Monthly Archives: March 2006

Fri 31st March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
2006 GeoDomain Expo - Associated Cities is holding a geographic domain names conference June 2 3. The conference, called “2006 GeoDomain Expo”, will focus on issues facing domain name and web site owners of geographic domain names. Associated Cities has members owning various high profile city .com domains. The Associated Cities network includes domains such as Atlanta.com, Houston.com, and NYC.com. The conference is June 2 and 3 in Chicago, IL. More information about the conference ... read more ...
Thu 30th March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
CMNN launches Body.com - Domain name and e-commerce company Communicate.com has launched Body.com. The site at www.Body.com is going through some launch pains but offers products in nutrition, fashion, frangrance, fitness, and beauty categories. Communicate.com (OTCBB: CMNN) owns some of the world’s best domain names. It’s holdings include Cricket.com, Perfume.com, Karate.com, Malaysia.com, Brazil.com, and many other spectacular domains. It has high-quality domain parking pages for ... read more ...
Wed 29th March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Blue.com was only a start… - The Blue.com sale I reported yesterday was only a small part of a busy week for domain name sales. DNJournal is reporting a slew of big domain sales, including a hypenated .info domain name for €19,000! New-York.info takes the cake as the highest hyphenated .info sale ever reported. It will certainly be attractive to search engines and is one of the reasons I’m a big believer in high quality .info and .biz domains for investment purposes. I was able to ... read more ...
Tue 28th March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Blue.com sells for $500,000 - Sedo is reporting that Blue.com has sold for $500,000. Apparently the color blue is better than the color brown. Just six weeks after Brown.com sold for $300,000, Blue.com has sold for $500,000 according to Sedo. In a sign of the rising domain name market, Blue.com is only the third biggest reported sale of the young year. On.com is the highest at $635,000 and Macau.com is second highest at $550,000. I’m sure Ron Jackson at DNJournal will fill us in on the ... read more ...
Mon 27th March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Softsquatting a American Idols - Here’s an interesting term: “Softsquatting”, as mentioned in a recent Wired article. Look at how many American Idol finalists have been either Softsquatted or Cybersquatted! The term refers to people that register the domain names of up-and-coming stars before they become household names. The article explains that softsquatters don’t try to sell the domains to the celebrities for a king’s ransom, but try to forge a partnership with the celeb instead. With ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Interview with “Father of a Internet” - I came across an interesting interview with Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founders of the Internet. What would Berners-Lee change about the internet addressing system if he could start from scratch? Looks like the biggest thing is to drop a slash (/): Looking back on 15 years or so of development of the Web is there anything you would do differently given the chance? I would have skipped on the double slash – there’s no need for it. Also I would have put the ... read more ...
Sun 26th March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
New Wall Street Journal article - There’s a new article about domain names in this weekend’s The Wall Street Journal Sunday. The Sunday edition of The Wall Street Journal is syndicated in a number of city newspapers, so it probably has more reach than the regular edition. The article is titled “Internet Sites Profit if you Misspell Address” and is about typo domain names related to financial sites. One of the sites profiled is Fafsa.ed.gov, which is the home page for Free Application for ... read more ...
Thu 23rd March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
More ICANN during Domain Roundtable - CEO and President of ICANN to keynote Domain Roundtable conference. In addition to Vint Cerf, Domain Roundtable has rounded up another ICANN representative for next month’s conference. ICANN CEO and President Dr. Paul Twomey will deliver a keynote on Wednesday, April 19. Because he was announced after the ICANN vote about the VeriSign settlement, I hope he’s taking this opportunity to inform the domain community about what’s going on behind closed doors. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Poker domains shutting shortly during Afternic - Three poker domains are closing soon at Afternic, along with a few other quality domains. Both Poker.sh and Poker.vc will close in about a week and have bids of $1,500 so far. .Sh is the country code domain for Saint Helena. .Vc is the country code domain for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Additionally, IllHoldem.com has attracted a $100 bid and will close in just under 6 days. Another gambling domain, LVsportsbooks.com, has met its reserve at $300. Other domains ... read more ...
Wed 22nd March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain scams increasing - It appears that the number of domain name scam e-mails is increasing. Over the past few days I’ve received a number of emails from people that received solicitations to sell their domains but the buyers turned out to be scammers. With the large number of people entering the domain investing world I think this is a good time to send out a warning about domain scams. Two common scams that I’ve discussed on Domain Name Wire are the appraisal scam and trademark ... read more ...
Tue 21st March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
RegisterFly $4 domain banking code - Domain Registrar RegisterFly is offering $4 domain transfers and other discounts. RegisterFly says it became the 8th fastest growing registrar last week and is offering the transfer special to celebrate. You must enter coupon code “FLY6PROMO” to get the special rate. This rate is good for 24 hours. RegisterFly is also offering new .com registrations for $6.99. Use coupon code “COMSPECIAL” at checkout. Offer is good for 24 hours. .Info domains are only ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New Dotster Happy Hour - Dotster is having another happy hour– this time for hosting. Dotster is having another happy hour this Wednesday at 4PM EST. Instead of selling cheap domains, this happy hour will offer the first 1,000 people a coupon for $1 per month webhosting. The special rate will be good for one year on the package that is usually $8.95/month, so you’ll save almost $100. Most people won’t be as attracted to this offer as the special domain rates, but this seems like a ... read more ...
Mon 20th March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
9trillion.com - The US government increased the debt ceiling to $9,000,000,000,000.00 last week. Feedback is instant on the internet today. So I registered 9Trillion.com to give my opinion about this sad event in American history. And as any good domainer would, I also registered NineTrillion.com to make sure there was no confusion. If I have more time I’ll bolster the mini web page at 9Trillion.com, but there are a number of other web sites that do a great job detailing the ... read more ...
Fri 17th March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoldKey parking use acquired - Paid domain parking business GoldKey has been acquired. According to an e-mail sent by Theo Antoniou of GoldKey, Domain Services LLC has acquired the GoldKey parking service. Domain Services LLC is a subsidiary of YesDirect which also owns BuyDomains. GoldKey made a splash in 2005 with two features. First, it uses a Yahoo! ad feed as opposed to Google Adsense (which most other domain parking providers use). Second, it introduced search engine optimization to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain check finally gets press coverage - A story I discussed almost 6 weeks ago is finally hitting the mainstream press — Sen. Max Baucus of Montana has introduced a bill to require adult web sites to relocate to a .xxx domain. As I discussed on February 6, the bill is a threat to all domain name owners: This is not a decision in which the US government should have a hand. That’s why ICANN was set up-to handle policy. The notion of taking away a .com domain name from its rightful owner is shameful and ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The arise and tumble of Pool.com - A new article in The Ottawa Citizen features Pool.com and the challenges it faces. The article covers Pool.com and its rise from nowhere in 2003. But it also discusses a grave threat to its business — and one I’ve mentioned numerous times — both exclusive drop agreements with registrars and VeriSign’s potential to take over the entire drop business. The article quotes a domainer suggesting that it’s not Pool’s fault that it is falling by the wayside. ... read more ...
Thu 16th March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign spin appurtenance moves into high gear - An article about denial-of-service attacks is actually a well-placed VeriSign PR campaign. Earlier today I wrote about an op-ed by a Verisign Internet Advisory Board member that suggested that VeriSign needs to hike .com prices in order to handle security. A seemingly unrelated story that hit the wires this afternoon features VeriSign talking about denial-of-service attacks that hit major web sites earlier this year. This is not a coincidence. Afterall, it mentions ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Speaks - Rick White, a member of VeriSign’s Internet Advisory Board, has published an op-ed about the .com price hike agreement with ICANN on CNET. White suggests that increasing security risks demand more investment by VeriSign in the .com infrastructure, hence the opportunity to jack up registry prices by about a third: For example, security giant Symantec reports that denial-of-service attacks are up 679 percent in the past year. These attacks are increasingly hindering ... read more ...
Wed 15th March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain names going, going… - Afternic and TDNAM have a number of domain auctions closing soon — at good prices. Bargain shoppers should take a look at Afternic’s boards for some good values closing soon. If you invest in one word domains, you might consider Purveyance.com. It’s currently at $800 with a buy price of $1400. For only $210 you can pick up CreditRepairBusinesses.com. TripGenie.com has an $800 bid with less than a day to go. Softball101.com has met its reserve with a low ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
On.com turns on $635,000 - On.com has sold for $635,000, according to DNJournal. The two character, one word domain is the highest reported domain name sale of 2006 and headlined a great week for domain sales. On.com wasn’t the only two character domain to sell this week as MO.org sold for $18,000 at Afternic. The #2 sale of the week was VideoClip.com, which sold for $38,500. A Hong Kong domain, Casino.hk, sold for $15,000. Both of these sales were at Sedo. SnapNames auctioned off another ... read more ...
Tue 14th March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain names as choice investments - An article on Advisor.ca gives a good, if not slightly flawed, overview of domain names as portfolio investments. The article, geared toward high-end financial investors, discusses the value of domain names compared to other investments (e.g. stocks). It was originally published in Advisor’s Edge Report. It bases most of its information on an interview with Alex Tajirian of DomainMart. Tajirian is a thought leader in domain analytics (although I sometimes question ... read more ...
Mon 13th March 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Showdown in Seattle - Vint Cerf will be one of the most controversial figures at Domain Roundtable 2006 in Seattle next month. How will attendees, who are sure to be almost unanimously opposed to ICANN’s deal with Verisign, going to react to the ICANN chairman’s appearance? Cerf is delivering a keynote at 8:30am PST on April 20. It’s not designed to be a QA session, but Cerf is sure to address the agreement with Verisign. If he doesn’t, the crowd will make him (if they are awake ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Basketball Domain Names - March Madness, college basketball’s annual tournamount, is upon us. Are there any good basketball domain names left to register? I decided to take a look at both unregistered basketball domains and similar domains on the resale market. If you have deep pockets, you can pick up basketball.info for $45,000 at Afternic. But if you don’t have that much to invest, consider these domains available for registration (as of the time of posting): -TheBasketballTeam.com -YourBasketballCamp.com -BallCamps.com -MensBasketballGuide.com -AllCollegeBasketball.com -CollegeBasketballPool.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Roundtable adds financial sessions - In a sign of the domain market’s maturation, next month’s Domain Roundtable conference will include finance-related sessions. According to a release by Name Intelligence, organizer of the conference: On Wednesday, April 19, 2006 at 9:45am, Ari Bayme of Milbank Roy Co., an international investment banking firm focused on mergers and acquisitions, strategic advisory and financing, will be hosting “Convergence Success Story: The Wall Street Perspective on Acquiring ... read more ...
Fri 10th March 2006
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TDNAM high trade domains shutting today - Here’s a list of select high traffic domains expiring at GoDaddy’s TDNAM today. GoDaddy has about 50 domains in its “high traffic” category that are expiring today. You can bid on these domains at TDNAM.com. Backlink data is provided by MarketLeap and reflects total links in Google, Hotbot, MSN, and Yahoo; be sure to verify before bidding. Also note that Google links and PR might be erased prior to you getting ownership of the domain. boat-insurance-quote.com Current ... read more ...