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Domain blogs have been buzzing about Google and ICANN’s recent move to “kill domain tasting”. Upon a closer look Domain Name News felt that initial reports were largely exaggerated .

Naturally that exaggeration perpetuated through out the web with a myriad of other bloggers like Jay, Sahar, Brett, Elliot, John Levine and even ZDnet and TechCrunch picking up the story and discussing this topic.

First let’s look at Google.

We followed up with Google to see exactly what they were trying to stop and maybe get some more insight in to their reasoning. Brandon McCormick who was mentioned in some of these articles was our first point of contact and he passed us on to PR rep Daniel Rubin at Google.

In our first email with Daniel, Domain Name News inquired : “It sounds [to me] like the information published is saying that any domain younger than 5 days will not receive any advertising from the Google Adsense for Domains feed. Is this correct?

Daniel responded: “To answer your question, this does not affect domains that are less than five days old. We have long discouraged domain kiting as a practice. In order to more effectively deter it, we will monitor domains that are added and dropped during the grace period. We will no longer serve ads to domains we have determined to be used for kiting. We believe that this policy will have a positive impact for users and domain purchasers across the web.”

It seems clear based on this email that Google is actually tracking domains that are being kited and are only really trying to prevent this practice and not specifically tasting. Google may be worried about specific cases where domain kiters were being sued by trademark complainants as Brett mentioned in his blog post.

As a follow up and to clarify we asked: “When you say “domain kiting”, you are referring to domains that are registered time and again, but each time no longer than the 5 day grace period?

Daniel responded: “Yes, we are referring to domains that are registered time and again.”

Much of the exaggeration in these posts seems to center around terminology. Brett Fausett even mentioned he was corrected by Jay Westerdal that the majority of tasters are actually kiting the domains. It seems important to DomainNameNews then to get the wording right. There is an important difference between kiting and tasting. From Wikipedia :

Domain tasting should not be confused with domain kiting, which is the process of deleting a domain name during the five-day grace period and immediately re-registering it for another five-day period. This process is repeated any number of times with the end result of having the domain registered without ever actually paying for it.

Domain tasting operations register bulk batches of domain names and keep the domain name that they believe will make them a return and delete the rest. Often times the taster will use a search company to place ads on the domain for that 5 day period in order to assess whether a domain name is worth keeping. Currently if the domain is deleted within the 5 day window there is no fee involved. This led to the abusive practice known as domain kiting. The kiter would register a bulk list of domains and keep them for the 5 day period and then delete and re-register the domain for another 5 day period, never paying for the domain or a fee. The practice does tie up large sums of money, as the registry requires registrars to prepay for registering domains.

Google doesn’t appear to be concerned with tasting but rather kiting. Even though many companies rely on Google to monetize domains, the companies that participate in domain tasting also have the resources, statistics and expertise to know when a domain is worth keeping. Some do not even need to monetize through Google to judge if a domain is worth keeping. Many can judge what domains to keep largely based on the traffic alone. Even if Google was preventing them from monetizing during this 5 day window, domain tasting will still occur. The experienced companies know what domains will make money and can still buy based on traffic numbers and estimated returns.

ICANNs Turn

Shortly after the news hit about Google stopping kiting, the ICANN board published their decision on a vote to change the fee structure on domains. This was read as another attempt to stop tasting. On closer inspection though, it would seem that their efforts would be similar to Google’s efforts and merely a way to stop kiting and not necessarily to stop tasting. Tasters would incur a fee for every domain tasted but this likely will not deter them entirely.

The Board resolves (2008.01.04) to encourage ICANN’s budgetary process to include fees for all domains added, including domains added during the AGP, and encourages community discussion involved in developing the ICANN budget, subject to both Board approval and registrar approval of this fee.” - Preliminary Report for the Special Meeting of the ICANN Board of Directors

ICANN fees are currently not levied on domains that are ran through the RGP AGP loophole that domain tasting and kiting operations use. The new fee should stop kiting of domains outright since kiting relies on never paying anything for a domain name. The impact on domain tasting, however, likely will not be as severe.

Many companies participating in domain tasting have registrar accreditations that give them the lowest possible price. However other participants have also been able to taste domains at registrars where they are paying per domain fees for tasting domains already. If participants are able to afford the cost of this fee and still participate in tasting, adding this new fee will not likely kill domain tasting. Rather, the lists of domains tasters run will be more thoroughly reviewed before tasting and the keep rate may change dramatically. Essentially, the cost of tasting has increased which will slow down these operations.

Domain kiting is now dead (as is NSI Front Running operation). There is no longer any way to register and drop a domain without incurring a fee. Tasting operations now have a higher cost to operate, but they have not been stopped. The ability to still make a buck off of domains seems to be alive and well.

UPDATE : A well known domainer also pointed out that the ICANN fee and Google’s efforts will not prevent tasting of expiring domains. At roughly 20,000 expiring domains coming through daily, the total ICANN fees if someone picked them all up would be small in comparison to the amounts that are being spent currently to acquire these premium generic domains. A registrar who wanted to grab them all up and run them through a tasting operation would not feel a significant pinch in their pocketbook by this fee. Registrars with multiple connections are in a great position to do this and outfits like Enom/NameJet and SnapNames are in an even better position as they can offset the tasting by auctioning off some of the domains.

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How to backorder a domain name

Are you struggling to find a good domain name for your new site? If so you may wish to consider using a domain backorder service. This article introduces the basic concepts of domain backordering and lists some of the services available.

A domain backorder service allows you to submit a backorder for a domain you wish to purchase. At the time of your submitting the backorder, the domain is owned by someone else. By submitting a domain backorder, you are hoping that at the time the domain expires, and is not re-registered by its owner, the domain backorder service will register it for you. The domain backorder fees vary by domain backorder service. The following domain backorder services are some of the most popular domain backorder services out there.

SnapNames.com - one of the stronger services, affiliated with about a dozen registrars. They will attempt to register the domain name for you for a fee of $60. If however more then one person is interested in the same name and has attempted to backorder it via Snapnames.com, the domain name goes into auction. The SnapNames auction last for 3 days and is awarded to the highest bidder. Auctions for dropped names have been known to go into $xx,xxx easily.

Pool.com - is a strong competitor to SnapNames.com. Pool.com might have a smaller pool of registrars ( excuse the pun ), but they sometimes manage to grab some names quicker then SnapNames.com. Pool.com has a similar auction setup and also charges a backordering fee of $60.

NameWinner.com is another domain name backorder service. They are not as strong as the top two, and might not grab as many names, but they can be successful at times. They charge $30 per backorder.

Godaddy.com provide their own backordering service. They do not publicize how many registrars they are associated with, if any. Their charge a fee of $18 for a backorder and if successful the name does not go into auction. They are not as successful for popular names as the top two.

Enom.com is a strong competitor to Pool.com and SnapNames.com. Their fee is $30 and they seem to have been quite successful in backordering some bigger names in recent times. Do make sure you check them out for comparison.

Overall, when backordering a really special name, I cover all my bases and pick 3 or 4 from the list of big backordering services. I usually go with Pool.com, SnapNames.com, Enom.com and Godaddy.com. By backordering with a few companies, you are multiplying your chances of grabbing that all important name. Since each of the services is associated with varied registrars, by covering all bases you are getting more registrars to work for you.

Article by John Motson www.dnexpert.com

Namecheap posted the message on their site yesterday: “Good news, we are pleased to announce that NameCheap.com is now an ICANN accredited registrar!” Good news indeed. Stay tuned for more information in the next few days. In the meantime see the current Namecheap coupon code

Make money online by joining a web hosting affiliate program.

If you currently host a website, joining a web hosting affiliate program can make you significant money when used intelligently, plus you can easily recoup the costs of bandwidth and server space. Web hosting affiliate programs are easy and free to join - all it takes is a few referrals in order to bring in new income.

If you’re happy with your current domain and hosting provider, ask them about their web hosting affiliate program. Often times, customer referrals can bring between $50 and $100 for each customer that signs up to your own provider’s hosting service. Many web hosts offer a web hosting affiliate program that pays a percentage of the sales made when customer you refer sign up for their services. This could be a recurring monthly, quarterly or annual repeat payment.

Most web hosting affiliate programs will send payments via check or send them directly to your bank account or even your Paypal account if you have one. You may have to wait until you have earned a certain amount. This could be as low as $50 or as high as $150 depending on the company policy. Imagine the income after making a few referal each week! There are also companies such as >WebmasterFX and TemplateMonster which offer affiliate programs for a very similar market, in this case marketing tools and design templates for webmasters. Offering your visitors a range of related goods and services is likely to increase your total referal commissions. Web hosting affiliate programs are easy to join – just fill out an online form and put an approved link on your existing website. You could also add a link in your emails and use them in discussion forum signatures. Of course if the program is lucrative enough it may be worth trying some paid advertising to speed up results. Look for a program with a large range of promotion material such as banners and text links to place on your site, and you’ll be on your way to making profits through a new revenue stream in just minutes!

How to install FFMPEG on windows?

This tutorial is about transcoding video fom one codec into another using FFMPEG. I got deeper into FFMPEG when I wanted to transcode into FLV (Flash Video) and it works very well. I developed the Riva FLV Encoder, a GUI for FFMPEG.

Update 26.10.2006: This tutorial is a little outdated as there were many changes in FFMPEG like the switch from CVS to Subversion and the workflow to compile FFMPEG under Windows has become more difficult. For the new tweaks check this tutorial.

  1. Download MinGW ” MSYS current releases (Window Exe Binaries MSYS-1.0.10.exe & MinGW-3.1.0-1.exe)
      Install MinGW
      Install MSYS
      HINT: During the Postinstall be sure to set the right path to MinGW with a “/” instead of a Windows-”". If you did it wrong anyway re-install MSYS to the same directory and do the postinstall right (I missed it a few times)
  2. Download and compile Lame
      Extract Lame to your MSYS home-directory
      Open MSYS and change to your lame-directory (cd ../lame-XXX)
      Enter the following commands:

      CODE:

      1. ./configure //(takes a few minutes)
      2. make //(lame is being comiled; takes a few minutes, too)
      3. make install
      After installing you will recognize that there are new directories and files in MSYS/local which we will use while compiling ffmpeg with mp3-support
  3. Download Subversion Client like Tortoise SVN (http://http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/) and install it
      Check out the sourcecode from svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg
  4. Compile FFMPEG
      Change the directory in MSYS to your ffmpeg-directory (cd ../ffmpeg)
      Enter the command:

      CODE:

      1. ./configure –enable-memalign-hack –enable-mingw32 –enable-mp3lame –extra-cflags=-I/local/include –extra-ldflags=-L/local/lib
      HINT: you can paste into MSYS by pressing your center mouse-button
    1. “–enabled-memalign-hack” is a Windows hack. Without this option ffmpeg always crashs with the message “removing common factors from framerate” when encoding AVIs.
    2. “–enable-mingw32″. I see no difference without it but we compile with MinGW and it would not do a harm when ffmpeg knows this
    3. “–enable-mp3lame”: Enable transcoding audio with the open-source mp3-lame-codec
    4. “–extra-cflags=-I/local/include –extra-ldflags=-L/local/lib”: The cflags- and ldflags-parameter sets the right path to your lame-installation which you did in step 3.d.
      Enter command: make (ffmpeg is being compiled; takes a few minutes)
      With “make install” you could now copy the ffmpeg.exe to c:Program Filesffmpeg. But there is no need to.
  5. Use FFMPEG
      Copy your compiled ffmpeg.exe from your MSYS directory to the directory where you like to transcode with ffmpeg
      Open the Dos-Shell and change to the directory where you copied the ffmpeg.exe
      Copy a test.mpg into your directory and enter the following command:

      CODE:

      1. ffmpeg -i test.mpg -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -r 15 -s 320×240 test.flv
      Your first FLV should be encoded now
  6. Render Images from a Video
      Enter command:

      CODE:

      1. ffmpeg -an -y -t 0:0:0.001 -i test.flv -f image2 test%d.jpg
      HINT: With -t you set the length of images to be extracted. Above we entered 1 millisecond the extract one image. If you miss this parameter all images of the video will be extracted

ZLib Support (e.g. for TSCC and Quicktime codecs). This should be compiled into FFMPEG. It is not an explicit compile in the configure statement. Do the following steps and after configure you should see that zlib is “on”.
Download and compile ZLib
Extract the files to your mysys directory
Change the directory in MSYS to that directory
Enter command ./confugure, make and make install.
AC3 Support
Add “–enable-a52 –enable-gpl” to your configure command3GP Support
If you want to enable 3GP support you have to add the AMR audio codec. Download the TS26.104
REL-5 V5.1.0 26104-5??.zip here. Extract the codec into libavcodec/amr_float and add “–enable-amr_nb” to your configure command

XVID Support (thanks to garvin.thornten at datel.co.uk)
Download and install the codec from www.xlib.org (see xvidcore-xxxx/doc/install). Add “–enable-xvid –enable-gpl” to your configure command. When compiling with xvid codec in MinGW or cygwin you will get a “mkstemp” error when compiling “xvidff.c”. To fix this edit “libavcodec/xvidff.c” and add the following after the #includes. This will probably be fixed in a future ffmpeg release: ´

C:

  1. /* Added for windows compile —————– */
  2. #include
  3.  
  4. int xvid_ff_2pass(void *ref, int opt, void *p1, void *p2); void xvid_correct_framerate(AVCodecContext *avctx);
  5.  
  6. int mkstemp(char* template)
  7. {
  8. char temppath[512];
  9. if(GetTempPath(512,temppath)!=0)
  10. {
  11. if(GetTempFileName(temppath,“fil”,0,template)!=0)
  12. {
  13. FILE *pFile;
  14. pFile=fopen(template,“w+”);
  15. if(pFile!=NULL)
  16. return (int)pFile;
  17. }
  18. }
  19. return -1;
  20. }
  21. /* ——————————————- */
  22.  

Link about qscale
removed “-f singlejpeg” as its identical to “-f mjpeg”

The No. 2 Czech Web Portal Centrum.cz and it’s parent company NetCentrum SRO, was acquired by private Equity Fund Warburg Pincus. Centrum.cz, also offers Web searching and context-based online advertising services. Apparently, Czech media has reported the value of the Web portal to be around $147 million.

Bankrate acquires Savingforcollege.com, a privately owned business run by college finance industry specialist, Joseph Hurley, for $2.25 million plus $2 million in possible earnouts. Savingforcollege.com offers various tools, such as online calculators and professional directories, and information about 529 college savings plans to help families save money for college.

Grandparenting resource GrandparentsMagazine.net, with an estimated 100,000 monthly uniques, has been acquired by Grandparents.com. GrandparentsMagazine.net founder Katrina Hayday Wester will join Grandparents.com. Grandparents.com is headquartered in New York City and owned by private investment firms Laser Partners and TWS Partners.. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

San Francisco based social shopping website StyleDiary.net has been acquired by StyleHive.com. StyleDiary.net which allows users to submit, tag and vote on fashion items raised $2.62 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners last year. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

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