us what you think. It’s the only way we’ll get better.
Since these surveys are anonymous, I also wanted to assure those who participate that although you don’t hear back from us, your feedback is making a real difference internally at OpenSRS. We’ve gained valuable insight and ideas about the control panel interfaces, documentation, technical support, storefront, and more.
These surveys are compiled and then shared with the entire company. We’re gradually making improvements that tie directly to the feedback you’ve provided, so please continue to tell us what you think and I promise, we’ll continue to turn that feedback into action. Improvements can’t happen overnight, but they’re starting to happen already thanks to your input.
So, if you’ve been a reseller of ours for more than three months, we just sent you an email with a link to the latest survey. We really want to know what you think about how we’re doing: the good, the bad, and the ugly. All of it. And the more, the better.
Please participate, it only takes a minute and it helps us build you a better OpenSRS.
Last week Creative Commons celebrated its 10th birthday. To help celebrate, Tucows issued a challenge to Creative Commons donors: do what you can to donate to the Creative Commons cause, and we’ll match contributions up to a total of $10,000.
At Tucows, we strongly believe that openness drives innovation.
For those of you not familiar with the kind of work being done at Creative Commons, they are a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. They provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.
Thinking about licensing in a way that promotes discovery and sharing goes against the grain of some organizations, but not here at Tucows and OpenSRS.
For most of us, the desire to share is almost instinctual– A default switch, set to on.
Our entire business has been built on leveraging open technologies wherever possible. This was true back in the early days as a shareware software mirror, and continues today as one of the world’s largest wholesale domain name registrars, under the OpenSRS brand.
"We support Creative Commons because all of our business philosophy is based on the open Internet. For the Internet to really flourish and remain an open, healthy, and great platform for innovation, we need to adapt old sets of rules to new paradigms. Creative Commons is one of the first and best examples of that." -Elliot Noss, Tucows President and CEO
It didn’t take long for donors to step up to the challenge. Just two days later, on Dec 17, Creative Commons, on the CC blog, Allison Domicone wrote they had reached $10,000 in donations. With Tucows contribution, this brought the total donation to $20,000.
Here’s wishing a happy 10th birthday to Creative Commons and the awesome work being done by its staff!
Most of our offices will be closed from the afternoon of December 24, 2010 through to January 3, 2010. We’ll be back in the offices on January 4 ready to serve you in the new year. As always our dedicated team of Technical Support reps continues to be available 24/7 to assist you.
Here are the hours by department:
Department
Dates and Hours
Technical Support
Regular hours
Payments
Closed December 27th and 28th
Compliance
Closed Dec. 25 – Jan. 3 inclusive
ccTLD Special Processing
Closed Dec. 25 – Jan. 3 inclusive
Please note that during this closure, there will be:
No orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: (.at, .fr, .ch, .li, .it, .dk, .mx)
Happy Holidays to you, your colleagues and your families during this holiday season and the new year!
I just returned from ICANN's 39th international public meeting, held last week in the beautiful city of Cartagena, Colombia. This was a highly anticipated meeting by many in the domain industry, as major developments were expected with regard to both the new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) process and .XXX, the proposed extension for adult sites.
New gTLDs
On the new gTLD front, ICANN's recent decision to allow vertical integration – which would allow registrars to operate registries, and vice versa – cleared a major roadblock in the new gTLD process. With this contentious issue settled, there was hope in some circles that ICANN would approve the most recent version of the Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAG), which outlines how to go about applying for a new gTLD, and officially launch the start of the new gTLD process.
While ICANN did not outright approve the DAG nor officially launch the application process in Cartagena, there was reason to be optimistic moving forward. ICANN's board passed a resolution at the meeting stating they considered many of the thornier issues related to new gTLDs (including trademark protection, root zone scaling and the economic impact) to now be closed. This in itself is a major step forward in the process. However, the Board also noted that there were still outstanding issues, including concerns from the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), which is comprised of representatives of more than 100 governments worldwide. The GAC provides advice to ICANN on key public policy issues.
As a result of the GAC's concerns and in an effort to resolve the outstanding issues that remain in the gTLD process, the board resolved to have an extended, face-to-face meeting with the GAC in February 2011. The meeting will take place a few weeks before the next ICANN international meeting in San Francisco. While most of those involved in new gTLDs were disappointed that the process was not outright approved, most of the people I spoke to were encouraged with the progress that had been made. Many of those same people are hoping for closure to the entire gTLD process by the San Francisco meeting, but whether that actually happens remains to be seen.
Progress on .XXX
There was also some progress made at the meeting with regard to the proposed .XXX extension (which is separate of the new gTLD process). To recap: This adult-oriented extension has been discussed since the early part of the decade. ICANN and ICM Registry, the private company that wishes to introduce XXX, have historically disagreed on whether ICM cleared all the necessary hurdles to get the extension approved. An independent review panel eventually determined ICANN did not follow its own policies and procedures when it refused to proceed with .XXX, and at last week's meeting, the board announced it intended to enter into an agreement with ICM Registry, subject to the GAC's advice – another issue to be tackled in the extended meeting.
ICANN’s 40th International Meeting
So, in the end, significant progress was made on two high-profile issues, but they were not resolved entirely. This sets up a very interesting meeting in San Francisco. The approval of new gTLDs in a meeting in a city so intertwined with technology would make for a great story. And it would be good news for those whom have been waiting for their approval for so long.
The annual report for .INFO was released today and for anybody interested in .INFO, or domain names in general should find it an interesting read.
The report shows that in 2010, the top-level domain (TLD) grew nearly 30% to more than 6.8 million domain names registered, holding it in place as the #1 new TLD ever launched.
From the report: “.INFO remains the seventh largest top-level domain on the Internet today, out of more than 270 today TLDs on the planet.”
For those who sell .INFO domains, the report also contains a number of great examples regarding how online businesses, individuals and non-profit organizations are using the TLD as well as interesting stats that link .INFO registrations to real world events, such as the earthquake in Haiti and the BP oil spill.
UK-based hosting provider Heart Internet, OpenSRS reseller since 2004, relies on OpenSRS to provide backend solutions for domain name registrations, SSL certificates and new services like goMobi that will help the company maintain the impressive growth rate that places it at the top of the heap in the UK.
Co-founders Jonathan Brealey and Tim Beresford started heart Internet in 2004. The pair, who had already created two successful businesses in Webfusion and 123-Reg, created Heart Internet to address what they perceived to be shortcomings in existing hosting provider offerings.
Jonathan Brealey, Co-founder, Heart Internet
“It was in a period where any hosting provision was really technical and quite poor and we saw an opportunity to make it easier,” says Jonathan Brealey, co-founder and Director at Heart Internet. To address the need, Heart Internet built a custom hosting control panel at a time when few other companies offered them. Heart combined the easy-to-use panels with hosting packages aimed at resellers.
“That’s an approach that’s still central to our business – making things easier,” says Brealey. From the start, Heart Internet looked to resellers as a way to extend its reach and also as a way to stay lean and focused on further developing its products and services.
“We get to deal with customers who are savvy and understand what they are doing,” explains Brealey. “Thanks to our resellers, we service a large number of websites, but we don’t have a lot of contact with customers because we have our customers who are reselling handling that relationship.”
Wide Range of Reseller Customers
Brealey says they have a good mix of resellers, including full-service agency customers that Heart Internet continues to help expand and develop important customer relationships. “We tell them that if they are selling someone a web site for a few thousand Pounds, then you definitely have inroads to sell hosting, domains and SSL to them as well.”
And for Heart Internet’s smaller resellers, generally one-to-three man shops doing web-design and development, Brealey says offering new solutions like goMobi makes a lot of sense. “We’re reaching out and explaining how to offer services to existing customers like goMobi as a £10 add-on.”
Why OpenSRS?
Heart Internet chose OpenSRS because they were looking for a service provider with a technical background. With innovation comes the need for partners who can provide backend services that keep pace.
Brealey says OpenSRS has always been a good fit. “You guys are technical and that’s how we like it,” he says. “Our developers like your API and the flexibility it offers us in terms of automating our services and keeping costs down.”
It’s a relationship that’s worked well for both companies as Heart Internet continues to bring its unique mix of innovation and simple-to-use, but powerful services to its customers.
Still Growing Fast
The company’s strategy continues to pay dividends. In 2009, Heart Internet found itself second on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 fastest growing technology companies list and was recognized as the fastest growing Internet company in the UK. In 2010, they again made the Fast 50 list, demonstrating the incredible growth opportunities that continue to exist in the Internet and hosting space in the UK.
Heart Internet plans to maintain that growth and momentum by continuing to innovate and by bringing new services and ideas to their resellers to offer to their customers. For example, Heart Internet recently rolled out an innovative service that looks up usernames on popular social media sites like Twitter and Foursquare at the same time as a domain search availability search. Touches like this are what keep them ahead of the competition.
Starting today, you're able to sell goMobi through OpenSRS. It's a new service from dotMobi that provides your customers with a simple, inexpensive way to build and host a mobile-ready website that works along with their existing site.
Why goMobi?
The mobile web is hot and it's getting hotter everyday.
The 2010 Mobile Web Progress Report by dotMobi revealed that the mobile web is showing incredible growth worldwide. The 2008 edition of the report showed 150,000 mobile-ready websites. Now, in 2010, there are over 3 million sites. That's an incredible two-year growth rate of more than 2,000 percent!
Compare that to the growth of the Internet on the desktop between 1996 and 1998. Back then the size of the desktop web grew from about 150,000 sites to 2.0 million sites. In other words, the mobile web is now growing at a far faster rate today than the desktop Internet did in a comparable timeframe.
Tap in to the Mobile Market
More and more big brands are adopting mobile Web strategies, but there's still incredible room for growth considering the number of mobile Internet devices that are being added every day. Consider this: right now, there are four mobile phones purchased for every computer purchased.
But mobile phones and other devices need mobile-ready sites – that's where goMobi comes in.
goMobi gives you a way to tap into the growth of the mobile web, providing additional value to your customers, and of course, giving you a way to make some money at the same time.
Try it yourself!
goMobi is a monthly subscription service and the service is not tied to a .mobi domain purchase. It's available to OpenSRS Resellers at a very low wholesale cost of $2.50/month.
The very best way to understand this product and what it offers to your customers is to try it out yourself. To facilitate that, we are offering a 30-day free trial with all goMobi subscriptions (for both you and your customers!). That gives you a month to give the product a try and get a good sense of how it works and what it offers to your customers.
You can find out more about how goMobi works, both for you in terms of selling it, and for your customers in terms of managing and using it on our goMobi pages.
Click on the “Try it Out” link to view a short screencast that will take you through the steps to provision and setup your own goMobi site in just a couple of minutes.
It’s really easy to think of a domain transferred away from your reseller account to another registrar as just that – a domain. But every domain is attached to a customer, and those customers often take more than their domain when they leave for a competing registrar.
Internet privacy is a big deal these days. Privacy breaches at various sites have exposed sensitive data like home addresses, phone numbers and email and more.
All the details can be found 
It’s that time again. The time when we ask you to tell us what you really think.
Last week 
I just returned from 
There was also some progress made at the meeting with regard to the proposed .XXX extension (which is separate of the new gTLD process). To recap: This adult-oriented extension has been discussed since the early part of the decade. ICANN and ICM Registry, the private company that wishes to introduce XXX, have historically disagreed on whether ICM cleared all the necessary hurdles to get the extension approved. An independent review panel eventually determined ICANN did not follow its own policies and procedures when it refused to proceed with .XXX, and at last week's meeting, the board announced it intended to enter into an agreement with ICM Registry, subject to the GAC's advice – another issue to be tackled in the extended meeting.
Jonathan Brealey, Co-founder, Heart Internet
The company’s strategy continues to pay dividends. In 2009, Heart Internet found itself second on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 fastest growing technology companies list and was recognized as the fastest growing Internet company in the UK. In 2010, they again made the Fast 50 list, demonstrating the incredible growth opportunities that continue to exist in the Internet and hosting space in the UK.
The 2010 Mobile Web Progress Report by dotMobi revealed that the mobile web is showing incredible growth worldwide. The 2008 edition of the report showed 150,000 mobile-ready websites. Now, in 2010, there are over 3 million sites. That's an incredible two-year growth rate of more than 2,000 percent!
