They have welcomed the idea just after the first presentation at Garage48 event. Here is an article on their website about us.
It's all fine with your pre-booked domain. We have kept it for you. If you haven't got an e-mail form us by Wednesday 20th of April 2011, check your Spam filter. If no luck, contact us.
You can have your own http://name.era.ee web address as well as email name@era.ee (coming soon). You can configure where both of them will be forwarded to (via redirect or frame), as we don't offer a hosting or email service, or era.ee can show a profile page with your contact information and links. Preconfigured forwarding options include your blog, Facebook profile, Twitter feed, etc. If you know how it works, you can also configure a DNS record (either CNAME or A) for your domain.
We don't offer web hosting nor email service, but you can point your domain to your website hosted somewhere else or forward incoming email to your existing address. See previous question for more details.
You can have up to two domains. One with your chosen alias and other given you automatically by us with your full name. If you do not have any alias you have activily used before, you do not need to create it and can have domain only with your real name. Once you have chosen your alias, you can not change or return it to era.ee for now. This option is in development. We will notice you if this option is available.
International domain names (IDN) use the "punycode" encoding to retrieve the actual domain configuration, eg õlu.era.ee is actually xn--lu-bka.era.ee, however most browsers will hide the encoded name from the user. It is a more difficult situation with email: while RFC 5336 exists to allow internationalized email addresses, it is still not widely supported, eg gmail doesn't allow you to send email to such addresses yet.
This is your personal website and no one else should have access to it. You have to log in with your ID-card or Mobile-ID in order to secure that. We have decided to use strong authentication, the same way as banks do, to make sure nobody else can use your identity. We can prove and if necessary and you wish, inform others as well that the information up there is approved by you.
The project is initiated and run by volunteers who do it without getting paid. Initially, it was a protest of Estonian domains going paid. Our running costs are at minimum and we cover them from the donations. If you feel you could contribute, please donate. You can be sure it's for the good cause.