The conference was suppose to be held the week prior to the ICANN Conference in Prague.

The delay was blamed on ICANN and delay on the TAS system and the date for the “Big Reveal” which still has not been set by ICANN.

In an email today Kieren McCarthy said about the postponement of the conference:

“The reason is quite simple: the TAS delay. Although ICANN has finally opened it a month-and-a-half later, it still hasn’t provided a solid date for Reveal Day.

“At this stage, even if the information is provided on schedule, there isn’t enough time between that and our conference to get a proper feel for what we are looking at in terms of the new gTLD industry.”

This was to be the third Dot-Nxt conference, which is all about the new gTLD’s program and draws both applicants as well as consultants, back end providers, lawyers and others involved in the process.

I was schedule to speak at the conference in June.

Here is the offical announcement:

“”Due to ongoing uncertainty over ICANN’s application process for new gTLDs, we have decided to postpone the .Nxt conference, planned for 20-22 June in London.

We would like to apologize to all those that have already registered for the conference, and will shortly be in contact with everyone that has registered, booked rooms and/or signed up as a sponsor.

We will refund in full all hotel rooms and sponsorships. All tickets purchased will be automatically extended for admittance to the new date for the conference. We will also be running a series of session webinars as details of the new gTLD process finally emerge. A Q&A below should hopefully answer any other questions you may have.

We have made this decision reluctantly but with confidence that the current problems with the process will be temporary. If you have any questions with respect to this announcement”"…

The site features 145 sites each getting a small banner with a click through to each site.

The directory is also accepting additional sites for listing.

If you own a developed .XXX site you can submit it to the registry through a form located on the 1st page of the xxx.xxx site…

Yet A URDP has been filed over the IDN by Marco Rafael Sanfilippo.

I found that the complainant owns the domain name cabanias.com and the ownership of that domain could be the basis for the complaint.

Domain name: cabanias.com

Registrant Contact:
Marco Rafael Sanfilippo

If you check out Mr. Snaflippo’s site you will see on the top left he uses the words cabanias.com, cabañas.com interchangeably

The domain name  cabañas.com  does not go to a parking page  but is going to a site for booking rooms.

There are at least 8 trademarks for the term “cabana” without the accent.

We will see what happens to this one.

 …

Highlights of public sales include:

• Top .com: kindred.com at 50,000 USD
• Top ccTLD: interest.me at 80,000 USD
• Top “other” TLD: amara.org at 25,000 USD

See all of the sales reported by Sedo after the jump.

Related posts:

• Sedo sells over $2.1M USD in domains the previous week
• Sedo & Afternic Sales Report of the Previous Week
• Domains Sales of the Previous Week, lead by Navidad.com
• Sedo Sales for the Previous Week Including GamesForGirls.com at $500,000
• Domain Name Sales Report for the Previous Week

Sales where lead by Summon.com which went for a very reasonable (IMHO) $17K

Also like Adopted.com which sold for $15,500

On the other hand Instantly.net for almost $17K seems less of a bargain.

Here are the reportable sales:

Today in a Twitter chat, I asked ICANN how many people requested a refund under this program.

The answer I got was:

“As of last night we had received two new requests for refund since full refund offer, one for $185k & one for $5K”

I’m personally not surprised there has been virtually no takers for a refund.

After waiting for many years,  no one in the game is going to leave the game due to a six week delay.

I thought at the time it was a smart move by ICANN to head off lawsuits by simply letting anyone who paid into the system to let them drop out and give them a 100% refund.

Now it seems even smarter.

In other news out of the Twitter chat:

An update on new timeline including the Big Revel will be released on or before May 29th  but that the “Target reveal date will still before Prague”

In all ICANN was asked what seemed to be well over 50 questions, they answered 15.

You can see the chat under the Twitter #NewgTLD

You can follow us on Twitter here.

 …

39% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings.

Highlights of public sales include:

·         Top .com: kindred.com at 50,000 USD
·         Top ccTLD: interest.me at 80,000 USD
·         Top “other” TLD: amara.org at 25,000 USD

Here are the reportable sales:

Yesterday a federal court affirmed a lower courts order throwing the case out for “lack of personal jurisdiction” against the owner of Faceporn.com

The owner of Faceporn  is Thomas Pedersen of Bergen, Norway.

According to federal law for a nonresident defendant to be sued in the US they must be found commit an intentional act expressly aimed at the forum state and that caused harm that the nonresident defendant knew would likely be suffered in the forum state which in this case was California.

The previous judge ruled that Facebooke failed to  “put forth factual allegations that suggest that confusion actually has occurred or that any of Facebook’s potential customers have been sidetracked to Faceporn’s website as a result of defendants’ conduct.”

 …

”

The TLD Application System, or TAS, has reopened. All registered applicants can now log in, review and submit their applications.

The system will remain open until 23:59 GMT/UTC on 30 May 2012. Consistent with our previous practice and to allow the application window to open as soon as possible, two-hour maintenance windows have been scheduled as follows: 22 May at 16:30 GMT/UTC, 25 May at 23:00 UTC, and 29 May at 22:00 UTC.

Applicants are encouraged to review “Top Things Users Should Know When TAS Reopens,” posted on the new gTLD microsite at http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/tas/top-ten. The document provides advice on logging into and completing applications, submitting wire transfers, and contacting customer service with any issues users might encounter.

During the last few weeks, we have fixed the technical glitch that caused us to take the system offline. Also, to address user feedback, we have improved the overall system performance and the HTML preview function.

In our continuing review of the system logs and system traffic, we determined that in two instances, a single file might have been temporarily unavailable to an applicant. Full access to those two files has been restored. ICANN notified the affected users.

We recognize and regret the inconvenience caused by this glitch and the delayed closing of the application window.”…