Tweet

By: James Koole on March 17th, 2008
Posted in: Industry News
Tags:
Comments: 0

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a nice article on the importance of choosing a good name to establish a strong corporate identity. The story highlights some interesting aspects when deciding on a company name and identity. It also talks about the importance of making sure that there is a tie between online presence and the corporate name by way of a solid, memorable domain name.

There are a number of case studies presented to illustrate the value of a good company name, and a couple of good examples where a poor choice of domain name led to problems. In one case, nanofluidics.com, the domain name was often confused and misspelled. In another example, Desert Moon Interactive chose the domain dm-i.com, with predictable results.

While the story focuses primarily on how to pick a good identity, it provides is a good list of dos and don’ts for domain name selection.

To summarize:

1. Make sure the domain name associated with your company name is available.
2. Make sure the domain name you select is both memorable and not confusing.
3. Keep in mind that you may have to go with an alternate name in the event that your first choice isn’t available as a domain name.
4. At the same time, don’t rule out a name because the exact URL isn’t available. Many users don’t remember the URL, and instead rely on Google to help them find the site they are looking for.

With domain names continuing to play an important role in establishing corporate identity, services like Premium Names that provide the ability to buy domain names in the secondary market will become even more important.

Our Name Suggestion tool, powered by DomainsBot and included free, gives searchers a valuable tool in establishing a corporate identity by giving domain name suggestions based on keyword searches.

Keep in mind that a domain name is more than just a URL. It’s often the starting point for corporate identity and providing tools and services like Premium Names and Name Suggest can be a great help to people looking to build a brand whether it’s offline or online.

Tweet

By: OpenSRS Team on March 14th, 2008
Posted in: Inside OpenSRS
Tags:
Comments: 2

I was confused when I got to work this morning and people were moving through the halls of Tucows with an unusual accessory: slices of delicious, bakery-fresh pie. There was talk of apple, cherry – maybe this was some pre-spring enthusiasm meant to cheer up a chilly gray day in Toronto?

As another slice wafted past, attached to a grinning owner, I’d had enough. I wanted answers. I asked someone what was up with the influx of pastries and was given the most obvious of answers: “Because Kari, it’s pie day.”

Pie day?

“Three point one four.” 3.14? March 14. Not pie Kari, pi!!! It all came together. Clearing the smoke from around my head I couldn’t help but laugh at this, the geekiest of holidays I’ve ever had the pleasure of celebrating. Turns out Pi Day has been a big thing since Larry Shaw started it at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1988. Albert Einstein was born on March 14 and if you’ve applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology lately, today is the day to expect your acceptance letter.

So to all our readers we raise a slice and wish you a very happy and healthy Pi Day!

Thanks to flickr user hhwlib for making the delicious photo, available under a Creative Commons license.

Tweet

By: Ken Schafer on March 14th, 2008
Posted in: Inside OpenSRS
Tags:
Comments: 2

One of the best parts of my role here at Tucows is being able to bring talented people into the company.

I’m thrilled to announce that Rohan Jayasekera has joined my team as Director of the Tucows Email Service.

At the risk of sounding like a stalker, I’ve had my eye on Rohan since I first met him at a BarCamp event here in Toronto a few years ago. I was impressed by Rohan’s deep insights on the topic our little “unconference” group was talking about (although I can’t for the life of me remember what exactly we were discussing) and when I got home I did a quick Google on Rohan and found a peer with an incredibly interesting background.

Rather than gush about exact how great a fit Rohan is, I’ll just point you to his blog post about joining Tucows so you can hear it from the man.

Tweet

By: James Koole on March 10th, 2008
Posted in: General
Tags:
Comments: 0

In case you missed the news, today is International Day of Awesomeness. It’s the one day of the year where people around the world can celebrate their awesomeness, other people’s awesomeness…everyone’s awesomeness.

You can’t argue with this awesome premise:

“The International Day of Awesomeness is a celebration of awesomeness. People are awesome every day, frequently don’t realize it, and their feats of awesomeness are rarely recognized. We aim to fix that, with a special day to both perform and celebrate feats of awesomeness!”

With that in mind, we had a couple of choices in terms of how we could celebrate this most awesome day at Tucows. We could talk about our own awesomeness, but that could come across as a wee bit arrogant. That would not be awesome. The other choice we have is to talk about how awesome you all are. By you, I mean our Resellers. That would be awesome.

For a wholesale services company like Tucows, Resellers are our lifeblood. We count on you to get out there and sell services, and support customers. And you do. That’s awesome, and we love you for it.

Tweet

By: James Koole on March 4th, 2008
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: Email Service
Comments: 0

Last week we told you about a number of enhancements we were making to the Tucows Email Service. Much of those efforts focused around making the webmail interface more brandable. Those updates, including the new branding features, are now available in both the Live and Test email environments.

Existing brands aren’t affected by these changes.

There’s more information in the updated documentation. A release note listing the changes made in this release has also been published.