.kiwi.nz, proposed new unmoderated 2ld

Donald Clark, one of the InternetNZ councillors, but acting in his private capacity, has formally requested the creation of the second level domain name .kiwi.nz.

Amendment to the .nz Registrar Agreement

In a society governed by the rule of law we all have to obey court orders, but under normal circumstances we can not be arbitrarily detained or have our property seized without a court order.

Google Closes Adsense For Domains

Google have announced that they are closing Adsense For Domains, their domain parking solution. They've had a lot of complaints about running a domain parking service at all and although they have stared down those complaints, I guess this will make their life easier

Their service has never really fired, it's always been the poor cousin of their other services and has never produced good results for me. I was getting a slightly higher PPC from them than from other providers, but their click rate was a lot worse and looking at their templates it's fairly easy to see why.

A volatile few months coming

The Domain Name Commission has released their February newsletter with .nz domain name stats for January 2011.

January saw 7423 new registrations with a net growth in .nz of 2729 compared with 7317 / 3161 for December 2010. It's easy to see this as New Zealand being on holiday in January, but when compared with the figures from last year where they were 6509 / 1949 in Dec 2009 and 7093 / 2931 in Jan 2010 it shows a jump in renewals and registrations early 2010 and a reversed change in 2011.

Christchurch Earthquake Community Response

Following this week's major earthquake, a dedicated volunteer team of Internet people, web masters, programmers, and computer savvy helpers have built the Christchurch Earthquake Community Response site to coordinate help efforts.

If you need help or can offer help, please go there.

Christchurch Earthquake: Are Your Domains Safe?

In the .NZ domain space, your domain registrations are passed through to the central registry that is managed by the New Zealand Registry Services (NZRS) company. NZRS has a main data centre and a hot spare in a geographically remote data centre. Their status page lists the main and hot spare as being up. If I recall correctly neither of these servers are in Christchurch.

InternetNZ donates $50,000 to Red Cross

In a press release, InternetNZ says:

"InternetNZ (Internet New Zealand Inc) has today donated $50,000 to the New Zealand Red Cross in support of those affected by the Christchurch Earthquake. This is one step the organisation has taken, and there will be further action. It is clear that cash is needed right now and an immediate donation is one of the best ways to help, backing those organisations that are there on the ground."