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By: James Koole on October 25th, 2011
Posted in: Partners and Resellers
Tags: Meet the Resellers
Comments: 0

Thanks to David Lie, CEO of Fastline for taking part in our latest Meet our Resellers feature. Fastline is based in Haugesund, Norway and offers hosting and other Internet services to clients located primarily in Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

David and I talked about the business climate in Norway which, like many other countries, is quite competitive. Fastline is doing well, despite the challenges, by offering great technology alongside excellent customer support — a common theme amongst our most successful resellers.

You can read more about Fastline here.

Fastline is representative of the thousands of OpenSRS Resellers in over one hundred countries around the world who look to OpenSRS to provide reliable domain registrations, trust products, email and other services with support and technology they can depend on. Thanks again to David for telling us about his business.

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By: James Koole on October 4th, 2011
Posted in: Announcements
Tags: Holiday Hours
Comments: 0

Shopping for pumpkins in Ottawa (courtesy Wikipedia)

Monday, October 10th, 2011 is Canadian Thanksgiving, which means that our headquarters in Toronto will be operating on holiday hours.

Typical Canadians – Always Trying to Be Different

For trivia buffs, there’s a really good reason why Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October while Americans wait until November (and no, it’s not because we’ll be snowed in – har, har). A quick check of the Book of Knowledge (aka Wikipedia) reveals the following:

“By the end of the 19th Century, Thanksgiving Day was normally celebrated on November 6. However, when World War I ended, the Armistice Day holiday was usually held during the same week. To prevent the two holidays from clashing with one another, in 1957 the Canadian Parliament proclaimed Thanksgiving to be observed on its present date on the second Monday of October.”

So there you have it – we’re just trying to avoid conflict in our usual Canadian way.

Holiday Hours

Now on to the official business: Our Technical Support team continues to be available 24/7 to assist you. Please note that during this closure, there will be:

• No orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: .at, .fr, .ch, .li, .dk, .com.mx
• No special processing for .ca (registrant transfers, conflicting and municipal registrations) or .eu/.be (redemptions).

Here are the hours by department:

Our normal hours will resume on Tuesday, October 11. Have a safe and enjoyable holiday!

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By: James Koole on August 29th, 2011
Posted in: Announcements
Tags: Canadians, Holiday Hours
Comments: 0

Next Monday, September 6, 2011, is Labour Day here in Canada (aka Labor Day if you are in the USA) and that means some special hours for a few departments here at OpenSRS.

First, the official business: Our Technical Support team continues to be available 24/7 to assist you. Please note that during this closure, there will be:

• No orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: .at, .fr, .ch, .li, .dk, .com.mx
• No special processing for .ca (registrant transfers, conflicting and municipal registrations) or .eu/.be (redemptions).

Here are the hours by department:

About Labour Day

With that stuff out of the way, I will note that I used to find it kind of ironic that we celebrate Labour Day by not working. However, a quick read on Wikipedia revealed that the origins of Labour Day in Canada can be traced back to December 1872 when a parade was staged in support of the Toronto Typographical Union’s strike for a 58-hour work-week. Makes much more sense!

Absolutely True Facts about Canadians

As is also the tradition here on the blog, I’ll now provide some interesting insights and facts about what we do on long weekends in Canada so that we can further some stereotypes about Canadians.

Here in Ontario, Labour Day is an official day of mourning for kids, and a day of wild celebrations for parents (by government proclaimation). You see, it’s the unofficial last day of summer as everyone is back to school dark and early on Tuesday morning.

It’s also yet another opportunity for many Canadians to drink beer and head for the cottage (preferably in the opposite order – drive to the cottage, then drink beer – Arrive Alive. Drive Sober). In fact, this weekend is one of the last chances to get out on the water before the switchover from jet skis to snowmobiles happens (typical September weather for Toronto is shown to the right).

Those that stick around the city, especially here in Toronto, get to enjoy the last couple of days of the Canadian National Exhibition (the Ex!) just a few minutes south of the Tucows head office at the CNE grounds. It’s deep-fried everything for two weeks. Last year it was deep fried butter…this year it’s deep fried Coke!

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By: James Koole on August 19th, 2011
Posted in: Reseller Resources
Tags: .XXX, Webinar
Comments: 0

The folks at ICM Registry who run the new .XXX domain extension have put together a really nice video that helps explain why you and your customers should be paying attention to the launch of .XXX.

The video is embedded below (and you should feel free to embed it in your own site or blog if you are participating in the .XXX launch – grab the embed code from YouTube).

Want More Information?

For even more information on the launch and how you can help your customers, regardless of whether they are part of the adult community or not, we have a webinar coming up next week Thursday with Patrick Donaldson, Registrar Liaison, ICM Registry.

He’ll give you all the information you need to make an informed choice about whether you want to be a part of the launch. Adam Eisner, our Director of OpenSRS Product Management will also be there to talk about how OpenSRS will support the launch.

Like all OpenSRS webinars, this is a free event.

There’s More to the Launch of .XXX Than You Might Think
Date: Thursday, August 25, 2011
Time: 9:30 A.M. and 2:00 P.M. EDT (13:30 and 18:00 UTC)
Register now

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By: James Koole on August 8th, 2011
Posted in: Events
Tags: HostingCon 2011
Comments: 0

We’re at an inflection point with mobile Internet access right now, and hosters are in a unique position to take advantage of it. That was the key message today from Tucows CEO, Elliot Noss in his session, “This Mobile Moment,” given this afternoon at HostingCon.

I won’t go too deeply into the content of the presentation, but Elliot’s point is this: mobile is exploding, current providers aren’t doing a great job serving customers, and customers are just waiting for a someone to come in and do things differently.

Elliot suggests that hosters are uniquely positioned to take advantage for a number of reasons, like the fact that hosting companies are really good at customer service and are used working with small margins.

Phone to Modem = Feature phone to Smartphone

He also says the current situation with mobile access is analogous to the move from using our copper phone lines for telephone calls, to hooking up a modem and starting to use our phone lines for Internet access. He says the switch from feature phones used for voice calls and SMS to smart phones (pocket computers, really) represents a similar shift in technology use.

The point is this: hosting companies should be thinking about how they can leverage their expertise in service, support and understanding the needs of their customers to identify and take advantage of the opportunity that this mobile moment provides.