Today’s post comes to you courtesy of Blogjet. Just testing.

Dotster is running a promotion this week, giving free whois privacy service with all new registrations. Use the coupon code “PRIVACY” during checkout.

By the way — and I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating — I like following new developments in the registrar and registry space, especially new service offerings. Dotster didn’t ask me to post this (I’m on their mailing list), but I am happy to pass on new service announcements and promotions from registries and registrars. Drop me a note if you have a new or interesting offering. I can’t promise I’ll always get it queued up for a post, but I’ll try.  

Silicon Valley Watcher: "Just a few days before the presses started rolling on the announcement of Ken Silva as VeriSign's first-ever chief security officer, I was dining with the man over filet mignon and crab at the trendy Tonno Rosso's near San Francisco's wharf, barraging him with questions about the very serious issues faced by internet infrastructure  and in particular the DNS system….”

EE Times UK: “The European Commission is advising companies and individuals to beware of fraudsters during the run-in to the intended introduction of the .eu top-level domain (TLD) at the beginning of 2006.”

United Press International: “The designation of two new top-level domains, .travel and .jobs, earlier this month by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has renewed some previous criticism about the organization's domain-approval procedure.”

Milton Mueller has a new post on ICANNWatch. He writes: “So ALAC's bizarre organizational structure asks individual users to devote half of their lives to building organizations that designate representatives who have an entirely indirect and minimal influence on ICANN policy. This is costly.” Yes and no. Yes, the current At Large structure is unduly complex. And, yes, at present the influence of the ALAC could be stronger. But, I’m not convinced that it won’t work or that it’s more trouble than it’s worth. In fact, I came away from Mar del Plata, the first meeting at which I had official ALAC responsibilities, with a renewed sense of hope for the future and influence of the At Large community. I’ll share some of my thinking on this in the coming days. The headline is that the ALAC will be more effective once the structure is in place, which ought to happen by the end of the year. And, yes, the structure could be improved, but I think we need to complete Version 1.0 of the ALAC before we move to Version 2.0. This will happen soon enough.

David Weinberger: “I just couldn't face implicitly confirming the idea that the blogosphere consists of big voices arguing with one another — spit fights! — instead of 10 million real voices engaged in every variety of human conversation and delight.”