The story of Pickaweb is a great one – husband and wife team Tony Messer and Pilar Torres Wahlberg literally started the company in a spare room of their home and have grown steadily since, now serving 20,000 customers in the UK and Spain.

Pickaweb’s approach is simple – take the fear out of the Internet for their customers through a commitment to great customer service combined with a willingness and passion to take the time to explain how anyone can use the web to grow their business.

It’s a great success story! We’re very proud to have Pickaweb as an OpenSRS reseller. Read the full article.

She was the Queen of England, Great Britain and Ireland from 1838 until she died in 1901. Why do we care so much about Queen Victoria? She was the Queen when Canada became a country in 1867. Kudos to her for letting us go our own way from the motherland. I think we’ve done pretty well for ourselves, thank you very much.

As we’ve explained in past holiday hours posts, traditionally we celebrate Victoria Day by opening up the cottage, opening up some beers, and blowing up some stuff with fireworks. O Canada!

With the wit out of the way, we’ll move on to official business:

Our Technical Support team continues to be available 24/7 to assist you throughout the holiday weekend.

Please note that during this closure, there will be:

• No orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: .at, .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:

Applications will be accepted from May 10 to June 8, 2012 at the CIRA website.

.CA Members and Registrants can play a key role in guiding the future of the Internet through their participation in the Nomination Committee Slate. CIRA will be inviting .CA Members and Registrants to participate in this stage of the 2012 CIRA Election.

You’ll find Ting in OpenSRS Offers – log into the new OpenSRS Control Panel and click the Offers Manager tab. Once you agree to the terms and conditions, and you’ll be assigned a unique Ting.com URL that you’ll use to send people to Ting to learn about the service.

What’s the Ting Offer?

• For your customers: Through OpenSRS Offers, you’ll be able to provide a $50 discount off a device purchase to everyone who you send to Ting.

Ting provides cost-savings and better customer service – the mobile phone service your customers deserve. Businesses (and families) can have unlimited devices on one account and they can pool multiple users together usage for greater savings. You can trust that your customers are in good hands at Ting. We’re quite confident that they’ll thank you for telling them about it.

• For OpenSRS Resellers: Ting provides an additional source of recurring revenue.

When someone signs up for Ting service using your URL or partner code, you get 25% of net revenue generated by that customer for two years.

More Information

The best place to learn more about Ting and see what makes it different is the Ting website. Try out the savings calculator, look at the plans, and maybe even try the service for yourself. Be sure to check out what people are saying about Ting on the Ting Facebook page and on Twitter.

Here’s an example:

My cell phone bill was so confounding, I'd have a better chance of grasping string theory. Switched to Ting, problem solved. @tingftw

May 4, 2012 8:34 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SeanGold3

Sean Gold

Getting Started

To get started with Ting in OpenSRS Offers, you can visit our OpenSRS Offers information page. There are some nice marketing resources for you including banner ads, logos, and email/web copy in the Offers section of our Resource Center. If you have any questions, drop by the OpenSRS Forums and ask away in the Ting area.

Extended Promotions

• .ORG: Our .ORG promotion will continue through the end of June. Get $2 off the cost of .ORG domains. If you already signed up, we’ll extend the promo for you automatically. If you missed out the first time around, sign up today to start saving.
• .PRO: The .PRO promotion was also extended through until May 30. Save big on .PRO domains – the registry cost is just $1.99 right now – and introduce your customers to .PRO. As with the .ORG promo, we’ll extend the promo for you automatically. If you missed out the first time around, sign up today to start saving.

.ASIA FreeBs

• .ASIA: FreeBs from .ASIA! Registrants of .ASIA domains will get FreeBs like headphones, and even Android tablets! That starts today and runs through the end of July. There’s no sign up for this one – all resellers are automatically included. More information.

You can see all current promotions on our Domain Promotions page.

There are quite a few small changes and additions to the goMobi service, but the overall experience remains very similar to what it was for those using the Site Builder. It remains very intuitive and existing sites will continue to work just fine.

That said, there are quite a few new features in version 1.6:

New Features:

• Ability to upload icons to features – a much requested feature!
• Option to add smartphone bookmark – upload a custom icon to be used when users create a shortcut to the goMobi site on their supported smartphone.
• Live site preview – the site preview in the Site Builder now emulates the experience on a smartphone.
• Keywords – improve SEO with meta keywords.
• New icon set – added a new theme.
• WordPress and Drupal redirection modules – available from the Advanced Feature or Finish page of the Site Builder.
• Site sharing options added to Finish page – easily promote your new goMobi site on Facebook, Twitter, Email or by QR code.

Enhancements:

• Improved Advanced Options - makes it easier for users to access advanced options when desired.
• New site colour options - users can more completely customize the goMobi site to match the colour palette of their existing site.
• WYSIWYG Editor added to Coupons - make rich, HTML coupons with images and text.
• Email option added to Find Us feature - let visitors send you an email to the email address of your choice.
• Additional language options added to Site Translation feature - more languages supported by the built-in translation feature.
• Email and SMS options added to the Create Link feature - create a link that opens email or SMS on certain smartphones.
• Additional Currencies added to mCommerce option - support for ten additional currencies.
• Video feature limit - increased from four to eight.
• Number of locations - increased from four to six.

Brazil is a big and growing market, so the addition of .COM.BR to the ever growing list of ccTLDs we offer is one we think will be of great interest to many of you. In fact, .BR is the most widely used domain for Portuguese language websites, outpacing even .COM in that regard. With a population of over 192 million people, Brazil represents a large market that is also quite technologically advanced.

.COM.BR domains do come with some specific requirements so to help you out with getting the extension added to your integration, we’ve prepared a special pull-out guide . It’s aimed mostly at those doing API integrations, but there’s some great information in there about some of the little things about .COM.BR that can sometimes be tricky. Download in PDF format.

Enabling .COM.BR in Search Results

.COM.BR is automatically enabled for all Resellers. Visit the Settings area for Domain Availability search in the Reseller Web Interface to enable .COM.BR domains in your search results.

Pricing

.COM.BR domains are priced at USD$22/domain year. You can see pricing for all the many TLDs we offer on our pricing page.

As always, our Reseller Support team is there if you have any questions about .COM.BR or any other extension we offer.

Read on to learn how to win a free pass to F2C or get a discount on your registration!

This year’s F2C conference features a very strong lineup of presenters and panelists. Confirmed keynote speakers include Vint Cerf, Michael Copps, Cory Doctorow, Benoît Felten, Rebecca MacKinnon, Eben Moglen, Mike Marcus and Aaron Swartz.

Here’s a good explanation of what F2C is all about:

Win a Free Pass, or Get 33% Off Registration

F2C meshes very nicely with our corporate ideals about how the Internet should work and how it needs to be protected and nurtured. Our mobile service Ting is a proud sponsor of the event and we have a couple of discount options for those of you who are looking to attend.

• First up, we have a free pass to give away to one person. We simply ask that you email us and give us a short explanation on why you think you should attend. Act fast – we’ll have a look at the emails and choose a winner on April 11th.
• For those who don’t get the free pass, we also have a discount code that you can use to get 33% off the registration fee. When you register, use promo code “TING33″.

The cost for the conference is $349 until April 16, after which the cost goes up a bit. That discount code will work until April 30.

For more information, and to register, visit the F2C: Freedom to Connect website.

Here are the hours by department:

Please note that during this closure, there will be no orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: (.at, .ch, .li, .dk, .com.mx).

In the session, Thorsten mapped out some of the trends and changes coming to the domain industry in 2012, and provided some key insights and ideas for hosting companies looking to take advantage.

2012 is going to be a year of big change in our industry. The introduction of new generic Top-level Domains will have major impacts on everyone across the Internet, including hosters. Make sure you are well informed about what’s going on, and armed with a plan so you’ll be able to find the opportunity in a time of change.

Below you’ll find Thorsten’s slides from the session. If you have any questions, feel free to ask away in the comments – we’re happy to share our knowledge and insights gleaned from 15 years at the forefront of the domains industry.