Monthly Archives: July 2009

Tue 14th July 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
New Way To Catch Dropping Domains For Only $18.95 A Pop - Name.com announced today its new “Domain Nabber Service” Domain Nabber is the beta version of Name.com’s back order service which includes a searchable database using Verisign and Yahoo data. Domain Nabber is currently limited to .com and .net domain names which are set to drop from the registry. All domain backorders are priced at $18.95 per substantially lower than current rates at NameJet.com and SnapNames.com Domain Nabber gives you up to ten days of daily drop lists (five past and five ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Blodget: Bing Will Bomb - Henry Blodget, a long time analyst of Internet companies, posted a story on the Silicon Valley Insider, entitled “Bing Will Bomb“. Why? First, he said there “isn’t a search war between Google and Microsoft.  Google won what little skirmish about 5 years ago” Second, he attributes any gain that Bing.com has made to curiosity in reaction to that enormous ad budget Microsoft has for the product. Third, Mr. Blodget says:  “yes, Bing has added some cool innovations, but nothing that Google ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICA Meets ICANN ON Broadway Over The URS - The following is the report on the ICANN forum on the new URS proposal which was held in New York Yesterday by Phil Corwin of the Internet Commerce Association, (the “ICA”)  that attended to represent domainers interests: Here are Mr. Corwin comments: “””” On Monday, July 13th, ICANN opened its global consultation summer road show on Broadway in the ornate Hudson Theatre in the Millennium Hotel. The show was very low in entertainment value and, while the orchestra seating was fairly ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
eGo.com Sells for $75,000, Hardware.de for $150,000 - Sedo has strong sales week. Sedo has brokered the sale of ego.com for $75,000. You may think that the buyer has a big ego, but it looks like the buyer has a different meaning in mind. Ego Friendly, LLC has a web site at the address for a motivational product called eGO. According to the web site, eGO was conceived by researching some of the neurological and psychological aspects of human behavior. We then interviewed people who achieved high levels of success ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DevHub Growing Quickly, Nearing 1M Monthly Visits - Web site development system quickly hitting milestones. The DevHub ecosystem of web sites is growing quickly and traffic is increasing in stride, reports the company. According to the company, there were 900,000 visitors to web sites on the DevHub platform in June. There are now over 10,000 publishers on the network and over 100,000 domain names. A little less than 5,000 of these sites are “DevHubbed” sites, as the company calls them. That means they are fully ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN’s Missing Picture: The Domain Registrant - The main source of funding for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) doesn’t get the attention it deserves. In my open letter to new ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom, I made made a key point with regards to domain registrants: “Remember that domain owners ultimately fund your organization. Registries and registrars merely funnel domain owners’ money to ICANN.” It’s a fairly simple idea, but here’s a flow chart. The orange line are registration ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New York Times: Brokering Peace in a Domain Name World - New York Times article covers this week’s new TLD discussion in New York. I don’t typically write about mainstream news articles about domain names. When I do, it’s usually because the articles are inaccurate. But today on the New York Times’ Bits blog, author Saul Hansell wrote a well balanced description of the current battle between trademark holders and domainers titled “Brokering Peace Between Brand Owners and Domainers“. In the post, Hansell describes ... read more ...
Mon 13th July 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Correction & Clarification on SyFy.com: It Did Not Sell For $250K - Soundly Reasoned: I went into deep detail on the necessity and reason of filing for a trademark and when you don’t. I am not going to repeat it here, so you will have to look at the previous comments to get those details. But in a nutshell, filing a trademark with the government provides added protection and lessens your burden of proof of ownership in an infringement case, but it’s not required to prove ownership of a mark in an infringement case. If you took a story I published, and ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
BostonHerald: Domains Are Free Advertising: Mattress.com Sold For $25 Million? - The Boston Herald published a very positive article this morning about domains highlighting the recent sale of Candy.com, and other category killer domains The article goes on to talk about Furniture.com which apparently sold for $1M in 2001, which I think has not been reported until now (maybe Ron Jackson can confirm this). “We bought the domain for $1 million,” said Carl Prindle, president and CEO of Blueport. “‘I think it’s worth significantly more than that now” The article also talks ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
.CM Auction Domains Are All Resolving, So Who Is Tracking & Making Money Off Them? - In preparing for the Rick Latona Auction of .CM domains, I found some very interesting things. Some of the domains in the auction are resolving to the .com owner’s site. Bodybuilding.cm goes to bodybuilding.com through an affiliate program. Date.cm is going to Date.com through an affiliate program. DrugStore.cm is redirected to DrugStore.com through an affiliate program. Most of the other 43 domains in the auction go to either a Sedo.com or DomainSponsor.com parked page, giving both of those companies, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Convergence Conference Registration Opens - Registration has opened for the second annual Domain Convergence conference. The conference will be held in Toronto, Canada August 13-14. Early registration is available through July 20 for $649, $100 off the regular price. The event is a general interest domainer conference, but will also include a special session about .ca (Canada) domain names. According to a company press release: Domain Convergence is the only event in Canada of its kind, giving domainers ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
A Domain Lawyer’s View of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Domain attorney Karen Bernstein discussses (lack of) reverse domain name hijacking findings. Earlier today Domain Name Wire published a guest article by The Hon. Neil Brown, a domain arbitrator, about how he approaches reverse domain name hijacking (RDNH) decisions. Last week I caught up with New York domain attorney Karen Bernstein to discuss RDNH. Bernstein has reason to be frustrated about domain disputes and the lack of RDNH decisions. She was the respondent’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Pricing Domain Names during “Make Me Move” Prices - Most domain names are priced at “Make Me Move” prices. One of the features of automated real estate appraisal web site Zillow is the “Make Me Move” price. These prices are set by owners of homes that aren’t really interested in selling, but will make a move if you offer them substantially more than the home is worth. Most “Make Me Move” prices are very high, but there’s an understanding amongst buyers that these are mostly listed for fun. Many domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
An Arbitrator’s View of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - How a UDRP panellist approaches the issues of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking and abuse of process. by The Hon Neil Brown QC [Editor’s note: in this exclusive guest article, The Hon. Neil Brown explains how he approaches the question of reverse domain name hijacking in UDRP decisions. Brown is an arbitrator and has heard dozens of cases at National Arbitration Forum and WIPO. He recently wrote a detailed finding of RDNH in a case for Shoeland.com. You can read ... read more ...
Sun 12th July 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Now We Know How Much NBC Paid For SyFy.com: $250K & The Story Behind It - ALAN: My last name is Hinman (hehe), and to be honest, did you know that I never heard the whole Polish thing before NBCU bought the trademark? No one ever brought that up to me, but that explains why we have a better following in Poland NOW than we did then I bet, lol! And yes, that word predates 1998, but remember, I am not talking about the actual creation of the word or any version of it. I’m talking about its specific usage as a variant spelling for “sci-fi.” CARTOONZ: I’m sorry, ... read more ...
Sat 11th July 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Rosetta Stone Sues Google For Trade Mark Infringement - In a seeming unending daily lawsuit filed against search engines for allowing advertisers to place PPC using others trademark terms, Rosetta Stone filed suit against Google yesterday in the Federal Court for the Eastern District of Virgina. The suit is typical of several others recently filed against Google, click here, here, and here and seek damages based on Google allowing advertisers, including competitors to Rosetta Stone from using Rosetta Stone trademarks in their PPC ads. The lawsuit cites ... read more ...
Fri 10th July 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
What’s Wrong With Y4.com? It’s Not Registered & Blocked By The Registry - So I was checking around for some domains and found Y4.com is unregistered, and seems to be blocked by the registry for registration. It’s the first domain I have seen come back with such a whois result in a long time. Back when NSI was the only registry they blocked the registration of  any domain containing one of the 7 dirty words made famous by George Carlin. (although some slipped in) In the raw whois search the domain Y4.com comes back as: “”””Domain names in the .com and .net domains ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Rupert Murdoch: The Economy Is Going To Take “Years and Years” To Recover - Rupert Murdoch CEO of News Corp, which owns Fox television and myspace.com, just to name a few media outlets, issued a very gloomy outlook for the economy. Murdoch said today at the Allen Co,  Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference, one of the biggest gatherings of television, movie and Internet media executives: “The mood of the conference is very bearish, very bearish” “I’m shocked at the business mood, which is talking about either that we’re at the bottom or going lower, but that ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The Australian Government Says No To .XXX - The Australian government said today opposes an .XXX or any other gTLD that would establish a RedLight District on the Internet. According to a story appearing in the Australianit.news.com.au, the AusRegistry, which operates the domain registry for .au, said that it has been approached by several entities planning to apply to register adult-themed gTLDs including, .xxx and .sex, however, a spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the government was opposed to the creation of adult-themed ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Why Hersheys Didn’t Buy Candy.com - Hershey’s = Old School, dependent on ad agency, old style marketing, slow to change (have they ever changed?), old fashioned “image” and not ready as a family-started corporate business to embrace “New Media”. My assessment is that two Hershey executives: Javier Idrovo, Sr. VP of Strategy, Business Dev; and Michele Buck, Sr. VP and Global Chief Marketing Officer, dropped the ball on this one (probably serving only as “yes-men,” due respect to the gender of Michele). Unfortunately, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Heineken Wants Heineken.tel Domain Name - Brewer files complaint with World Intellectual Property Association. Heineken Espana, SA, has filed for arbitration at World Intellectual Property Organization to get the domain name Heineken.tel. .Tel is a new domain name designed to be a business card on the web. Because .tel domain names can’t be developed as traditional web sites, I’ve wondered how an arbitrator would decide that a .tel domain was registered and used in bad faith. In this case, the owner ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
PlasticPinkFlamingos.com and GattisJingle.com - Two Austin companies use smart domain names. I heard two commercials yesterday that showed smart domain name moves by local Austin companies. The first was for a nursery called Pots and Plants that I pass by every day. They are at the corner of a busy intersection and are known for the hundreds of plastic lawn flamingos on their lawn. Today, at about the same time I was passing by the nursery, an NPR sponsor message mentioned the nursery and its domain name – ... read more ...
Thu 9th July 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
Who Would Spend $18 Million To Redesign A Site? The Government Of Course: Recovery.Gov - ABC News’ is reporting that $18 million in additional funds are being spent to redesign the Recovery.gov Web site. The new Web site promises to give “taxpayers more information about where their money is going than the current version of the site”. “Recovery.gov 2.0 will use innovative and interactive technologies to help taxpayers see where their dollars are being spent,” James A. Williams, commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, says in a press release announcing the contract ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
HitWise: Bing.com Market Share is Up But So Is Google’s - According to research firm HitWise, Bing.com and Google market share increase in June. Microsoft share went from  3.4% in the first week of the month to 6.63% by the end of June. Google accounted for 74% of all U.S. searches conducted for the four weeks ended June 27, up fractionally from May and the prior year’s 69%. Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) accounted for 16% in June, down from 20% last year June. Ask.com slid to 3.2%. Other findings from HitWise. Longer search queries have increased in popularity over ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Forbes.com Covers Domains: “Get Your Domain Now” - Forbes.com just posted an article entitled: “Get Your Internet Domain Now“. The article citing a Sedo.com report, saying that the average cost of a domain on Sedo’s reseller platform is up to $2,808 up from $2,049 a year ago. The article widely quotes Nora Nanayakkara, Director of Business Development at Sedo, who says in part: “Companies are rushing to buy generic domains to capitalize on Internet searches without the need to spend enormous amounts of money on expensive online marketing ... read more ...