May 9, 2012 — Cloud infrastructure as a service provider CloudSigma announced at Interop Las Vegas on Tuesday it has launched SigSTORE, a SLA-backed distributed SSD storage solution, for its public cloud IaaS offering.

May 9, 2012 — Web hosting provider Rackspace announced its first quarter results in an earnings call on Monday afternoon, and while analysts were disappointed with the results, it is clear that Rackspace is banking on its cloud investments like OpenStack to ramp up future revenues.

ICANN is targeting 22 May as the intended reopening date for the TLD Application System. ICANN anticipates the system remaining open for five business days and close on 30 May. This takes account of the 28 May Memorial Day holiday in the United States. ICANN took TAS offline on 12 April days before it was scheduled to close following a technical glitch that may have allowed some users to see some file names and user names of other users. To date ICANN has seen no evidence that any TAS user intentionally did anything wrong in order to be able to see other users’ information. In the latest announcement by Akram Atallah , ICANN’s COO, it is noted the large majority of users are unaffected by the glitch. But ICANN will continue to review the extensive database of system logs and system traffic, and any new and relevant information that emerges from this analysis will be shared with applicants in a timely way. Even as late as yesterday, 7 May 2012, ICANN’s packet-level research uncovered a new set of instances (in addition to those previously announced) where another applicant might have viewed a set of system-generated file names. It is possible that further analysis will also show that some of the parties that we have notified were not affected, but notice was provided out of an abundance of caution. It is expected there will be over 2300 applications for TLDs by the time applications close. While no date has been given for when applications will be revealed, given ICANN’s original timeframe of 18 days from applications close to the “big reveal”, it would be expected that the TLDs applied for will be revealed sometime around 18 June or shortly thereafter. And given the ICANN meeting in Prague commences on 24 June, it could even happen then.

Publishing house HUB Uitgevers has appointed SIDN, the registry for .NL, to provide back-end registry services for the new top-level domain (TLD) .AMSTERDAM. Amsterdam’s municipal authority asked HUB Uitgevers to operate the Dutch capital’s TLD after careful market research. The expectation is that the new TLD will come on line in 2013. Pre-registration is possible at puntamsterdam.nl and dotamsterdam.nl from 7 May. “Naturally we are very pleased that Amsterdam and HUB have chosen SIDN to handle the technical realisation of .AMSTERDAM,” said Roelof Meijer, SIDN’s CEO. “With nearly five million registered .NL domain names, we have vast experience with all aspects of domain name registration. We expect new TLDs such as .AMSTERDAM to change the internet landscape. Clearly, therefore, we want to be involved in this development.”

May 8, 2012 — Web hosting provider Connectria announced on Tuesday that it will expand in Dallas through a CyrusOne data center.

May 8, 2012 — The shared hosting market hasn’t been a hot topic in the hosting business for years. But while other areas have seen more rapid growth, the shared market is still out there, still consistently producing revenue for a large number of hosting providers.

The capital of The Netherlands has begun an outreach programme to get potential applicants interested in registering their preferred domains. The website, puntamsterdam.nl , says sales of .AMSTERDAM domains will commence at the end of the year, which may be being quite hopeful, especially as it is quite likely ICANN will not have approved even half of the new gTLD applications. No information is given as to whether domains will be sold through registrars, or directly through the registry. But should you want to be kept informed of when the .AMSTERDAM domain you are interested in becomes available, you can register at dotamsterdam.nl .

ICANN has offered a full refund of application fees for any gTLD applicant that wishes to withdraw its application prior to publication of the list of applied-for new top level domains. The announcement comes about following a resolution authorising full refunds that was adopted during a Board of Directors workshop in Amsterdam on Sunday, 6 May 2012 and was announced in the latest update from Akram Atallah, ICANN’s COO . The announcement notes that ICANN recognises this represents an increase of only $5000 over the refund that withdrawing applicants would otherwise receive, but that the organisation believes it is an important part of fulfilling our commitment to treat applicants fairly. However after going through the detailed and lengthy application process, it would be unlikely many, if any, applicants would take up ICANN’s offer. There were 2091 applications for new gTLDs in the TLD Application System when ICANN took the TAS offline on 12 April following a security glitch. From these applications, the organisation had received around US$350m in application fees. In addition, there were 214 potential applications that were registered prior to the 29 March cut-off date, but whose payments have not yet been received or reconciled. Last week ICANN also confirmed they are in the process of notifying applicants whether they were affected by the software glitch, and that they plan to complete this process on or before Tuesday, 8 May. Shortly after that process is complete, they will announce the schedule for reopening TAS and completing the application period. Once the system is reopened, it will keep it open for at least five business days.

Businesses must be established within the European Union to enable them to register their trademarks as .EU domain names, a legal advisor to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said. The case came about after an American eyewear company, that uses the domain name lensworld.com, wanted to register a .EU domain name, but their trademark was not established in EU. The company, Walsh Optical, hired the Belgian intellectual property consulting firm Bureau Gevers to register the domain lensworld.eu. However the Belgian eyewear maker Pie Optik, who uses the domain name lensworld.be, complained, after attempting to register lensworld.eu in January 2006, around a month after Bureau Gevers applied for the .EU domain on the day .EU domains became available. “Only undertakings and organisations which are themselves established in the EU may request a .eu domain name,” the Advocate General Verica Trstenjak said, according to a statement from the Court as reported by Out-Law . “The .EU Top Level Domain is intended to provide a clearly identified link with the EU, the associated legal framework, and the European market place. It should enable undertakings, organisations and natural persons within the EU to register in a specific domain which will make this link obvious.” “Against that background, a non-resident undertaking cannot be allowed to circumvent the rules on eligibility by obtaining registration of a .eu domain name by means of a legal construction such as the commissioning of a third party organisation that is established in the European Union and thus an eligible party,” the advisor said. Out-Law goes on to report “Advocate General Trstenjak said that Walsh Optical’s so-called ‘licence agreement’ with Bureau Gevers was in reality ‘a contract for the provision of services’. Therefore the Belgian consultancy could not be considered a ‘licencee eligible’ to benefit from the priority rights given to it when it had applied, and been granted, rights for ‘lensworld.eu’ on behalf of Walsh Optical, she said.” To register your .EU domain name, check out Europe Registry here .

In the year’s second biggest sale (the largest was personalloans.com selling for $1 million), jackpot.com topped the Domain Name Journal weekly sales chart in the week to 29 April with a big $500,000 sale through Moniker. The sale easily eclipsed second placegetter movies.xxx, which sold for $90,000 through the .XXX registry ICM Registry. It appears that movies.xxx was the fourth largest reported .XXX sale to date, behind gay.xxx ($500,000), toys.xxx ($125,000) and xxxbook.xxx ($100,000) and just pipping footfetish.xxx ($89,000). Third on the weekly list was wirelessphones.com, selling for $70,000 through DomainHoldings/AfternicDLS. The week was another quiet week for Sedo at the top of the charts, which previously appeared to average a dozen or so sales in the top 20. However in recent weeks it has regularly been pushed down to below ten of the top 20. Its top sale in the week to 29 April was hike.in, selling for £20,000 ($32,000). Overall AfternicDLS equalled Sedo with six sales, including the wirelessphones.com sale with DomainHoldings, which itself was involved in five of the top 20 sales, including one with Moniker. However .COM held up its end to maintain some sense of normalcy in the sales chart, accounting for 16 of the top 20 sales. In addition to one .XXX sale there were three ccTLD sales during the week. To check out the Domain Name Journal list of top reported domain name sales for the week to 29 April, see dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2012/20120425.htm .