Alex Reid

After the election was official this past weekend, canada.votes2011.ca went live, gathering up steam on Facebook and Twitter. It’s a project that I’ve been somewhat busy with for the past ten weeks, in anticipation of the five provincial elections coming up this fall.

The site is built around using the new functionality of WordPress’ Multi-site network, and a subtle domain hack. I’m still adding to the site, and recruiting writers to add content over the next five weeks, and again closer to the five provincial elections in October.

After ten years, CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority) is finally pushing forward with some new policy changes to bring it in line with how other top-level domains are handled.

CIRA is the government-mandated organization under Industry Canada that manages the dot-ca country code top-level domain and has been doing such since December 2000, but it’s been using the same system for ten years and it needs to be updated – badly.

The old system was also designed to suit roughly one million dot-ca domains but currently there are 1.5 million dot-ca domains. It reached the one million mark in April 2008. Largely CIRA has acknowledged that it needs to update its policies to be more in line with other top-level domains.

So starting today, for the next week, CIRA is locking down their system. Specifically, dot-ca domain name holders will not be able to change settings. Domain name renewals and new registrations will be allowed during the transition.

The result of these changes is simply to make it easier to manage dot-ca domain names and to keep this in line with how other top-level domain names are managed. More specifically:

• Transfers of dot-ca domain names will no longer require an annual renewal fee. It will simply be a change of contact information.
• The domain life cycle will be changed to bring it in line with industry standards and more like generic top-level domains (gTLDs). Changes include moving to a similar renewal grace period, redemption period, and the use of authorization codes for transfers.
• CIRA Registrant profiles and passwords will be eliminated and domains will be managed at the Registrar level, with no further confirmations required (currently Registrants have a separated CIRA profile to approve some management functions).
• Third- and fourth-level domains will no longer be available for registration. It will still be possible to manage and renew any existing third- and fourth-level domains through OpenSRS.
• WHOIS privacy will be managed at the Registrar level (currently it is managed at the CIRA website).
• Registrar-to-registrar transfers will allowed only after the domain is registered for 60 days (currently 30 days).

Yet another top level domain (TLD) is being rolled out: .tel.

The purpose of the .tel domain is an “unified contact directory services as text-based alternative to fragmented communications solutions” or in other words an one-shop-stop of all your web sites, phone numbers and other contact information. No private hosting is required for the .tel domain as the usage of the domain name is simply a one-page information portal.

No photos, no html, no web stats, no design options and no associated email – however what is interesting is that clicking on a phone number will activate a “click to call” feature.

The .tel domain name may challenge directory services as it intent is for companies and individuals to offer a compilation of their contact info when they want as they want, while most telcos only update their directory listings once a year as their data is tied into the annual printings of their paper directories. The .tel template is also designed to appear on mobile devices like Blackberry and iPhone.

The TLD will launch on December 3, 2008, when domains will be available only to trademark owners costing a few hundred dollars per domain. On February 3, .tel will be more widely available, sold at premium prices for minimum three year terms. After March 24, they will be available to the general public for a regular price and a one year term.

In what could be dubbed ‘creative’ at the Pickering Institute is considered ‘Black Hat SEO’ by most. The “diploma mill” is renting out sub-domains of it’s pi.edu domain for.. wait for it.. $50/month.

None of the blogs set up so far appear to be populated with content, and Google’s Matt Cutts has already indicated that Pickering’s blogs won’t show up in search results. Searches for “Pickering Institute” and “site:pickering.edu” both return blank or irrelevant results now, so Google appears to be serious about stopping this sort of behavior in its tracks.

Yahoo, however, continues to index the site.

Earlier this week, CIRA announced that the number of dot-ca domain names reached one million.