Developers, crisis communicators, emergency planners, GIS specialists, technology workers, project managers and helpers are uniting around the world to use their skills and Internet savvy to help the Haitian earthquake victims.
People watched the news, donated money and then asked: can I help?
As a Crisis/Technical Incident communicator for Tucows/OpenSRS, I write all the incident reports, maintenance windows and system status updates for Resellers. Using the Internet tools to quickly get messages to customers is important for our business. Every day I work with some of the best techs in the world to make that happen. Tucows is very passionate using the Internet as an agent for positive change. I joined the CrisisCommons movement because this is a chance to use “agile actions” to help others. The CrisisCommons mission is to use this groundwork to help now and for all future emergencies. This is the power of the Internet flexing its community spirit and heart.
CrisisCamp – Haiti
CrisisCommons was started in 2009. It is a grassroots organization that facilitates partnerships and maintains a network of technology volunteers to respond to specific needs in times of crisis. From this, associated CrisisCamps are created to organize people who want to volunteer their skills to help NGOs, Emergency teams and Non-profit Aid organizations. When there’s a crisis or a need for CrisisCommons to respond, they come together for action.
It has been a heady week since our first CrisisCamp Haiti conference call last week. CrisisCamps sprung up in 6 major US cities last Saturday. Since then the momentum has grown and this weekend 12 camps are planned: from Boston to London, the UK to Bogota, Columbia to Washington DC to Seattle. There are three basic types of CrisisCamp activities: development help, social media (wiki, blog, cataloging, mapping) and general helpers. People are donating their time and helping to tackle projects ranging from OpenStreetMap to Mobile Development to a Haiti Hospital Capacity Finder.
I’m organizing Toronto’s CrisisCamp Haiti. Our first kick-off meeting is Sunday, January 24th, 2010. If you live in Toronto and want to help, please join us. Over at Butterscotch, our sister company, Michael E. Callaghan is contributing screencasts for CrisisCamp.
Our friends and hosting company partners joined together to create Hosting For Haiti. They are working with the American Red Cross to provide support, which may include mobilizing relief workers, sending relief supplies, and providing financial resources for recovery. You guys rock!
If there is no CrisisCamp event planned in your city or country but you want to get involved, you can contact CrisisCommons. I am also available to get you get rolling: Heather AT opensrs.com. If you know someone who would like to lend a hand, please spread the word.
We are proud to announce that OpenSRS is sponsoring the 2010 series of THE WHIR (The Web Hosting Industry Review) Web Hosting Industry Networking Events. This is our second year of involvement.
What is a WHIR Networking Event?
What a great opportunity to meet our Resellers, peers and new friends in a social setting! The WHIR created videos in each of the cities during the 2009 season. As you can see, the events provide a casual environment to enjoy some food and drinks, and network with other folks in the web hosting and domains industry. The WHIR did a fantastic job organizing these events and we are really looking forward to building on this success.
We’ll send you personal invitations for events in your area. If you are located or traveling to the these events, please join us. Representatives from our Sales and Product Management teams regularly attend. Feel free to contact us to arrange meetings.
Masterhost is one of the largest Russian webhosts and an OpenSRS Reseller. We are fortunate to have Alexander Ovchinnikov, COO, join us to talk about Masterhost and the Russian Internet industry.
1.The services you provide are diverse from hosting to domains. Tell us more about what you offer your customers.
Masterhost has been successfully operating since 1999, which means this winter we are celebrating our 10th anniversary. The services we offer include: virtual hosting on unix and windows, including the provisioning of Virtual Private Servers (VPS), offering dedicated servers in Russian and European data centers, and the registration of domain names. We are also accredited Registrar for the TLDs .ru, .su, .рф (IDN). We’re especially proud to be the 2008 winner of the 2008 RUnet Prize award in the category of “Technology and Innovation”. RUnet award was established in 2004 and is a national award in the field of high technology and the Internet, to encourage outstanding achievements and companies – leaders in the field of information technology and electronic communications.
Masterhost is the leading company in Russia confirmed by an independent market hosting statistics on placement of domain names on the servers hosting provider. By the number of supported active sites, Masterhost is among the third largest hosting providers in Eastern and Central Europe (Netcraft, 2007) with more than 150, 000 domains.
Our VIP clients (approximately 55,000 in total) include the largest and very-well known Russian businesses including TV channels, news agencies, popular portals, Russian MSN Weather, AD networks, entertainment web-sizes, newspapers, telco web-sites, travel web-sites. We aspire to be an innovative knowledge company by providing free hosting projects in the field of education and educational programs for the non-profit educational web project. This project is in collaboration with Microsoft.
2. The Russian market is growing. Can you tell us more about RUnet (Russian Internet) and your locations (Moscow and St-Petersburg).
RUnet is a description for Russia’s national Internet presence. The .RU domain is among the top 20 country-code top-level domains with one of the highest rates of growth over the past five years. (approximately 2,494 835 registered .RU domains). Masterhost has more than 150 000 .RU domains, which is about 11.5% of the total market share.
It’s estimated that the number of RUnet Internet users will increase by approximately 34% in 2009. This is determined by factors such as interest and demand of the population to gain access to the web. There is an active development of the Russian market with various service providers and services (Internet service, broadband, and hosting providers). Internet access is mainly concentrated in Moscow (68%) and St. Petersburg (10%). The remaining 22% is in other regions including major cities such as Novosibirsk, Krasnodar, Ekaterinburg, etc. Masterhost is actively promoting its services these regions.
3. How did Masterhost grow as an Internet business?
The company was formed in 1999. In the early days of its existence, the company’s management had a primary goal of not expanding too fast, but rather to accumulate the work experience and build a solid team of professionals. The company’s management made every effort to ensure the proper level of service was built to provide the required level of quality. Masterhost employees over 150 highly skilled specialists who focus on quick and effective solutions to any problems faced by our customers. Their approach to work is crucial to our success. All of this allows our company to be an absolute leader in Russia’s market hosting.
4. How long have you been an OpenSRS Reseller and how has your partnership with OpenSRS helped your company succeed?
For our clients, we carry out all necessary procedures for the registration of domain names in the most popular domain zones in Russia and the world. We have been working with OpenSRS since 2005. To date, through your company, we register or renew in the order of 250 domains per month in such areas as: .com, .net, .org, .info , .mobi, .eu, .co.uk, .org.uk, .biz , .cc, .tv , .me and .name.
5. What do you think about the growth of new ccTLDs?
Unique domain names are a scarce resource in the 21st century yet required for virtually any business. Many ccTLDs are now open for international business. ccTLDs don’t really increase without major geopolitical changes. There are other options.
Happy Holidays from the OpenSRS team. Most of our offices will be closed from the afternoon of December 24, 2009 through the morning of January 3, 2010. Our Technical Support team continues to be available 24/7 to assist you.
photo by Frank Lemire, Technical Support Team Lead
Here are the hours by department:
Department
Dates and Hours
Technical Support
Regular hours
Payments
Closed December 25th and January 1st
Compliance
Closed Dec. 24 – Jan. 3 inclusive
Service Bureau
Closed Dec. 24 – Jan. 3 inclusive
Please note that during this closure, there will be:
No orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: (.at, .fr, .nl, .ch, .li, .it, .dk, .com.mx)
No special processing for .ca (registrant transfers, conflicting and municipal registrations) or .eu/.be (redemptions).
We are looking forward to working with you in the new decade. Happy Holidays to you, your business colleagues and your families.
.TEL is unlike any other TLD. Telnic, the registry provider for .TEL, provides a unique alternative offering for your customers to create and organize their communication profiles and keywords.
With .tel, you can:
Bring all your communications under one name
Control how people reach you, directly from your phone or computer
Increase your search engine rankings
Get found online without spending on creating, hosting, or maintaining a website
It uses DNS as a data store rather than the traditional method of TLDs mapping DNS to websites.
Over 50% of small businesses in the US don’t have a website, but they all want to be found online. A .tel domain offers a solution as a lightweight online presence that doesn’t require technical skills or extensive funds. For those businesses that have a website already, .tel is a mobile-optimized site and a way to promote other online resources and improve SEO rankings through back links. A .tel domain easily integrates into normal websites as a contact-us page, so when a business moves or changes phone numbers, their clients can still find them with an easily-updated .tel page.
.TEL won Best Domain Name TV Commercial in the nametalent.com Domain Name awards with this video:
Quick Links:
Telnic is the registry provider of this sTLD (Sponsored TLD)
Telnic began the process for .TEL in 2000. .TEL has been fully available since March 24, 2009.
Editor’s note: OpenSRS offers 25 different top-level domains (TLDs) for our resellers. This is the 17th post in a series intended to share information about the wide range of TLDs and to introduce you to some of the available resources that the various Registries provide.
Video content is the future: “If it moves, put it on .tv.” The .tv registry provider is VeriSign. They just relaunched the ccTLD with great tools to help you and your customers. The numbers speak volumes: every minute 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. In the US, 80% of Internet users watch online video at least once a month. We are a culture embracing online media.
.tv is the preferred destination for video, film, animation, user-generated content and playable media of all kinds. It’s also a great choice for product demonstrations, how-to videos, keynote addresses, plus training and educational content. Whether you are in the business of creating videos or just use videos in support of your business, a .tv domain name is the natural place for your video content to live. Some of the most prominent .tv sites on the web include: Leo Leporte’s twit.tv, justin.tv, ustream.tv and blip.tv.
When you sign up for the .tv promo (until December 31, 2009), we’ll give you a complete package of .tv marketing materials (.tv logo, icons, animated banner ads and email templates).
Editor’s note: OpenSRS offers 25 different top-level domains (TLDs) for our resellers. This is the 16th post in a series intended to share information about the wide range of TLDs and to introduce you to some of the available resources that the various Registries provide.
Change management is all about ensuring the stability of our services. In the last year, we made significant improvements to our Change Management processes.
In part one of the series, A.J. Mirani, Manager, Technical Operations, talked about how we analyze changes and manage risk. Creating categories for changes and risk is only part of a solid change management process. In part two, A.J. provides more context to the life-cycle of a change request:
Stay tuned for more videos about the Technical teams at OpenSRS. Also, if you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to hear more about, let us know.
Editor’s note: In this Meet OpenSRS series we will talk to people from our Technical Support, NOC (Network Operations Center), Ops (Technical Operations), Security and Development teams. We know you count on us to give you high levels of service, so that you can manage your businesses. Our goal is to give you an inside view into how we support and maintain your OpenSRS services.
We’re accountable to you to provide stable, reliable services. To meet that goal our Technical teams have made significant improvements to our Change Management processes.
In our last video, A.J. Mirani, Manager of Technical Operations, provided us with a brief overview of the Technical Operations team. He joins again with two videos explaining the OpenSRS/Tucows Change Management processes.
In this first part, A.J. talks about how we analyze changes and manage risk using our version of ITIL/ITSM: (5 minute video)
Next week, we’ll post part 2 of our conversation on Change Management.
Editor’s note: In this Meet OpenSRS series we will talk to people from our Technical Support, NOC (Network Operations Center), Ops (Technical Operations), Security and Development teams. We know you count on us to give you high levels of service, so that you can manage your businesses. Our goal is to give you an inside view into how we support and maintain your OpenSRS services.
With a renewal rate of 74% and an annual growth rate of 20%, .CA serves value for your Canadian domains customers. The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) operates the .CA domain.
Disponible en Français au-dessous
Started in 1988, Growing Strong
The first .CA domain name was upei.ca, registered in 1988 by the University of Prince Edward Island. Back then, .CA was run by a group of volunteers at the University of British Columbia. In 2000, control of .CA was transferred to CIRA, a non-profit corporation that manages the .CA domain space on behalf of all Canadians.
.CA Today
With over 1.2 million .CA domains in existence today, .CA easily ranks in the top 20 of ccTLDs worldwide. According to CIRA, more than 400,000 times every minute someone initiates an action online that involves a .ca domain name. CIRA has a new campaign to help Resellers leverage this activity. It’s called “Get my Own .CA” and features great Canadian small businesses and organizations such as Midnight Poutine and Blade Tape (hockey stick tape). CIRA has targeted the small business market with ads appearing in Marketing Magazine, The Globe and Mail, CBC.ca and Yahoo Canada.
Why .CA? CIRA’s Annual Report has more statistics to help your customers when they consider .CA:
70% wanted to show their site was Canadian
60% of Canadians prefer .CA for online shopping
35% use their .CA for personal use
64% use their .CA companies/organizations
Adam Eisner, Director, Domain Services for OpenSRS on .CA and the Canadian Market:
Quick Facts:
The .CA registry is CIRA, a not-for-profit corporation
Editor’s note: OpenSRS offers 25 different top-level domains (TLDs) for our resellers. This is the 15th post in a series intended to share information about the wide range of TLDs and to introduce you to some of the available resources that the various Registries provide.
Avec des renouvelements de 74% et une croissance annuelle de 20%, point-ca offre vos clients une aubaine. L’Autorité canadienne pour les enregistrements internet (ACEI) est le registre des noms de domaine .CA. En opération depuis une vingtaine d’années, le ccTLD .CA gère au-delà de 1,2 millions de noms de domaine:
Au moins 400,000 opérations chaque minute passent au cours de domaines point-ca. L’ACEI a récemment lancé « Get My Own .CA » , un projet démontrant des entreprises et organisations canadiennes, entre autres Midnight Poutine et Blade Tape. l’ACEI cible les petites entreprises avec ses annonces dans Marketing Magazine, Globeandmail.com, cbc.ca et Yahoo.ca.
Pourquoi point-ca? Le rapport annuel de l’ACEI pour 2009 offre quelques renseignements pour vos clients:
70% désire montrer aux visiteurs qu’il s’agit d’un site Web canadien
60% de canadiens préfèrent les domaines point-ca pour la commerce électronique
35% utilise point-ca pour tâches personelles
64% utilise point-ca pour compagnies ou organisations
Adam Eisner, Directeur de Domaines, au sujet de point-ca et le marché canadien:
Données:
Le registre point-ca est l’ACEI, un société du secteur privé à but non lucratif
Créé in 1987 par des bénévoles de l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique et ouvert au publique en Décembre 2000
Point-ca, un ccTLD, gè au-delá de 1,2 million domaines
Note de l’Éditeur: OpenSRS offre 25 domaines de tête (TLDs) à nos clients. Vous lizes l’article quinze dans une série visée a enseigner au sujet de les nombreux domaines de tête et partager les resources qu’offrent divers registres.
Special thanks to Ben Zanin, Senior NOC Analyst, OpenSRS for providing his translation assistance.
Canadian Thanksgiving is Monday, October 12th, 2009. Our corporate offices will be closed for annual harvest activities like jumping into piles of leaves and eating pie. Our Technical Support team will remain available. If you are celebrating, enjoy your feast. We’ll be back in full force on Tuesday, October 13, 2009.
