ICANN's AGM will be held in Montreal, Canada in November. It's the time of the year when several posts on committees, councils and boards are rotated, but a lot of the decisions about who will take on the various roles are made well in advance. Yesterday evening the ICANN Board announced who the new Chair would be and it's Maarten Botterman. He'll be joined by León Felipe … [Read more...] about ICANN Announces Incoming Board Chair
More Mergers in European Hosting & Domain Market
As the hosting and domain name space becomes mature there will inevitably be an uptick in mergers and acquisitions. In recent years we've seen GoDaddy acquire multiple companies to strengthen its hold on the European market, while UK based Centralnic has more recently been acquiring companies across the globe. Personally I predicted that this uptick in M & A activity … [Read more...] about More Mergers in European Hosting & Domain Market
Help Shape the Middle East DNS Forum
The Middle East DNS Forum has been held annually for the last 6 years. As the name would suggest, the event is focussed on domains and DNS related topics with an emphasis on topics of relevance to stakeholders in the Middle East. In common with most events of its kind there is a program committee that works behind the scenes to put the schedule for the event together. … [Read more...] about Help Shape the Middle East DNS Forum
IPv4 in Europe is Pretty Much Exhausted
IP addresses are probably not a topic that will excite the average internet user, but without them you wouldn't be able to navigate the internet or read an email or watch a cat video. Most internet users are still using IPv4 to access the internet and due to the way that system was designed it's got limitations ie. there is a finite number of IPv4 addresses that can ever be … [Read more...] about IPv4 in Europe is Pretty Much Exhausted
Check the new “Whois” From Your Mobile
Whois is being deprecated in favour of a more modern technology. The new solution for handling domain name registration data is called RDAP (Registration Data Access Protocol) and it is designed for machines to read and handle. It's not meant for direct human consumption. While some web browsers might be able to display the RDAP output in a human readable format many can't … [Read more...] about Check the new “Whois” From Your Mobile
ICANN’s Technical Team Hiring in Uruguay
ICANN's "Office of the CTO", which of course ends up being called "OCTO", does quite a bit of technical outreach around the world. They've recently announced that they are expanding the team in the Latin American and Caribbean region. The new role will be based out of ICANN's office in Uruguay, though I'd suspect that whoever gets the gig will end up spending a lot of their … [Read more...] about ICANN’s Technical Team Hiring in Uruguay
ICANN Pitching Panel for SXSW
ICANN's North American team, in conjunction with Access Now and ISOC, is trying to put together a panel for South by Southwest (SXSW) which is being held in Austin, Texas next March. The panel session being proposed is entitled: "Can we save the global internet?", which is, I suspect, intentionally provocative: Expansion of the Internet has slowed. And the next billion … [Read more...] about ICANN Pitching Panel for SXSW
WordPress Buying Tumblr
Tumblr is to be acquired by Wordpress' parent company Automattic. Yahoo! bought Tumblr in 2013 for $1 billion dollars, whereas reports are citing numbers below $3 million for the latest sale! Yes, that's "million". The blogging service makes a logical choice for Automattic who already own a growing number of companies serving the blogging space, as well as the .blog … [Read more...] about WordPress Buying Tumblr
AFRINIC Hiring Head Honcho
AFRINIC is one of the five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). In very simple terms it looks after the IP address allocations for the Africa region, while RIPE does Europe and the Middle East, ARIN handles North America, LACNIC Latin America and APNIC does Asia Pacific. However the role of an RIR within the broader internet eco system is often a lot bigger than simply … [Read more...] about AFRINIC Hiring Head Honcho
Centralnic Swallows IWantMyName
Centralnic has been on an acquisition trail for the last couple of years and has been happily gobbling up as much as possible. Earlier today it was announced that they've just acquired New Zealand based IWantMyName (Ideegeo). The deal is valued at £2.75 million and it looks like it's already closed, as the IWantMyName site is already sporting a Centralnic logo. So who … [Read more...] about Centralnic Swallows IWantMyName