Posts by James Koole

Effective Tuesday, February 9th, 2010, we’re implementing a new “soft-suspension” process for all users of OpenSRS Email Service. This new process is intended to mitigate the potential effects of spam sent by users of OpenSRS Email Service and to ensure good deliverability and reliable service for all users.

Full information about the change has been sent to all OpenSRS Email Service Resellers. Full details are available in the Resource Center – direct link.

What follows is the text of an open letter from our CEO, Elliot Noss.

Hello,

With great pride I note that January marks the 10th anniversary of the first domain name registered through OpenSRS.

Back in the spring and summer of 1999, we started planning for a different way to sell domain names. We had two businesses at the time, the Tucows.com software libraries and a large Toronto ISP, Internet Direct.

We knew that domain names should be simple and inexpensive to sell, and were made much too difficult and expensive by the monopoly provider. We were confident that we could fix that.

We also knew something more important. With competition coming, the companies planning to launch were simply copying the monopoly and maybe dropping the price a little. Domain names would likely be offered from $35/year!

And we recognized that registrars didn’t sell domain names, service providers did.

We took those beliefs and poured them into a service offering that launched in January of 2000. It was an immediate success.

Now ten years later, and we still have our very first customer still happily and actively selling domains through OpenSRS. The first domain we sold is still managed by OpenSRS. And we’ve grown every single year.

So much is different now than it was then. The meaning of “service provider” has changed. In 2000, what we today know as web hosts were really just evolving out of the loam, forced into existence by telcos and cablecos killing dialup ISPs through regulation. Now the whole concept of the web host is morphing into something different, and, in many ways there may be a re-integration of “ISPs” and “web hosts”.

So much is the same as it was then. People still need a personal relationship to help them get the most out of the Internet. Too many people still don’t have one. There is still a huge gap between what people CAN do on the Internet and what they are ABLE to do.

Most importantly, we still view service providers as the greatest distribution channel in the Internet economy. We care deeply about our relationships with them and embrace the ones that care deeply about their relationships with their customers. So many of you are still around TEN YEARS LATER! You should be proud. I know I am.

Thanks to all our customers, employees and partners. We hope and expect that the next ten years will be even better!

Sincerely,

Elliot Noss
CEO Tucows Inc.

It’s been a great ten years for OpenSRS, and a great ten years for the Internet as a whole. We’d love to hear from you as well! What’s your memories of the early days? How did you come to be an OpenSRS partner, and how did you come to realize success in your business? Comments are open; share your memories.

We’re big fans of WordPress here at OpenSRS, and for good reason–it offers an open source, stable and highly extensible base on which to build websites and it comes complete with an active, passionate community of users and developers.

With that in mind, we thought it would only make sense to sponsor WordCamp Toronto. The event takes place on March 27th and 28th, 2010 right here in Toronto, and promises to presentations on best practices and how-tos along with WordPress success stories, music and more.

If you’re in the Toronto area and would like to attend WordCamp, registration is open. If you’re a WordPress expert, speaking slots are available as well.

For those not in Toronto, WordCamps are held around the world throughout the year, bringing together the WordPress community in places like Indonesia, Japan, Ireland, the US and Canada. You can see the full list of WordCamp events worldwide at the official WordCamp Central.

The Board of Directors of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is currently seeking interested individuals to serve as members on its 2010 Election Nomination Committee. Applications for consideration to become a member of the Nomination Committee will be accepted from January 4 to January 22, 2010.

CIRA is the steward of the .CA domain extension in Canada. Tucows has a long history of working with CIRA on its Board of Directors, and we encourage our Resellers in Canada to take an active role in CIRA, where possible.

You can visit this CIRA Nomination Committee webpage for more information about how to apply for a position on the Nomination Committee and the eligibility requirements. Feel free to pass this information around to other people that you feel might be interested or qualified to serve in this fashion.

Over the weekend, CNNIC (the Chinese Internet Network Information Center which controls the .CN domain) made an announcement that it is implementing a new policy beginning today, December 14th, 2009, that affects all new .CN registrations.

Under the new policy, individuals are effectively barred from registering .CN domain names as CNNIC now requires a paper application which includes a business seal, company business license (photocopy), and registrant ID (photocopy).

More information:

• China Global Times article
• CircleID post

At this time, we are working with Neustar, our registration provider for .CN domains, to determine the exact details of the new policy. It is not yet known what impact this new policy will have on .CN registrations.

For the time being, we continue to process registrations as usual.

We will update the Reseller Blog with further information as we receive it.

.EU is the latest ccTLD to announce that they are adding support for Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) registrations.

IDN support in .EU domains goes live on December 10th, 2009 at 10:00 UTC (view the time in your timezone). At that time, something of a landrush will occur as .EU IDN domains will become available on a first come, first served basis. Prior to that time, OpenSRS Resellers can create pending orders in OpenSRS. As soon as our Registry connection is re-enabled after .EU IDN support goes live at the Registry, we’ll begin attempting to register pre-orders as quickly as possible.

IDNs are domain names that contain non-ASCII characters. Generally, these are non-English domain names. For example, the Swedish å, the German ü, the Romanian ș and characters from the Bulgarian and Greek alphabets as a whole. It’s important to note that these IDN domains are so-called, “before the dot” registrations. That is, the IDN characters are restricted to the part of the domain that is before the dot – the “example” part of example.eu – as opposed to having a non-English version of the part after the dot – the “eu” extension itself.

Given the wide range of languages spoken throughout the European Union, it makes a lot of sense for .EU to offer IDNs and it’s expected that demand for IDN EU domains will be strong.

EURID has put together a fairly extensive information portal for the IDN launch. You’ll find information about which languages and characters are supported, as well a list of frequently asked questions about .EU IDN registrations.

Did you miss our SSL webinar last week? Then you’ll definitely want to read on.

We were really pleased to have Bob Angus, Product Marketing Manager at VeriSign join us via the web to present “Get the Sale: Overcoming Four Common Objections When Selling SSL”.

Bob provided some really good, practical tactics and strategies that will help you sell smarter and move more SSL units.

He covered everything from how to figure out whether the potential customer is ready to buy, to how to use some basic stats and resources to sell EV and other higher margin SSL products.

Based on the lively Q&A session that followed, it was clear that our Resellers are hungry to sell more and are looking for the tools that they can use to do just that. Bob’s presentation provided some of those tools and tactics, and attendees went away equiped with at least two or three things that they could put to immediate use to counter competitors and tackle those common questions buyers might have.

Archive Video is Available Now

We did record the entire session including an informative question and answer session. That video and the accompanying PDF of the presentation slides is available now.

→ View the archive

(if you registered for the event at GotoWebinar, you should already have received the link to the archived version via email).

We have some great news to help you wrap up 2009 and kick off 2010 with a bang: Starting December 1st, and continuing through the end of March, 2010, .ME domains are just $4.99 at OpenSRS! That’s 75% off the regular price.

Make sure you sign up

As with most OpenSRS promotions, you’ll need to signup to take advantage of the savings and you’ll receive the discount in the form of a rebate, deposited into your OpenSRS Reseller account in the following month. The promotional price applies to new one-year registrations or the first year of new, multi-year registrations only. Renewals, transfers and any domains sold through OpenSRS Storefront are not eligible.

Click here to sign up for the .ME promo and while you’re there, make sure you sign up for our other promotions underway right now including .TV, .INFO and .IN domain names.

Tucows President and CEO, Elliot Noss appeared on Business News Network’s (BNN) “After Hours” program here in Canada yesterday to followup on his comments made recently on the Tucows Inc. website.

In that post, which is definitely worth a few minutes of your time for a full read, Elliot called out Canadian broadband providers as lagging behind much of the rest of the world when it comes to providing affordable, fast, and reliable broadband Internet access:

“In my role at Tucows I have the pleasure of traveling all over the world and having customers who are service providers all over the world. We are always discussing access markets. I could bore you with story after story but very few countries have slower, more expensive access offering than us in Canada. A fantastic study done for the FCC by the Berkman Center for Internet Studies at Harvard is just the most recent to confirm the sad state of broadband in Canada.”

Click here to view the clip at the BNN website.

Looking to supercharge your SSL sales? Look no further.

One of the things we hear over and over again, is that it’s nearly impossible to sell SSL certificates in the face of companies like GoDaddy who seem to be more interested in moving as many units as possible, at the expense of the bottom line. But it’s simply not true–with the right information and techniques, you can effectively sell SSL by easily countering some common objections customers might have.

2010 is fast approaching and now is the time to start thinking about how to energize your SSL sales. And don’t forget that our GeoTrust $199 Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificate promo is coming to an end soon as well. End 2009 with a bang and kickstart your SSL sales activities heading into the new year.

Get the Sale!

Bob Angus, Product Marketing Manager, VeriSign, will present “Get the Sale! Overcoming four common objections when selling SSL.” Bob will address the four most common objections that you’ll face when selling SSL certificates, provide you with the information that you need to address each one head on, and help you make the sale.

He’ll cover everything from objections over price, to how to handle questions about technology from customers who may have bought into some common misconceptions about SSL. In short, Bob will arm you with information and tactics that you can use when selling SSL to even the most sceptical of customers.

This is a free event for OpenSRS Resellers.

Details:

REGISTRATION IS FREE
What: Get the Sale! Overcoming four common objections when selling SSL
When: Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 11:00 A.M. EST (16:00 UTC)