GoDaddy.com can't win for losing. Even as it loses thousands of customers to other domain name registrars, it was accused of stalling domain name transfers on Monday morning, by rival service NameCheap.
GoDaddy.com has been the target of the anger of many customers after it came out with strong support of the Stop Internet Piracy Act, or SOPA, which many consider to be the first step to Internet censorship. Since then, the company has backed down, but too late: it's losing customers and desperately making attempts to keep them. NameCheap said:
“As many customers have recently complained of transfer issues, we suspect that this competitor is thwarting efforts to transfer domains away from them. Specifically, GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process. This practice is against ICANN rules.“
With the incomplete WhoIs information, Namecheap said that it's only recourse was to manually process the requests, which it said was doing.
GoDaddy, on the other hand, responded to Namecheap's accusations, though only to TechCrunch. They sent the tech blog an email, that said:
"Namecheap posted their accusations in a blog, but to the best our of knowledge, has yet to contact Go Daddy directly, which would be common practice for situations like this. Normally, the fellow registrar would make a request for us to remove the normal rate limiting block which is a standard practice used by Go Daddy, and many other registrars, to rate limit Whois queries to combat WhoIs abuse.
"Because some registrars (and other data gathering, analyzing and reporting entities) have legitimate need for heavy port 43 access, we routinely grant requests for expanded access per an SOP we've had in place for many years. Should we make contact with Namecheap, and learn they need similar access, we would treat that request similarly.
"As a side note, we have seen some nefarious activity this weekend which came from non-registrar sources. But, that is not unusual for a holiday weekend, nor would it cause legitimate requests to be rejected. Nevertheless, we have now proactively removed the rate limit for Namecheap, as a courtesy, but it is important to point out, there still may be back-end IP addresses affiliated with Namecheap of which we are unaware. For complete resolution, we should be talking to each other -- an effort we are initiating since they have not done so themselves.
-Rich Merdinger Sr. Director of Product Development - Domains Go Daddy"
GoDaddy.com's response, therefore, is that the "block" is / was standard operating procedure. In any case, it says it has removed the blockage and that things should be moving swiftly, but only if Namecheap it the registrar to which the domain name is being moved.
Despite all the bad press, it would seem that things are not all that dire for GoDaddy.com; according to The Verge, while GoDaddy.com lost 21,054 domains on Dec. 23, 2011, but had gained 20,034 domains in return on that same day.
Still, reddit has suggested that Dec. 29 should be a "move your domain away from GoDaddy day." We'll see if things really take shape on that day, which is Thursday.
In a sort of tit-for-tat promotion, eBay has an answer to Amazon.com's earlier promotion from last weekend. eBay's promotion gives you $10 to spend in-store if you spend $100 online.
One could consider it the reverse of last weekend's Amazon.com promotion. That perk used the Internet giant's Price Check app to encourage consumers to check a price in-store, check the price using the app, and then walk out without buying anything.
The promotion gave users, after they placed a desired item into the Price Check app's virtual shopping cart, a 5 percent discount, up to $5. It could be used 3 times for a maximum of $15 in savings. That promotion drew a great deal of anger from brick-and-mortar retailers.
eBay's promotion goes the other way. Spend $100 online, and get $10 to spend in-store. The negative, however, is that the selection of stores to is pretty small, and let's be honest, not all that compelling when compared to Amazon.com.
In other words, as a direct answer to Amazon.com's promotion, this makes for good PR, but hardly makes a consumer's wallet all that happy. The online stores that you can make the purchases at are the Toys“R”Us store on eBay, ToysRUs.com, DicksSportingGoods.com or Aeropostale.com.
You also can't mix and match, or at least it doesn't sound that way, because a person who spends $100 will receive a $10.00 in-store gift certificate which can be redeemed at a "local retail store of the same brand." In other words, you have to spend $100 and Store X to get $10 off at the brick-and-mortar version of Store X.
The promotion runs from Sunday at 6:00 a.m. ET through Monday, December 19 at 11:59 p.m. ET.
While we understand the anger that brick-and-mortar retailers had against Amazon.com's promotion last weekend, as a consumer, we have to say: if you want to compete with Amazon.com, you have to compete on price.
Some of the argument against the Amazon.com promotion was about Amazon.com's perceived sales tax advantage. However, Amazon.com's price advantage isn't just the small percentage it gains from that. For example, on Friday night, one of its Lightning Deals was the H&R Block Deluxe + State 2011 tax program for $24.99, down from $44.99 retail.
It's hard to argue with that price advantage and buy from a brick-and-mortar retailer.
eBay has a mobile app of its own, called Red Laser. Similar to Amazon.com's Price Check app, consumers can use it to scan a bar code, compare prices, and buy online. It has one key difference, though: consumers can also see if the product is available nearby.
Amazon.com's latest 2011 holiday shopping promotion begins at 9 p.m. tonight and ends Saturday, Dec. 10, at 12:59 p.m. The Retail Industry Leaders Association is definitely upset.
The promotion involves Amazon.com's Price Check app, which was recently released as an Android app after existing as an iPhone-only app for about a year. With Amazon.com's Price Check app, users can compare a retailer's pricing against Amazon.com's by scanning a barcode, taking a picture, or entering a product name. Once that's done, the app will then display prices for Amazon.com's site, including its Marketplace vendors; it will also indicate if the product is available with free shipping.
Yep, you're finding a product you like in a retailer's store, and you can then instantly compare it to Amazon.com's pricing. In the old days, you would have had to actually either browse to the Internet on your smartphone (or use Amazon.com's app), or even (heaven forbid) go home with a list and surf Amazon.com's site there.
All right, for local retailers, that's bad enough news. Amazon.com's prices are generally lower, right. Starting at 9 p.m. tonight, though, after a user places a desired item into the Price Check app's virtual shopping cart, a 5 percent discount will be applied to the product price, up to $5. That's hardly a game changer, but it is something.
The Price Check app promotion can be used on up to three products, so the maximum savings will be $15.
Still, the Retail Industry Leaders Association’s Katherine Lugar was quite clear with her displeasure in a statement issued about the promotion:
“Retailers compete on price 365 days a year, and at no time is that competition hotter than during the make-or-break holiday shopping season. However, by continuing to evade collecting state sales taxes, Amazon’s exploitation of a pre-Internet tax loophole is resulting in a 6-10 percent perceived price advantage over their competitors on Main Street.
"Amazon’s aggressive promotion of its Price Check App shows the lengths they are willing to go to exploit this tax loophole, and is a stark reminder of why Congress needs to act to protect retailers on Main Street. A failure to act is an implicit endorsement of a subsidy of Amazon, a subsidy that distorts the free market and puts jobs on Main Street at risk."
There's a problem with Lugar's statement: how is Amazon.com's sales tax "loophole" being exercised here? The price on the store shelf that a consumer will see does not include the sales tax. Unless, like us, he does the math in his head (or on his smartphone), he's not going to see that.
Instead, he's going to see that the retail price of and LG 42LV4400 42-Inch 1080p 120Hz LED-LCD HDTV is $799 retail locally and $499 at Amazon.com. Why should he pay $799? The Retail Industry Leaders Association seems to think he should.
It's not just that either. With Amazon.com, you don't have to wonder if the store has what you want. YOu see it's either there or not there, online. Quite frankly, Amazon.com has a wider selection than any of the retailers we visit.
Yes, it's a problem for the local retailers. But it's not about a tax loophole. It's about pricing, period.
John Abraham Bipasha Basu to break-up with discussions of the social networking site Twitter has expressed his anger. eight-year love affair that lasted two paths after the split this month.
John Simi Garewal chat show had admitted to their relationship soured. Taking a dig at John actor says that he prefers to keep private things private.
"Wht happens between 2 ppl is supposed 2 stay between d 2 when its over, that’s d dignity that I have grown up with and the respect I deserve. I dn’t need to be on a talk show 2 prove my goodness!My relationship with John Abraham is over fr good, fr reasons knwn best to d both of us," Bipasha tweeted.
"My break up happened almost a year ago! Why r these stories coming up now? Is it a pr exercise for a film or overimaginative journalism?" she added.
Although at least one of the employees working for a counterfeit Apple store in Kunming, China, is just fine with the fact that, although it is clearly designed to look like an Apple retail store, it's not one, customers do not have quite the same opinion.
A customer with the surname of Wang told Reuters "When I heard the news I rushed here immediately to get the receipt, I am so upset. With a store this big, it looks so believable who would have thought it was fake?
"The biggest thing I'm upset about is that I spent so much money at this store and I don't even know whether it is real or not. What can I do? They aren't going to give me a refund."
Well, one possible clue would be that the word "Store" was misspelled as "Stoer." That, and the fact that a quick check of Apple's website shows it has 4 stores in China, 2 in Beijing and 2 in Shanghai.
Although the store continues to say that their products are authentic, why is it they are not giving out receipts? That would be another clue, to us. Wang said that she spent 14,000 yuan ($2,170) last month when she purchased a 13-inch Macbook Pro and a iPhone 3GS from the Kunming store, but she wasn't issued a receipt at the time, as staff told her to return later. She was reported on Friday shouting "Where's my receipt, you promised me my receipt last month!" to employees, before they moved her out of the main store and upstairs.
The store (and actually, there are three clone stores in Kunming) is feeling both customer anger and heat from the media, and they aren't happy. One employee said, "The media is painting us to be a fake store but we don't sell fakes, all our products are real, you can check it yourself. There is no Chinese law that says I can't decorate my shop the way I want to decorate it."
There may not be a Chinese law regarding that, but Apple might have something to say about that. The stores are decorated in such a way that they are virtual clones of official Apple stores. Even the employees wear the traditional blue shirts and name tags (but without names, another clue) that Apple retail store employees would sport.
Not everyone is so upset, and so far, Apple hasn't shown it's upset, either. One customer, Hu Junkai, 18, said, "As long as their products are real it's okay -- after all, you enter a store not to look at anything except their products. If the products you buy are real why do you care whether the store is a copy?"
The question is, if the store is a copy, is it such a stretch to think the products might be, as well?
Mumbai blasts on Wednesday evening, which is once again shaken up the entire country is boiling with anger again. Strongly condemned the Mumbai blasts Bollywood .
Bollywood beauty Aishwarya Rai was supposed to meet today in Delhi French respecting the Mumbai blasts, have refused to take the Ash. Ash said that it is time to celebrate. He said event organizers to postpone the program. tell you today that former Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was going to honor the French government.
French government’s prestigious award "The Order of Knight of Arts and Letters’ was going to reward the ash. Ash from the first Indian actress Nandita Das, Shah Rukh Khan King of Bollywood and Bengali beauty Sharmila Tagore has received this award.
The country’s financial capital Mumbai Wednesday evening between 6.45 and 7.00 Silesilewar 21 people were killed in three blasts reported and 145 people injured. The attack on the terror outfit Indian Mujahideen has been blamed.
Anushka Sharma has also learned to stay in the news. So far, so films and discuss the affair with Ranbir Singh Anushka who live in the past been seen wearing a large diamond ring. This led to speculation that since this is just somewhere they have not engaged.
According to sources, it will be draped by Ranvir Anushka Diamond Ring. No matter how denied that she and Ranbir are just friends and nothing about the affair, but where there is smoke without fire.
Ranbir during theToronto IIFA Awards sonakshi Sinha after dancing all saw the anger. So maybe that Ranbir gave it to him to celebrate.
Well that Anushka Anushka have told the manager he is not engaged. Sushmita Sen, Anushka, much like the hope that it will not answer what I can not gift a diamond ring? For this I need a man?
Paywalls are one thing, but a paywall for just one subset of users, and based on the hardware they use to browse the Web? The New York Post has done just that, and by doing so might anger people enough to make themselves irrelevant on the Web.
Nah. But some may wish it would happen, after what the Post did.
Prior to Saturday, those who chose to visit the New York Post's site were annoyed by an interstitial pop-up ad for their iPad app. Starting on Saturday, those who chose to visit the New York Post's site on an iPad couldn't get to the site at all. Instead, a user is greeted by:
Thanks for coming! NYPOST.com editorial content is now only accessible on the iPad through the New York Post App.
Uh, really? That is incredibly stupid and silly.
First, it's easy to get around. You simply use an alternative browser, such as SkyFire. Of course, that only gets around it if you want to go directly to the site. Let's say you are using the iPad's native email client and someone emails you a New York Post URL. Well, that's gonna load up Safari, and you're not going to be able to view it.
That even means that if you're surfing the Web in the New York Post's Facebook page (though likely, they might get unliked by many over this) you won't be able to read anything posted there ... click on the URL, and it doesn't open the NYP app, but goes via Safari. Oh, sorry, we blocked you!
It's supremely silly, and just one more reason to avoid the NYP. Although there are ways around the restriction, it will be like jumping through hoops, and for a Murdoch entity, too.
If Murdoch really wanted to monetize the New York Post, why not some sort of daily app ... oh wait, they already did that; it's called The Daily.
The New York Post app is $1.99 in the App Store, and of course you have to pay for a subscription. Certainly, this move is probably going to get a ton of negative reviews posted, and definitely isn't going to help sales, no matter what the Post thinks.
Realistically, we assume there will be quite a bit of fallout over this, and the decision will be reversed. It's really the silliest idea we've ever heard of.
After Superstar falling ill, the very first news which topped the headlines is that Rana has been dropped. Soundarya Rajinikanth who came to know about this has fired at a leading daily which published this article.
Soundarya has immediately called the concerned daily newspaper and burst of anger. Not leaving them with a warning, Soundarya is ready to file a case against the newspaper. Rana is Rajini’s brainchild and at any cost the filmmakers are in a decision to release the film in 2012.
Recently the director of the film confirmed that the film is going to start its shoot in the month of July as Deepika Padukone’s dates are also not available until July and in the meantime Rajini also recovers fully.
Eros International, India's largest integrated film studio and Ocher Picture Productions of Soundarya Rajinikanth are jointly producing the film. [WaY]
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