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It's hard to believe that 2011 is already drawing to a close and even if you don't celebrate Christmas in your household, you are probably finding yourself swept up in the "spirit of Christmas" as we stumble headlong towards the holidays. Here's some digital gift giving solutions to make your Christmas go off with a bang.

Studies have shown that kids spend 96% of their waking hours bug eyed in front of a computer screen these days, so base your gift purchasing decisions around feeding their online addiction. You'll instantly become their favorite aunt/uncle whilst saving your shoe leather from miles of exhausting mall marching. SmallWorlds and Minimonos are fantastic, safe browser based games that have millions of teenage players globally. Set up a funky game character and drop some credits on the account for in-game purchasing of digital merchandise. For young readers and learners, check out 8Interactive's outstanding talking books on both iOS and Android. Great distractions for long car trips and waiting at the doctor for inoculations.

For adult friends and family what could be more personal than a new domain name managed right here at iWantMyName? Traditionally, most new family blogs are set up over the holidays when Mom & Dad are busy snapping photographs. So it's a great time to give away a domain name Christmas present. Got friends or family setting up a small business? Grab an appropriately branded domain and get them set up online with all the best business apps. Remember we offer almost 100 different domain extensions to choose from and easy one-click DNS setup for the best hosted apps.

After the gifts are revealed and everyone's feeling a little fatigued from too much egg nog and brandy infused Christmas pudding, grab your favorite web device and escape to a quiet spot for some online Christmas entertainment. We heartily recommend Gizmodo for irreverent (and sometimes mildly disturbing) holiday reading for geeks. Gizmodo is the home of the Lego Yoda Santa, so it must be cool.

Have a safe and happy festive season everyone!

Domain privacy has been a long-awaited feature at iWantMyName and we're happy to now give you an option to mask your home address in the public whois record without giving up ownership or transfer control. The service is free of charge and can be easily added to your domains from the iWantMyName dashboard.

For those of you who don't know, domain registrations require your contact information to be provided for storage and display in the international whois database. This means that anyone in the world can view your address and phone number without restriction.

Today we're pleased to announce the release of our managed DNS hosting for domains which are not registered at iWantMyName. This enables you to manage domain names independently from any registrar or registry and also benefit from easy domain customization through the iWantMyName marketplace.

By purchasing the DNS hosting add-on, you will be able to set A, CNAME, MX, AAAA, SRV, TXT, NAPTR record types in real-time and use our URL forwarding services. We also show you additional domain information such as your current registrar, ownership details and expiration dates:

Getting started is easy. Simply purchase the DNS hosting add-on ($2.90/yr) for the domain you would like to manage via your iWantMyName dashboard, apply the desired DNS or URL forwarding settings and switch the nameservers to ns1/2/3/4.iwantmyname.net at your current registrar. Host your DNS with iWantMyName now.

Internet body ICANN meeting in Singapore this week is presiding over the most significant opening up of the domain name system (DNS) for many years. ICANN has agreed in principle to allow new top-level domain extensions known as generic top level domains (gTLDs).

Approval for new gTLDs has been long awaited by entrepreneurs and digital branding pundits who plan to create domains for cities, global corporations and popular commercial products such as food (.food, .restaurant), sports (.basketball, .ski), banks (.bank, .secure) or airlines (.united, .lufthansa). But the new TLDs also have their critics who claim the initiative is simply a money grabbing exercise and that the emphasis should be towards addressing better security and making the Internet more inclusive.

However ICANN has responded by ensuring that the cost and regulatory barriers to forming a new domain suffix are substantial. In reality there is unlikely to be an avalanche of new gTLDs and in the meantime there has also been progress on DNS security and the provision of internationalized character sets.

Whatever your views on ICANN and its elephantine bureaucracy, we are sure to see some changes in the domain landscape over the next few years. Major corporates such as IBM, Canon, Apple and BMW are looking at securing their own TLD whilst forward thinking cities like Berlin (.berlin) or New York (.nyc) may soon have a custom domain extension. In many cases gTLD owners will acquire domains strictly for their own internal use. But brand managers around the world will need to keep a close eye on other suffixes that emerge in public. Individual users should also think about how they can leverage the new domain endings to build a personal brand presence online.

With the successful launch of iWantMyName as a global domain registrar site and then into Germany and the Netherlands last year, we felt it was now time to turn our attention to home. We have had so many requests from our friends to establish in the New Zealand market, because of our unique service offering, friendly user interface and great customer support. Finally we had to say yes and we now have a dedicated Kiwi site at http://iwantmyname.co.nz offering fixed prices in New Zealand dollars.

The Kiwi iWantMyName has New Zealand's widest range of domain extensions, many of which are unavailable from other local domain registrars. Examples of exclusive domains include the recently launched .TEL and .ME suffixes plus interesting country code top-level domains from all over the world such as .LI (Liechtenstein), .IO (British Indian Ocean Territory) and .FM (Federal States of Micronesia). Customers from the existing site can use the same login details to access their accounts across the iWantMyName platform suite. We also offer the same free services on our Kiwi version so that you can hook up your own domain to customise a wide range of great web applications such as GMail, Blogger and Zoho. In the very near future we also plan to add some cool new Kiwi-made services that we really want to support.

We think it is appropriate that the launch of a new product should be celebrated with some special offers. So until the end of February we are offering new .COM, .NET, .ORG and .NAME domains for only $19.90 NZD plus .INFO for $9.90 NZD. We are also able to offer a FREE one year extension if you transfer your existing domains across to iWantMyName NZ. Transfers can be handled from your personal dashboard once you join up. Please note that all domain prices quoted on the Kiwi site are GST exclusive and that we provide full GST invoicing to all our valued customers.

In addition, we are supporting the Australasian Linux conference LCA2010 which rolls into our hometown Wellington on 18-23 January. Look out for the iWantMyName crew at our stand at the Open Day on Saturday 23rd. We would be happy to demo the new site and discuss how we are supporting the open source movement and other technology communities in New Zealand.

It is with a huge amount of pride that we announce the launch of two new domain registrar sites:

In conjunction with a great partner in the Netherlands we've created Benikvrij (Am I free), a Dutch language version of our service. With all the functionality of our existing site, local web apps, plus full Euro currency integration Benikvrij introduces the iWantMyName platform to one of the largest domain markets in Europe.

But we aren't just stopping there. We've also opened a wholly owned and operated German language domain registrar site and we called it simply meinName (my name).

The German language site is a special achievement because ideegeo in part has its origins in an idea that began in Germany. So meinName is a little bit like a return home for us.

The new sites demonstrate how we can powerfully leverage the underlying platform technology behind iWantMyName and how we can make other partnerships work in new markets. Expect to see further rollouts and cool new services in the future as we change the face of domain name management.

ICANN, the internet's governing body, yesterday officially announced the introduction of Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) extensions for nations and territories. This means that a full web address including the domain suffix can contain non-Latin characters such as Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew or Greek in the future.

"The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago," said ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush. "Right now Internet address endings are limited to Latin characters - A to Z. But the Fast Track Process is the first step in bringing the 100,000 characters of the languages of the world online for domain names."

Watch the video with people from around the world explaining how localized domain names will help them using the internet in their native language:

The introduction of internationalized country domains is an important step towards a global internet and we would like to congratulate ICANN and everybody involved in achieving this long-awaited milestone.

Having total DNS control has been one of the most requested features of our power users. DNS is not only the underlying technology for our Domains for Apps but also probably the most overlooked cloud service. Hence we are pleased now to offer a low-level DNS editor which gives you full control over your domains and lets you manage DNS records completely in real-time.

The new DNS editor supports A, CNAME, MX, AAAA, TXT & SRV records. Have a look at this shiny new tool:

In addition to being Apple geeks, we're also big suckers for simplicity and productivity at iWantMyName. So we thought: why not offer a domain search feature for a service where we spend lots of time anyway? Hence the concept of our iWantMyName Twitter Search Bot was born.

As of today you're able to check domain name availability by sending a direct message to the @iwantmyname Twitter account. Just start following us, send "d iwantmyname thedomainyouwant.com" and we'll reply with the search result including a link to immediately register the domain:


Search for alternatives if a domain is taken:



Immediately register the domain if it's available: