Country code domain names carry risks. Here are a couple examples.

Sure is pretty. Until the water rises.

This headline isn’t a joke. Here’s how global warming and subsequent rising ocean waters could doom a domain name extension.

Last night I read an article in The Economist about the Maldives, an island nation planning for the day it will be below sea level. The article also mentioned Tuvalu, an even smaller island nation of just over 10,000 inhabitants. At its highest, Tuvalu is just 5 meters above sea level. If waters rise, Tuvalu will become history. Its government is planning for that day, too.

A comical look at the state of our economy (satire).

[As CEOs of the “big three” auto manufacturers in the U.S. go hat-in-hand to the federal government today, I thought I’d take a humorous look at what may happen if the biggest three registrars ran into trouble.]

Representatives of the “big three” domain name registrars — GoDaddy , eNom, and Network Solutions — asked Congress for a bailout today after facing unheard of financial hardship.

“There are tens of thousands of jobs at stake,” said a representative of Network Solutions. “It’s not just the employees of our company.”

Be careful as you click through checkout on GoDaddy .

If you’re used to quickly clicking through the GoDaddy checkout process to register domains, be warned: the default registration period has changed to 5 years. The graphic below shows the default when I tried to register the domain RegisteringDomainsForMultipleYears.com.

Most domainers already stop at this step to change the default from two years to one, and it’s likely that you’ll catch the change when it comes time to pull out your credit card and you see the $49.95 charge per domain (the price for 5 years).

Moniker to consolidate management of its registrars to Moniker’s system.

Have you ever won a domain at SnapNames and found the winning registrar — such as 1HostUnitedKingdom.com or AceofDomains.com — to look suspiciously like Moniker other than a different logo? That’s because these registrars are all “owned” by Moniker.

Starting this Tuesday afternoon, you’ll no longer have to deal with logins at these registrars. They’ll all be consolidated to Moniker for account management purposes. If you have any domains at these registrars then you will receive a separate login for Moniker for each one: