iWantMyName Domain Blog

100+ Shockingly Short .IO Domain Names Available Today At 20% OFF!

2012-05-18T04:45:14Z

These goodies will go fast, so without further ado, here are the few remaining (letter-only) two-character .io domains:

ah.io, ay.io, bq.io, dv.io, ej.io, ew.io, fh.io, fq.io, ft.io, fv.io, gj.io, gx.io, gz.io, hc.io, hf.io, hj.io, hv.io, iu.io, iy.io, ji.io, ju.io, jv.io, jw.io, jy.io, kc.io, kf.io, kq.io, ku.io, ld.io, lh.io, lj.io, lq.io, lw.io, lz.io, nm.io, oa.io, oj.io, oq.io, oz.io, pq.io, pz.io, qd.io, qf.io, qg.io, qh.io, qj.io, qk.io, qm.io, qt.io, qy.io, rj.io, rl.io, rn.io, rq.io, ry.io, ue.io, uf.io, uj.io, ul.io, uo.io, uq.io, uw.io, vl.io, vq.io, wa.io, wd.io, wj.io, wl.io, wn.io, wt.io, wv.io, wz.io, xb.io, xf.io, xg.io, xh.io, xj.io, xk.io, xu.io, xv.io, xw.io, yb.io, ye.io, yf.io, yg.io, yh.io, yi.io, yj.io, yk.io, yl.io, yp.io, yq.io, yr.io, yv.io, yw.io, zc.io, zf.io, zg.io, zj.io, zl.io, zn.io, zp.io, zq.io, zr.io, zs.io, zv.io

Personal Domains Anchor Creative Customization

2012-05-16T05:00:00Z

It is always exciting to see domain names released into the wild and being put to good use. We've noticed that there is a burgeoning community of artists, designers and makers promoting their pet projects on the web these days. There's also a growing number of attractively designed hosted services like Cargo, Tumblr and 500px that make it really easy to create and domain customize an attractive art portfolio.

Here are some great examples of creative showcases. Reclaiming Value is a U.S. based site that sharpens our imagination by exposing the simplicity and beauty inherent within tastefully recycled objects. Anais Gato is a freelance graphic designer from Barcelona who attracts new projects from all over Europe by posting examples of previous assignments on her Cargo Collective site. Tessa Fox is a talented photo-journalist who covers the film and music scenes in both U.K. and Australia.

The resurgence of interest in design and creativity is certainly happening at grassroots level, but the Internet is at the heart of a much broader cultural and creative shift taking place that will have global implications. For example, respected and influential media such as The Economist and Wired regularly publish articles talking about the coming revolution in distributed and additive manufacturing. It's clear now that prophetic companies like Ponoko were onto something big when they got into remote 3D manufacturing and began building an online community of designers and makers.

iWantMyName makes it easy to domain customize your creative portfolio with a one-click DNS set-up on your domain. For more information or assistance with handling your domain set-up, please feel free to contact us.

.UK Available For 1 Year, .IO 2-Letter Domains & May Promotions

2012-05-04T01:54:27Z

The British registry Nominet recently reduced the minimum registration period for all .UK domain extensions (.co.uk, .me.uk and .org.uk) to one year. As of today, any .UK domain purchase at iWantMyName will reflect this change and domains will be registered for one year only. The registration period of existing domains is not affected but subsequent renewals will occur on a yearly basis.

More good news for fans of short domain names! We now support two-letter .IO domains for customized URL shortening or your next website or app. These super short web addresses are available at only $79.00 USD in the first year.

Other currently running promotions this month are:

$12.00 .INFO domains
$19.00 .ME domains
$49.00 .EC domains
$85.00 .FM domains

We also still offer great discounts on domain transfers which also apply if you want to use our free managed transfer service.

Happy Birthday dotFM

2012-04-30T05:00:00Z

A raft of new top level domains may be on the way soon, but the dotFM registry was amongst the first to promote a country code domain (ccTLD) for wider commercial use. Fifteen years along the track, our domain DJ charts the progress of this ground-breaking registry.

The .FM domain originated as a ccTLD allocated to the tiny Pacific Island chain of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), a self-governing state formerly under United States stewardship until independence in 1986. Being small and highly dispersed and with a population of just over 100,000 there was quite limited local demand for the domain, so a plan was devised whereby San Francisco based BRS Media would market .FM to the global online media industry.

The domain obviously offers the perfect home for anyone involved with Internet radio; but .FM has also been adopted widely by businesses and individuals from across the broader media, entertainment and music industry. Included amongst the more notable users are music recommendation sites Last FM, BlipFM and Turntable FM as well as popular regional radio channels such as Jazz FM. Newly launched Official FM is the latest aspirant with its attractive offering being featured in TechCrunch recently. With hundreds of millions of Internet radio listeners tuning in globally, BRS are now also pitching to deliver .RADIO, one of the first new TLDs off the block.

iWantMyName is promoting .FM domains at a special price of $85.00 this month.

Eyebrows Raised As CISPA Rolls Forward

2012-04-27T00:53:23Z

Internet commentators were in a flap today and tech forums abuzz as it was revealed the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of the CISPA Act. Seems like there is no let up in the barrage of legislation designed to afford greater "protection" for individuals and corporations that use or abuse the Internet.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act ostensibly facilitates the voluntary sharing of information between U.S. government agencies and private companies to defend against external attacks on networks. It amends some tired laws that date back over sixty years in some cases. Whilst most people agree that the cyber threats mentioned in the bill do exist, there is disagreement over whether such legislation would be effective at all. Critics of the bill also worry that it legalizes information sharing that could impact on privacy, under the guise of ensuring security.

President Obama is reportedly unimpressed by the current version of CISPA as well and alluded to the possibility of a Presidential Veto despite the fact some of the most intrusive aspects of the bill were toned down considerably before it was approved. A few original supporters of the bill were left in a quandry as they struggled to balance privacy concerns against the very real need to mitigate against cyber attacks.

How far the bill actually proceeds is still uncertain; but after last year's SOPA debacle it once again raises the spectre of a hurriedly written law that has huge implications for corporations and individuals and about which most citizens have had little or no prior information. But with the Presidential election looming and other competing bills on the Senate agenda it may be a long time before CISPA sees the light of day. In the meantime voters have the opportunity to get informed about the topic.

Sharing Easter Fun Online

2012-04-05T17:00:00Z

It's Easter time. For some people this means chocolate confectionery, egg rolling and a curiously wet tradition called Dyngus Day. For others it's a time of religious reflection. However you celebrate Easter, there's sure to be fun with friends and family and probably some amusing photos and stories to tell. It's a great time to begin or update your blog or image portfolio.

Your friends may be flocking to Facebook, but let's face it, there's nothing interesting about its dull, corporate, cookie-cutter approach to online content sharing. If you want something a little more personal, there's now a wide range of hosted blog services and portfolio apps available to help you express your creativity - and we're making new additions to our App Marketplace every week.

Even better, you can easily domain customize most of these services with a single click from within the iWantMyName dashboard. Don't be left with egg on your face this weekend. Get hopping and start your own personal abode on the web.

5 New Country Codes: .PM, .RE, .TF, .WF & .YT Domains

2012-03-31T02:22:55Z

This week we have added five new country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) for you to register at iWantMyName. The domain extensions .PM (St Pierre et Miquelon), .RE (Réunion), .TF (French Southern Territories), .WF (Wallis and Futuna) and .YT (Mayotte) belong to France and are managed by AFNIC, the French registry.

.PM, .RE, .TF, .WF and .YT domains can be registered by anybody worldwide at a yearly price of $49.00 which includes the required local address in the European Union. We also offer domain transfers in these French extensions without you losing any previously paid term at your current registrar.

P.S. Need help with moving your domain names? Check out our free managed transfer service.

Care For Dynamic DNS (DDNS) Updates?

2012-03-02T04:48:24Z

Over the past few days we had some requests for a simple API that allows DNS updates for your domains from the console or from within a script. We really wanted this for a long time too so I sat down and looked around for standards already in use. The de-facto standard for these sorts of updates seems to be DDNS -- used widely by DynDNS -- which is supported by many routers out of the box.

We sat down and wrote a DDNS implementation for iWantMyName and you can use it right away. No configuration needed, no special stuff to set up, just start using it.

The call looks like this:

curl -u "[username]:[password]" \

  "https://iwantmyname.com/basicauth/ddns?hostname=[hostname1]&myip=[IP]"

There can be more than one hostname in the update call (separated by commas) and hostnames that don't exist yet will be created implicitly. Please keep in mind that DNS will be cached. In order to find out what records are currently set for your domain, just ask our nameservers directly:

dig @ns1.iwantmyname.net [hostname]

This will return the current DNS settings for the hostname that our authoritative nameservers have. If you want to check the IP addresses various resolvers around the world know of, try the following DNS check tool.

[UPDATE]

Thanks to feedback from our users we made our DDNS service even more useful. The "myip" parameter is now optional and gets automagically filled with the remote IP if not provided. This makes it even easier if you use this with a dynamic address as you can skip the step where you try to figure out your own address.

.CO Domain - What Will You Build?

2012-02-28T22:00:00Z

The .CO domain launched at the end of 2009 and after only 18 months had already built a customer base of over 1 million registrations. That's astounding growth by any standard. But it's not all one way traffic for the perky upstart. The .CO registry is firmly focused on reaching out to and supporting entrepreneurs because it wants to be the new .COM domain for business.

.CO is in fact the country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the Republic of Colombia. But the government of the South American nation handed over management of the domain to a joint venture company based in the United States. The company has backing from Neustar, one of the most experienced global registry technology providers ensuring that customers can have confidence in the security of their domain.

There is currently a great campaign underway showcasing young entrepreneurs that picked up .CO for their business domain and it tells the unique stories of how they dreamed up their .COOL idea. Those young business people are in good company. Some of the hottest technology companies in America are already using the .CO domain, including Twitter, 500 Startups and Google.

We couldn't resist joining the party too. So if you have a brilliant business idea and want to find your own fantastic .CO domain, simply hop over to our domain search page at iWantMyName.co.

Price Reduction For .CZ, .ES, .FR, .LU & .LT Domains

2012-02-27T05:19:17Z

We're constantly reviewing our top-level domain range to offer you the best domain and DNS management experience at affordable rates. Our philosophy is to reduce prices as we grow and pass on any savings we receive from registries or suppliers. That's why you can now enjoy cheaper domain registration for the following domain extensions:

.CZ domains: $35 → $30
.FR domains: $70 → $50
.ES domains: $35 → $25
.LT domains: $35 → $30
.LU domains: $45 → $40

This is a permanent price reduction for new domains and subsequent renewals.

How A Personal Website Can Boost Your Business

2012-02-23T02:32:56Z

Guest Post by Per Schmitz -- Founder of DooID:

At DooID we focus on developing an outstanding platform for simple and clean personal websites. Our aim is to help you build an effective tool that will enhance your accessibility and promote your personal brand, in a painless, easy way.

A personal website will help you to connect with clients on a very emotional level, as you don't only display the professional aspects of your life, but also give insights into who you are, your interests and visions. This emotional link will help to build trust and a deeper personal relationship with your audience. Emotions are a very subjective component of every sales process, but none the less weight heavily when taking decisions. At the same time your personal website displays all your on- and offline contact data. Unlike on a paper business card, virtually displayed contact data can easily be kept up-to-date and can showcase everything from your social media links to phone numbers.

Point people to one simple place where they can find your complete range of communication options, and can easily choose which way is the most comfortable for them to contact you. DooID allows to use your own domain name with the created personal website, which is a big advantage and adds professionalism when using your site for business purposes. A personal domain name like "yourname.me" will make your site easier to remember and look more professional.

We just teamed up with DooID to help you set up your new domain and add it to your DooID site with one click -- without any technical skills.

Photo Hosting Service 500px Increases Exposure

2012-02-15T23:00:00Z

Every so often we come across a web app that simply blows our socks off. 500px is one such. It's a portfolio offering for photographers that is jam packed full of absolutely gorgeous images. Of course we simply had to add it to our recommendation list of hosted services and it has been great to see users taking early advantage of our easy domain customization facility for 500px portfolios.

500px is a community and a meritocracy as well, so the most popular shots get featured and promoted on the site. They also upgraded their iPad App recently which is proving to be popular. The site has frequently been described as a Flickr killer, but there really is no comparison. 500px is squarely aimed at professional or more serious amateur photographers. So you won't find yourself overwhelmed by pics of kittens and cute babies. This is serious content from dedicated, creative and hard working photographers.

You can tell these guys are serious about promoting their craft. The 500px app has now been optimized to deliver a better experience across all mobile platforms and they also built a nifty plug-in that allows pros to export image files directly from Adobe Lightroom. No doubt other enhancements are in the pipeline. In the same way that Instagram is revolutionizing mobile image sharing and with a reputed 8 million plus visitors daily, 500px looks unstoppable.

New: .EC Domains From Ecuador

2012-01-30T09:03:54Z

You can now register the .EC domain extension from the Republic of Ecuador. After .CO (Colombia) and .PE (Peru), it is the third TLD (top-level domain) from the northwest of South America in our ever growing list of domains at iWantMyName.

While the .EC web address is mainly used within the country itself, registration is open for businesses, organizations and private persons worldwide. This makes .EC an attractive domain for URL shorteners or vanity domains. New registrations and transfers for the Ecudorian TLD are available at an introductory price of $79.00 USD. Get started and purchase your own .EC domain name today!

A Domain For Chinese New Year

2012-01-25T23:00:00Z

This week sees the start of the Chinese or Lunar New Year with 2012 being a "most auspicious" year of the dragon. There's no denying that China remains an economic juggernaut and despite the uncertain global economic outlook, growth is expected to exceed 8% this year. So what is the best way for companies trading there to build a secure web profile?

There are two considerations for businesses wishing to set up a web presence in China or other Chinese speaking markets. Firstly, what are safe domains to use? The .cn domain is a well established domain with over 3 million (mostly domestic) users, but which is under the strict control of the government Information Ministry. We have chosen not to offer the .cn domain at this time.

Many companies outside China however are making use of the .asia domain which is a completely independent domain that became available in 2008 and has almost 200,000 registrants around the Asia-Pacific region. Because .asia is a relatively young registry, there remains the opportunity to secure some good quality domains. Another U.S. based registry that we recommend is the cn.com domain which we are currently offering at a huge discount.

The second consideration is language. Internationalized domain names (IDN) have arrived and you can now have your favorite domain in non-Latin scripts - example 幸运的红龙.com. IDNs are available across a limited (but growing) number of the most popular registries. If you have a non-English brand name that you wish to promote, this is a great way to go.

Blackout Sheds Light On SOPA Madness

2012-01-18T03:24:38Z

Led by major Internet sites such as Reddit and Wikipedia, January 18th is now shaping up as a major online protest event aimed at raising public awareness regarding the highly controversial Stop Online Piracy (SOPA) bill that is before the U.S. congress at present.

Enacting SOPA in its current form will undoubtedly have major implications for Internet companies globally. It could also potentially crush freedom and innovation on the Web through draconian measures designed to promote a "shoot first, ask questions later" approach to addressing content piracy. That is why we recently invited domain owners to Make A Move For Good away from fat cat companies that were backing SOPA.

The consumer backlash against SOPA stopped some of its corporate sponsors dead in their tracks, proving that Internet activism really can make a difference. But the war is not yet won. In fact it is feared that supporters of the bill such as media dinosaur Rupert Murdoch and his powerful friends in the motion picture industry are scrambling to mount an orchestrated counter-attack. It is important to show that we don't want an Internet censored by governments at the behest of corporate lobbyists.

You can show your support for the blackout in many ways. Firstly (and most importantly) blog about it and share opinions and discussion widely through social media as well as offline. Secondly, you may wish to add an image to your site supporting the protest. Our friends over at web optimizer Torbit have created a nifty Javascript popup that does exactly that. Be informed and keep on fighting.