Latest .Nxt news

Dot-heinz and dot-ketchup ditched weeks after buyout by Berkshire Hathaway

Buffett: Spends $28 billion; saves $130,000 by ditching Heinz gTLD applications.

Heinz has shelved its two new gTLD applications just three weeks after the company agreed to be bought out for $28 billion by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

Announcement marks start of a busy year and changing industry

WhatBox? has announced it will use a joint collaboration of NameJet and Afternic to auction domain names under its dot-menu gTLD.

The announcement marks what will soon be an explosion in efforts to sell "premium" domain names to the highest bidder as well as encourage large businesses to register domains under certain extensions.

A lot to discuss as the industry starts opening up

This time next week will be the first conference covering new gTLDs for some time - and it should be a good one.

How the MAG is undermining the IGF's credibility

Despite increasing relevance in the uncertain post-WCIT world, the advisory group to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) remains incapable of fixing long-identified problems and is undermining its credibility.

If you have a better solution to the issue, let's hear it

Atallah: Surprised at the strong reaction to suggested contract changes.

ICANN COO Akram Atallah has responded to a wave of angry responses from the DNS industry over proposed changes to new registry contracts by asking it to "step up to the plate" and provide solutions to real problems.

Over 30 responses arrived on the last day of a public comment period on the revised contract, most of them highly critical. Key groups within the organization accused the organization of imposing top-down solutions, that the proposal contained "serious and fundamental flaws" and the revisions amounted to "nothing more than a power grab by ICANN staff".

Webinar turns tables on ICANN

The companies that run much of the domain name system are pushing a contractual dispute with overseeing organization ICANN public.

In an unusual move, the Registry Stakeholder Group of ICANN (RySG), which represents all the registries currently under contract with ICANN, and the New gTLD Applicant Group (NTAG), which represents more than half of the 1,930 applications for new Internet registries, have published an invitation for a public teleconference to discuss the proposed contract changes.

Anyone interested is invited to attend the online meeting on Monday, March 4, 2013 at 1500 UTC through the address http://icann.adobeconnect.com/rysg/. Those who wish to speak will have to call in and use the password "RY"; call-in numbers are provided on the invitation.

And sets the world asleep

ICANN has published "contention sets" for the 1,930 applications for new Internet extensions it has received - and left the Internet community wondering what the fuss was all about.

Of all the possible combinations and permutations of names that could be taken to be similar, only four applications that are not exact matches have been chosen: dot-hotels and dot-hoteis; and dot-unicorn and dot-unicom.

Apart from those four, ICANN says there are 230 contention sets of exact matches i.e. people applying for the same name, and 754 applications involved in total - reflecting the infographic we produced back in June 2012 when the applications were first announced (the only difference being that one of the dot-swiss bids has withdrawn).

Last minute flood of angry responses to new gTLD comment period

The domain name industry has responded angrily to an attempt by oversight organization ICANN to make last-minute changes to a contract covering new Internet extensions.

On the last day of a 21-day public comment period over the proposed changes, ICANN received 31 responses (40 in total). Most significant among them were joint letters from stakeholder groups within the organization all of which were highly critical of proposed changes to the registry contract for new gTLDs.