Today only (midnight to midnight gmt-7) Name.com is having a sale on .US domains — only $7.29 — as part of their Tiny Domain Deals holiday promotion.  Stay tuned for more deals in the coming days.

Take advantage of some great deals over at Moniker.com.

Through November 30th

.COM registrations and transfers are $7.49
.COM renewals are $7.75
.NET registration and transfers are $5.99
.NET renewals are $6.05

These are some of the best deals I’ve seen on .COM and .NET from a big registrar like Moniker.

Through December 31th

.MOBI registrations are $7.29
.MOBI renewals are $11.19

Hit up Moniker.com for the deals.

DomainMonster.com has some domain sales they started a while ago that are still going on. Of particular note is their .TV sale which was supposed to end in August, but according to their website is still ongoing.  DomainMonster.com’s already very competitive price of $19.99 a year is lowered to $16.99 (for the first year) with the order code TVAUG09.

The other ongoing special is .ORG domains for $6.65 with the order code ORG-SPECIAL (the deal ends November 30th 2009 and the price reverts to $9.99).

DomainMonster.ca is also offering the newly available Cameroon ccTLD – .CM -  for $149.

Check out the deals at DomainMonster.com

The online domain marketplace Pool.com is teaming up with Neustar, the operator of the .BIZ registry, to auction off a number of very rare 2 character .BIZ domains.  The auction of more than 1000 2 character domain names will occur as a phased release from November 30th, 2009 through February 2010.  The list of two-character domains is available at www.twodotbiz.biz.

VeriSign® issued a press release today, revealing that Name.com has joined the VeriSign® identity Protection (VIP) Network – meaning that Name.com can provide additional protection to its clients beyond a secure log-in.

Name.com will now offer its clients two-factor authentication from VeriSign®. Two-factor authentication combines something a client knows (username and password) with something they have – for example an authentication keyfob. The security device (as VeriSign® refers to it) works by generating a one-time password for every sign on. The security device works across any VIP-enabled Web site.

This is a good move for Name.com, given the increased prevalence of domain theft. Those domainers with portfolios containing valuable generics are at a heightened risk and may flock to Name.com as a result.

Name.com was well known as a trustworthy registrar that had excellent prices on .com domains — $5.99 for the first year and on transfers. They recently raised their price back up to $7.99 — well er sort of. There is a graphic on their homepage instructing users to use a special promo code (XUP599) to get the discounted ($5.99) price on .coms — but only for a limited time. I’m not sure why they decided to go this route – perhaps they are trying to get customers used to the idea of paying $7.99 with the occasional promo code thrown in. Check out Name.com to get .coms for $5.99 (with the promo code) while you still can.

1and1.com has a new domain registration sale – Get up to 25 .BIZ domains FREE for the first year. .BIZ is not my favorite domain extension by a long shot but in this case the price is certainly right. Click here to go to the 1and1.com domain registration page.

Nominet, the .uk registry operator, reports that the .uk domain name has passed the 7 million registrations mark. 1 Million of these domains have been registered in the last year alone.


A recent survey of British Internet users (performed by Opinion Matters) showed that 72% of users are more likely to choose a .uk over a .com when looking for informatin online

Bido once again had technical issues when attempting to rerun the FixedLoans.com auction. According to Sahar Sarid Bido will be closing up shop indefinitely until they can resolve the issues.

I really like the concept and hope they can get up and running again soon.

Bido.com, the 1 domain-per-day, 1-hour, no-reserve auction website crashed just after 2pm EST today during the auctioning of FixedLoans.com. Apparently the site was done in from a combination of massive traffic and a new chat implementation. As I was participating in the auction, I had first hand experience of the crash. The last bid I could see before the site stopped updating was around $5600 with about 4 bidders still in the mix (although there could have been more as my bids were not registering).


Bido will rerun the auction of FixedLoans.com tommorow as a regular auction, one hour, starting at $1 – no reserve. Here’s hoping they fix the technical issues by then.