.Mobi, the sponsored top level extension aimed at mobile devices, has opened up a reserved list of 650 city names which are now ready for applications. According to the press releases this is being done as a ‘free’ release and cheekily mentions London.mobi as an example despite the Mayors office not really knowing alot about it.

The application process is in short to raise awareness of .Mobi by creating a working website and comitting to ongoing promotion :

• A description (250 words) of the proposed content / services / applications to be offered via the .mobi website corresponding to the city name.
• A description of the applicant’s marketing and promotion plans. These plans must include:
  A public launch event to local press for the city name web-site.
  A Press Release to issue in liaison with mTLD promoting the city name web-site.
• Local marketing efforts for the city name web-site at a minimum cost of €2,000 per annum.
• Examples of the applicant’s use of the string corresponding to the Offered Name in any other Top Level Domain.

Assuming that the City of London IT bods can write 250 coherent words the next few hoops could be interesting to fulfil. A new website often has budgets well in excess of €2,000 and a few press releases / public launches, however the two stumbling blocks could be the exclusive contract terms and section 3 of the above.

Does the City of London actively use a Top Level Domain containing the London string? The current website is London.Gov.UK , the logical ccTLD - hopefully the above is a typo and ccTLD’s are valid as well. You have to feel sorry for the mobile users over in another London (canada), or the other Londons around the world, who it seems have already lost any potential case for the name in the eyes of .Mobi.

As for the city names .mobi contract document there are some interesting clauses namely ;

• The new owner will create a website inside of 60 days.
• The new owner will aim to ’strengthen user loyalty and goodwill towards the .mobi’ domain.
• There is currently unspecified ‘renewal award terms’ , ‘website development schedule’ and ‘promotion schedule’ that must be agreed and met for any name to be used, and we assume continue to be used.

The application guide mentions a non-refundable fee of €150 will be paid per application, which assuming one application per name would be very close to a tasty €100,000 cash injection into the .Mobi coffers.

One further thing that stands out is the explaination of what .mobi is at the top of the application guide - "It is the first - and only - top level domain dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices". There we were thinking .mobi was all about ‘lite’ versions of the web, when really it is helping us all make VOIP calls, telnet sessions, mobile friendly email and instant messenging.

It is quite worrying to see people running a top level domain not to know the difference between The Internet and The World Wide Web

Cybernetnews (what a 1996 domain name) reports that FireFox 3 will incorperate something similar to the LocationBar plugin as standard.

In summary the plugin highlights the domain name in the browser address bar, this makes it easier for a user to identify what site they are on. This will draw attention to the domain name being used, and ought to strengthen the branding of easy to remember domain names.

Part Two of our look at the recent PAB policy papers looks at Domaining! That is to say the trading of domain names and associated services.

The FSB Paper

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) were asked to comment and have supplied a position paper. In this they recognise Domaining as a ‘growing industry’ and one that will be around for the foreseeable future.

As with any industries there are the good, the bad and the evil, and then those who declare they will Do No Evil. The FSB would like to protect the ‘vulnerable’, the example give is someone visiting FredBloggs.co.uk rather than FredBloggs.net .

The FSB paper is quite lightweight and does not show great understanding of the issue, confusing the need to ‘protect’ a name via choosing a decent ISP and keeping up to date with renewals etc to that of the legitimacy of purchasing generic names, and the ‘evil’ of cybersquatting.

The FSB mentions that if a third party owns a domain name and will not sell it for ‘the average’ of £15 it is bad luck. Sadly this is 2007 and if anyone believes they can get a decent domain name for 15 quid then it is the personnel department that needs a call to hire some IT staff that live in the real world.

Thankfully Sedo will be making a presentation which ought to mention the average sales price on their platform (low £xxxx) and inject a little reality feedback on the domain market.

The Executive Paper

The interesting paper is the Nominet Executive review ( PDF here ) covering ‘Domaining, dropcatching and the secondary market’, which covers DAC stats and renewal fees. The secondary market has been lost in the ether it seems.

DAC is the Nominet quick whois system, created to take load off the main public whois. It is a quick return interface returning the status of a given domain name.

In summary the paper states:
- 306 DAC subscriptions.
- 106 ‘active’ DAC users.
- 20% of names in 2006 of deleted names are dropcaught.
- That is £650,000 of revenue in 2006 from dropcatchers, not including renewals and transfer fees!

One further comment that stands out in the paper is the term ’suspected anti-abuse groupings’, which implies Nominet knowledge of groups acting together to share resources but as of yet not formally linked. This will only fuel the fires of pitchfork wielding domainers who believe cheating is the way to get a great domain name.

Perhaps it is time the PAB advises Nominet that yes the emperor is infact naked and there is a thriving domain market out there. The question is does Nominet want to stay out of it (by keeping first come first served) or auction off expired domain names.

.Nz has more in common with .UK than just sharing a DRS system - they also have decent domain sales! Recently a large .nz (mainly .co.nz we believe) portfolio sale was made by Domain World Ltd (New Zealand based company) to Portfolio Brains LLC (USA based company) including domains such as CreditCards.co.nz.

It is rumoured that the sale was in the NZ$xxx,xxx price range with $100,000 New Zealand Dollars equating to £38,000 in GB pounds.

Further to previous posts regarding the problems arising from Nominet UK upgrading their systems it seems several more bugs have been spotted roaming in the wild.

- IPS-TAG change emails are not turning up at ISPs. This means that a registrant can change the TAG of their domain yet the tagholder (or in the new Nom lingo the ‘registrar’) will not be aware of this.

- Multiple payment reminders being sent out. One nom-tech member had ten emails inside a day for the same invoice.

- Oddly merged domains. Some domainers have been recieving renewal notices for names that have nothing todo with them, or have been previously bought from another party.

It has been confirmed by Nominet that the transfer rules have changed. No longer can a domain name transfer be enacted and a IPS-TAG change requested at any point - the domain is now locked to the current registrar until the transfer takes place. This is due to the new transfer forms having a ‘TAG’ section so Nominet can process the transfer of registrant and TAG change in one action.

This process change was not documented and for domainers came as quite a suprise, with one domain transfer that we know of (coupled with previous v194 upgrade errors) being held in IPS-TAG limbo.

The new transfer forms asks the new registrant to write down a current domain name they own , thus linking the new registration with their current Nominet account, however the form states:

"Please note that the registrar will also be changed to reflect the registrar on your existing account".

So on transfer the domain name will have its TAG updated to the existing TAG used for your main account. If you are a domainer who holds names at different registrars it could be worth remembering which names are where and use ones you know to be at a specific registrar if you want to avoid them being bounced around TAGs.

Nominet are still in the process of conducting upgrades to their registry provision and associated services systems. Jay Daley, chief IT bod at Nominet, recently stated

"With the release of the new Automaton there have been a number of bugs that have affected some registrars, for which we apologise.  In some cases our testing has been inadequate, but for many these are triggered by a rare set of circumstances that were not part of our test data."

This has had some domainers brand the upgrade as a ‘farce‘ and questioning the ability of Nominet, likewise trying to define what ‘backwards compatible’ really means, for example it seems the new system errors out on added whitespace to automaton requests whereas the old system did not.

There has been a notice of downtime of Nominet systems on July 1st (a Sunday) to carry out ‘major work’ which we assume will be the final fix for the problems with the upgrade, and result in all services returning to normal.

Yesterday another Targeted Traffic (does anyone know what the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is meant to stand for?!) auction was held, the headline figures are $10.9 million of name sales and a pile more ($63 million) of unaccepted bids.

We have decided to break down the pre-auction ‘reserve category’ and the top offers on the top of the ‘passed’ domains:

$5M+
auction.com                        pass $4,500,000 (We expect this to close at 5mil shortly.)
dermatology.com               pass $4,500,000
HorseRacing.com             pass $4,500,000
Slots.com                            pass $4,500,000

$1M-$5M
artist.com                                pass $750,000
cats.com                                 pass $2,000,000
commodities.com                 pass $1,750,000
Dollars.com                           pass $700,000
DSL.com                                pass $1,500,000
menopause.com                  pass $1,500,000
obgyn.com                              pass $1,000,000
PRESSRELEASES.COM     pass $2,500,000
PuertoRico.com                     pass $3,500,000
Scotland.com                         pass $3,000,000
six.com                                    pass $1,000,000
Student.com                            pass $3,000,000
Tourist.com                             pass $750,000

It could be viewed that the $5M+ names have had ’safe’ bids placed at a level where sales are not likely. Generally we are taking the view that any bids at less than reserve are meaningless however we are sure supporters of certain TLD’s and genres will use it as proof of a booming market and demand.

The rumour mill was hard at work with Scores.mobi reportedly having a reserve of $120,000 yet only reaching $115,000 with no active bidding. Sadly the auctioneer did not point out another $5k would secure the name, with many reading this as a sign that the $115k was a prebid and no active bidders to take it past the reserve. Perhaps with the auction taking over three hours to complete fatigue has kicked in (with people reportedly leaving early) so bidding lacks the frenzied approach that drives prices upwards.

There has been alot of comment on blogs and forums that the high reserve prices are indicative of ‘greedy’ domainers, who are not interested in gaining sales unless it is at top dollar. Others are reporting "The big story today was also the bubble bursting for .mobi domains" due to the lack of sales.

The top twenty names that sold (subject to payment and transfer) are:

$3,000,000 CreditCheck.com
$1,800,000 Seniors.com
$550,000 Cardiology.com
$400,000 CarSales.com
$400,000 Bald.com
$300,000 Text.com
$250,000 Locals.com
$220,000 Spices.com
$175,000 Clock.com
$160,000 Psychologists.com
$150,000 MegaYachts.com
$140,000 Charters.com
$135,000 Lips.com
$135,000 Blogging.com
$115,000 Note.com
$100,000 Bulk.com
$95,000 ZN.com
$95,000 Fountain.com
$82,500 Pimple.com
$80,000 DiscountPerfumes.com
(Fuller sales lists are here and here)

The stand out buy in our opinion is Text.com for $300k / £150k , and the buyer of CreditCheck.com came and went specifically for that domain as right after the auction he ran out the door. Hopefully he is located again to complete the transaction

There has been an interesting release by Vodafone, especially considering they are .mobi backers :

"An innovation on the Vodafone network will take pages designed for the computer, compress them by up to ten times on average and turn them into mobile-friendly content, making them easy to read on over 150 handsets without losing any of the information, or the design"

This may not bode well for .mobi - why remember to do Site.mobi when Site.com will be ‘translated’? The proverbial man-in-the-street (or should that be teen-on-a-bus) mobile internet user will never know the difference, they will place ‘Ebay.com’ into their browser and Vodafone will chomp the page accordingly.

The BBC and Google have been using similar technology in the wild for a good few months now however this is the first time a .mobi backer has openly taken an opposing stance to the core idea of .mobi.

Source: http://www.vodafone.com/ppc/vodafone_mobile_internet.html . Yes that is the ‘mobile internet’ page on a .com linked to from the Vodafone.mobi page (media & investor section).

Nominet have recently completed their ‘data restructuring’ upgrades. It seems the new systems do have teething troubles with TAG holders unable to conduct LIST commands (fixed last night) and some TAG holders unable to issue successful RELEASE commands.

The new Nominet systems have tighter data controls so whereas slightly malformed queries were processed, they are now spat out with errors attached eg. where blank text preceeds a field name.

One of the more interesting error messages is the "V194 Operation blocked by Nominet process" which I am told was misread by a bleary eyed domainer at 3am to read "Operation blocked by Nominet Progress".

Hopefully the end result when all the bugs are ironed out is proper progress