Hassle-free Immediate Domain Name Registration

Harris Interactive Offers Data On E-Retailers

Thumbprints:
New E-Mail Append Service for Business Addresses

No Need For A PC To Access E-mail, With The $99 MailStation

VoTiV Systems in the US is offering a no-commission domain name registration service in the US. VoTiV's Register Free service at http://www.registerfree.com offers Web users the chance to search out and register their own domain names without any upfront charges.

Users must still pay the InterNIC subscription rate of $70 per domain name for the first two years of registration. This is an unavoidable charge.

According to Eric Leinburg, VoTiV Systems' CEO, the Register Free service is competing with Register.com for domain name services and allied products.

"Register Free can compete with Register.com. We offer more services and don't require any payment at the time of registration - they require immediate payment of $70," he said.

Leinburg said that Register.com has been taking advantage of its position as the first test-bed registrar, so VoTiV decided to offer all the same services - plus some additional services - for free.

"By competing now, Register Free believes this will showcase the services that VoTiV Systems can provide to other domain name registrars," he said.

In addition to not requiring any upfront fees, Register Free is also giving away free services such as domain parking, DNS hosting, Web forwarding, e-mail forwarding, and Web-based e-mail client services.

Register Free does not require customers to provide a domain name system server eliminating a major hassle and speeding up the process of getting a domain name up and running.

Leinburg says the move to free registration has been made possible by the use of automated domain name registration systems for the new domain name registration industry.

"VoTiV Systems has been developing domain name registration products and services for over three years and is the leading provider of domain name registrar system," he said, adding that the firm will make domain names more useful, accessible, and powerful.

VoTiV Systems' Web site is at http://www.votiv.com.

(Contact: Alan Sullivan, VoTiV Systems 301-766-7150)

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A new online service purports to be the first in the nation to offer performance data on more than 180 e-retailers. The information will be available in the form of a quarterly online report priced between $5,000 to $14,000.

Market research firm Harris Interactive, Inc. claims that its "ecommercepulse" survey, available at http://www.ecommercepulse.com, employs a database of 3.4 million e-commerce customers to gather information on e-retailers.

The first survey, which draws from e-mail interviews with more than 103,000 e-commerce consumers, rates retail sites on brand awareness, site traffic, buyer conversion rates and customer satisfaction, as well as other criteria.

Harris executives contend that the survey is vital to Internet investors. "Most of the companies that are in the study are trading at a high multiple mostly based on potential," said Alex Metzger, director of technical resource services for ecommercepulse. The survey tells investors which companies are actually making sales and which are simply havens for "window shoppers," he said.

While results from the first phase of the survey will not be released until sometime next week, ecommercepulse has already confirmed investor optimism about one firm, Metzger said. "In the very competitive auction category, which was the first we completed, eBay had a triple slam dunk." EBay scored high in the areas of sales, customer retention and customer satisfaction, he also said.

The survey looks at e-retailers in 10 categories, including auctions, computer software, computer hardware, electronics and travel services. The price for the report is based on the number of companies and company categories that customers wish to review.

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Thumbprints offers Direct Marketers the power of contacting and selling to customers via e-mail by overlaying your customer business list with e-mail addresses. The service claims it can identify deliverable e-mail address for about 20% of your housefile. There are no set-up costs and you pay 50 cents per deliverable append. Turnaround time is one week. Contact Bill McKay at Acxiom Direct Media, bmckay@ix.directmedia.com, or (925) 975-4663.

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A new low-cost device makes it possible to access e-mail without the need for a PC. According to Cidco, the $99 MailStation is as simple to use as just plugging in a phone.

Company officials say that the specialized focus of the e-mail device - which is confined to sending and receiving e-mail - allows the company to offer the product so cheaply.

MailStation is easy to use, and intended for those who, for whatever reason, either do not have a PC, or do not want to start their PC just to access their e-mail.

Tamara Burnett, spokesperson for the company, said that it is a portable device. "What you do is plug the MailStation in to a standard phone line to download messages and to send e-mail out and then you can unplug it because it runs on batteries."

She continued, "It has a screen, and you get the e-mail message just like you would on the normal computer - who the message is from, and the subject - and you read it along the same lines.

The keyboard is 85 percent a real keyboard, and it has a flip-up screen that you can move up and down to read and write the messages."

The device is configured at the factory with a local access number and e-mail address so user input is kept to a minimum.

"It comes fully configured for the user," Burnett added. The e-mail address is programmed into the device before we ship it out. All a new user has to do is take it out of the box, push the "Power" button and the "Receive E-Mail" button, and they're ready to go."

The service is available either by buying the device and and paying a $99 fee for a year of the Cidco service, or for a monthly service for $9.95. Both come with unlimited e-mail.

(Contact: Tamara Burnett McGrath/Power Public Relations, 408-727-0351)

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CorporateAccess, (www.corporateaccess.com), Miami, has launched a Web site aimed at providing manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and retailers with the means to go live on the Internet with a "virtual showroom." With more than 400,000 company listings, representing over five million products and services, CorporateAccess.com reportedly provides its members with a range of research, marketing, e-commerce, public relations, news and advertising services.

"Our goal is to offer small to medium-sized companies an avenue for promoting their company on the Internet by providing them with a virtual showroom in which to display their products," said president/founder Evaldo Dupuy, in a statement.

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