How to transfer domain name from OfficeLive.com

OfficeLive.com was offering free domains with their OfficeLive package in 2006. They were renewing the domain names for free every year. However, they have recently changed their policy and are not renewing the domain names anymore (effective Oct 1, 2009). If you are an OfficeLive customer and have a custom domain name, you have the option of paying $15 per year to keep the domain name active. On the other hand, if you want to transfer your domain name from OfficeLive.com to another registrar, say GoDaddy, follow the instructions below. The instructions are lengthy but they work.
Notes:
– IMPORTANT: Transferring your domain name to another registrar cancels your OfficeLive account and you will lose all your webpages, email etc.
– The Domain Registration Key (DRK) provided initially is different from the Domain Name password required later during domain name transfer. MelbourneIT calls it Domain Name Password/authinfo (see step 19 below) while GoDaddy calls it an Authorization Code.
– The cancellation confirmation email from OfficeLive comes in a couple of minutes and does not take 48 hours as mentioned below
– Make sure the domain name is unlocked at MelbourneIT before attempting a transfer to another registrar

 

 

Procedure to transfer your domain name from OfficeLive (i.e. from Melbourne IT)
Please note down your Domain Registration Key (DRK) to unlock your domain name at Melbourne IT, by following below mentioned instructions:
1. Go to http://www.officelive.com/
2. Login into your Microsoft Office Live account using administrator Windows Live ID and password.
3. On the Home page, at the top of the page click on ‘More’ option.
4. In the drop down menu, select Domain manager.
5. Click on the link ‘Learn about saving your information’.
6. Note down your domain name and Domain Registration Key.
When you retrieve the DRK for your domain, please follow below mentioned instructions to cancel your Microsoft Office Live account:
1. Sign in to your Microsoft Office Live account using your Windows Live ID and the associated password.
2. On the Home Page click on “Account Management” under “Manage Your Office Live Account”.
3. Now, click on “Cancel your account” on the middle of the page.
4. Click on Next.
5. Select the reason for cancelling the account.
6. Click on Next and enter your alternate email address where you want the cancellation confirmation email.
7. Now, click on “Cancel this account”.
Note: You will receive a cancellation confirmation email within 48 hours along with the Domain Registry Key (DRK) details associated with your domain.
Once you cancel your account with Microsoft Office Live, if you want to transfer your domain name to another web host provider, please follow the below steps on how to unlock and manage your domain name:
1. Go to http://www.melbourneit.com.au/cc/godirect/
2. Enter your domain name and registry key and click on continue.
3. Click on ‘create a new account’ below the text box where you are prompted for My account password.
3.1. Fill up all the information needed:
3.1.1. Contact Information
3.1.2. Login Information
3.1.3. Other Information:
3.2. The Country Code is “1” for United States (for UK it is 44)
3.3. The email address you enter must not be related to the domain you are attempting to transfer/manage.
4. After filling up all the information, check the box that says I have read and understood the Sign Up Terms and Conditions. I agree to abide by the terms and conditions, as stated there in.
5. Click Create. Now your account is created.
6. On the My Account Console page, click Logout on the right side of the page.
7. Now you will be redirected to the Melbourne IT web site.
8. Click Manage Domain Name on the right side of the page.
9. Type your domain and registry key.
10. Click Enter Management.
11. Click Transfer management to Melbourne IT.
12. Sign in using the username and password for your Melbourne IT account using the username and password, which you created for your Melbourne IT account.
13. Click Continue after you have verified all the information on the page.
14. Click on My Account console.
15. Click on the link “View/Manage domain name” under the Domain Names.
16. Click on your domain name (customer domain name) under the Domain Name section.
17. Click on the Unlock Domain Name.
18. To change name server, click on Change Delegation Details under Name Server Details on the right side of the page. Here, you can change the domain name server settings for your new service provider.
19. To obtain new authorization code in order to transfer your domain, click Retrieve Domain Name (authinfo) Password (on the same page on point 17).
Upon cancellation, you will no longer have access to email accounts created through your Microsoft Office Live account. If you still want to cancel your Microsoft Office Live account, then please reply to us with the confirmation along with the requested details.
Additionally, please note that DRK is the authorization code needed to transfer your domain name. With the DRK you will be able to manage your domain with other host and change the name servers.

 

 

Instructions to transfer your domain name from Melbourne IT to GoDaddy
Instructions on how to transfer the domain name from MelbourneIT to GoDaddy is available via the following links:
http://help.godaddy.com/topic/160/article/1592?prog_id=GoDaddy&isc=gdbb2
http://products.secureserver.net/products/domain_transfers/transfer_domain_melbourne_it_reseller.pdf (PDF)
Note: The Domain Registration Key (DRK) provided initially is different from the Domain Name password required later during domain name transfer. MelbourneIT calls it Domain Name Password/authinfo (see step 19 above) while GoDaddy calls it an Authorization Code.

 

 

Useful Links:
– http://office.microsoft.com/client/helppreview.aspx?AssetID=HA102829191033&ns=OFLV20
– http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/en-US/DomainPolicyChange
– http://www.peter-v.com/how-to-cancel-office-live-and-transfer-domain-to-another-registrar/
– http://www.kartik.info/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=19
– http://ask.officelive.com/smallbusiness/wiki/support/cancel-a-custom-domain-name.aspx
– http://products.secureserver.net/products/domain_transfers/transfer_domain_melbourne_it.pdf

First 50 Manipur related Domain Names

I have compiled a list of the first 50 domain names which are related to Manipur, or are owned by Manipuris. The emphasis here is on WHEN the domain name was registered. Hence, the list is ordered by domain registration date and not by relevance of content. This is a work in progress. So, there are not 50 domain names yet :). If you wish to add an entry to this list, please post a comment to this blog entry or email me at bobby AT maisnam.com.

First 50 Manipur related Domain Names (Last updated: 9/23/2009)
Rank Date Registered Domain Name Notes
1 2000-01-04 e-pao.net Manipur News Portal
2 2000-05-04 manipuronline.com Manipur Portal
3 2000-05-15 coremanipur.org CORE Manipur – NGO Organization
4 2000-07-09 kanglaonline.com Manipur News Portal
5 2000-11-13 bobbymaisnam.com Bobby Maisnam’s website
6 2001-06-11 brajeshwar.com Brajeshwar Oinam’s blog
7 2001-09-10 sanaleibak.com Sachi Sharma’s website
8 2002-10-07 elangbam.com Elangbam Family website
9 2002-11-05 chorusimphal.com Ratan Thiyam’s Chorus Repertory Theatre
10 2003-01-03 ema-europe.org European Manipuri Association (EMA)
11 2003-03-30 haobam.com Martin Haobam’s website
12 2003-07-13 oinam.com Owned by Brajeshwar
13 2003-08-11 thesangaiexpress.com Sangai Express newspaper
14 2003-08-18 maisnam.com Owned by Bobby maisnam
15 2003-09-18 imphal.net Redirects to manipur.org
16 2004-08-29 manipur.org Info about Manipur
17 2005-01-10 radiomanipur.org Streaming audio of Manipuri Radio programs
18 2005-04-16 ifp.co.in Imphal Free Press newspaper
19 2005-07-06 dhaniweb.com Dhani Computers Imphal
20 2006-02-04 e-paolive.net E-Pao.net’s media website
21 2006-03-12 meyamgi.com Dynamic AJAX based Manipur phonebook
22 2006-07-21 namaonline.org North American Manipuri Association (NAMA)
23 2006-08-23 duranthiyam.com Duran Thiyam’s website
24 2006-10-31 ocricket.com Owned by Brajeshwar
25 2007-03-31 manipurpolice.org Manipur Police official website
26 2007-04-17 linux-manipur.org Linux Manipur
27 2007-05-22 huirem.com Owned by Brajeshwar
28 2007-05-22 nongmaithem.com Owned by Brajeshwar
29 2007-06-02 chabungbam.com Chabungbam’s blog
30 2007-07-16 sekmai.com Owned by Brajeshwar
31 2007-10-22 manipurpage.com Manipur Portal
32 2007-11-08 tongbram.com Anthony Tongbram’s blog
33 2008-01-18 northeasterner.in NE India articles
34 2008-04-05 poknapham.in Poknapham Manipuri newspaper
35 2008-08-16 istvimphal.com ISTV Cable TV Network
36 2008-09-12 msadmanipur.com Manipur Students’ Association Delhi (MSAD)
37 2008-09-21 thabal.com Social Networking Site
38 2009-04-18 manipurcomments.com Collective blog by Manipuris

Yahoo! Domains – Price hiked to $35 – Don’t forget to cancel after transferring!

Yahoo! Domains recently hiked their domain name renewal prices to $34.95. I had one domain name with them. And once I got the renewal notice email with the increased price, I decided to transfer my domain name to GoDaddy, my regular registrar. Domain name renewals currently cost $9.99 at GoDaddy. Yahoo! Domains sent me the renewal email notice 1 month in advance and I was able to transfer the domain in about 3 days without any issues.
Here is what happened next. A couple of days back (11/24), Yahoo! Domains charged me $34.95 for domain renewal fees even though I had already transferred my domain name on 10/29. So, they basically charged me for a service that they were not providing!
So, I tried to email customer service through their website and it turns out that I need to call them instead. In case anybody needs to call them in the future with this same issue, the number for Small Business Domains is 1-800-318-0870. Make sure you have your domain name, Yahoo! username, date of birth, credit card number handy, since they will use it for verification. Anyways, the customer service representative was pretty nice and she promptly cancelled my account and refunded the $34.95 charge. It turns out that Yahoo! would still charge me for the domain name renewal even after I had transferred it, if I did not proactively cancel the account.
Bottom line – don’t forget to cancel your Yahoo! Domains account even though you have already transferred your domain name to another registrar!
The question remains – why did Yahoo! hike its Domain name fees? The general opinion going around is that, with Yahoo! not doing very well these days, they are planning to get out of the domain name business. In fact, Yahoo! itself is not a domain name registrar. Their domain names are managed by Melbourne IT, which I believe also manages domains for Microsoft Office Live.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Be safe and eat well 🙂
Related Links:
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/06/27/yahoo-hikes-domains.html
http://www.godaddy.com/
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/
http://www.melbourneit.com.au/

The first .com domain name

The first .com domain name was symbolics.com. It was registered on March 15 1985, more than 20 years back!
The first domain name to be registered was nordu.net which was registered on January 01 1985.
A list of the first 100 .com domain names is available here | cached copy.
I have also compiled a list of the domain names of the major tech and media companies to see which ones were registered when. IBM.com seems to be the first one in the list (March 19, 1986). Interestingly, both Adobe.com and AMD.com were registered on the same day (17 Nov, 1986).
ibm.com 1986-03-19
intel.com 1986-03-25
att.com 1986-04-25
adobe.com 1986-11-17
amd.com 1986-11-17
cisco.com 1987-05-14
dell.com 1988-11-22
oracle.com 1988-12-02
sony.com 1989-07-07
bbc.com 1989-07-15
microsoft.com 1991-05-02
infosys.com 1992-07-17
macromedia.com 1993-05-13
cnn.com 1993-09-22
timewarner.com 1994-04-28
amazon.com 1994-11-01
yahoo.com 1995-01-18
aol.com 1995-06-22
ebay.com 1995-08-04
google.com 1997-09-15

.in domain names, maisnam.in

www.inregistry.in - Official .IN domain name registry.in (dot in) domain names were released for unrestricted registration to the general public on 16 Feb 2005. Before this, there was a 22-day (Jan 1-21) period called the Sunrise period during which Indian trademark holders could pre-apply for a .in domain name. It seems that after the registry opened up on 16 Feb at 12 pm, 24,000 domain names were picked up in the first hour!
I just registered my first .in domain name – www.maisnam.in. I registered it using GoodLuckDomain.in. Registration was easy and fast. My site went live in less than 30 minutes. The domain management interface was also good and I was able to change my nameserver settings without any problems. However, they do not provide any other DNS functions. The only catch about registering through GoodLuckDomain is that the payment page is not over https. But, it seems that payment is handled by NamesBeyond.com which does have an https certificate from Verisign.
.IN Registry (Official site)
List of Accredited Registrars
Actually, I wanted to register my .in domain name using Net4India or Directi since they are reputed companies.
But Net4India opened up live registrations late and when they did open up to live registration, I found out that the minimum registration period is 5 years. I guess they have a lot of corporate customers and so they do not really care about the general public who wish to register for only one year.
Directi’s live registration is still not active. And it seems Directi and its resellers had problems registering .in domains for the past few days. And many of those resellers actually had to register using GoodLuckDomains. [ More info ]
Update (3:30 AM 2/19/2005): The main Directi.com website does not allow live registrations of .in domains yet. But it seems you can register .in domain names by going to http://manage.directi.com/. I have not tried this yet and so I am not sure. But if anyone has registered a .in domain name using the above manage.directi.com URL, please let me know.

.mobi and .jobs domains

ICANN has given the preliminary ok to two new domains – “.mobi” and “.jobs”.
The “.mobi” domain names would be for websites and other services that that are specially designed to work around the limitations of cell phones, including their smaller screen size and data capacity.
The “.jobs” suffix, meanwhile, would be for employment agencies/human resource departments – for example, the job postings section of corporate websites.
.post and .travel domains had also been given preliminary approval in October 2004.
Related Links:
Yahoo News
BBC News
News item at ICANN.ORG

.org domain names, UltraDNS, PIR

Checked the report for maisnam.org at dnsstuff.com and found out that DNS for maisnam.org is managed by UltraDNS. That explains why the DNS changes are so fast. I am not sure if GoDaddy has shifted its DNS management to UltraDNS. Or maybe it is because of the .org extension.
Googled a bit and found out that .org domain names are handled by the Public Interest Registry
I think I have a lot more to learn about this.

maisnam.org

Registered maisnam.org today. I registered the domain through GoDaddy at 12:57 AM and got the confirmation email at 12:58 AM. I set up the domain so that it points to the maisnam.net website. When I was setting up the domain parking on the maisnam.net control panel, I realized that it was already detecting the domain name. I thought to myself – “How is this possible?”. Because new domain name registrations normally take around 48 hours to propagate. Then I opened IE to see if the domain name was working and the website showed up! I thought that is INCREDIBLE! I mean, you register the domain name and it shows up right after you register! That was at 1:05 AM, 7 minutes after I registered the domain. Maybe it showed up right after I registered but I did not check at that time. I took a screenshot after that:
maisnam.org screenshot
| enlarge (48 kb) |
If you look at the screenshot, you will notice the www.maisnam.org URL in the address bar. Also, the system time at the bottom corner of the screenshot shows 1:10 AM!
I also checked the Whois records in other registrars – Network Solutions (whois), Register.com (whois), DomainDirect (whois). I also checked the Whois records on GoDaddy.

maisnam.com

Registered maisnam.com on Monday (08/18) with GoDaddy.com. The domain got activated in 24 hours. Then shifted the nameservers to zoneedit.com. Pointed the A-records to my existing maisnam.net webspace for the time being. maisnam.com had been registered previously but recently (June 2003), it expired and the previous owner did not renew it. I had been waiting for a long time for the domain to become available for re-registration.
Monday, I also got my TA assignment. I am still 10 hours webmaster and 10 hours TA for CS100.
Transferred 1 computer from SERF to Pady’s office on Monday and another 2 yesterday (08/19). Pady bought a ‘D-Link 704P Broadband router with print server’ from BestBuy. Installed the network in Pady’s office. It’s working fine now.
Met Dr. Berry Tuesday morning. Also met Mahesh Doraiswamy in the afternoon and again later in the evening. Made some updates to jntucekcs.org in a somewhat round-about way. Today morning it was working again even though yesterday night I had to access it remotely through Netscape on cetus@cs.
I LOST MY KEYS YESTERDAY!!! :(. I am still searching for them.
There were lots of virus attacks today. I got more than 200 virus emails today!
There was a dance party at I-House yesterday evening. It was ok, not so much fun.
CLASSES STARTED TODAY. Have 580 in the evening.