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It's been completely overworked and abused since we first got it and we now have to schedule some downtime.

Naturally we'll be conducting the much needed maintenance outside office hours, as we wouldn't want a lack of caffeine to have a negative impact on our staff's performance.

We have warned our staff members who work the early morning shift that they may have to wait for their first dose of the day (I think some of them have taken to referring to it as a "fix") while our office manager does the necessary.

We expect service to return to normal around 9am, however there are no guarantees, so please excuse our sleepy staff.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 11:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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The idea behind the new policy (PDF) is to help stem online fraud and cybercrime of various kinds, however the policy document itself is very ambiguous in its wording.

While ambiguity might be a good idea in certain contexts it's not a good idea when it can affect people's businesses and income.

Both myself and several other people have gone on the record about this, but ICANN seem to have approved the policy change regardless.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Leo Vegoda has posted an excellent followup of the session on the ICANN blog, summarising the speakers' various comments and thoughts.

While we may have some experience with ipv6 the session in Paris definitely opened my eyes to a whole set of issues that we will need to address moving forward.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We're currently putting what I hope (and even pray!) are the final touches to our new website.

One of the things we are very very interested in updating is the testimonials page ie. the place where people tell us how wonderful we are!

Seriously. If you like our services and are happy to let others know email me directly (michele@blacknight.com) and we'll put it up on the new site.

Please don't ask me to write your testimonials (it's happened before!) We're only interested in genuine ones.

Thanks!

Posted by Michele Neylon at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog (via), the latest firmware release for both the iPhone and iPod Touch includes support for other domain extensions; namely .net, .edu and .org.

The inclusion of .edu is an odd one. Either they're targetting a LOT of US students or there's something very odd going on. What's odder still is that they've completely excluded dotMobi (.mobi) as well as .info and .biz. Surely adding support for .mobi would have been more logical on a mobile device than adding .edu?

Posted by Michele Neylon at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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I personally own a very eclectic mix of domains including a .kz (Kazakhstan), but I know that that kind of madness isn't for everyone!

While catching up on RSS feeds this morning I came across a short piece about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. While most of the press are focussing on their newborns the writer in question had spotted that Ms Jolie, or someone acting for her, had registered a bunch of domains related to the twins.

That's good going!

It's never too early to register a domain name. Registering your child's name, for example, means that they'll have their own little slice of cyberspace when they're ready for it.

In the case of the Jolie - Pitt babies it's a little different, as they were bound to attract plenty of online interest for the next few years, so registering the domains now will save them a lot of headaches (and money) further down the line.

So when should you register a domain?

When you want to. When you can. When you feel that you should.

Worst case scenario, your idea doesn't blossom and grow and you let the domain expire.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Since we launched our VPS hosting a couple of months ago we've been working on adding extra documentation both internally to our wiki and externally to our knowledgebase and websites.

We've recently added a short FAQ for VPS clients which hopefully addresses some of the questions people have.

We'll be adding more content as we can, but if there are any areas that people would like us to focus on please let us know.

I've also added a new VPS section to our forum

Feedback, as usual, is welcome

Posted by Michele Neylon at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)