June 2012 newsletter

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SUMMARY: A GLANCE
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1. Thunderbird chooses Gandi
2. Like Us on Facebook: Win a T-Shirt!
3. New extension: .JP.NET
4. Price Increase for .ORG
5. June Promotions
6. Simple Hosting Admin Pages in SSL
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Get ready for summer! After May’s holidays and barbecues in the sun, we are all geared up to handle a nice warm summer season. And since we’re talking about good weather, our enthusiasm barometer is rising, after the announcement by Mozilla of Firefox fame that Gandi will be their European partner for Thunderbird, the popular free email client. And as we have the wind at our backs, it’s time we forge ahead with Social Networking on platforms that we have so far somewhat neglected. After our Twitter t-shirt in April, we are moving on to use Facebook to do something similar. For domain names, we can offer the .JP.NET extension now, and we’ll talk about the .ORG price increase, and some counterbalancing promos for June. On the hosting side, aside from some behind-the-scenes maintenance and improvements, we switched the administration pages in Simple Hosting to SSL for security.

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1. Thunderbird chooses Gandi
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Mozilla, the makers of the great free open source email client Thunderbird, asked us if we wanted to be their partner for Thunderbird integration in Europe, and we said emphatically:YES! Aside from any potential benefit to Gandi or its users, we value the chance to work in concert with a team of excellent engineers. The result is something both teams can be proud of. When new European Thunderbird users want to create an email account, Thunderbird will suggest buying a personal email address using Gandi’s email, and will automatically configure your inbox in Thunderbird! This option will be generally available globally in version 13 of Thunderbird (no, we are not superstitious), released today.

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2. Like Us on Facebook: Win a T-Shirt!
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In April, we launched a “seduction” campaign on Twitter, to gain more followers and share our updates with more customers. In this same spirit, we are reaching out with Facebook.  While it is less geeky than Twitter, Facebook is at least as popular, if not more, and allows sharing more words, pictures, and media. To join in, browse to our Facebook page here.

and click on the application “I like Gandi”. That will take you to a form where you can enter to win a t-shirt by random drawing.  100 “likers” a day will win a custom, home delivered, specially designed Gandi t-shirt in their specified size. The winners will be drawn from the entire set of “likers” (except previous winners, of course), so the sooner you “like”, the more chances you will have to win. Go directly to the Facebook App here.

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3. New extension: .JP.NET
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Those of us who love Japan, but also feel the bite an official .JP domain takes out of our wallets, will be happy to see that this alternative choice is available at one-sixth the price. The .JP.NET is an interesting alternative for those of us wishing to have an affordable, Japan-oriented domain. It is  12.00 € ($15.00) plus VAT per year for the creation, transfer, and renewal for customers with A level pricing. For more information about this extension, which is open to everyone, see more.

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4. Price Increase for .ORG
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Following the same path as its larger commercial cousins COM,. NET and. BIZ, the .ORG, through its registry (PIR), will increase in price this year. This increase will take effect July 1, which is less than a month away. Gandi will pass on some of this price increase, reluctantly, to our customers. The new price for creation with A level pricing will be 12.54 € instead of 12.00 € (plus VAT). Similarly, renewals will go up from 12.00 € / year to  13.00 € (plus VAT). In the current market context of rising prices for gTLDs and the recent fall of the €uro against the dollar, combined with the fact that ICANN authorized a new round of price increases for the coming years, we strongly advise customers who wish to retain domain names for the long haul to renew them for the maximum number of years (up to 10 years total for gTLDs).

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5. June Promotions
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As usual, here’s a summary of active promotions on domain names this month.

• Creating .LT domains is half off for all price levels for the month of June only.
• The super promo -50% discount for a year for a .INFO ends in late June.
• The .ME promo runs until the end of this month, with a half-price creation for all price levels:

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6. Simple Hosting Admin Pages in SSL
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Often requested, and now completed, the Simple Hosting administrative pages are now available in SSL. What does this mean, exactly? Well, it means Simple Hosting instances are now more secure, because your use of the instance control panel will be authenticated on the gpaas.net domain, which belongs to Gandi. No more unencrypted sessions, potentially with logs or other sensitive data!  To take advantage of this option, you must restart your instance, and go to your interface in https and not http. The default will change to https effective at the next update of Simple Hosting, i.e. in the month of June!

Please don’t hesitate to tell us what you think of our services, our company, or our sponsored projects. We value your feedback, privately at newsletter-en@gandi.net, or publicly via Twitter and Facebook. Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Nicolas Lhuillery
Head of Product
http://www.gandi.net

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