This is a mix of advantage and disadvantage at this early stage. One of the advantages is the opportunity to secure a domain name to suit your company name or product exactly (not something you can always do with a dot com these days). Secondly, this will identify businesses active in Asia and companies with business interests in the region now have a better reference.

The disadvantage is that this is a new domain and there is a danger of users defaulting to a dot com reference or adding a dot com to the end of the URL. This should become less of a problem over time. Address books or reply to sender emails will take note of the address without any problem.

Technically, a company should be based in Asia to apply for a dot Asia domain, however, Thai Source can help to secure a dot Asia domain for your business or provide more information - contact us today - these domains are going fast...

Visit the Dot Asia site for information. If you would like to check for availability, please email us the names you require or contact us for further help with the registration process.

dotasia.org

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We've included links to some of the top websites and online advertising campaigns that have interested us. Some are big budget and high-tech - others are simple but content aware. One of the best examples follows...

Case Study - Campaign: Will it Blend?  Company: Blendtec

This is probably one of the more interesting ad campaigns and totally suited to the internet.

The thirty-second ads are from Blendtec who manufacture a line of food blenders. Not very interesting so far you might think. Introduce the concept that almost anything can be blended and have the super-cool Tom Dickson present the results and you have compulsive viewing.

Items given the Will it Blend? test include golf balls, Bic lighters, iPods, a garden rake and spam - still in the can. Once the smoke clears a grinning Tom looks genuinely pleased about the results. Don't try this at home. Now...where's that blender...

Go to willitblend.com

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Recently, we have come across domain name ownership disputes involving web designers and hosting services who have registered domain names on behalf of their clients - some have registered a domain but retained ownership. This effectively means a company using a domain may not actually own it - this can lead to major problems if that company wants to

The contact details for domains are split into three sections - domain owner, admin and technical contact. You should ensure your email is listed as owner and admin at least.

This ensures the domain belongs to your company and it can be relocated to a new hosting service if you wish. You can check domain details online if you are uncertain of your current registration details.

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If your favourite site now offers a button (normally orange in colour) with the initials 'RSS', 'XML' or 'Atom' it is now offering a direct news feed (or 'Really Simple Syndication').

So, what does this mean?
In short, it means that news and updates are pushed to you - you don't have to go and get them. Most importantly, unlike promotional emails or emailed newsletters, you don't need to provide personal details, email addresses or subscribe to anything before you get the information.

Although this information is pushed out to you, you decide who sends it in the first place and you decide if it's something you want to read or not. In effect, it's more control for the user. You're likely to know the origin of the information and actually want it because it's something you have asked for - and without the penalty of handing out your personal information or email address.

How is this information accessed?
The principle is the same as email. You can install software on your computer and this will download the latest headlines for you (in the same way as email and Outlook Express) or you can use an online service that is accessed remotely (you can get to your information from anywhere - similar to Hotmail or Yahoo! mail).

There are quite a few RSS readers available and many browsers now incorporate this feature as standard (Firefox, for example, searches the web pages you view for RSS content).

This kind of 'pushed' information also seems to be the basis for some of the new search services from Microsoft Live. This pushes information at you if it finds anything related to your interests.

Although not revolutionary, this kind of information serving will make life a lot easier for regular web users and it's not dependant on any new development language, so we think it will become standard and continue to develop in the future, unlike some applications that disappear overnight.

Thai Source design can create RSS feeds for your site if your products or services lend themselves to regular updates. Visitors numbers can be improved with RSS and your customers will appreciate being in control of the information you send them.

Thai Source tip : If you decide to add RSS to your site the main point to consider here is headline writing. A good, direct or intriging headline will encourage the user to read your news. Long or uninformative headlines may discourage a followed link (a link leads to the relevant section of the actual web site).

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