ICANN starts auditing registrars for data escrow compliance.

Last month ICANN sent a breach notice to domain registrar Parava Networks. Among several serious breaches, one of Parava’s faults was not escrowing its registrant data. ICANN’s Registrant Data Escrow (RDE) program requires domain registrars to escrow customer information with a third party provider. If the registrar fails or loses its accreditation, ICANN can tap the escrow data to ensure the safe transfer of domains to another registrar.

But if Parava, which managed over 30,000 domains including some easily worth six figures, was out of compliance, then is your registrar properly escrowing data?

I asked Mike Zupke, Registrar Liaison Manager at ICANN, how domain owners can be sure they are protected.

“ICANN has not published a list of registrars who are or are not compliant with their RDE requirement,” said Zupke. “Doing so would be complicated. Because data is held in escrow, it might appear that a registrar has begun escrowing data, but in fact, has undertaken to deposit garbage data.”

Publishing a list may give the false impression that your registrant data has been escrowed when it has not. ICANN is currently implementing an auditing program to ensure that registrars are submitting valid registrant information into escrow.

Registrars may hold back registrant data because they believe it gives them leverage with ICANN. If ICANN shuts down a registrar that has not escrowed data, it may be difficult to transfer the domains to another registrar while maintaining proper domain ownership records.

“The process of terminating a registrar for failure to escrow data is difficult and somewhat time consuming because ICANN’s priority is to ensure registrants are not harmed, and this means, we need to have access to the very registration data the registrar has failed to escrow in order to transfer the names to another registrar,” said Zupke.

Once the auditing procedure is underway, hopefully ICANN will feel comfortable publishing a list of out-of-compliance registrars.

Web site development platform to offer domain name registration; continues growth.

Domain development platform DevHub has signed a premium reseller agreement with Demand Media’s eNom to offer domain names to its customers.

Although DevHub’s agreement with eNom right now is fairly simple, I can see the relationship expanding with eNom’s parent company. Demand Media is about bringing social media to masses, and DevHub could be a good platform to enable that.

DevHub now has over 3,000 registered users and 100,000 developed sites.

Since officially launching the platform to new customers last month, DevHub has added several new features:

- Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics integration
- Robust Blogging / Content Editor
- Ability to set up sites at subdomain.devhub.com
- Twitter notification: customers can easily update their Twitter followers of their site launches and updates whenever they make changes
- Social bookmarking widget: allow site visitors to easily share what they’ve found with their contacts over email or on sites like FaceBook, Digg, Delicious, and more.
- Full Color Editing : Fully control the palette of your site, from text to button color to navigation

DevHub is a product of EVO Media Group.

New web-based system streamlines domain transfer process.

Domain name aftermarket Sedo has changed the way it communicates with buyers and sellers during the domain transfer process. Instead of sending e-mails, all transactions will be managed through a dashboard called “Transfer Center”.

Sedo’s previous system, involving multiple communications from Sedo transfer specialists, was difficult to track and opened the system up to potential security issues.

Through the transfer center, customers can:

- View status updates
- Communicate with your Transfer Specialist
- Update Billing details
- Edit Technical Transfer information
- View payment requests from Sedo
- Upload documents requested by the other party (such as invoices)
- View uploaded documents (such as invoices)

I assume the system will send automated e-mail alerts requesting the buyer and seller to log in to their Sedo accounts to view updates. The new system will be similar to those of Escrow.com and Afternic.com. By requiring customers to log in to a secure interface to view updates, customers are less likely to receive bogus e-mail communications requesting actions such as transferring a domain name.

Go Daddy gets three new patents, bringing total to five.

The Go Daddy Group, Inc, parent company of domain registrar GoDaddy, has been awardedthree new patents this month. Based on a search of “Go Daddy” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Go Daddy now has five patents. Its previously issued patents include one for private domain registration (whois privacy) and a server based spam filter.

The three patents granted this month relate to web design and internet fax:

U.S. Patent 7,500,182: Host web page displaying target web page image – A system and method are disclosed for allowing a target web page to be edited on a host web page by a Designer. A scaled view of the target web page may be displayed on the host web page so that the Designer may view the target web page during the editing process. An editing palette may be selected, from a menu of editing palettes, for editing the target web page. An overlay, corresponding to the selected editing palette, may be positioned next to or superimposed over the scaled view of the target web page. The overlay may provide positioning or other types of information to assist the Designer in using the selected editing palette. Different overlays may be used as different editing palettes are selected. Once the target web page is customized, it can be made accessible via the Internet.

U.S. Patent 7,500,183: Target web page edited using overlay on host web page – A system and method are disclosed for allowing a target web page to be edited on a host web page by a Designer. A scaled view of the target web page may be displayed on the host web page so that the Designer may view the target web page during the editing process. An editing palette may be selected, from a menu of editing palettes, for editing the target web page. An overlay, corresponding to the selected editing palette, may be positioned next to or superimposed over the scaled view of the target web page. The overlay may provide positioning or other types of information to assist the Designer in using the selected editing palette. Different overlays may be used as different editing palettes are selected. Once the target web page is customized, it can be made accessible via the Internet.

U.S. Patent 7,502,135: Document color and shades of gray optimization using dithered monochrome surfaces – Methods, apparatus, software, and systems of the present invention allow for optimization of color and shades of gray documents prior to their conversion to a monochrome format. If color/gray elements are identified in the document, the distance between them and their intensity is determined. If there are elements with the same or similar intensity in close proximity to each other, colors of some of the elements may be replaced with solid monochrome colors, and/or dithered surfaces, and/or monochrome patterns. Further, the elements may be outlined. These improvements make elements in the document more distinguishable after its conversion to a monochrome format. The described color optimization and outlining may have wide applicability in the Internet Fax technology.

Go Daddy recently filed a divisional patent on the fax technology.

Domain name parking alternative simplifies pricing of Enhanced and Managed accounts.

Domain name parking alternative WhyPark announced today that it has simplified its pricing structure.

Users still pay $99 to set up 100 sites, but pricing for Enhanced and Managed accounts is a fixed monthly charge of $10 and $25 respectively.

Compared to basic accounts, Enhanced accounts offer:

-More templates
-10 MB image hosting
-RSS feed integration
-Stats sent via email
-Social networking features
-Premium content
-Commenting and moderation capabilities of articles

Managed accounts include all the features of Standard and Enhanced accounts, plus:

-100 MB image hosting
-Syndicated RSS feed publication
-WhyPark moderates article comments

Enhanced and Managed accounts also get discounts on paid services such as article writing and search engine submission.

WhyPark also released platform upgrades such as stats improvements (see more stats on one page, and elimination of search engine bots from stats), speedier site, better bulk changes, and easier edits.