Monthly Archives: May 2009

Sat 16th May 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICANN Issues Advsiory To Customers Of OnlineNic.com: You Can Transfer Your Domains - Over the past days readers to this blog have left comments regarding their inability to transfer domains they had registered at OnlineNic.com to any other registrar. I sent these comments over to Phil Corwin of the Internet Commerce Association (ICA) who contacted ICANN on behalf of these domainers. Tonight in response, ICANN issued the following advisory to all Onlinenic.com customers: Customers of registrar OnlineNIC who had problems with previous transfer requests should now be able to transfer ... read more ...
Fri 15th May 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Changes Its Policy To Allow Advertisers To Use Trademark Terms In Ad Text - The other day we wrote about Google announcing a new policy that would allow advertisers to buy trademarked keywords.  We also wrote about a class action suit that was filed this week against Google for similar conduct. Today Google went a step further and announced that not only can you buy keywords for trademarked terms, but you can under certain circumstances, advertisers can now use trademarked terms in the text of there ad, which represents a major shift in policy for Google. Here is the full ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Live Current Weaseling out of Cricket Deals - Company gets out of one deal, assigns other deal to joint venture. Live Current Media (OTC.bb) is slowly working to distance itself from its long term cricket agreements, potentially reducing its liabilities. In its latest 10-Q, the company reported that it has terminated its agreement with Board of Control for Cricket in India (“BCCI”), which called for the company to pay $3M per year for 10 years. The company still has a memorandum of understanding with DLF ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Did Parava Bilk Customers from Renewal Fees? - Parava alleged to have kept renewal fees instead of paying them to VeriSign. What’s a warning sign that your domain name registrar is about to leave you in a lurch? You pay it to renew your domain many years in advance, but it only renews it for one year at a time. Apparently a lot of Parava customers have experienced that. This week Tucows (Hover.com) took over the domain names that were at Parava, which was de-accredited by ICANN. It didn’t take long for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Woman Sues GoDaddy for Alleged Discrimination - Former employee alleges company ignored complaints about harassment. A former GoDaddy employee has sued the company in U.S. District Court, alleging it discriminated against her after she complained of sexual harassment. In the lawsuit, Rachel Pearson alleges that a co-worker engaged in “many offensive, hostile, and threatening acts” such as staring at her and touching her inappropriately. She claims that GoDaddy did not respond properly to her allegations, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Close to 1 Million Member Milestone - Domain broker and domain parking company may hit milestone this quarter. Domain name brokerage and parking company Sedo may be celebrating a milestone this quarter for reaching one million registered users. The company’s first quarter financial report shows that the company now has 962,000 registered members, up from 907,000 at the end of last year. At this pace, Sedo should hit the million mark sometime during Q2 2009. It’s unclear if these numbers include ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Name Appraisal Scam Now during NameOrange.com - Warning: do not buy domain appraisals at NameOrange.com. A new domain appraisal scam that surfaced a few months ago has migrated to a new web site, NameOrange.com. The scammers send an e-mail to domain name owners offering to buy their domain for a certain percentage of the appraisal price. The e-mail requires an appraisal from one of three domain name appraisal services, including one owned by the scammer. The scammer’s appraisal service has the lowest price, ... read more ...
Thu 14th May 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
Google Suffers Widespread Outages Today - According to numerous news sources and reports it appears Google suffered widespread outage affecting many of its online services today. Most Google properties were inaccessible to users across the U.S. and worldwide from about 10:45 a.m. until about 12:20 p.m. EDT. People from coast-to-coast and as far as China, Australia, and France were all impacted. The outage, quickly dubbed #googlefail by Twitter users, shut down everything from Gmail to the Google.com home page. Google News, Google Reader, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
NameJet.com To Auction Off Registry Owned, Reserved .Me Domains - Namejet.com announced on its site today that it would be hosting an auction on 15, premium, registry owned .me domains stating on June 5th. Unlike all NameJet,com auctions to date, some or all of these domain will have a reserve price (although you can still “backorder” them for $69) and the “Reserve amounts will be published at auction start” As a side note, with some “owned domains” having been recently auctioned off on NameJet.com like toxic.com and trumpet.com, and with the added ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
directNIC Offers NameMedia Domain Name Inventory - Large domain name registrar to offer AfternicDLS domain names. People searching for domain names at directNIC will soon have the option of buying an existing domain name through NameMedia. NameMedia, which owns BuyDomains and Afternic, will offer its catalog of domain names to customers. For example, I just searched for “baseball.com” at directNIC and was offered an assortment of baseball domain names for purchase: Domain owners that want to have their domains ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
PremiumDomains.com Needs a New Slogan - Site offers $1,000 prize for winning slogan. PremiumDomains.com, which is run by the same company as Domaining.com, has relaunched. The service now includes hand-picked, uber-premium domain names for sale such as Cleaning.com, Hybrid.com, and Competition.com. Sellers list domains on the site for a 15% commission, which includes listing on the site and an outreach/marketing campaign. (Alternatively, you can pay to just have your domain listed without brokerage and ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tucows Posts Q1 Profit - Domain name registrar sees strong domain registration revenue. Tucows (AMEX: TCX) has posted a profit of close to $1M for the quarter ended March 31. This compares to a loss of about $1M in the same quarter in 2008. The company cites both sales of its domain portfolio through Yummy Names and improved domain registration and renewal numbers for the improved results. On the company’s investor conference call last night, CEO Elliot Noss said new domain registrations ... read more ...
Wed 13th May 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
YummyNames.com Makes Tucows.com A Cool Million - Tucows.com reported earnings after the market closed today Elliot Noss, President and CEO of Tucows said  “we saw continued strength in domain registrations through our  wholesale services business, marked by the highest number of new registrations since the second quarter of 2000 and strong year-over-year growth in renewal transactions.” “In our YummyNames branded domain portfolio business, we completed a $1 million bulk domain name sale and executed an arrangement with the buyer committing ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Class Action Suit Filed Against Google For Selling Trademarked Keywords - I know your thinking this must be the all Google blog this week, but everyday news is coming out on Google and today’s is not good. As we wrote yesterday, Google announced the further expansion of its policy regarding allowing rivals to buy keywords under trademarked terms in up  to 200 countries (you can read that post here). Today it appears, Google is facing a new lawsuit for allowing companies to use trademarks to trigger pay-per-click ads. (It does not appear Google knew of this suit when ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
So What Did Google Show Off Today In Their Web Press Conference? Plenty - What did Google unveil in its Web press conference today? A slew of new and future features on Tuesday, including one that will allow people to better coordinate Internet searches on their cellphones and computers and another that will produce sophisticated automated research reports. At a briefing at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, executives demonstrated tools To align its search products on personal computers more closely with cellphones; A new feature, available immediately, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Thought Convergences Releases Statement about Westerdal Termination - Company says termination is unrelated to acquisition dispute. Thought Convergence, parent company of TrafficZ, has released a statement about the termination of Jay Westerdal. The statement claims that Westerdal’s termination is not related to a dispute between Thought Convergence and Westerdal over the acquisition of DomainTools and Spry. Thought Convergence’s statement is below: While we believe that employment matters should be dealt with internally rather ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Thought Convergence Sues Westerdal - Company sued Name Intelligence founder Westerdal on May 1 over $16M deal gone wrong. Earlier today we reported about a riff between Thought Convergence and Jay Westerdal, founder of Name Intelligence. I was just tipped off to a lawsuit filed by Thought Convergence against Westerdal earlier this month. Defendants also include Per Westerdal, Ray Bero, and Cameron Jones. The complaint is for alleged breach of securities exchange agreement, breach of employment and ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
UPDATED: Jay Westerdal and Thought Convergence Part Ways - Name Intelligence founder leaves company. Jay Westerdal, founder of Name Intelligence, has left Thought Convergence. Thought Convergence, parent company of TrafficZ, acquired Name Intelligence LLC last year. The acquisition included the popular DomainTools.com site. Westerdal remains with Name Intelligence, Inc. a holding company. Reached by phone this afternoon, Westerdal said his departure stems from a payment dispute over the acquisition. “Thought Convergence ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Parava Transition to Hover Has Started - Transition of domains from de-accredited registrar begins. The wait is almost over for Parava Networks’ customers who haven’t been able to access their domain names in a couple weeks. As I write, domains are being transferred to Tucows’ Hover.com. Parava customers need not contact Hover yet, as they will receive an e-mail with instructions later today when the process is complete. Customers will go to a special URL on the Hover site to claim their domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
TelFeeder Populates .Tel Domain Names - System makes it easier to populate multiple .tel domain names. A new service called TelFeeder.com has launched, helping owners of multiple .tel domain names quickly upload data. .Tel domain name owners download a simple XML file and open it in Microsoft Excel. Next, they input data according to each field (i.e. e-mail address) and save the file. Then users upload the file through TelFeeder.com and the .tel domain names are automatically populated with the data. TelFeeder.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN.gone? Internet Battle Set for this Fall - U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) questions future of DNS management. ICANN’s Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the U.S. government ends in September, and already countries around the world are asking that control of the domain name system be pulled from the U.S. There are sure to be big battles ahead. NTIA is seeking public comment (pdf) on ICANN and the termination of the JPA. In reality, ICANN ... read more ...
Tue 12th May 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
etang.com Sells For $35K on NameJet.com - The domain etang.com sold yesterday for $35,603 on NameJet.com to the bidder name “kevenkou”.  In all there were 129 bidders in the auction. etang translates into “lakes” in french. Here are some other notable sales over the last few days at NameJet.com: internetoffice.com                  $8,099 autowax.com                           $5,044 jjt.com                                       $4,422 permits.net                              ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Google To Actively Promote The Sale Of Trademarked Keywords To Rivals - We all know that Google (Yahoo as well) has allowed competitors to buy keywords of competitors trademarked terms to advertise there products. According to Business Week, Google  starting June 4, will allow advertisers in about 200 countries to purchase rival trademarks as keywords to trigger display of “sponsored search” ads on Google. Honda, for instance, could bid to have one of its ads displayed when a consumer searches the term “Toyota.” In recent years some companies have sued Google ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Anteaters Fail to Eat Ant.com - Attorney John Berryhill successfully defends Ant.com in UDRP case. Attorney John Berryhill has defended big animals such as Elephant.com. He’s even defended swine flu-carrying animals such as Pig.com. But he must have really set aside his ego to defend a tiny little pest in Ant.com. Nonetheless, he won. The complainant was Atlanta Network Technologies, Inc., which operates ANTonline.com. The respondent was ANT.COM Limited, which offers search functionality and ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Politician Uses Generic Domain (and Wins) - Next Austin mayor used AustinLeadership.com as domain name. This past weekend a typically low turnout of about 12% of registered voters in Austin elected Lee Leffingwell as the new mayor. Leffingwell caught my attention early in the campaign when I saw one of his roadside placards. Instead of using the domain name LeeLeffingwell.com or LeffingwellforMayor.com, the sign simply read: AustinLeadership.com This caught my attention because it’s rare to see a politician ... read more ...