" 'Whois' actually facilitates protection of personal information," argued J. Scott Evans, a lawyer who represents intellectual property interests before Icann.

I've blogged several times about my love for Trumba, an online calendar that I use for myself, my family, and my kids' sports teams. When I blogged about it, it was wonderful. I say "was" because the company has decided to dump me as a user. They're not forcing me off right now, but they're abandoning the consumer market in favor of an "event" or "enterprise" approach and increasing the price to $99/month. That's not a misprint. Trumba thinks its going to build its future on an online calendar that sells for $1200 each year. This strikes me as completely insane. There's no online calendar worth that much, for the enterprise...or even the palace. I'm grandfathered until my subscription expires next year, but I'd rather find a replacement soon rather than later. Any ideas?

At today's public forum, I asked the Board to keep in mind the concerns of the legacy applicants when it considers new gTLDs tomorrow. A copy of a letter I sent to ICANN on behalf of one applicant is attached to this post. (Link: legacyletter.pdf)

John C. Dvorak and his gang of cranky geeks do a few minutes on whois and the recent GNSO work in the Halloween edition of the Cranky Geeks show. Contains some colorful language.

Tickets for the big gala event tonight were distributed starting at 8:00 am this morning. By 9:50 am, when I asked for mine, they had run out. So, how about a little love for your friendly neighborhood blogger? If you have an extra, look for me. I'm the guy in the blue suit and the pink striped tie. I have a collectible Bret Fausett bobblehead to swap for a ticket! UPDATE: Got one. Thanks!

Okay, more podcasting. If you were subscribed, you would know this already.

I took a vacation from my vacation from podcasting and podcasted again today. It's over at Internet.Pro. I have a new RSS feed for the radio show, so if you're not subscribed to the new feed, you'll need to subscribe all over again. Apologies for that.

I have a new article up on Name Brief. You don't really want to know.

It used to perplex Wendy Seltzer that an article I wrote years ago for New Architect magazine, titled "Cease and Desist," ranked higher in Google than Chilling Effects, the site and service she launched on the same subject matter. She's now jumped me in the rankings (I'm nine, she's eight), but there's a bunch of junk above us both.

Ireland's Independent has a very nice profile of Dennis Jennings, one of the new NomComm appointees to the ICANN Board.

At the encouragement of some friends, I signed up with Facebook. If you're on this thing too, we can facebook up. I hadn't looked at Facebook for a while, and it looks like its vastly improved. I'm still not sure what is to be gained with this over, say LinkedIn (where I also have an account), but I'm willing to give it a whirl.