Monthly Archives: June 2009

Fri 5th June 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google Gets Into Local Directory Business - Google adds features to local listings; competes with local online business directories. Google is enhancing its local business listing features and will now compete head on with local business directories such as yellow pages, and to some extent geo domains. With its new Local Business Center, business owners can add a listing for their business or claim an existing auto-generated listing on Google. They can then add videos, photos, and even online coupons. But ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Gets Walloped in Court, .Com Domain Prices Could Fall - VeriSign on losing end of appeal over registry contract. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has reversed a lower court decision throwing out an antitrust lawsuit by Coalition for ICANN Transparency (CFIT) against VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN). This means an antitrust lawsuit against VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) can go forward, which may eventually mean lower .com domain name registration prices. The plaintiff’s counsel was domain name attorney Bret ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Track GoDaddy Terms of Service Changes during New Web Site - New web site allows you to track changes in GoDaddy’s terms of service. Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched TOSBack, a new service to track changes to company’s terms of service. It currently tracks a number of popular web sites, including Facebook, eBay, YouTube, and domain name registrar GoDaddy.com. It shows a side-by-side comparison with relevant changes highlighted. Most of these are minor or benevolent changes, but we all remember the uproar ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Archive.org vs. DomainTools for Web Site Captures - Archive.org and DomainTools take a different approach to the same problem. Now that ICANN’s hearing on Capitol Hill has passed I’m going to return to Domain Name Wire’s series on using DomainTools. Today let’s explore DomainTools’ historical site thumbnails, a key tool for investigating the prior use of a domain name before buying it. Most people are familiar with Archive.org a.k.a. Wayback Machine, a service that “archives” web sites at different points ... read more ...
Thu 4th June 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Congress Finally Calls ICANN Out On It’s Finances - Florida Republican Cliff Stearns (a fellow Gator)  called ICANN out on its finances , noting that the last balance sheet the nonprofit group showed a $7 million surplus. “You should take that $7 million and make sure that cyber-squatters are gone,” he said. “I think your job should be not just developing a surplus but actually implementing,  making it cheaper for consumers,   and actually doing your mission.” Bravo. This is what we have been saying for a long time, especially after ICANN ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Verizon Testifies To Congress Against a New gTLD’s - The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Verizon,  testified in front of the House Energy and Commerce Internet Subcommitteepanel, which is holding hearings on ICANN,  that new gTLD’s shouldn’t be allowed unless there is a proven market demand for the names and the Internet is secure and stable. ICANN President Paul Twomey said in his testimony in front of the same committee, “There is a demand. Geographic names like dot.NYC and dot.Berlin are being proposed along with others like dot.sport, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DevHub Releases Improved Web Site Editor - Web site building platform releases improvements. Hosted web site creation service DevHub has released an improved editor that allows users to develop their domain names faster. The editor is now compatible with Internet Explorer 7 and 8. It also lets you see all of your content, including flash videos and widgets, immediately when you add them to your page. This makes it easier to layout pages. Publishers can now cash out their earnings when they hit just $5.00. DevHub ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Congress Beats Up ICANN (Part 3) - Question and answer period at hearing gets testy. In part 1 of our coverage of today’s U.S. House of Representatives hearing on ICANN, DNW covered committee member’s opening remarks. Part two covered witnesses’ opening testimony. The real fireworks started when the committee members asked questions of the witnesses. Committee chairman Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) started the questioning by following up on Verizon’s comments about cybersquatting. (Verizon ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Congress Beats Up ICANN (Part 2) - Twomey gets his turn to talk; Verizon shows concerns about new TLDs. In the first part of Domain Name Wire’s coverage of today’s congressional hearings on ICANN I summarized some of the committee members’ opening remarks. Now let’s turn to the witnesses’ opening remarks. The witnesses were National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Fiona Alexander, ICANN President Paul Twomey, VeriSign Senior Vice President Kenneth Silva, Go Daddy General ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Congress Beats Up ICANN (Part 1) - Members of the House rip into ICANN over pricing, transparency, and security. It wasn’t pretty. For better than two hours today, members of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet took turns ripping into Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and its President/CEO Paul Twomey. If nothing else, ICANN’s experience on Capitol Hill today will give it all the more reason to try to get out of U.S. oversight. In ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Technology Policy Institute To Speak during ICANN Hearings - Authors of recent study about ICANN to provide testimony. Thomas Lenard of Technology Policy Institute and co-author of a recent study about ICANN’s structure will provide testimony at today’s congressional hearings on ICANN. Yesterday Domain Name Wire reported about Go Daddy’s planned testimony. Lenard’s testimony will also call for reform of ICANN before it is cut loose, according to a document on TPI’s web site (pdf). However, as I noted when TPI’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Country Code Domain Name Auction Thursday Morning - ccTLD auction starts at 10 am EDT. A live and online domain name auction taking place in conjunction with the TRAFFIC ccTLDs conference in Amsterdam starts momentarily. Online bidding begins at 10 am EDT on Proxibid. The auction includes both traditional country code domain names such as .nl (Netherlands) and .de (Germany), as well as “commercialized” country code domains such as .tv (Tuvalu, but branded as “TV”). Rick Latona Auctions, which is running the ... read more ...
Wed 3rd June 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Rick Hits Another One Out Of The Park: Candy.com Sold For $3 Million - Rick Schwartz announced today on his blog, that he has completed the sale of Candy.com for $3 million dollars to Melville Candy Company of Massachusetts. This is another multimillion sale for Rick and the 4th in the last couple of months for the industry, following in the heels of Toys.com for $5.1M, Auction.com for $1.7 Million and Ad.com for $1.4 Million. Not bad in the worst economy in 80 years. Candy.com will be owned by GJ Holdings, LLC,  which will develop a new Internet based confections ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Yahoo’s CEO: “We’d Be Better Off If We Never Heard The Word Microsoft” - The CEO of Yahoo, Carol Bartz,  in speaking on a possible deal with Microsoft said today at the Bank of America U.S. Technology conference: “I personally think we’d be better off if we never heard the word Microsoft” Bartz went on to day that a search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft could provide savings to Yahoo of not much more than $500M-$700M. Bartz said Bing will give Microsoft some “uplift” in the search market, but will not fundamentally change the competitive dynamics in the search ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
The Joke About Domains That Rings True - A friend (non-domainer) sent me this e-mail joke, that is making thecircuit around the net called: “10 Worst Company Domains” Of course each of these domains really does exist for the purpose explained, but all have double meanings. In the spirit of the TRAFFIC show being held in Amsterdam and something for everyone to keep in mind as you search for great domains to register; some domains have a double meaning; enjoy: “”””Everyone knows that if you are going to operate a business in today’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Roundtable Keynote and Discount Offer - CEO of technology trade association to keynote Domain Roundtable 2009. [Updated: things may seem to happen slowly in government, but change quickly with keynote speakers. The keynote for Domain Roundtable has been changed. We have removed the former speaker and added the new one to this article.] Jonathan Zuck, President of Association for Competitive Technology (CCIA), will be the Keynote Speaker at this month’s Domain Roundtable Conference in Washington, D.C. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
$3M Candy.com Sale Gives Domain Name Industry a Boost - Candy.com sells for $3M. Here’s what it means. It’s official, according to seller Rick Schwartz: Candy.com has sold to GJ Holdings for $3 million (and may include some royalties). But I’m not going to write about how great Rick is; I’ll leave that to other people (and Schwartz does such a good job of it himself). Instead, I’m going to make a few observations: 1. I like the online candy sales business, and this is of course the perfect domain name for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Names a Topic on Capitol Hill Thursday - Hearing to discuss ICANN’s future will be held Thursday. Domain names, specifically ICANN, will be discussed tomorrow in Washington. The House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet will hold a congressional hearing tomorrow about the future of ICANN and the U.S. government’s involvement. ICANN has already garnered the support of Al Gore and former ICANN chairman Vint Cerf that the joint project agreement should be concluded, effectively ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The Incredible Mutating Domain Appraisal Scam - Scam must be working as it keeps moving to new domain names. First Pozde.com. Then TropicalNames.com. Then NameOrange. Now the latest domain name appraisal scam has moved to FlyAppraisals.com. It’s all the same scam and the same scammers. You get an email offering to buy your domain name for some percentage of the appraisal price: We are interested to buy your domain name DOMAIN.COM and offer to buy it from you for 65% of the appraised market value. As of now ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Name Registration Growth: Up or Down? - New VeriSign report shows domain registration growth is up. Or is it? They say there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. The truth is you can focus on particular numbers to change the impression. That’s the case with VeriSign’s new June Domain Name Industry Brief (pdf). I could have headlined this article “Domain Registrations Up 17%”. But I also could have titled it “Domain Registrations Decline 17%”. It all depends on the baseline. VeriSign ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Moviles.net Domain Name Sells for $35,000 - Spanish language domain name tops Sedo’s weekly charts. It’s an interesting week when Sedo’s top domain name sale is only 25,000 EUR (about $35,000 USD). It’s even more interesting when that domain name is a Spanish language .net. But this past week Moviles.net took the crown at Sedo. “Moviles” means mobile in Spanish, and the domain name appears to have been used as a web site before being purchased. It is now temporarily parked at GoDaddy. Although ... read more ...
Tue 2nd June 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The ICA’s Take On The Uniform Rapid Suspension & What’s it’s Going To Do About It - The Internet Commerce Association (the ICA) has just released its statement regarding the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) proposal of the trademark group making up the IRT committee of ICANN. Yesterday we published a post, discussing  the IRT committee and their proposals to increase protection for trademark holders in the domain world and make effect that would have on all domain holders, the most troubling of which is the URS. Today the ICA released the following statement outlining their position ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
WSJ: Small Business Dropping Brick & Mortar In Favor Of Online Business - The Wall Street Journal today published an article entitled, Entrepreneurs Pack Up and Go Home, which talks about a trend of small businesses abandoning their brick and mortar businesses, unable to afford the rent and overhead, and going online. One such person is quoted as saying in support of closing its store and moving it online: “You don’t have overhead, you don’t have to manage employees, you don’t have to keep the store clean — all the stuff that comes along with running a retail ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Bill Clinton Loses Domain Name Challenge - Former United States president Bill Clinton has lost a challenge for three domain names. Bill Clinton had a way of winning at the polls, but he couldn’t persuade an arbitrator this month that he should have rights to the domain names williamclinton.com, williamjclinton.com and presidentbillclinton.com. The domain names were registered by an outfit called “Web of Deception” and allegedly forwarded to the Republican National Committee’s web site. The arbitrator ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Arbitrator Says Complainant Harassed Domain Owner - Domain arbitrator says complainant brought complaint to harass domain owner but won’t find reverse domain name hijacking. LaFrance Corporation made a dubious attempt at getting the domain name LaFrance.com and lost. But despite overwhelming weakness in its case, an arbitrator with World Intellectual Property Organization failed to find reverse domain name hijacking. Just wait until you read why. But first, let’s consider this case. LaFrance Corporation uses ... read more ...