Internet domain registrars began selling .co domain names on Tuesday, and some of the 11 virtual-real-estate sellers report seeing plenty of demand.

Most domain retailers are selling this first batch of .co names for about $30 per year. Dot-com domains generally go for $10 or so, but the list of memorable .com’s is ever-dwindling.

Major U.S. vendors of Internet land, including Go Daddy in Scottsdale, Ariz., and 1&1 Internet in Philadelphia, are advertising .co’s prominently on their home pages. Australia’s Melbourne IT reports on its Twitter page “a massive success with .co with most customers getting their choice of .co domain name.”

Twitter, the San Francisco company, was among the earliest adopters with T.co, which the company is using for its URL shortening service similar to Bit.ly. Twitter took possession of that Web address before .co names were being widely sold.

Other companies are less enthusiastic about the new Internet subset. Some feel compelled to pay high prices to secure their brand names from domain squatters looking to capitalize on an opportunity.

“.CO domain is yet another reason to be screwed by domain squatters,” read a tweet by Ben Huh, the chief executive of the Cheezburger Network of blogs that includes Fail Blog and the site that launched the Lolcat phenomenon.

Online retailer Overstock.com said it paid $350,000 for O.co and “related URLs.”

— Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

You can now begin accepting Pre-orders for the .CO General Availability period!

The prices for all Registrations during the General Availability period will be Rs.1399.00 per year !

Please Note: Pre-orders are being offered on a first-come, first-serve basis. We will not accept multiple orders for the same Domain Name.

Important Details:

– General Availability Pre-orders can be placed from the 16th of July,2010
– There are NO non-refundable fees applicable to Pre-orders or regular Registrations during the General Availability period.
– You will only be charged Rs.1399.00 only if your Registration is successfully executed post the 20th of July, 2010
– General Availability Pre-orders and Registrations are offered on a first-come, first serve basis.
– There are no restrictions on who can Register .CO Domains during the General Availability period.

A draft policy framework and guidelines have been drawn up to prepare the ground for the full-fledged use of domain names (website addresses) in Indian languages, possibly by year-end or later.

The guidelines and policy, prepared by the Department of Information Technology in consultation with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), may be subject to changes before they are put in place.

Hindi is expected be the first Indian language to be made part of the new Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) system. The IDN was launched in November 2009 by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the global body that oversees the operation of the domain name or website address system.

The IDN regime, launched after years of discussion and preparation, marked the biggest change since the core protocol governing the Internet address system came into being, making it possible for users of languages with non-Latin scripts to use them in web-addresses.

As the first step, the ICANN has been permitting the introduction of a limited number of internationalised country-code top level domain names — website addresses in different languages ending with the name of the respective countries (For instance, the part that ends with a .com, .org or .edu).

The ICANN has put in place a “fast track” system, under which certain requirements will have to be fulfilled by individual countries before making their language systems operational.

The Devanagari script-based languages (Marathi, Hindi, Konkani, Sanskrit and Nepali), Gujarati, Oriya, Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Assamese and Bangla will be included in the new language dispensation in phases. It will eventually cover all 22 official languages, including those using Perso-Arabic scripts such as Urdu, Sindhi and Kashmiri.

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December 17, 2009 — VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world, today announced, effective July 1, 2010, an increase in registry domain name fees for .com and .net, per its agreements with ICANN.

As the economy and society becomes increasingly dependent on digital technology, it is imperative that investment in the underlying infrastructure, including .com and .net, continue to keep pace with the robust growth of the Internet and ensure its continued security and reliability. Over the last decade, the volume of Internet traffic and domain name system (DNS) queries on VeriSign’s global infrastructure has increased from an average of approximately 2 billion queries per day in the year 2000 to more than 50 billion queries per day today while maintaining 100 percent operational accuracy and stability for the last eleven years.

Over the next decade, VeriSign will continue investment to build out the .com and .net infrastructures to manage the increasing demands on the infrastructure brought on by the proliferation of Internet-enabled phones and devices and the emergence of DNS-centric technologies and services. VeriSign also continues to scale and fortify the .com and .net infrastructures globally to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.

About VeriSign

VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) is the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world. Billions of times each day, VeriSign helps companies and consumers all over the world engage in communications and commerce with confidence. Additional news and information about the company is available at www.verisign.com.

Trademarks

VeriSign, and other trademarks, service marks, and logos are registered or unregistered trademarks of VeriSign and its subsidiaries in the United States and in foreign countries.

The launch plan for the .CO domain name extension has been announced. .CO domains will be available through a select list of accredited partners.

A global Sunrise will take place from April 26 through June 10, allowing eligible trademark holders the right to apply for the .CO domain names corresponding to their marks before registration is open to the general public.

Landrush will occur from June 21 through July 13, and will be open to anyone interested in registering certain high priority domain names. General availability will begin on July 20, opening the .CO domain for registrations on a first-come, first-served basis around the world.

Watch Out this space !

aalpha NET will start accepting Pre-registrations of .CO domains from 15th june 2010 !

Check : http://control.aalphanet.com