Next opportunity for Board approval comes in April.

We now know that ICANN’s Board will not vote on approving the new top level domain name applicant guidebook at its March meeting in San Francisco.

But will the delay be just one month?

ICANN’s Board of Directors will meet again on April 21 for a “Special Meeting of the ICANN Board of Directors”.

Given that ICANN will have its bylaws-defined consultation with the Governmental Advisory Committee during its March meeting, it seems reasonable that one month later everything will be wrapped up.

Then again, as people frequently point out, no one has ever lost money betting against approval.

If new TLDs get the green light in April then you can expect the application window to open up in the fall, and the first new TLDs to come on line either late 2012 or early 2013.

But I’m not placing any bets on that.

Zuccarini sues three companies for negligence.

John Zuccarini has filed another lawsuit (pdf) stemming from the sale of 14 domain names on NameJet.

In this case he counts Network Solutions, NameJet, and now ICANN as defendants.

Zuccarini owes the IRS and creditors $550,000, some of which involves a cybersquatting judgment against him.

A court-appointed receiver was holding some of his domain names to satisfy these debts, but he accidentally let some of them expire. 14 domain names were subsequently auctioned off on NameJet.

Zuccarini says Network Solutions should have placed a special lock on the domain names since they were subject to a legal action. He claims Network Solutions, NameJet, and ICANN were all negligent.

He also says Network Solutions and NameJet received unjust enrichment from the auctions.

Zuccarini filed previous lawsuits in this matter that were thrown out by a judge.

He also just filed a case in Philadelphia for motions against court receiver Michael Blacksburg.

.Co Internet CEO says .co off to good start but hard work lies ahead.

In a blog post titled “The State of the .CO Domain“, .Co Internet CEO Juan Calle released some numbers about the effects of the company’s Super Bowl commercial tie-in with Go Daddy.

Calle says that sales on Super Bowl Sunday were 35 times as much as a typical Sunday. Traffic to the company’s Opportunity.co and COinternet.co web sites was up 100x.

Of course we don’t know the base for typical Sunday registrations, but the important thing is that this momentum continues.

He also said that .co had a good launch but has a long road ahead of it — pointing down the road 5, 10, or even 20 years:

Frankly, it’s really far too early to pop the champagne corks and party like its 1999. What we have on our hands, folks – is simply a good start. A solid launch.

Calle noted two success metrics that the company won’t use in a silo: the number of domains registered and aftermarket sales. He notes that they could easily boost the number of domains registered by dropping the price to $1.99. He also thinks that it’s too early in the lifecyle of the domain name to look at aftermarket sales:

I suspect we will need to wait a good 4 or 5 years to see the .CO extension become more widely adopted, developed, monetized and marketed by end-users — and for the after-market to ripen. In my humble opinion, most of the efforts we are seeing today to quickly flip .CO domain names on the secondary market are largely driven by speculation.

Instead, Calle wants to measure .co by “Gross Domain Product”:

…measuring not only the total number of .CO registrations, but the number of websites developed, and the broader value of the economic activity happening within the .CO space.

In March .Co will launch a billboard in Times Square and an outdoor advertising campaign in New York City, Austin and San Francisco. I imagine the Austin campaign will be tied into the SXSW Interactive Festival. I’ll keep my eyes open.

Survey takers rank domain name forums.

Once again DNForum is the highest rated domain name forum.

That’s according to over 1,500 people who took the 6th Annual Domain Name Wire Survey.

48% selected DNForum as the top forum for discussing domain names, up from 37% last year.

NamePros came in a distant second place with 21%, followed by the private Domain Boardroom at 14%.

A few regional and/or niche domain forums also picked up votes: Poland’s DI.pl received 6% of votes via write-ins, UK’s Acorn Domains got 4%, and IDNForums received 3% via write-ins.

Despite changing ownership last year, DomainState only mustered 4% of votes.

1. DNForum 48%
2. NamePros 21%
3. Domain Boardroom 14%
4. DI.pl 6%
5. Acorn Domains 4%
6. DomainState 4%
7. IDNForums 3%

You can see more results from the 2011 Domain Name Wire Survey here.

Moniker auction picks up steam and other domain name auction updates.

Bidding has started to pick up at Moniker’s extended auction.

The auction is a continuation of the company’s DOMAINfest Global auction held in Santa Monica earlier this month. Lots will begin closing at 12:15 PM PST today.

At the time of writing 20 domain names have received bids ranging from $300 to $9,060. The top bid is for ePower.com.

Only one auction is seeing competition at this point with mermaids.org grabbing two bids at a $325 current price.

With fewer than 500 domain names in the extended auction it’s worth browsing through to look for any overlooked domain names.

In other domain auction news, Sedo’s .co auction ends at noon Eastern time. Two domain names have hit their five figure reserves: Love.co and Shop.co are each at $20,000.

Don’t overlook another competitive auction: the Tucows/OpenSRS limited edition cookie auction is up to $260 with 13 bids after just 1 day of bidding!