We can think of many different applications for the letters MG, the most well-known being the famous English sportscar, or the abbreviation of Machine Gun, or Magnesium, or why not Millimeter...

However it really does correspond to the official ccTLD of the island of Madagascar, and you can now manage your .mg domains at Gandi.

To create a .mg for one year, it will cost you $117.00 if you pay A rates and no VAT. You can see all the prices here.

Register your .MG:

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SUMMARY: At a Glance
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1. Accented Domains from AFNIC
2. The Opening of .PT
3. One Year Registration of British Extensions
4. 2 NEW Extensions at Gandi: .MG and .IO
5. May Promotions
6. Server API Brings New Opportunities
7. The Simple Hosting API
8. New Ubuntu VPS Image Available
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This month, we decided to do things a little differently, adding this summary so that the impatient among you can
scan it like a menu. and skip directly to your favourite dish of information.
At the end of this newsletter, we have our usual feedback link, so take the opportunity to tell us if you like the new format!
Featured this month is the sunrise for “accented” character in extensions offered by AFNIC, including the most famous:  .FR.

Slightly lower in European impact, but still significant, the Portuguese national extension (.PT) is open as of May 1, and, on this same date, .UK  will be able to be registered for 1 to 10 years (instead of the previous minimum 2 years).
We added two extensions to our collection, .MG and .IO. You will find, as always, the perennial section summarizing the domain name promotions for the month of May, and then, to conclude, some news about our Web Hosting API and a new Ubuntu distribution for our servers.

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1. Accented Domains from AFNIC
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We often talk about IDN, or Internationalized Domain Names. One aspect of this type of domain is that a domain name can contain one or more accented characters. This lets you distinguish your domain from the clearly less stylish, unaccented versions! For instance: meme.fr, mémé.fr and
même.fr, are 3 distinct names, not just variations on a meme. Making these available has to be done carefully however, to avoid a potential cybersquatting issue with trademarked un-accented versions. To do this properly, AFNIC has proposed a kind of “sunrise-based” registration period. It’s dependent on ownership of the name, without accents.
To continue with the example above, if you have meme.fr, then for the next two months you have the opportunity to register any and all accented forms. From May 3rd on, owners of domains in .FR, .RE, .YT, .PM, .WF, and .TF can register accented versions. If you don’t own such a domain in unaccented form, just wait. On July 3rd, you can register the accented or unaccented version, as you like. Here’s a post on the Gandibar that also describes this: http://www.gandibar.net/post/2012/04/27/Accented-FR-domains

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2. The Opening of .PT to everyone
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Until now, if you wanted to register a .PT (the Portuguese national extension) you had to show credentials proving that you were a legitimate company, registered in Europe, and that the name you wished to register was the exact business name of the company.
No more! Since May 1st, you can register any name you like with a .PT extension (except of course for certain terms prohibited by the registry, as is the case for every extension).

You must provide (as applicable):
- Your EU VAT No. for companies in the EU
- An identification code for companies and individuals not in the EU
- A fiscal code for Portuguese nationals
- A passport number for individuals of other nationalities

For more details, see:
https://www.gandi.net/news/en/2012-04-27/639-opening_of_the_.pt_extension/

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3. One Year Registration of British Extensions
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Being fond of exceptions, our friends in the United Kingdom had long ago decided that a .UK domain name must be registered for a minimum of 2 years, and that it could be renewed only six months before the expiration date.
Well, like many exceptions, this rule has fallen to the tyranny of the majority, and the new rule, in force since May 1st, allows registration of a .UK (that is, .CO.UK, .ORG.UK, or a  .ME.UK) for as little as a single year. Actually, you
can also renew a .UK for over 2 years (up to 10,
like other extensions). This is good news.
One minor caveat: registering for a single year costs you more per year than if you take it for 2+ years.
https://www.gandi.net/news/en/2012-05-01/642-.co.uk_for_one_year/

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4. Two NEW Extensions at Gandi: .MG and .IO
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Two new extensions are being made available to Gandi customers this month, with the Malagasy .MG and the very “Input/Output” appropriate .IO. A .MG will cost you the tidy sum of € 90.00 for one year, grid A. All the prices are here:
https://www.gandi.net/domain/price/detail/mg

The British Indian Ocean Territory is much more accessible, and very popular with us geeks, because of its representation of I/O (the abbreviation for Input/Output in computerspeak). To get your .IO for a year, it will run you € 39.00, in grid A. These two extensions are open to all. See the prices here:
https://www.gandi.net/domain/price/detail/io/

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5. May Promotions
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As usual, here's a summary of active domain name promotions this month.

All creations for .PH are half price for the entire month of May.
https://www.gandi.net/news/en/2012-05-02/647-.ph_for_half-price_in_may/
New registrations of .PRO domains for one year are € 3.25 + VAT, at A rates, until the end of the month of May.
https://www.gandi.net/news/en/2012-04-13/529-big_promo_on_.co/
The .INFO extension continues its 50% off  for one year of new registrations, for all price grids until late June.
https://www.gandi.net/news/en/2011-11-17/493-.info_at_50_off/
The .ME extension is half-price until July, for new domain creations in grid A
https://www.gandi.net/news/en/2011-10-01/457-50_off_.me/
The. CO is now half-price for domain registrations of one year, until the end of the month
https://www.gandi.net/news/en/2012-04-13/529-big_promo_on_.co/

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6. Server API Brings New Opportunities
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If you are a user of the Gandi API (or not yet, for that matter), it has probably not escaped you that you could not buy Gandi server resources (in IaaS) directly via the API. This situation will be ancient history, starting May 7. This opens new opportunities to potential resellers (you, for example). You can now purchase and deploy complete IaaS server solutions right from your own applications.
It’s also useful for configuration management, too. You can now script the whole life cycle of a server, to you own specifications. Fire them up automatically, re-configure them on the fly, take them down when conditions you define are met.
If you want to test this API, it’s already available in the test region (OT & E). It will be promoted to production on May 7th. For more information and feedback
on this API, see:
http://www.gandibar.net/post/2012/05/03/Managing-IaaS-Cloud-Hosting-resources-via-API

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7. The Simple Hosting API
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In case you missed it, you should know that the API
for Simple Hosting management is available in Production
at Gandi, since April 19. With it, you can create your own interfaces for reselling our Simple Hosting solution directly. You can easily combine it wit the API that controls domain names, which means you can easily resell full solutions,
packaging hosting with domain name registration. The possibilities are endless.
For more information, see:
http://www.gandibar.net/post/2012/04/12/Simple-Hosting-API%3A-Empowering-Web-Hosting-Resellers

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8. New Ubuntu VPS Image Available
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Of all the members of the Ubuntu family of strange animals, I would like to have a pet Pangolin.
Ubuntu 12.04 is now available for Gandi VPS Servers in 32 and 64 bit versions. This version of Ubuntu, called Precise Pangolin is the latest, and it is scheduled to be maintained for 5 years (or until April 2017). Come see what a Pangolin looks like ☺


As usual, don’t hesitate to send us your suggestions for how we can improve our services, your enhancement requests, this newsletter, as well as your ideas for news features, or your questions, queries, and complaints. Our newsletter address is newsletter-en@gandi.net  

Sincerely,  

Nicolas Lhuillery
Product Director
Gandi
http://www.gandi.net  


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If you wonder what region of the world could possible correspond to .IO you will not be dissapointed by the voyage :)

This extension is very popular among computer enthousiasts, often referred to as Geeks or sometimes Nerds... And why this? Quite simply because this acronym, IO, is used in the computer world as i/o meaning Input/Output for data within a computer system.

Otherwise, .IO is the official extension of the British Indian Ocean Territory, though that is apparantly a less popular usage of the extension...

It only costs $50 to register a .IO domain for one year under A rates, if you don't pay VAT. You can see all .IO prices here.

Note for transfers: incoming transfers are free, they do not change the domain's expiration date. To perfom a transfer, you must either ask the registry or your current provider to make Gandi (NIC-1165) the billing contact and then launch the procedure via our interface or ask your provider for the password of your administrative contact at the registry and then add it as the transfer authorization code during the procedure.

Register your .IO

You can manage all your IaaS servers with our resource management API!

From the first to the 31st of May, registering a .PH for one year will cost you 24.00€ plus tax instead of the regular price of 48.00€ plus tax at A rates.

Click here to see the complete price list.

The United Kingdom's official extension, available at Gandi in one of three forms: .co.uk, .org.uk, or .me.uk, is standardizing its registration duration period.

Until now, these domains were only available for registration for a single two-year period at a time. This rule us now obsolete, however, and so you can now register a .co.uk, .org.uk, or .me.uk for just one year if you want.

Register a .UK:

Beginning on May 1st 2012, the Portuguese extension .PT will be available to those outside Portugal.

You will still need to provide an ID number, but it will no longer be limited to Portuguese citizens. The first major change is that there is no longer any need to have a personal or company name that is the same as the domain!

For example:

• If you are a registered organization (company, association, etc.) in Europe (EEC), you must provide your Intra-Community VAT number. If you are not in Europe, you must provide a different fiscal ID number.
• If you are an individual who is a citizen of Portugal, you must provide your Fiscal Code. If you are not Portuguese, you must provide your passport number.

Register .PT:

Beginning May 3rd, you will be able to register a .FR domain with accents. Learn more about this in our blog.

Following the recent release of the public Simple Hosting API, I'd like to answer a frequently asked question about it.

Until end of May 2012, you will benefit from a super promo on the creation of your .CO domains! During this promo, .co domains are half off for the first year of creation.

See .CO prices

Get a .CO