Thanks to what I assume was an issue with someone's company card, Samsung forgot to renew a potentially dangerous domain, leaving it to be purchased by Anubis Labs chief technology officer and nice guy João Gouveia. According to Motherboard, the domain associated with Samsung's S Suggest app "ssuggest.com" was seemingly abandoned, giving Gouveia (or any hacker) the opportunity to purchase it.
Hey Lifehacker, So I've bought a few domains for ideas I've decided to build over the years, but these domains are auto-renewing and collecting dust. What's the most effective way to onsell them so I can recoup my costs and hopefully make a profit?
The web site for the New York Times was taken offline today by the Syrian Electronic Army, using credentials from a reseller for Melbourne IT. One tactic that might have helped prevent that? A registrar lock.
Chaos reigns on web-based services if you let domain names, SSL certificates or other key infrastructure expire. certalert.me is a service that warns you if a company-owned domain or SSL certificate is about to reach its due date.
Even though Google is no longer officially offering free Google Apps for Business accounts, there is still a way to sign up for Google Apps and get it linked to your own domain. Just sign up for Google App Engine and add your domain to that account. You'll get Google Apps along with it for free.
If you got in on Google Apps for free before Google shut the party down, congratulations. If you're starting a new domain now and looking for someone to host your domain's webmail, getting a Google Apps account just got a little more expensive. If email is all you're looking for, you may want to try using Microsoft's new Outlook.com instead.
One big advantage of using Google Apps is that you can take advantage of Gmail and Google Drive while keeping your own company domain for email. Google has expanded the range of domains it offers for new sign-ups to include 22 new country-specific options. Unfortunately, Australia isn't on the list.
Companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Australia Post and the Commonwealth Bank are currently competing for a new round of top-level domains -- think new versions of .com and .org like .search, .blog and .app. The argument is that this will make the internet easier to use, but we think it's a bit sketchier than those involved would like to admit. Here's why.
Sites on Google's Blogger platform have long used addresses of the form blogname.blogspot.com. Google is now applying the same regional detection it uses on its main site to Blogger, so many of those addresses will now show up in the form blogname.blogspot.com.au for Australian visitors.
If you've even briefly considered setting up your own domain with Google Apps, consider that after May 10, any new Apps "Standard Edition" sign-ups are limited to 10 users, requiring a Business Edition purchase to go beyond that limit.
Having an online presence is essential for a business these days, but setting one up and maintaining it can seem both time-consuming and expensive. Here's five simple strategies you can use to enhance your online business presence for little or no cost, whether you're a part-time start-up or a rapidly growing organisation.
A quick reminder of two things you might have forgotten over the holiday break. Tomorrow is the final day for submissions to the auDA review on how domain name rules might change in Australia. Meanwhile, the annual Whirlpool broadband survey remains active until the end of the month. Get involved!
A new top-level porn domain, XXX (e.g. http://pornexample.xxx), was approved today by ICANN, the non-profit organisation responsible for managing the assignment of domain names and approval of new top-level domains like .com, .org and so on. This doesn't mean that all porn sites will leave their current cushy URLs for XXX - or even, necessarily, that you can't host a non-porn site on a .xxx domain - but it'll be an easy block for concerned parents.
The Internet has seemingly gotten a long way with top-level domains -- the last bits after the dot in any Internet domain name, usually abbreviated to TLDs -- essentially limited to country codes (such as .au) and a handful of "global" options (such as .com). However, this week ICANN (which controls domain name policy) is voting on a proposal that would allow a much wider range of TLDs, including company names and trademarks. As the BBC reports, one of the first cabs off the rank if the proposal goes through will probably be .xxx for adult content, which ICANN has rejected previously. An approval committee will block any offensive choices, and in the event that several organisations want to create a new top-level domain, there'll be an auction. If nothing else, that's a good way for ICANN to get funding.Porn frenzy aside, what new top-level domains would you find useful? Do we need .social for social networking? .hack for code listings? .nsw and .qld, with every other state getting a go as well? Or is a healthy dose of creativity and a dirt-cheap .com domain name still the best choice? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
