The PlanetDomain Blog

There are over three and a half billion mobile phone users in the world, vastly more than all the computer users combined. Over 25% of these people access the internet on their phones. These figures suggest mobile internet capability is fast becoming a reality for online marketers.

Mobile Marketing

In April ActiveMedia launched ActiveFRONT, a mobile marketing program designed to integrate SMS and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). The initiative was designed to give marketers better access to people who use online communities, which in this day in age means practically everyone.

However this type of media doesn’t apply to the majority of mobile net users. The Blackberry and now the iPhone are becoming tremendously popular and can support nearly as much content as a computer; but most people don’t own these high end devices.

Mobile Internet Today

The regular mobile user has a handset which can’t support CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) presentation. CSS is designed to help web crawlers read document presentation in terms of font, colour and layout. Therefore if you are a mobile marketer aiming at the average mobile net user your advertising content needs to be outlined in clean semantic mark-up.

In other words marketers should write their material in plain old HTML to create simple text-only advertisements. Eliminate any unnecessary frames and decorative images that would slow the loading process for a screen measuring between 100 and 640 pixels. Tabulated data is also a big no. The standard mobile mostly supports only one column of information.

Further guidelines to consider revolve around the physical size of a phone. Condense the entire presentation to fit within a smaller viewing space. The font size for all text needs to be reduced. As does the information contained in the brief because without a mouse or keyboard the user won’t feel like clicking through a large amount of material. The average screen will allow for 20 to 40 characters in 12 to 15 lines.

URL addresses also need to be as short as possible where applicable.

Looking Forward to .mobi

Mobile phones are no longer being used for marketing in terms of just smsing. With the expansion of mobile net use, campaigns can now be better targeted to reach the ideal audience.

.mobi is a domain extension that was approved by ICANN in 2005 and is specifically aimed at increasing mobile net use. To purchase your .mobi today visit Planet Domain.

By Stacey Manson

You have spent a considerable amount getting your new business off the ground and now it is time to join your comrades online.

Many budding entrepreneurs opt to self-design their website, and why not, who better knows their business right?

If you are developing a blueprint for your site there are few things that must be considered. Web pages which are visually appealing and fuelled with sales oomph may actually cause your site to lose visitors.

Say NO to Flash Animation

If you have ever been to a site where the first page is some fancy animation, it is not as appealing as it is annoying. Out of the world’s top sites NONE of them are prefaced by flash animation. What’s more when Google scans the first page of your site for relevant content, it can’t interpret the animation and registers the first page as void of content.

Flash animation can also take a notoriously long time to load. Not everyone has fast internet access so if you make your visitors wait most will leave the site and visit one that downloads quicker.

First Thing’s First; Key Information

Users don’t want to waste time looking for the most important information; make it easy for them by showing your company’s product on the first page. Make this message clear and to the point. Where possible adorn the page headings and titles with the keywords that best describe your site. Google places greater importance on information inside headings. So if you can succeed in getting your message across here your site is more likely to place well in the Google rankings.

Make sure contact details are easily visible. If they aren’t on your first page, make sure they are at least a click away.

Consistency is Key

The design must be simple and effective, which needs to be a carried throughout the entire site. Don’t go overboard with too many different fonts, colours and layouts.

When I Hear Music…

Music on a webpage, like flash animation, takes too long to load and because of this drives visitors from your site rather than draws them in. Unless your business is music related, don’t use music on your site to add extra flavour.

If people want to listen to music while they browse they will open their iTunes, not log on to your site.

Don’t Forget to Update!

Once your site is live, it still needs maintenance! Give it a face lift once the design becomes dated. Analyse the traffic reports, available from your hosting supplier, and customise your sight to better suit those who are visiting it the most. Make sure all of the links on your sight are operational; you will lose customers quickly if error messages on your site are common place.

The best plan of attack is to find a qualified web designer to work through any issues for you. Yet if this is not within your budget try and at least give your site the best chance of success.

By Stacey Manson

How many times have you tried to log on to a site and failed where previously you have had unabated access? The ‘thinking icon’ deliberates, contemplates and meditates, but still the desired information refuses to appear.

‘It’s the useless server again,’ you presume after a frustrating five minutes spent repeatedly clicking Mr Refresh. However researchers at the University of Washington have now discovered that this may not necessarily be the case.

Black Holes on the Net

Graduate student Ethan Katz-Bassett and his advisor Arvind Krishnamurthy have discovered that information is constantly being lost along digital conduits that were previously operational. They have termed these areas where information travels into oblivion as the internet’s ‘black holes’, and apparently they comprise a whopping 10% of the internet.

It appears the internet, which is trusted as a reliable communication network for many vital services, is actually less dependable than phone networks. In fact since the inception of their analysis last September almost a million black holes and reachability problems have been detected.

The Hubble Program

The researchers have designed a system called Hubble, named after the NASA space telescope that first detected intergalactic black holes. It operates via a network of cyber-probes which detect computers that can be reached by some, but not all, of the internet. This data suggest that there is an issue occurring en route and there is the presence of a black hole. The probes monitor up to 90% of the net.

Bassett and Krishnamurthy hope the new technology will drastically improve the functionality of the internet by allowing ISPs to track down the source of problems experienced on their network. Their data is updated every 15 minutes and their website hosts a map illustrating where black holes are occurring at any given minute.

What Triggers a Black Hole?

It is believed the black holes are caused by problems with particular routers. This can vary from issues with new router paths not operating properly to issues with multi-homing.

Multi homing protocol connects a site to the internet from more than one address, which enables it to have several different connectivity links. The technology is meant to make it easier for information packets reach their destination, yet it is also making it easier for those packets to be sent to black holes.

It is hoped that future versions of Hubble will be able to more precisely pinpoint the exact cause of the holes. Maybe the researchers will be able to find a way to permanently reroute SPAM to these holes too!

So next timed the hourglass refuses to disappear from your monitor don’t be so quick to blame your particular server. It is quite possible the information you desire has passed over the event horizon and into cyber oblivion.

By Stacey Manson

A growing number of domain registries have been leaning towards jazzing up generic Top-Level-Domains (TLDs) by replacing the recognised .com .net and .org with a subject defining ending. For example, there has been a recent push for ICANN (the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to introduce .xxx for adult only websites.

In theory this approach does seem practical. Type in .shop and a website related to shopping appears. Type in .mp3 and you can download the latest music. Catching up on the weekend sports scores; type in .sport. There are infinite possibilities, prompting the question of why ICANN hasn’t used a relationship between web content and domain names before.

Why Creating Content Driven TLDs Can’t Work

The idea is simple and appears effective. Yet in practice, category based TLDs would almost certainly be pointless and unsuccessful.

One of ICANN’s prime functions is to ensure the prolonged stability of the Internet. This stability relies on the relative simplicity of the current Domain Name System (DNS). By creating TLDs that effectively create a myriad of group filters, the complexity of the system is increased and thus, with the greater chance of error, becomes more unstable.

What’s more is the direct challenge category specific TLDs would be to the diverse nature of the web. The Internet is ultimately successful due to its decentralised make-up. Currently it allows for open freedom to information. However a strict correlation between content and domain names would allow barriers to be created, severely hampering that freedom.

Internet Growth and TLDs

Categories would also change over different times and places. It would be extremely hard to create global labels that appease all communities of people. For example the notion of .mp3 was completely foreign fifty years ago and still is to certain areas of the world. In another fifty years the concept will have evolved again meaning even more categories will be needed to compensate for the evolution. The whole process of trying to keep up with changing technologies and attitudes with the endless creation of filters would cause the net to become progressively less and less universal.

Even if ICANN was to allow the development of these TLDs, it is hard to see domain registrants all over the world moving to purchase new domain names appropriate to their sites’ particular category.

Not only would this be cost deficient for businesses needing to purchase multiple domain names, it would create a disparity between those using the old system and those with the new.

The current IP addresses have successfully created fair competition between domains because each site is read and located irrespective of what the site visually displays.

Category Based TLDs and the Market Today

Category specific TLDs are already being tested by a small percentage of web users and the results have been far from smooth sailing. Unless the computer and the ISP have specially downloaded software, the processor will be unable to resolve the domain.

Although the dotcom bubble of the late-nineties is a distant memory, .com is still by far the most popular and recognised TLD on the market. There are no conditions of use, it is cheap to acquire and the danger of content driven domains has had little tangible impact on its success.

When considering registering a domain, be extremely wary of the new .shop, .sport, .whatever fad because the results will not be as favourable as they appear.

By Stacey Manson

It has taken a few years, but changes to auDA policy mean Australia may finally enjoy some of the same domain name freedoms already considered normal in the US and Europe.

For six years, Australia has been unique amongst our international peers in restricting the .au 2LD from transfer. Anyone needing to transfer a .au domain name, for whatever reason, found it virtually impossible to do so.

Evolution of Internet Policy

The restrictions are a hangover from original attempts to shield the then fledgling internet from market pressures. Championing the belief that the internet should be open to all, auDA enshrined a policy designed to prevent the commercialisation of domain names and shut out speculators from the market.

Domain name speculation has become big business in the US and Europe, with some domains changing hands for six figure sums. There is no doubt that, despite the original non-commercial aspirations of the internet, domain names have become highly prized commodities with a large amount of power attached to them. But with many becoming frustrated at the inability to capitalise on the power of their own domain, the pressure has been on auDA for a long time to adjust this policy.

Commercial necessity required change, not merely from a financial viewpoint, but also a practical one. If a business can be sold on, the relevant domain should also be sold on and transferred with it. If a domain is an exclusive commodity for the purposes of registration and ownership, it should also be a commodity available to trade, when necessary or desirable to do so.

A Huge Step in the Right Direction

From June 1, 2008, the process of transferring a .au 2LD to another party, for whatever reason, becomes a whole lot easier. This is a major development and dramatically changes the domain landscape in this country, for the better.

Yet people should be aware of certain restrictions before going out and registering every variation of the most popular phrases and whacking them up on eBay.

Quoted from the auDA website.

“Key features of the new policy are as follows:

• it will not be allowable to register a domain name for the sole purpose of resale or transfer to a third party
• registrants will not be able to transfer their domain name for the first 6 months after the initial registration (this does not apply to domain names that have been renewed or previously transferred)
• after 6 months, registrants will be able to offer their domain name for sale/transfer by any means (eg. by listing the domain name for sale on a domain brokerage website, advertising the domain name for sale in a newspaper, or contacting a prospective buyer directly)
• the new registrant must comply with normal eligibility and allocation rules
  registrant transfers will be processed by the registrar of record using a standard transfer form, and the registrar may charge a transfer fee
• parties to a transfer will be asked to disclose the sale method and price, on a voluntary and confidential basis, so that auDA may collect aggregated statistical data to improve access to market information for buyers and sellers.”

Reading the Fine Print

It is yet to be established how these restrictions are to be implemented. It would be virtually impossible to police whether people were registering domains purely for the purpose of resale. Without direct complaints that can be supported by suspicious trading behaviour, it is hard to see how auDA intends to enforce this line.

Also, the 6 month non-transfer period after registration seems arbitrary. It may be designed to prevent opportunistic registrations – although rare, a phenomenon reported in the US. This practice involves domain providers snapping up any unregistered domain names entered into their search interface, holding them at a higher price should the customer later try to register.

In Australia, such behaviour is clearly against the code of conduct and would result in major penalties. Australian domain providers cannot register domains that are not for immediate use (ie; to pass onto a customer) so the six month restriction seems designed to prevent behaviour that already has sufficient safeguards.

A six month non-transfer period may inconvenience many who negotiate deals or need to make changes with legitimate reason in the first few months. The same reasons that would necessitate a transfer after 6 months are still valid before, so there may still be frustrated domain owners out there.

It is great to see changes bringing Australia into line with similar international territories. But it is certain that the domain name landscape will continue to evolve in Australia as the needs of business and the traditions of auDA find compromise.