Categories
annoyances internet

Buying A Domain On A Smartphone

CatBegemot.com - Buying Domain From Smartphone Yesterday I noticed that the very first domain I ever tried to own, but never did – CatBegemot.com (it’s coming from here, if you must know. Not that I am infatuated with Woland figure, it’s just that specific character – Cat Begemot – is very appealing to me.) is actually free (as in Deleted and available again), so I decided to waste no time and grab it. Unfortunately, the place I am working from right now blocks the access to all three domain registrars I am using – GoDaddy, Moniker and NameCheap.

No problem, I said, I have a smart phone (it’s AT&T Tilt at the moment, equipped with Windows Mobile 6), so I’ll just go get it from there! Yeah, right.

Namecheap loaded fine, but refused to acknoledge my credentials. No matter how many times I reloaded web site and tried to sign on – no luck. I was thrown back to the same page requiring login and password. Sorry, Namecheap, no business for you today.

Moniker loaded fine too, even allowed me to sign into my account. Next step – check if domain is available. I never realized it until that day that every time you check for domain name Moniker checks for all the available extentions. Guess it’s an upselling technique. What threw me off was those AJAXy boxes that roll for a moment and then present you with a checkbox – empty if domain is available or filled if it is taken. Obviously, boxes never got their AJAX stuff to work, so no way to register domain there too. Moving on.

GoDaddy was the scariest place to go on my smartphone, mainly because you can hardly see any useful features behind heavy advertising. Just imagining all that mess on a tiny (comparing to 1920×1200 24″ screen I have at home) smart phone screen was giving me creeps. Nevertheless, I jumped on the task. Quite a few minutes later, when all the junk loaded over my 3G connection, I was able to log in and submit a domain search. As you might have guessed, another button was teh culprit. The Go To Checkout button happened to be powered by some AJAX or JavaScript or whatnot and simply doesn’t work on mobile version of Internet Explorer. Sorry, you loose!

It wouldn’t be me if I left the problem unresolved. A little search around turned up two unblocked providers – Joker and Name.com. While I’ve stumbled on more than one occasion of negative feedback about Joker on WHT, the Name.com sounded like a reasonable choice, so that’s where I went. The whole transaction took no more than ten minutes and ta-da! Finally, after almost 10 years of exile, the catbegemot.com is in my posession.

Categories
domains

Available Domain Names

According to Moniker, there are not that many domain names with words WebDesign before top-level zone available. Today I ran a search and here’s the list of available domain names:
WEBDESIGN.AC
WEBDESIGN.AERO
WEBDESIGN.BIZ.PL
WEBDESIGN.CLUB.TW
WEBDESIGN.COM.AG
WEBDESIGN.COM.KI
WEBDESIGN.COM.MU
WEBDESIGN.COM.NF
WEBDESIGN.COM.SC
WEBDESIGN.COM.VC
WEBDESIGN.EBIZ.TW
WEBDESIGN.GAME.TW
WEBDESIGN.GEN.IN
WEBDESIGN.IND.IN
WEBDESIGN.INFO.PL
WEBDESIGN.KI
WEBDESIGN.NET.AG
WEBDESIGN.NET.KI
WEBDESIGN.NET.MU
WEBDESIGN.NET.NF
WEBDESIGN.NET.SC
WEBDESIGN.NET.VC
WEBDESIGN.NF
WEBDESIGN.NOM.ES
WEBDESIGN.ORG.AG
WEBDESIGN.ORG.KI
WEBDESIGN.ORG.MU
WEBDESIGN.ORG.SC
WEBDESIGN.ORG.VC

As you can see, only two top level domain names left. Time to run!

Categories
domains

Network Solution Saga Continues

After numerous confirmations of scam-like business practices, Network Solution is now looking into implementing a feature that will allow users to “lock” domain for 4 days, instead of doing this for them automatically. Ironically, this feature look just awfully familiar – just like “domain tasting”. With difference being that now anyone can lock the domain without even providing their contact info. Don’t even need to set up various fake registrars to grab and drop domains for tasting, just keep searching for it.

Another bad trick here is that since domain name would appear registered – there is a very good chance squatters may snipe it right the moment it will be released. And it is already very well known what it means. Some of my clients paid pretty large sums for their trademarked name – just to get it faster then through the lawsuit.

Interesting facts:

  • In 2000 Network Solutions was purchased by Verisign for $21 billion.
  • In 2007 they were purchased for $800 million.

My take? If you have domain names at Network Solutions – move them to someone not so dangerous. GoDaddy, Moniker or NameCheap (we use all three of them) look much better.