all promotion by the registrars who hope to gain new business. i have in fact found a new one that is user friendly(most of the time) and inexpensive, domainsite.com and will be using them more in the future as a result of the promo. some of the people here might remember the one weekend the office supply company, staples ran a promotion any domain extension for $1 thru register.com and it was limited to one domain per person. it was a 2 day event if i remember correctly but generated some good publicity for their company. no idea how many were registered under this program.