DOMAINfest heads to Prague. Here’s what you need to know.

Heading to Prague for DOMAINfest in two weeks? I hope you’ve booked your hotel since the Intercontinental is sold out. But if not, we’re here to help. Read on for alternative hotels and more information about your trip to Prague.

I caught up with Oversee.net to get answers to some common questions:

Is the hotel sold out or are just the discounted rooms sold out? Where should people look for alternative hotels?

Yes, the entire hotel is sold out, including the DOMAINfest discounted rooms. See our hotel page for nearby hotel options.

Here are a few local suggestions:

President Hotel Prague (next door)

Buddha Bar Hotel Prague (4 min cab ride, 10 min walk)

Crown Plaza Praha Castle (10 min cab ride, 30+ min long walk)

Prague Marriott (5 min cab ride, 15 min walk)

Mandarin Oriental (6 min cab ride, 30 + long walk)

Hilton Prague (6 min cab ride, 15 min walk)

For those traveling from the U.S. to Prague, what do we need to bring with us?

This web site has lots of very helpful info for traveling to Prague. You can also find this link and others on the DOMAINfest web site under Prague Travel Tips.

The electrical current is 220V/50 Hz AC with standard, continental two-pin plugs and earthed three-pin plugs. A two-pin plug will fit into a three-pin socket. Visitors should bring their own adaptors or they can be purchased at the airport.

Make sure appliances like shavers, hairdryers, curling irons, camera chargers, laptops, etc. have a switch to change the voltage to 220! If you are visiting from North America you will need a transformer as North America works on 110V and Europe works on 220V.

Visa requirements information is available here.

For those that don’t speak English, what resources will be on site?

We will have German, Polish and Czech translators providing “United Nations” style headphone translations during the Wednesday morning presentations. The same translators will be available for 1-on-1 and small group translations during lunch and then during the 2-hr Power Networking session after lunch. The translators will also be available during the Moniker auction as well as during the Wednesday Dinner Networking party. On Thursday, we will have the same translators available for certain excursions.

How many attendees will there be?

It should be slightly larger than the 220 attendees at our NY event, perhaps as many as 250. About half of attendees registered so far have never attended a DOMAINfest event, so this should be a fresh, invigorating, highly motivated audience. There will be attendees from 24 countries — close to the 26 countries at DOMAINfest Global 2010.

What else will be different about this Prague event?

The two hour Power Networking Session is different. This session will start with four fifteen minute panels of experts before the actual networking begins. At the beginning of this session, we will have 4 separate 15-minute panel discussions on stage. There will be one panel for each topic.

During each 15-minute panel, a moderator will ask each expert two or three questions. When all 4 panels are finished, experts will walk over to designated corners of the conference room as we did in New York.

When will the conference officially kickoff?
There’s a Tuesday Happy Hour party in the exhibit area from 16:00 to 20:00. Beer, wine and snacks plus a chance to meet with our sponsors and exhibitors.

Registration rate increases from $595 to $695 on Oct 1. Registration fee includes all sessions, auction, Tuesday happy hour party, 2 lunches, 2 dinner parties, and a full day of unique excursions.

Remember that the web is not anonymous.

The online world seems anonymous. Except it’s not.

That’s why I’d like to remind you to be careful when you think you’re anonymous. Or at least don’t pretend to be someone you’re not.

Two days ago I posted a story about Bridgepoint Education losing a UDRP case. It wasn’t a friendly post to the company. Lots of people from Bridgepoint viewed the post. One of them decided to defend the company in a comment using a generic email address and not identifying him/herself as an employee.

As any WordPress user knows, your IP address shows up right next to your other information in the administrative panel. This person used a generic email address but made the comment from his work computer network.

This isn’t the first time someone has tried astroturfing on Domain Name Wire. I often get multiple comments on a story under different names…and the same IP address. Or there was the guy trying to sell domains by responding to “another person’s” question about a particular domain. The response said the person should buy the domain, but it was really from the same person who posted the query (and owned the domain).

Another example from a different blog: yesterday someone from iStockPhoto posted comments on a negative story over at ShoeMoney. He changed his name a couple times, but all comments pointed back to iStockPhoto.

On Domain Name Wire you’re allowed to use a handle instead of a name. I’m not going to disclose your identity*. But you must use a real email address and you can’t pretend to be unaffiliated with a company you’re defending.

(*Your comment will be deleted if it contains a threat, even if it’s a joke. You’d be surprised how comments I delete for that reason.)

Rather than try to cover your tracks, I’d recommend this instead: don’t post something online if you’d be embarrassed if your identity came to light.

Google buys typos of ccTLDs and top level domain names other than .com

Over the past few days Google has ramped up its efforts to get country code and top level domain name typos in the .com version.

For example, it has registered dozens of domains in the format:

google-(cctld).com

including google-in.com (India), google-lu.com (Luxembourg), and google-ws.com (Western Somoa).

The company has also registered or acquired a number of google-TLD.com names including google-net.com, google-Mobi.com, google-coop.com, and google-museum.com.

No need for dashes, though. A common typo is to forget the dot between a second level and first level domain name. .Com is often appended. So the company has picked up domains such as googleeu.com, a typo of Google.eu.

Typo traffic to Google is immense. Google’s land grab show just how powerful .com is for all companies, regardless of the top level domain name people are trying to visit.

Big issue on the table at ICANN retreat.

In about 24 hours the ICANN Board of Directors will kick off a retreat. It’s not an official board meeting, but it’s anticipated that the two day retreat will finalize an important issue: registry/registrar separation.

A lot is at stake in this decision. Millions of dollars for the stakeholders.

Until now a registry hasn’t been able to own a registrar and (technically) vice-versa. Afilias is owned by a number of registrars, though.

The question is if this separation should be relaxed.

In one corner are the registrars that would like to introduce new top level domain names. Ideally they would like to be unencumbered. But some of them, including eNom, are willing to go the middle road. The middle ground proposal is dubbed JN2. It basically says a registrar can be a registry but with heavy restrictions until 18 months after the TLD is released.

In the other corner are those that want no integration. They want to limit cross ownership to 2%. In Afilias’ case, it wants to increase cross ownership to 15% because of its existing registrar investors.

You can read about the various proposals and how no consensus has been reached here.

Another issue is private registrars. Should someone who owns a registrar solely to manage their own domains be restricted from releasing a new TLD? That would defeat the purpose of this restriction.

The pressure is on ICANN’s board. Like any good bureaucratic and political organization, odds are they’ll pick the middle of the road. Or punt to someone else.

This time both sides of debate make use of “form” comments.

The comment period for “Revised Proposed Registry Agreement for .XXX sTLD and Due Diligence Documentation” at ICANN ends Thursday. Much like last time, there are hundreds of comments submitted through online forms that basically says the same thing.

But this time .xxx backer ICM Registry has decided two can play at that game. The company has added a form to its web site at icmregistry.com/forms.

This has prompted one commentor, who goes by the name Naughty Traffic, to cry afoul:

SCAM BOGUS POSTS: “Please approve the .XXX Registry Agreement”

Any post with ICM’s form mail titled: “Please approve the .XXX Registry
Agreement” should be discounted.

Sure, Mr. Naughty. We can discount those. But then we should also discount the many form letters with the headline “I run adult websites and I do NOT want the .xxx tld!”

Not surprisingly, few of the comments actually address the material for which ICANN is requesting comments.