The date for nominating your choices in various categories is now over. Hopefully you got to nominate your favorite domainer of the year and the best sponsor. The best broker award is a new addition this year. You can see the full list of nominees in each category on the “Targeted Traffic” website.

The “Best Domain Blog” nominees for 2012 are listed below.

TheDomains.com (Berkens)
DNJournal.com (Jackson)
ElliotsBlog.com (Silver)
DomainNameWire.com (Alleman)
DomainShane.com (Cultura)
DomainGang.com (Acro)
DomainSherpa.com (Cyger)
MorganLinton.com (Linton)
HybridDomainer.com (Hackney)
WhizBangsBlog.com (Gilmour)
TNTNames.com (Eccles)

These are supposed to be the blogs you cannot miss if you are a part of domain industry and want to stay tuned to all the latest developments and news. Each of one of these bloggers is an expert with a personality and strong opinions.

Personally, the only two blogs out of this lot that we regularly pop in on are DNJournal.com and ElliotsBlog.com. Let’s just say that the mark of a good blogger is the ability to find an industry angle in just about any story.

For example, the Chick-Fil-A controversy seems to be raging out of control. It’s a good idea to write about that to attract more traffic while taking a stand yourself. But what’s the domain industry angle to it? A post on ElliotsBlog.com tells readers that domain investor Warren Royal has a company called Royal Bobbles which has a line of Chick-Fil-A bobblehead dolls.

Opera mini for mobile devices is Opera’s leading brand with 173 million users and is what keeping the company stable and pushing forward. It currently leads on the mobile browsers and getting lots of revenue from advertisers. The desktop version of Opera provides speedy browsing but not as fast compared to Google Chrome and it also has the tabbed browsing which is also found in other browsers like Firefox and the Internet Explorer so that makes Opera a “not so special” browser at all. But the camera support can be a total game changer for the Opera for no other browser has this feature yet.

There is also a rumor that Facebook is planning to acquire Opera and this is because of Facebook push on its video chat which would make great sense due to to new feature of Opera.

Will the browser with camera support the next big thing in the net? are we gonna be seeing websites with interactive video chat supports? The new Opera update may actually be a revolutionary feat and may change the faces of the next websites. With blogging and social media leading the web platform a camera support on a browser may be the answer for a more interactive like real time blogging and social media experience.

Codenow which can be accessed via CodeNow.com is an API focused learning center and can provide you hands on training in developing and deploying API in minutes. Learning how to code an API consume lots of time and it requires asking permission from API developers and also using a specialized syntax platform or software but with CodeNow, you can learn to code in the browser and run it live for a real time result and checking of your codes.

CodeNow has split screen, the left pane is where you do the actual coding while the right pane lets you view the results. You can also run the code in a virtual machine or a development kit platform and share the results of your codes in a link or decide to keep it for yourself.

Learning to code is your best weapon in the digital age. Most of the high paying jobs being offered belongs in the IT industry like software engineering, quality testing, web programming and these jobs requires you to learn to code. CodeNow.com offers a seamless environment and user friendly workspace that is perfect for beginners and novices and those who wants to venture into the API and apps development industry.

The website is currently in beta test but it is open now for reservations and you can submit your email to be shortlisted as new beta testers or receive a notification once the website is officially launched.

So what does the whitespace means for the new design of google + and will it be an integral part of its remodeling? The whitespace is actually a feature of the new google + and it is called Responsive Web Design. The whitespace makes the design adoptive to the browser and automatically adjusts its spacing to fit in the browser and unlike Facebook where it has fixed width and spacing and does not depends on the browser’s layout. Basically, the new Google design changes its layout and re-sizes itself when you maximize or adjusts your browser while Facebook just looks the same.

The question is: What will Google + do with the vast whitespaces? Time will tell. Maybe Google will be adding features time to time to fill up the gaps but according to Google the Whitespace they basically just wanted the social networking site to be responsive to the browser.

Although a lot are skeptic with the Whitespace and doubtful whether it would help google + in the battle of social networking site supremacy I personally think the the responsive browser design is a good idea. I like the fact the Google Plus is more focused on contents rather than advertising like Facebook. I also think that the idea is revolutionary and will also be perfect for websites as well and not just for social media sites which have dynamic contents. It would be a great feature for ecommerce sites and other types of websites to have the interactive navigation and responsive layout like google +. If you have not seen the layout yet then head over to Google plus and maybe it is time to revive your interest to the fledgling social site again.

Nominet, a popular registrar of .co.uk domain names, recently outlined a comprehensive set of changes to its services, which it will implement beginning in May of 2012. The biggest change is that a single-year registration of a .uk domain name will cost £3.50 per year, where a two-year registration will be £2.50 per year. Both prices will have the standard VAT added atop those prices. The two-year price is the same as before, but the availability of one-year domain purchase is a new element to Nominet’s services.

Domains will also be available for renewal for up to 10 years, and renewal will be possible at any time, as long as the renewal years do not add up to over 10 years. Prior to these changes, registrants could only acquire Nominet domains in two-year blocks.  There are other new aspects to Nominet’s operating procedures, too, many of which seem to streamline customer services, billing, and renewal processes. One of these changes includes an inability to cancel a purchase once the registration invoice has been issued to the customer.

Apparently, there had been concern that the availability of single-year domain registration would increase the number of non-serious domain customers – people who want abusive or throwaway domains in the .uk registry. Hopefully, a slightly higher cost for a one-year period of registration will set this problem back slightly.

The Fantasy Domaining Contest will run a little like a fantasy football tournament. The big winner will receive a trip to the 2012 DOMAINfest Global conference, including a $1,000 travel stipend and four nights at a hotel in addition to free tickets to the conference and a publicly-awarded trophy. The second-place and third-place winners will get free and half-off tickets to the conference, respectively.

The contest will help hone the skill of its contestants at the domain name game. From a list of 1,000 domains, the entrants to the contest will draft a roster, put domains “in-play”, substitute and trade domains with other users, and project PPC revenue. From an original list of 35 selected from the 1,000, 25 domains are put into play. The contestant must choose the domains that s/he thinks produced the most PPC revenue between December 1, 2010 and January 16, 2011, and the actual revenue recorded for the domains between those dates determines the contestant’s overall ranking based on his or her roster.

The contest began on December 1, 2011, but you can still sign up and play (if you’re a resident of the United States) through January 16, 2012. Signing up is free. Winners will be notified on January 18, 2012. For more details, visit http://www.domainfest.com/fantasy.

No, Harvard isn’t going into the pornography business. But if a domain name buyer picks up harvard.xxx before Harvard does, you can bet that site would make an awful lot of money. Harvard wants to avoid its name being smeared in this way (and someone else profiting off the Harvard name, more likely than not). When getting a domain try a network solutions coupon for a discount. Colleges and universities are buying the domain names to keep them safe, to keep them from being utilized by pornographers hoping to capitalize on fantasies about Harvard girls on a site that ends in .xxx.

.xxx domains are currently selling for about $200 apiece, and multiple domains are being purchased by some schools of higher learning. Let’s hope the Board of Trustees never finds out about such an expenditure – or that they get a quick explanation.

.xxx reportedly raked in about $10 million from domain name buyers just during its sunrise period, which expired on October 29. Currently, .xxx is in landrush, and apparently pricing and information have been difficult to find for those in the business of domain name purchase. December 6th will certainly be a big day.

Typically another mail server, which has received an email for a domain that it doesn’t know how to directly deliver, queries DNS for a list of MX records that match the domain of the To: address in the email. It looks for the lowest preference number and contacts that mail server via SMTP.  If there are two MX records with the same preference number, any of them that share the lowest number may be used.  If mail delivery is not successful with the first host, the host with the second lowest preference number is used for the next attempt at mail delivery, typically after a timeout.

All of this provides a level of redundancy and backup to ensure emails can be successfully delivered, even if one or more mail servers are inaccessible.

So let’s talk about this for a second. Since they are the registrar and the hosting company use them for both services chances are there’s an issue they will fix it quickly because they cannot point fingers. In the past a hosting company would point the finger at the registrar and the registrar when the finger the hosting company in your site become per week. But these days is not the case. So you should use a GoDaddy hosting promo code to obtain the best possible price on hosting and receive the benefits of everything also they provide. For example they provide many things such as one click application installation so you can create a site and build out however you want very easily and very quickly. As a great service that they provide them because they are such a large host they provide it at an amazing price.

TinyURL is also good if you are redirecting people to an affiliate link. With a TinyURL, only you will know it is an affiliate link. The only URLs the visitors will see is the TInyURL and the end URL. And you will still get the affiliate credit!

You can use TInyURL to redirect to any page in your site. Use the service when sending a link through email to avoid long links from breaking.

the best part of TinyURL is the cost- the service is FREE! Of course, you are always welcome to make a donation to keep the service for free, but that is entirely up to you.