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Namecheap isn't great. Their URL redirect/page parking IP addresses have been blacklisted before, and when this happens they are unresponsive and may even go so far as to blame the customer for the problem, telling them to stop using the redirect service.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=544386
http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/54698-namecheap-shutting-down-domains.html
http://www.dnforum.com/f34/blacklist-status-thread-97021.html

> I hope ICANN reconsiders and returns to latin+numbers only addresses.

ICANN is in the business of hyping domain name sales and cashing in on it. Look at their TLD selloff. Applying needs a $185K non-refundable "application fee" which ICANN claim they need to cover their oveheads. Justified if they read applications while drinking Dom Pérignon from a gold slipper. The only way to convince ICANN not to do something is to convince them it won't make them money. Speculators and squatters are still out there, so no chance!

http://www.mindsandmachines.com/2010/01/icanns-credibility-in-the-balance-are-new-tlds-going-to-happen/
http://www.domainnamenews.com/up-to-the-minute/businesses-urge-icann-initiate-gtlds-delay/6121
http://domainnamewire.com/2009/02/25/icann-to-study-price-caps-on-domain-registrations/
http://www.dnforum.com/f17/icann-irt-final-report-abomination-wholly-unbalanced-thread-369416.html

TFA:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10432404.stm

Interestingly, that strikes me as potentially pretentious and wasteful. Don't tie up a chuck of Internet real estate just for your own personal vanity, IMO.

Tying up a domain name for personal vanity? I take it you've never looked into the domain speculators market. Read dnforum.com for a bit. These guys buy/sell thousands of domain names and park most of them for ad income. I had to compete with these speculators in a domain auction to get my weave.org domain. If I had not gotten it, it would have ended up being a parked page.

I'm not saying your point is unreasonable. There's probably a lot better uses for weave.org than my own email domain -- but at least I'm using the domain and it's not just parked by some speculator hoping to double their money by reselling it to yet another speculator. To give you an idea of what they charge, weave.info is currently parked and for sale for almost $1700 and is also listed as $2000 on Sedo. If they smell a legit business wanting to buy the domain name to use it as a website for useful content, their asking price goes through the roof.

I thought the same after stumbling onto it in 2007. Now it seems surprising that that there is surprise, especially after the mainstream coverage of ireport.com, toys.com and property.com sales.

So if you're interested, check out http://www.dnjournal.com/ and look at the "Domain Sales" and "YTD Sales Charts".

http://www.dnforum.com/ is the largest forum for domaining.

http://www.domainnamewire.com/ is an insightful news source.

http://www.namebio.com/ is fun to peruse for past sales.

Auctions for drops and end-user sales are at http://www.snapnames.com/ http://www.namejet.com/ and Godaddy's TDNAM service. http://www.sedo.com/ and http://afternic.com/ are mostly end user sales/auctions.

Then continue onto http://www.ricksblog.com/ and finally http://www.domaining.com./

There's plenty of other sites to surf and and never ceases to be interesting. There's even a book ("The Domain Game") that's a good read from a historical perspective.

It's a tough, relatively unknown and tight-knit business. But a burgeoning business nonetheless.

Did you happen to notice that the domain was registered in February of 2004? It's unlikely that the Obama campaign decided to grab it for this campaign. (actually, this thread shows that it may have been handed over to MySpace in 2006.)

So who knows who decided to point it at the Obama campaign site.

Why not submit your questions to the pros?

*sniff* *sniff*

=Smidge=

Below is a quick copy and paste from one of my posts on DNForum regarding IDNs ... I own some IDNs and believe they have much potential, but there are still many unanswered questions...

Excerpt from a post of mine on DNForum regarding IDNs:
http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?p=732080

I'm running into a lot of issues that many IDN folks aren't discussing - probably because they've not consider them ...

Various issues / threats / questions:

?? The existance of numerous diverse dialects, even totally different languages, etc in the same country ... it's among the reasons that English dominates in some areas; some natives, even if they can understand a particular dialect, will sometimes speak a totally non-native language, such as English, instead to avoid risk of offending the other party. One can't assume one language dominates an entire region - languages can also overlap many areas ... it's one of the reasons some are pushing for language / culture based TLDs, such as .CAT (among the dumbest ideas ever, but that's another discussion for the .CAT thread running here on DNF).

?? An IDN that contains western european characters that very close matches a non IDN ... ie. cafe.com verses café.com ... what happens? Will the IDN be highlighted / blocked by default? ... likely an easy UDRP target? ... introduction of a new IDN specific dispute procedure? -perhaps there already is one?

?? Trademark issues ... ie. an IDN that is similar / exact to a trademark in another country ... less obvious, what about an IDN that translates to that of a trademarked word / phrase? -I believe there's a thread discussing such an issue now on one of the other boards here.

?? language variants (more applicable to asian languages, etc) related issues ... how good / stable are the various language variant tables?

?? what happens when a language variant table changes? -how are conflicts handled?

?? what happens if a character variant (an IDN [IDL package] technically can comprise multiple character variants [code points]) is released? ... does the current registrant get first dibs? ... even if yes, it may not be quite that simple if a character variant occurs in numerous permutations.

?? What happens if a reserved character variant is changed to a preferred character variant? - while such a change would have little to no effect on affected IDNs (IDL packages), it could result in the appearance of some IDNs changing ... probably not a biggie compared to some other issues, but one to be aware of.

?? How reliable, especially for those in languages with numerous character variants, will IDN domain resolution be? ... IDN resolution depends on much client-side APIs.

?? How well will IDN resolution APIs be regulated ... I can easily envision scenerios in which a web browser and/or other applications (email, IM, etc) implement resolution differently ... ie. adding and/or ignoring one or more valid language associations for a particular IDN / converting similar-looking western european characters to standard A-Z characters, etc. A related concern is language table management - I'm a little hazy on if the tables will be internally stored by each app or remotely loaded for each session, etc.

Rambling on, but there are a lot of things that one needs to be aware of with IDNs.

Jump Domain postal address, even in their corporate filings, is a MailBoxes, Etc. maildrop - 790 W. 40 HWY #197, BLUE SPRINGS MO 64015.

Think transfer security is a problem ... there's a security problem far worse:

(a post of mine reposted from ICANNWatch http://www.icannwatch.org/ - slashdot.org rejected it, but I'm used to that LOL!)

-----

Bogus "Whois Problem Reports" are increasingly going from being an annoyance to being a real security risk. Some recent incidents I've experienced due to Whois Problem Reports *merely* being filed:

* Dotster, about two weeks ago, threatened to delete a domain if I didn't respond.

* BulkRegister, just yesterday, threatened to suspend a domain if I didn't respond within 5 calendar days.

What good are Whois Problem Reports when anyone can file one and there is virtually no screening performed to ensure such reports have any validitity to them; reports filed on some of my domains claimed everything was wrong, including the expiration date - what!? Talk about pure nonsense!

As of now, if one wants to cause a registrant problems, all they need to do is file bogus reports at the Internic link below (it's so easy, it's frightening!) - heck, if someone really wanted to be deviant, they could spread a virus that sends bogus Whois Problem Reports from hijacked computers...

http://wdprs.internic.net/

In addition, some registrars, such as GoDaddy, charge a fee to the registrant for *merely* reviewing a Whois Problem Report for a particular domain, regardless of whether the report is valid - see links below for more details:

http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?t=67862

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&th readid=328696&perpage=15&pagenumber=1

There is much talk about the transfer policy changes and security, yet bogus Whois Problem Reports is a security risk many times worse.

Some ICANN policy changes are needed pronto regarding Whois Problem Reports...

1. Requiring more than just a name and email for people making complaints - they should have to provide a postal address that's verifyable and/or some other information.

2. Screening of such reports - permit registrars, if they're not already, to toss out Whois Problem Reports that they feel are invalid without involving the registrant; stop wasting their time over this nonsense.

3. A standard on how registrars handle Whois Problem Reports

* including a reasonable time for the registrant to respond, such as 30 calendar days, before any action is taken ... as of now, some registrars do little while others suspend domains within only a few days - so if one goes away on holiday, they could very likely come back and find their domains suspended/deleted.

Something needs to be done before bogus Whois Problem Reports get any further out of hand ...

Ron Bennett