First let me say a few things, Happy New Year to everyone. Last night was the first time my five and six year old kids stayed up for the stroke of midnight, it was a blast. Also, I have some new year goals which I will get to you guys next week, it involves everyone so only fair to share. DNKitchen.com is getting a make over, the new theme will be up by Monday if not sooner.
OK, now on to this million dollar site scheme.
John Motson is the author/owner of DNXpert.com and Domaining Manifesto, an ebook that I have promoted here in the past. Now it seems that John wants to become a millionaire with the development of his latest website. I am just going to state my personal opinion, I think he is nuts and genius all at the same time. I do not like these sites yet I want one for myself, lol.
Earlier this year ICANN rolled out its plan to allow new “generic” extensions (suffixes) to be created in association with niches, geographical locations, or even corporate names. For example instead of using a .com domain a business could apply to create its own extension like .furniture or .detroit and corporations could apply for TLD’s such as .dell or .ebay. The plans for this type of domain name system has many domain owners worried about the future of staple extensions like .com, .net and .org. Can a system like this really benefit the Internet addressing system, publishers and consumers? The U.S. government doesn’t think so. Earlier this week Meredith Baker, the head of the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) called for ICANN to rethink it’s plans to unveil this idea so quickly. The NTIA’s concerns are that by opening up this system it could jeopardize the balance of current Internet addressing system and thwart Internet commerce.
You may be asking yourself why anyone should care what the U.S. NTIA branch has to say about this. Although the U.S. government cannot mandate or manipulate ICANN’s policy, it’s management of the domain name system is under contract with the U.S. government and ultimately ICANN needs it’s approval to create new generic TLD’s.
I personally think that adding new generic TLD’s is a bit too much for the Internet addressing system. There are already loads of obscure ccTLD’s that are launched each year. It seems that the registrars and ICANN are the only people really benefiting from all of these obscure extensions. Take the .ME extension for example. Country code’s were created to serve specific countries domain name needs. .ME is Montenegro’s country code, however it was rolled out by registrars and touted as the great new brandable extension to use for your personal web pages (hey look at my .ME!). Honestly, I think this is ridiculous. Adding a generic TLD system would make web browsing even more confusing for most users. The average Joe surfing the internet barely even knows what a .info, .tv or a .biz extension is. Imagine having every business that could afford to launch their own TLD marketing their new domains: “Check out Homes.Denver the real estate portal…or was that Denver.Homes?” This just seems to me like a big scheme by ICANN to capitalize on eager businesses and organizations to plunk down their $100,000 application fee to secure their “.whatever” domains. Our current system seems very reasonable. Extensions like .com, .net and .org are the generic TLD’s and are complimented nicely by ccTLD’s (country code, top level domains). It will be interesting to see what decisions are made concerning the future of generic TLD’s. It will also be intriguing to see how the relationship of ICANN with the U.S. government evolves this year with Obama coming into office.
News story: USA Today
ICANN new generic TLD announcement: ICANN
EDIT – 4 for 1 special has been extended to December 31st
I came across WooThemes while searching for some new hot WordPress themes for a few of my sites. I am considering using one for DNKitchen, hmmm, we’ll see what the new year brings. In the mean time I wanted to share this special deal, it is good from December 17th through the 24th. Buy one theme at $70 and get three more for free, that is four themes for the price of one. Even if you do not have a use for one right now this may be the best time to buy.
I got my four themes
By the way, if you have not upgraded to WordPress 2.7 yet, do it. Much cleaner looking, easy to use and some more features added.
Google Chrome beta launched just a little over 100 days ago. It is now coming out of beta with 10 million users. First reaction was that is a lot of users, after looking at the browser market share chart below that equates to only .83%.
I have not tried Google Chrome and at this point do not have any intentions of it. Honestly, I just got used to Firefox which I installed about four months ago. Never know, I didn’t think I would switch from IE either
This directly from Google Chrome…
“Internet users have an increasing number of choices for web browsers today, including Firefox, Safari, Opera, and now Google Chrome. Sometimes web pages look and work differently in each browser, so it’s important to test your site across all of them to ensure all your visitors can enjoy the experience you’ve designed.”
I am glad that I am not a developer, I’m sure they are tired of different browsers.
What is Google Chrome?
For those of you that have been under a rock for the last 100 plus days here is an overview video from Google.
