As we’re at the midyear point, now is a good time to evaluate how prepared you are for tax preparation, rather than wait for year end. To sweeten the deal a bit, the folks at Outright have partnered with Network Solutions to offer a free domain name and business profile page for one year to new signups. The promotion runs through until the end of July.

If you don’t already have a web presence, this might be a great way to get yourself online, and to get the bookkeeping and tax preparation benefits of Outright. Just register as normal with Outright and they’ll send you the details on how to get your domain name. It is estimated that 50 percent to 60 percent of small businesses do not yet have an online presence; offers like this can give people the ability to take the plunge and move their business to the web.

What I really like about this offer is that it is very much in the spirit of the Small Business Web movement that I think is tremendously important for the long-term success of web services. While not an integration move, it shows how service providers can work together to bring a real benefit to their small business users. I’ve watched these interactions and relationships develop online and am thrilled to see real benefits coming out of these partnerships.

Is your business online? Could you use a free domain name?

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Network Solutions has run afoul of bloggers, domain registry industry watchers and others in the last few days when it became clear that using its popular domain registry checking service automatically triggered a buy order from the Herndon, VA based company.

While promising to amend the practice Friday, checking a URL today such as bigyellowtimer.com at Network Solutions WHOIS page automatically locked you out from buying the domain elsewhere. If you wanted to buy bigyellowtimer.com tomorrow, your only option is through Network Solutions for $34.99 – over three times the price as compared to other popular domain registrars.

Network Solutions claims the practice is to prevent “front running” although others say it is exactly that practice.

“The domain name you want is available for registration only at Network Solutions because we want to make sure that our customers do not lose the domain name to disreputable individuals (or entities) that snatch up domains after a domain search has been made,” says a Network Solutions Tech Support article.

To thwart the efforts of these sneaky individuals, Network Solutions reserves unregistered domains for up to four days from the date they are searched on our Web site. This customer protection feature provides our customers the opportunity to register names at a later date without fear that the name will be registered by the “Front Runners.” If the domain you searched is available and one that you really want, we suggest that you register it immediately to ensure that you will not lose the name.

So is Network Solutions engaging in exactly the practice it says it’s trying to protect its customers from?

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• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
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