Tucows is a proud sponsor of this evening’s CaseCamp Toronto 7. Hundreds of folks from Toronto’s digital marketing, social media, and communications community have signed up (on the wiki and/or the Facebook group) to attend. Tonight, our very own Bill Sweetman will be on stage to talk about the Tucows domain name portfolio to this group of digital gurus.

The action for this free communications and social media unconference gets started at 6:00 p.m. The event starts with networking and interactive art in the bar, followed by four 15 minute case-study presentations from the good people at TD Canada Trust, RedFlagDeals.com, Story2Oh!, and the Hospital for Sick Children.

Tucows plans to report its first quarter fiscal 2008 financial results via news release on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at approximately 4:00 p.m. (ET). Company management will host a conference call the same day at 5:00 p.m. (ET) to discuss the results and the outlook for the company.

More details and the full news release can be found at our media site.

TORONTO, April 29, 2008 – Tucows Inc. (TSX: TC, AMEX: TCX) plans to report its first quarter fiscal 2008 financial results via news release on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at approximately 4:00 p.m. (ET). Company management will host a conference call the same day at 5:00 p.m. (ET) to discuss the results and the outlook for the company.
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After much deliberation and consultation (in other words, in true Canadian fashion), the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has announced that WHOIS Privacy will go into effect on .ca domain names beginning June 10th, 2008.

The CIRA approach to WHOIS privacy is quite interesting and demonstrates a clear desire to protect the privacy of Registrants. There is full information on the new policies at the CIRA website.

In his Law Bytes column in today’s Toronto Star, Michael Geist calls the new policy “a model for domain name registries around the world.”

Geist goes on to suggest that CIRA is now in a global leadership position on the issue of registrant privacy. Geist writes, “With more than a million Canadian domain name registrations, the resolution of the whois issue ensures that the Canadian domain name space is set for continued growth as it now features a “privacy advantage” over other domains struggling to strike a similar compromise.”

What makes the CIRA policy different is that WHOIS privacy is enabled by default for individual domain owners. Registrants have to specifically opt-out with CIRA to have their information displayed. In contrast, the registration information for corporate domain holders is shown by default, however, they can opt-out and hide the information in what CIRA calls special circumstances.

As you would expect, we’ll be fully complying with the new policies. We’ll have more on how things will work from both a Registrar and from the Reseller perspective soon.

ISPCON Spring 2008 is less than a month away. That means there’s only a few days left to take advantage of free exhibits and events passes.

If you are planning to attend ISPCON, head over to their website to sign up today. The free exhibits and events pass offer only lasts through April 18th. Also of note, the price for conference and one-day passes also goes up after April 18th as well.

Tucows will be at ISPCON again this spring. Elliot Noss, Tucows CEO and President will offer up his thoughts in a keynote address on Wednesday, May 14th. Elliot will explain “Why YOU and lowfat lattes are Google’s Worst Nightmare.”

In addition, Rohan Jayasekera, Director, Tucows Email Service, will be participating in a panel discussion. That session, “Who Should Be Running Your Email,” is scheduled for the Wednesday, May 14th, but check the ISPCON conference schedule for the official word on times and for information about the other sessions.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Because I am fascinated with the world of domain names, I truly believe I have the coolest job in the world as the General Manager of the Tucows Domain Portfolio.

Now I have the pleasure of adding a new person to my existing team. That’s right, I’m looking to hire someone in the role of Associate Domainer. Maybe that someone is you or someone you know?

Here are some more details about this special role:

Associate Domainer at Tucows

Tucows is currently seeking a unique individual to join our Domain Portfolio team as an Associate Domainer. As a key member of this exciting and rapidly evolving business area, you will report directly to the General Manager, Domain Portfolio. (That would be me.)

Tucows has one of the largest domain name portfolios in the world, and these domain names are currently monetized through domain parking and domain sales.

In this full-time position, located in our office in Toronto’s Liberty Village, you will assist in reviewing and selecting domain names from daily lists for possible acquisition by Tucows. You will also grade and price domain names, manage, restore, renew and transfer names, and optimize the landing pages of parked domains. You will generate daily, weekly and monthly reports on data trends and patterns as well as respond to internal and external email and phone sales and support inquires about domain names in our portfolio. Your ability to work in a fast-paced environment will contribute to the growth of this evolving business area and the ongoing success of Tucows.

The ideal candidate will have kick-ass Internet research skills and excellent verbal and written communication skills. Proficiency in Word, Excel is a must, while database experience (MS Access/SQL) would be a nice bonus. Previous experience in and/or passion for the domain name industry, domaining, or PPC advertising would be very useful.

If you can multi-task, are detail-oriented and have the ability to manage your time effectively under minimal supervision, then this is the job for you.

Head over to the Careers site for more information and to apply.

I have to say that this is an amazing opportunity for someone who wants to break into the booming but still relatively unknown industry of domaining (domain name investing). Here’s a fascinating and seminal article on the topic of domaining that got a lot of people buzzing about domaining and domainers (those folks that practice domaining) when it was first published a year ago. It provides a rare ‘behind-the-scenes’ perspective on this fascinating industry and some of its key players.

With any luck it will also inspire a few people to apply for the Associate Domainer position at Tucows.

After a long wait, ICANN has issued a much needed clarification describing how it interprets its domain name portability policy.

Tucows has been an advocate of strong domain name portability policy since the early days of ICANN. We believe that consumer choice is a fundamental element of a healthy market. Without strong domain name portability policies the domain market will never be as strong as it should be.

The debate dates back to the early days of ICANN. Network Solutions, still owned by Verisign, had 100% market share. They were also the only registrar. By the end of the first full year of domain name competition, their market share was almost cut in half, falling to just 52.9% market share. At this time, fewer than 1 in 5 customers were choosing to do business with Network Solutions.

The former monopoly had serious problems to address.

The primary driver of this massive loss of market share was the substantial drop in domain name prices that Tucows introduced into the market in January, 2000. At the time domain, the early competitive registrars and Network Solutions, were selling domain names for $30-$35 each. We sold our first name as an accredited registrar on January 16, 2000 for $10 making us the first competitive registrar to seriously compete with NSI for real market share. NSI has since reduced their prices to closer match the market but they are still viewed by many as a high-price provider.

When faced with these prospects, most business owners react with a competitive response – new pricing, special promotions, enhancing features, etc. Network Solutions reacted by making it as difficult as possible for domain registrants to transfer their business to one of the newly created registrars. Instead of working harder to keep their customers, they were going to make it impossible for their customers to leave.

Tucows advocacy resulted in ICANN adopting a set of domain name portability policies entitled “Inter-Registrar Domain Name Transfer Policy”. In its earliest form, draft versions of this policy proposal were actually modeled on Tucows transfer practices which continued to be viewed as a benchmark for the industry. While the new portability policy had widespread support amongst the community, Network Solutions, Go Daddy and Register.com strongly opposed its adoption.

Network Solutions and GoDaddy reacted by implementing more obstacles for customers who wanted to leave and try a new provider. They claimed these restrictions would enhance “consumer protection” and “security” but the net result was simply that it became a lot harder for registrants to transfer their domain names away to new providers.

These customer hostile policy abuses continue into the present day.

This is why Tucows especially welcomes this clarification from ICANN. This advisory specifically addresses many of these policy abuses and provides greater recourse for our staff to help our customers in resolving domain transfer related issues. Provided that ICANN backs up this advisory with clear enforcement against those ignoring its advice, it should become easier for duly authorized registrants to safely and securely transfer their service to a new provider.

The Tucows’ User Experience Design group is hiring!

### User Experience Design Group?

What is the UED group all about? Our primary mandate is to ensure that all of our products and services work effectively, look great, and leave you with a fresh, minty taste that doesn’t fade for at least 12 hours.

Well, maybe not that last one, but we’re working on it. Here, have a breath mint in the meantime.

As a fairly new group within Tucows we’ve got a ton of work ahead of us. From a web perspective we’re working to improve every contact point between you and Tucows. This includes everything from broad improvements to the control panels you rely on every day to making our corporate web sites communicate more effectively.

In a nutshell, we’re here to make stuff (specifically Tucows stuff) look great, work great, and help you get stuff done.

### Now Hiring: Web Developers! Visual Designer! Ponies!

I could start trotting out buzzwords and catchphrases here to describe all of the amazing, cool stuff we’re working on at Tucows, but I’d have to take myself out back and wash my mouth out with soap to atone afterwards. Needless to say, we’ve got a horn o’ plenty full of exciting work on the go here, and we need some smart, talented people to help us make it all happen.

We’re currently looking for a visual designer as well as one junior and one intermediate front end developer.

### » Junior / Intermediate Front End Developer

You:

* are standards-driven with real-world experience
* are keenly aware of the benefits (and difficulties) of creating beautiful, usable, and accessible interfaces in the context of today’s technological realities
* keep up with current design and development best practices
* know that the term “progressive enhancement” is not a spam subject line
* can take mockups and turn them into fully functioning, hand-coded works of art.

The acronyms XHTML, CSS, DOM (scripting), and JS are like nerd comfort food for you and you’ve got the portfolio to prove it. Your PHP experience is a huge asset.

Does this sound like you? Apply for the [junior front end developer position][1] or the [intermediate front end developer position][2] now.

[1]:http://go.tucows.com/careers/ued/frontend1/2008-04/
[2]:http://go.tucows.com/careers/ued/frontend2/2008-04/

### » Visual Designer

You:

* are a visual, creative person who understands that a huge part of effective design is solving problems
* have a portfolio of work you’ve done (web & rich media — print experience is a plus)
* can create a design vision from the conceptual to the fully-formed
* are highly user-centric and strive to make technology easier and fun to use
* can boss around Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash like nobody’s business.

Interested? [Apply for this position now][3].

[3]:http://go.tucows.com/careers/ued/visualdesigner/2008-04/

### Wrapping up

This is the first of many posts on the UED group and what we’re up to, so keep your eyes peeled for more from my group as we kick it into high gear. Feel free to [get in touch with us][4] to ask questions, send us feedback, or even just drop us a line to let us know about a cool design-related link.

And, as promised, I leave you with: [ponies!][5]

[4]:http://go.tucows.com/email/ued/
[5]:http://images.google.com/images?q=ponies

Happy Friday faithful readers! Spring appears to have finally sprung here at Tucows HQ in Toronto (at least most of the snow has melted).

One of the most important parts of my job is finding and keeping talented people. Right now, I’m looking for a Marketing Manager to join the herd. This might just be one of the best digital marketing jobs in Canada.

Here’s the pitch:

As our Marketing Manager, you’ll get to come to work every day with a bunch of bright, passionate people who are really smart about the Internet and good at what they do.

You’ll apply your creativity and innovative ideas to design, implement and manage our marketing programs. You’ll never hear, “but we’ve always done it THIS way” at Tucows. In fact, we want you to blaze a trail.

It’ll be your job to deliver email marketing, promotions, retention/acquisition campaigns, search engine marketing & optimization and to manage media and analytics.

We’re one of Canada’s oldest Internet companies. As a wholesale Internet services provider, we offer domain names, SSL certificates and email to our resellers (thousands of web hosting companies and ISPs around the world).

At Tucows, we believe the Internet is the greatest agent for positive change world has ever seen. We know that people find the Internet complex and confusing, so our work is to make things simple and reliable. We’re big on innovation and creativity and believe it is found in every employee, customer and partner we have. And finally, we know that through teamwork we can achieve remarkable things.

If this sounds like your dream job, cruise on over to our Careers site to read all the details of the job and drop us your resume. If you’d like to learn more, drop me a note and we’ll connect for a chat.

Elliot Noss, our President and CEO, will be one of the keynote speakers at ISPCON Spring 2008. ISPCON happens May 13th – 15th at Chicago’s Donald E. Stephen’s (Rosemont) Convention Centre.

On Wednesday, May 14th, at 10 A.M., Elliot will present, “Why YOU and lowfat lattes are Google’s Worst Nightmare.” Here’s the summary:

“Google has an Achille’s Heel. Ruthless efficiency is embedded in their DNA, which is good for machines but bad for human beings. In this keynote session, Elliot Noss, President and CEO of Tucows will talk about how Starbucks is a better role model than Google or how applying this approach can help make a difference in your business as you compete against the biggest fish in the pond.”

As usual, Tucows will exhibiting at ISPCON. In addition, Rohan Jayasekera, Director, Tucows Email Service, will be participating in a panel discussion. That session, “Who Should Be Running Your Email,” is scheduled for the Wednesday, May 14th, but check the ISPCON conference schedule for the official word on times and for information about the other sessions.

ISPCON is less than six weeks away. We’re gearing up for the show, and we’re looking forward to getting the chance to meet potential new, and current customers face-to-face. See you there.