Author name: fairwindsp

Josh Bourne ⬥ 25 August If and when it comes time for businesses to decide whether to apply for their own gTLD or register domain names in other new gTLDs, one question marketers will have to ask is how they will spread the word about new domain names.  Specifically, how will they persuade Internet users […]

FairWinds Partners ⬥ 23 August Have you heard?  There’s a new technology making its way to the masses of the Western world: QR codes.  Formerly reserved for the technologically savvy and (let’s face it) slightly geeky, QR codes are now being integrated into mass marketing.  The young and the old, smartphone and “normal” phone users

Josh Bourne ⬥ 19 August Last weekend, I started building a tree fort for my children.  It turned out to be a bigger project than I anticipated, and I only got as far as partially completing the subfloor, which you can see pictured here.  Building around a tree presents some serious challenges in terms of

Josh Bourne ⬥ 16 August I’ve written about domain renewal scams on the blog before, and I came across another one described in a recent NetworkWorld article. Internet Listing Service, a group based in Toronto, sent fake invoices to small businesses, non-profits and individuals.  The invoices, which were designed to look like they had come

Josh Bourne ⬥ 15 September Yesterday I was an in-studio guest for the Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU 88.5 American University Radio.  Every Tuesday, Kojo covers different tech-related topics, and yesterday’s show focused on new top-level domain names and what they will mean for Internet users.  Tina Dam, ICANN’s Senior Director of Internationalized Domain Names

Josh Bourne ⬥ 30 July UNICEF appears to be in the market for its own TLD.  The UN organization dedicated to providing humanitarian and development aid to children and mothers in developing countries recently announced a Request for Information from potential vendors to help acquire and operate .UNICEF. Back in October 2009, the Universal Postal

FairWinds Partners ⬥ 28 July A new kind of Public Service Announcement (PSA) has arrived – the public service app.  It looks like smartphone apps are no longer limited to games, drink recipes, and social media platforms, meant purely to entertain us and keep us from having to interact with others during those oh-so-tedious minutes

Josh Bourne ⬥ 27 July I’m up in Eagle River, Wisconsin on vacation with my sons this week.  We visited last year around this time, and I blogged about that trip as well. My birthday was on Saturday, and in addition to my two boys Charlie and Oliver, my sister, my parents and my grandmother

Josh Bourne ⬥ 26 July FairWinds recently released a study that calculated the cost of typosquatting for the brands behind the 250 most highly trafficked websites.  The total included costs from visitor acquisitions, lost sales and impressions and also recovery of typosquatted domain names, and came out to $327 million per year. A major source

Josh Bourne ⬥ 16 July I was driving with my family to Nationals Park to see the Nats play the San Francisco Giants on Sunday, when I noticed a Windows Catering truck drive by. As it passed, (because I can’t help myself) I noticed the company’s domain name displayed on the side of truck. Again,

Josh Bourne ⬥ 24 May Proxy services are a serious problem. They embolden cybersquatters and cybercriminals by providing them with safe harbor in the form of invisibility and/or anonymity and make it difficult for trademark owners to gain access to infringers. A proxy service is a registered domain name holder (“registrant”) that licenses the use

Josh Bourne ⬥ 24 June George Kirikos wasn’t the only one who raised really interesting and challenging points at the ICANN meeting.  There are two more people who made comments and asked questions that I think are important and that I’d like to talk about here. The first is Zahid Jamil, who hails form Karachi,