Tucows’ Employee Lucas Cochrane and His Discovery Channel Debut

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Tucows’ Employee Lucas Cochrane and His Discovery Channel Debut Posted: 05 Sep 2011 11:39 AM PDT If you’re a fan of the Discovery Channel, you may have seen our very own Lucas Cochrane during Daily Planet’s, “Future Tech” a new segment that covers Tech, Gaming and Social Media. Lucas is no stranger to the camera. In 2009, he had his own show called “Pimp My PC” on Butterscotch TV, where he helped viewers creatively customize, personalize and trick out their boring beige box PCs. During business hours at Tucows, Lucas is our go-to guy for all things related to IT and can be counted on to handle everything from the deployment of an authentication cluster, to troubleshooting audio/video issues on Skype. But labeling Lucas the Tucows IT guy and leaving it at that just wouldn’t be fair… This man has the geek cred of ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ lead character Lewis Skolnick, combined with the stage presence and comedic timing of Jerry Lewis, and the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of Ron Popeil. When George Clooney needs help with the ladies AND programming his VCR, Lucas is #1 in his speed dial. At least, he will be as soon as George sees this episode of FutureTech. A word of caution however: never (ever) agree to play Star Wars trivia with this man (you will lose), and never, ever bet Lucas that he’ll be unable to get an old Logitech webcam working on a MacBook Pro (I lost $5 bucks to him this way just last week). But seriously, Lucas is a great example of the super talented people we get to spend out days with at Tucows/OpenSRS. His intrinsic desire to teach himself new things, combined with his super friendly nature and ability to teach others will undoubtedly make him a great addition to the Daily Planet team and we’re all extremely proud of him here at Tucows. Congrats Lucas! To see what Lucas has to say, check out the segment of FutureTech on this week’s episode of Daily Planet.

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.XXX Launch Updates and Webinar Archive

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.XXX Launch Updates and Webinar Archive Posted: 02 Sep 2011 04:46 AM PDT If you missed our .XXX launch webinar last week, we have the archived version available now for on-demand viewing. Patrick Donaldson, Registrar Liaison for ICM Registry and Adam Eisner, Director of OpenSRS Product Management, shared some good information to help you make the most of the launch of this new domain extension. Win-Win-WIn Patrick talked a bit about how .XXX is a win-win-win for everyone involved – the adult entertainment industry, consumers and those who want to avoid adult content online. One of the key points that Patrick made was that regardless of what your customer base is like, there is an opportunity with the launch of .XXX to help them out. If you want to provide services like hosting or domain registration to those in adult industries, then you can help them acquire new .XXX registrations, or domains matching their existing .com domains. For those who don’t wish to be a part of the extension, then you can help them out with blocking registrations or simply registering the matching .XXX domain to the existing .COM or other extension. There was also a lot of information from Adam about the different phases of the launch including what happens and who can register domains during Sunrise A and B, Landrush and General Availability. View the archive here. .XXX in Horizon Test Environment In addition to the webinar, we can also tell you that .XXX is now available in our Horizon Test Environment for testing. That includes both the Reseller Web Interface, and the API. If you plan to participate in the launch, log in to the Horizon Test Environment RWI and see how things work. We’ll continue to update our .XXX launch information page as required. Documentation for the RWI and API has already been updated and posted in advance of the launch.

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Further Strengthening Our Commitment to Europe plus 1 more

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Further Strengthening Our Commitment to Europe Posted: 01 Sep 2011 05:40 AM PDT OpenSRS has been focusing heavily on Europe for the past few years. We're quite confident that we're the best choice for European companies looking for a partner they can count on that understands their business, culture and specific needs. 200 TLDs by the End of the Year Alexander Schwertner, Managing Director, ePAG The recent acquisition of ePAG by OpenSRS further illustrates this commitment to Europe. With ePAG, we'll be able to dramatically extend our ccTLD coverage to include most, if not all, of Europe. We expect to be able to offer the ability to register 200 different TLDs by the end of the year. Welcome ePAG to the OpenSRS Team Joining the OpenSRS team as part of the ePAG acquisition is Alexander Schwertner, who is the Managing Director for ePAG. Alex has extensive experience working with European resellers at ePAG. He’ll continue to work at ePAG, with a specific focus on ccTLDs. In addition to Alex, Jan Leendertse and Evelina Joschko will also be joining the OpenSRS European Team, continuing in their roles in sales and account management. Welcome to Alessandro Baruffi I'm also very happy to introduce yet another new member to our European team – Alessandro Baruffi. He is responsible for account management and business development throughout Europe and is based out of our office in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Alessandro Baruffi, Account Manager Alessandro speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese. I’m happy to say that we’re almost at the point where you’ll be able to talk to OpenSRS in whatever language you are most comfortable with. Come Meet Us in Person at WHD.local If you would like to learn more about OpenSRS and meet Alessandro, Alex or myself, various members of our team will be touring Europe in the coming weeks for the WHD.local events. The first stop is Cologne, Germany, on September 14th and from there it's a nearly two month trip around Europe including stops in Poland, Turkey, Netherlands, Russia, Romania, UK, France, Spain and finally Switzerland. Get more information on WHD.local, including free registration codes (value €199) by clicking here. We look forward to meeting you at an event in your city!

Another Trustwave Incentive Winner! Posted: 31 Aug 2011 10:25 AM PDT We have another winner to announce in our Trustwave SSL incentive program. Joe Wolff won a $50 Amazon gift card simply by selling a Trustwave SSL certificate in August. Customers who buy from eRacks.com are now nicely protected with 256-bit encryption thanks to a Trustwave Premium SSL with Wildcard cert. Remember that this incentive program continues through the end of September. We’ll have another surprise winner to announce sometime in September. And one lucky reseller will win an iPad 2 courtesy Trustwave. All the details on the promotion are here.

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Holiday Hours: Labour Day, September 6, 2011

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Holiday Hours: Labour Day, September 6, 2011 Posted: 29 Aug 2011 10:22 AM PDT Next Monday, September 6, 2011, is Labour Day here in Canada (aka Labor Day if you are in the USA) and that means some special hours for a few departments here at OpenSRS. First, the official business: Our Technical Support team continues to be available 24/7 to assist you. Please note that during this closure, there will be: No orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: .at, .fr, .ch, .li, .dk, .com.mx No special processing for .ca (registrant transfers, conflicting and municipal registrations) or .eu/.be (redemptions). Here are the hours by department: Department Dates and Hours Technical Support Regular hours Payments Email support: payments@opensrs.org Compliance Closed Sept 6th (Monday) Service Bureau Closed Sept 6th (Monday) About Labour Day With that stuff out of the way, I will note that I used to find it kind of ironic that we celebrate Labour Day by not working. However, a quick read on Wikipedia revealed that the origins of Labour Day in Canada can be traced back to December 1872 when a parade was staged in support of the Toronto Typographical Union’s strike for a 58-hour work-week. Makes much more sense! Absolutely True Facts about Canadians As is also the tradition here on the blog, I’ll now provide some interesting insights and facts about what we do on long weekends in Canada so that we can further some stereotypes about Canadians. Here in Ontario, Labour Day is an official day of mourning for kids, and a day of wild celebrations for parents (by government proclaimation). You see, it’s the unofficial last day of summer as everyone is back to school dark and early on Tuesday morning. It’s also yet another opportunity for many Canadians to drink beer and head for the cottage (preferably in the opposite order – drive to the cottage, then drink beer – Arrive Alive. Drive Sober). In fact, this weekend is one of the last chances to get out on the water before the switchover from jet skis to snowmobiles happens (typical September weather for Toronto is shown to the right). Those that stick around the city, especially here in Toronto, get to enjoy the last couple of days of the Canadian National Exhibition (the Ex!) just a few minutes south of the Tucows head office at the CNE grounds. It’s deep-fried everything for two weeks. Last year it was deep fried butter…this year it’s deep fried Coke!

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Exciting updates from your reseller friendly support team!

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Exciting updates from your reseller friendly support team! Posted: 25 Aug 2011 10:38 AM PDT If you’ve called into support in the past two weeks, you may have noticed something. For starters, the average time it took a support rep to answer the phone was less than 30 seconds. We also recorded zero abandoned calls. Call volume was the same as always, so how did this happen? About a month ago, we asked Claire Lam, our head of professional services department, to take on some additional responsibility to help us understand some of the key challenges within the Technical Support group and implement some changes. For the past several weeks, Claire and her team have been pretty busy. As our new head of Reseller Technical Support, Claire is applying what she’s learned working with large hosting providers, combined with her background in customer service, software development and business process to identify to implement changes that will help us deliver on our promise of Reseller Friendly customer service. Measuring for Service As a data-driven individual, her first order of business was to implement the right measurements. “We need to know how we’re doing today, so we can figure out how we can do better tomorrow.” Claire told me. Part of this data collection project involved the introduction of Top 5 issues affecting resellers that Claire shares with the entire company on a weekly basis, and the implementation of a short reseller satisfaction survey sent after the closure of every ticket “Resellers aren’t required to complete the short survey, but those who do will be providing us with actionable data we can use to improve” Claire says. Trying New Things! In addition to the more traditional methods of support management, Claire and her team are trying new things. Last week, with the help of Jonathan Clarke, one of our senior support analysts, worked with Claire to implement LiveChat support service right on key areas of the OpenSRS website. It’s on a trial basis with a goal of serving the needs of resellers who are unable to call us, but are looking for something a little more realtime than email. So far, testing has been positive and it’s a perfect example of the kind of thing we think our reseller customers will appreciate. What’s next in Support? There’s a number other things Claire’s been working on, but rather than list them here, I’ve asked her to think about some topics she’d like to share and we’ll share them with you here shortly. So this won’t be the last you’ve heard from Claire and the support team and we hope that in the coming weeks, you’ll notice and appreciate some of the efforts they’ve been working on. Have you interacted with our support team lately? How did we do? What could we do better?

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Wake up to .XXX Sunrise

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Wake up to .XXX Sunrise Posted: 19 Aug 2011 05:40 AM PDT The folks at ICM Registry who run the new .XXX domain extension have put together a really nice video that helps explain why you and your customers should be paying attention to the launch of .XXX. The video is embedded below (and you should feel free to embed it in your own site or blog if you are participating in the .XXX launch – grab the embed code from YouTube). Want More Information? For even more information on the launch and how you can help your customers, regardless of whether they are part of the adult community or not, we have a webinar coming up next week Thursday with Patrick Donaldson, Registrar Liaison, ICM Registry. He’ll give you all the information you need to make an informed choice about whether you want to be a part of the launch. Adam Eisner, our Director of OpenSRS Product Management will also be there to talk about how OpenSRS will support the launch. Like all OpenSRS webinars, this is a free event. There’s More to the Launch of .XXX Than You Might Think Date: Thursday, August 25, 2011 Time: 9:30 A.M. and 2:00 P.M. EDT (13:30 and 18:00 UTC) Register now

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New Video Series Available for Resellers

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New Video Series Available for Resellers Posted: 18 Aug 2011 07:01 AM PDT We put together a five part series called “Creating Compelling Web Video” that you can use to help your customers make better web video content. The videos take viewers through the various steps they need to take to make video that stands out from the crowd – from choosing hardware, prepping content, shooting, editing and finally sharing the finished product. As an OpenSRS Reseller, you are free to use the video series however and where ever you wish. No attribution is required. We tried to keep the look as generic as possible and as with all of our marketing materials, you can add your own branding or logo if you want to make it your own. Available for download and on YouTube All five parts are available on our YouTube channel but you can also download the videos in .mov format so you can upload them to your own video host, add your own logo or whatever else you might want to do. The videos and other .TV marketing resources are available on our .TV Marketing Resources page. Video content is a great fit with .TV domains. Remember that we also have a .TV pricing promotion happening right now through the end of the year. More details on that promo and the signup form are here if you aren’t already taking advantage. Part one of the series is embedded below to give you a sense of the content and also the production values:

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