The highly anticipated .CO launch is finally here! Beginning Tuesday July 20th, 2010 at 2PM Eastern / 18:00:00 UTC, .CO registrations will be available for general availability at directNIC.
Here is what you need to know in order to be prepared for the launch:

• directNIC is offering 1 year .CO registrations for ONLY $25 USD.
• .CO general availability begins at 2 PM Eastern / 18:00 UTC
• .CO is unrestricted meaning that anybody can register a .CO!

.CO offers many benefits including:

• .CO gives businesses and brands the chance to create a worldwide footprint.
• .CO is relevant to individuals, businesses and organizations.
• .CO is meaningful, memorable and intuitive to use for people around the world.

The .CO registry has been extremely busy creating awareness for .CO and we are very excited to be able to offer the .CO domain extension to our customers! Mark your calendar for Tuesday July 20th and be sure to visit directNIC.com to register .CO domains!

What is in a name? The simple answer can be taken right from the Merriam Webster dictionary; “a word or phrase that constitutes the distinctive designation of a person or thing”. So in short, a name is a label.

The question and topic of this blog post is simply, how is your email address labeling you? Have you ever been handed a business card, or even made one yourself, with the email address ending with the URL of a free webmail client such as gmail.com, hotmail.com, or yahoo.com? Maybe you use one of these popular webmail clients yourself for communicating with clients and business peers. I am here to let you know that you are not helping yourself by having a free webmail client as part of your professional label and image.

As stated above, a name is a label. The label you put on your business card by using a free webmail account, such as johndoe@gmail.com, is a label of unprofessionalism.  I can immediately gauge a business’s level of professionalism when I see that the email contact given is ending with a free webmail address instead of the person’s website address.

With all business comes competition, meaning you have to work hard to keep on top of your game and make sure you always look better than your competitors. When you use a free webmail client, you are making your business look like a one man operation. This can trigger a number of ideas about your business in the mind of a potential client or someone who has professional interest in your company, such as the following:

• This person is using their personal email, which means they probably haven’t been doing this for a long time.
• If they haven’t been doing this for a long time, their product might be of a lesser quality than their competitor.
• If they are still using a personal email, this probably means they have not expanded and could be a sign of bad business.

You are also losing an opportunity to brand your own company and are instead providing free advertising for your email client.

Either way you look at it, it’s hard to find anything positive to say about of using a free webmail client for your business emails.

So what’s the solution? The answer is to stop branding your free email client. Start looking more professional and start branding your own business. Register a domain name instead. Next, sign-up for website hosting so that you can create an email account and showcase your own name and company brand in your  email URL..  Use an email address that showcases your company name in the URL, such as johndoe@nameofbusiness.com, and show a level of professionalism, dedication to your job, and organization.

You might be asking “but how do I get an email address with my desired URL name?” The answer to that question isn’t as complicated as you might think. If you have a domain and a website hosted with directNIC you are already half way there.  directNIC offers several email plans including a free auto forward option.  Auto forward allows you to forward your email to your preferred email client.  If you don’t have a domain name and hosting with directNIC, check us out and let us help you with your online label.  You can start the search for your perfect domain and with the search box at the top of our blog.

Facebook is in the news once again – this time for adjustments made to all Facebook users’ privacy settings. A recent Google search led me to numerous articles on Facebook and privacy related stories. Some people are now suggesting that, with the changes to privacy settings, Facebook is the Antichrist of privacy. Please note, I do not think Facebook is the Antichrist. Other social media participants are calling for a Facebook boycott which would not be the first time a Facebook boycott was suggested .

In all fairness, I am not here to say whether or not Facebook is good or bad. directNIC does have our own Facebook fan page and I think there are some excellent uses of Facebook when used properly. Facebook is here for the foreseeable future so it is important to know how to manage your Facebook privacy settings. Here are a couple of Facebook privacy related articles that are worth reading.

First, here is an interesting graphic posted on MattMckeon.com that illustrates what has happened to privacy on Facebook since its inception. It is worth taking a look at so you know what you are dealing with.

Now that you know what information of yours is potentially being made available to the public, let’s look at how you can make your information more private. To manage your privacy on Facebook, you currently need to navigate through 50 settings with more than 170 options. For a good pictorial explaining how to manage your current Facebook privacy settings check out this New York Times article. I updated my own settings which took about 15 minutes to do but was well worth the time and allowed me to understand more about who is seeing what on my Facebook page. I recommend investing 15 minutes of your own time to do the same.

It goes without saying that when you sign up for Facebook, you are opening up your world and allowing others to have a peak in. The question is, who do you want to let in? While the New York Times article doesn’t show you how to close the door on everyone and make your profile on Facebook completely private, it does at a minimum allow you to know about the current privacy options that you have to manage – for today anyway.

Moving is never easy. You spend weeks making sure your mail gets forwarded correctly, that your new letterhead arrives in time of the move, and any last vestige of your old address has been eradicated. And just when you think you’ve taken care of everything it hits you – you’ve got over 200 domains that has WHOIS information that needs to be updated.

While that may sound daunting – it’s really not a big deal when you’re with directNIC. directNIC’s Mass Modify feature lets you change Contact Information, Nameservers, Hosting, E-Mail, or Auto Renew options for as many, or as few, domains as you need.

If you’re a directNIC customer with more than 10 domains in your account, you’ve probably already seen this option in your domain manager.If you haven’t, go ahead and log in now and check it out . Right below your domain table you’ll find links to Mass Modify any of the values mentioned above.

While directNIC doesn’t display the links in the account for customers with fewer than 10 domains the feature is still available by following this link.

Once you’re at the mass modify page, simply choose which domains you’d like to modify and the fields you need to update. You’ll then be able to enter in your new information which will then be applied to all selected domains.

So in a blink of an eye you can update your WHOIS info and all will be right in the world – if you could just figure out what box you packed up your computer in, that is.