Monthly Archives: October 2009

Mon 5th October 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
thepiratebay.org New ISP Shuts The Site Down, Again & Google Removes It - Following up on a story we have been following for a while, according to multiple reports ThePirateBay.org was shut down again, today,  after a group representing copyright owners forced the search engine’s new bandwidth provider, NForce to cut off service. At the time of publication the site is inaccessible. Apparently there is a nonstop effort to go after any ISP that provides bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, to shut the down the site, by threatening the ISP with lawsuits and fines. Back In August, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
FTC Releases New Guidelines For Bloggers, Twitterers and Advertisers & Fines Up to $11K Per - The Federal Trade Commission released guidelines today,  effective December 1, mandating that bloggers,  Tweeters and other “online marketers” will have to tell readers (consumers) when they are paid or given freebies to write positive reviews or online postings. The rules also applies to “word of mouth” campaigns such as those carried out on social networking sites. The FTC said, “the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement” ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UDRP: Your’e Going To Lose A “…Sucks” Domain If You Park It. - In a new ruling today on the domain radioshacksucks.com made it pretty clear if you own one of these company “sucks” domains if you park it you will lose it. While such domains have been found to be fair use when there is a site with content related to fair critizim of the company, this WIPO ruling clearly states that parking such a domain will be fatal to continued ownership. “””The Panel notes that  Simply having a domain name with “-sucks” in the name cannot, by itself, establish ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
RSS.com Leads Sedo’s Sales for Week during $125,000 - Good values in six figure domain names as RSS.com sells. RSS.com took home the top prize this week at Sedo, with the domain name selling for $125,000. TheDomains reports that the buyer is Ron Sheridan, one of the earliest employees at Oversee.net. Sheridan left Oversee earlier this year. This is another example of the good values available for high end buyers right now. The domain was originally listed at $750,000 before being dropped substantially. Big price ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
No Wildcarding for New Top Level Domain Names - ICANN says ‘no’ to wildcards. Registries that are awarded new top level domain names will be prohibited from wildcarding unregistered domains, based on the latest version of ICANN’s applicant guidebook. The new registration agreement reads: For domain names which are either not registered by a registrant, or the registrant has not supplied valid records such as NS records for listing in the DNS zone file, or their status does not allow them to be published in ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New Top Level Domains Still Two Years Away from Reality - Latest ICANN guidance and remaining challenges means new TLDs are a long way away. The introduction of new top level domain names, such as .green and .food, looks to be at least a couple years away from reality. ICANN’s latest draft guidebook for entities wishing to apply for a new top level domain name states that the application process is likely to start in the “first half of 2010″. Previously, the goal was the first quarter of 2010, but even that was the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Latest Top Level Domain Guidebook Allows .Com Prices to Skyrocket - New draft guidebook doesn’t adequately address concerns that VeriSign could hike .com registration prices. Over the weekend, ICANN released its latest New gTLD Applicant Guidebook with guidelines for the introduction of new top level domain names such as .eco and .shop. Unfortunately, the guidebook still holds a time bomb for owners of existing domain names, such as .com domains, that could force them to pay massive renewal fees for their domains. What the guidebook ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cybersquatters Not Allowed to Apply for New gTLDs - Cybersquatters not allowed to apply for new TLDs. Does that include domain registrars? The latest version of ICANN’s guidebook for new top level domain name applicants includes language to prohibit cybersquatters from applying for new top level domain names. This could have interesting implications if people get technical about it. First, here’s who is not allowed to apply: b. Applicant, or any partner, officer, director, or manager, or any person or entity ... read more ...
Sun 4th October 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
UPDATE: Drew Carey Bids $25K For “Drew” Twitter Account - We wrote a couple of days ago about the Twitter account “Drew” being up for sale, with Twitter’s blessing, carrying a minimum bid of $10K, followers not included. Today comes the news that Price is Right host Drew Carey bid $25,000 for the Twitter name “Drew”, with a potential bid of up to $100,000 if Drew Carey’s own Twitter account (@drewfromTV)  gets to 100,000 followers by November 9th (currently at  23,500 followers). While many want to take this as a sign that Twitter names, may ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
This Is What Happens When Browsers Try To Be Search Engines - Elliot raised an interesting issue on this blog today on how certain ISP (Road Runner in his case), resolve incomplete URL  in the browser to a site other than what your intending. Once Elliot raised the issue, I went in a different direction and tried the same term Elliot was searching for in Safari, “TVlistings” on Firefox. I have Bell South as my ISP (owned by ATT) and I don’t have the same problem that Elliot had. The problem I see is is wider than the ISP problem that Elliot found. The ... read more ...
Sat 3rd October 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
Twitter Account Name “Drew” Is At Auction For Charity - Interesting article over at Mashable.com, discussing the online charity auction for the Twitter account name “Drew” (Name only followers are not included, he has over 7,200 of them by the way) The auction is being held for the benefit of  and all money from the sale will go directly to the LIVESTRONG foundation. The seller is Drew Olanoff, who was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma and who has a site at blamedrewscancer.com Interesting enough, the auction according to Mashable is with Twitter’s ... read more ...
Fri 2nd October 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
Note To Corporate America: Secure The Domain BEFORE Putting Out The Press Release - I just saw a press release from a Minnesota Hosting company announcing its new program, an incentive for companies to replace their old servers with new dedicated servers. “””Playing off the government’s Cash for Clunkers program, VISI’s “Cash For Servers” promotion offers a rebate up to $500 to anyone who purchases a new dedicated or virtual dedicated server and turns in their old server to VISI. Companies can receive up to a total of $3,000 in rebates ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Chicago we Love You, But we Have To Root Against You - As most of you know, the Olympic Committee will announce Friday, its decision on where the 2016 summer Olympics will be held. The 4 finalists are Chicago, Rio, Madrid and Tokyo. I have to admit, I’m not impartial. Why? Domain names. The most popular tourist Geo domains, other than the actual city .com,  is the Visit……com. May cities and countries use Visit…….com as their official tourism site. We own VisitRio.com and VisitMadrid.com, giving us a 50% shot at one of our domains becoming ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Industry Veteran Ron Sheridan Buys RSS.com From Sedo For $137,500 - Ron Sheridan, formerly with Oversee.net, announced today that he has completed the purchase of the domain name RSS.com for $137,500, including commission, from Sedo.com. The asking price of the domain, RSS.com which I believe was as high as $750K, was dropped to $250K on July 10, 2009 and then to $125K on September 14, 2009. Ron Sheridan says that he, along with Phil McKegney, plan on developing the domain, and while they are  “not prepared to reveal the precise nature of what we will soon be ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Will IDN Top Level Domains Kill Existing IDN Domain Names? - You’re right, there is no written guarantee from ICANN on any of this; nor will you see any, and there’s a good reason why this is, and that’s because it’s not their problem or concern. The only stipulation ICANN have set is that surfers must not get confused, hence where the much used ICANN phrase “not confusingly similar” has come from. For example, there is no way on earth a new cctld .teevee would be allowed, because it sounds like an existing extension (.tv) I am an ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
15%-25% of Domain Names are Registered with Masked Whois - Study examines use of privacy and proxy services. A new report (pdf) released by ICANN yesterday says that 15%-25% of all registered domain names use some sort of service to mask whois information. The study found that the majority of people masking whois use a proxy service, which means an entity actually registers the domain on the domain “owner’s” behalf, and then leases it to that owner. Only 15% use privacy services, which mask some of the whois information ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Files 3 Patents for Domain Suggestion and Advertising Method - Company files patents for improving current domain suggestion and advertising systems. Go Daddy Group, Inc., parent company of domain name registrar GoDaddy, has filed three patents for a method of suggesting possible domain names. The applications also suggest this method can be used for targeted advertising, search results, and web site content. The applications were filed in 2008 and published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on October 1. In the patent ... read more ...
Thu 1st October 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Has Bing.com Maxed Itself Out Already? - According to a report by analytics firm StatCounter, Bing.com’s share of the Internet search market decreased by more than 1 percentage point in September. Bing had 8.51% share in September compared with 9.64% in August. So you must think that Bing’s decline helped Yahoo. No. Actually, Google’s share of the U.S. search market increased to 80.08% in September compared with 77.83% in August despite Bing.com’s massive ad campaign. Yahoo’s share of the search market decreased from 10.5% to ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
A New First: Internet Advertising Exceeds TV Ad Spending in a UK - Talk about a milestone for the Internet. The UK has become the first major economy where advertisers spent more on internet advertising than on television advertising. According to a report by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers,  advertisers spent a record £1.75bn on online advertising,  a 4.6% year-to-year increase, in the first 6 months of 2009 In 1998, when the IAB first measured internet advertising, only £19.4m was spent online. The internet now accounts for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Takeover Bid Launched for Dark Blue Sea - Photon launches takeover of Dark Blue Sea. Photon Group has launched a takeover bid for Dark Blue Sea, parent company of Fabulous. Photon currently owns 30.55% of all issued ordinary shares of Dark Blue Sea. The company is offering to buy outstanding ordinary shares for 30 cents per share, which it says is a 56% premium to the average share price over the past month. Dark Blue Sea’s second largest shareholder, Huon Capital, says it intends to accept the offer ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Hot off Press: Domain Owner Responds to Glenn Beck - Response filed in Glenn Beck domain dispute. Most UDRP domain dispute proceedings make for dry reading. But when someone who has created a bitingly satirical web site works with his lawyer to put pen to the paper, the end result can be quite amusing. Such is the case in Glenn Beck’s fight for the domain name glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. If you haven’t read about this case yet, the domain owner created the web site because of an internet meme ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Arbitrator Rains on Media Rain’s Parade - Utah company loses its frivolous UDRP complaint. No surprise here. But still a sad, abusive story to report. Media Rain, LLC has lost its arbitration proceedings in which it tried to obtain the domain name Rain.com. The facts were quite damning. Rain.com was registered back in 1990, 18 years prior to Media Rain’s formation. Verio acquired the ISP that owned Rain.com in 1996. But Media Rain, which uses the domain name MediaRain.com, wanted to get its hands ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Napoleon Hill Foundation Doesn’t Own “And Grow Rich” - Arbitrator rules against foundation on all three counts in UDRP. The Napolean Hill Foundation has gotten rich off its namesake’s timeless “Think and Grow Rich” book. But an arbitrator with National Arbitration Forum has ruled that it doesn’t have a lock on the term “and grow rich”. The foundation filed a claim against the owner of FlipandGrowRich.com, a web site that offers information about flipping real estate, including a book titled “Flip and Grow ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Top 5 Domain News Stories of Sep 2009 - A look at the top five news stories on Domain Name Wire in September. It was another strong month for traffic at Domain Name Wire. Here are the top five articles for the month, ranked by traffic. 1. Go Daddy Files Patents for Enhanced Whois and DNS Records – Go Daddy has filed for a few patents related to enhancing whois and DNS records, making them interactive. 2. U.S. Postal Service Delivers USPS.mobi Domain Name – The United States Postal Service has won the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Two Domain Conferences on Tap for October - Two domain conferences hit the United States in October. Casa Marina Resort in Key West Two major domain name events are taking place in October. Sedo will hold its annual SedoPro Partner Forum October 7th – 9th at Casa Marina Resort, located on the island of Key West, Florida. This invitation-only event is limited to Sedo’s big customers in the SedoPro program. If it’s anything like the last stateside event in New York, it will be an event to remember. Then ... read more ...