Monthly Archives: November 2009

Thu 19th November 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Apple Belatedly Gets iPodNano.com Domain Name - Better late than never, Apple gets iPodNano.com domain name. It took about four years, but Apple has finally gotten its hands on the iPodNano.com domain name. Apple filed for arbitration with National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name. The owner of the domain name, Fusion Media Ltd., did not respond to the complaint and the arbitrator found in Apple’s favor. Fusion Media registered the domain name in September 5, 2005, two days before Apple officially introduced ... read more ...
Wed 18th November 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Without a Trademark, WIPO Awards Domains In A Decision That Should Worry “Government” Domain Holders - This is a a one panel WIPO decision that’s maybe troubling for any one owning a domain related to a governmental entity or governmental function. This case involved several domains containing “811″ combined with a state. The domains at issue were: alabama811.com, al811.com, la811.com, louisiana811.com, tennessee811.com, tenn811.com, and tn811.com 811 was set up by the FCC in March 2005 to as the national abbreviated “One Call” dialing code for providing advance notice of excavation activities ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Webby Awards Gets it Wrong: Adsense Was Bigger than Adwords - Which was bigger, Adwords or Adsense? The latter changed more. The Webby Awards has put out its “Ten Most Influential Internet Moments of the Decade“, and I take issue with one of the listings. The list includes this entry from 2000: Google AdWords launches (2000) With the launch of AdWords in October 2000, Google turned advertising on its head. The self-service ad program opened up the marketplace to any business, no matter how big or small, and allowed advertisers ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Yahoo to Provide Ad Contracts to Department of Justice - DOJ probing advertising contracts for Yahoo-Microsoft search deal. Domain Name Wire has learned that Yahoo! advertising partners have received a notice that the company will be providing copies of their advertising contracts to the Department of Justice. The disclosure of this information to the Department of Justice is in conjunction with the DOJ’s review of the Yahoo-Microsoft search deal. The request by the DOJ is being made pursuant to the Hart-Scott-Rodino ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Messer Defends Descriptive StreetPrice.com Domain Name - Seller of Vodka.com wins UDRP case over StreetPrice.com. Roy Messer, perhaps best known in domain circles for selling Vodka.com for $3 million, has successfully defended an attack on his StreetPrice.com domain name. Messer was represented by domain attorney Ari Goldberger. The complaint was brought by the web site StreetPrices.com, a price comparison web site launched in 1997. Messer registered the StreetPrice.com domain name in 1998. The panel found that the Messer ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Five Warning Signs a Top Level Domain is Doomed - If you see any of these warning signs, run for the hills. A number of domain investors, myself included, have invested money in newer top level domain names. Many times these investments haven’t panned out. So here are five warning signs that the top level domain you’re investing in is a money loser. 1. Domain registrants spend more time on forums writing about how the domain is the next great thing than they spend managing their own portfolio. 2. The registry ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Worst Tech Support Chat Session Ever - Nomination for the worse online tech support chat ever. Someone at my web host must have had a bad day Friday. After I discovered a problem with my email forwarding, I opened up a live chat session. Here’s the transcript of the first 10 minutes of the chat. Support: Hello, how may I help you? andrew allemann: For some reason none of my forward email accounts under domainnamewire.com are working. e.g. andrew -at- domainnamewire.com, pr -at-domainnamewire.com. ... read more ...
Tue 17th November 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
NameJet Brings In Over $50K In Just 4 Domain Auctions - 4 big domain auctions closed today on Namejet.com with a total haul of over $50K in sales. 3 of the domains were three letter .com’s and one was a very good insurance domain. APN.com sold for $14,401. APN like any three word domain stands for plenty of organizations, but the most frequent seems to be for Access Point Name. InsuranceClaim.com sold for $12,100 LMD.com sold for $12,100 OGT.com also sold for $12,000 OGT  stands for Ohio Graduation Test which seems to be a requirement in that state ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UPDATED With Current Bids, SnapNames Monthly Showcase Closes during 3:15pm EST Today - The Snapnames.com Monthly showcase auction for November closes at 3:15pm  EST today. Here are all the domain with bids as of the time of publication 1:45pm EST. Those with an (r) by the amount have reached reserve and will sell, the others have bids but the reserve price has not been reached. To see our picks from the auction, check out our post here. To join the auction or to add to your watch list, just click on the link so we can take some of Oversee’s cash. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
An Open Letter To Oversee/SnapNames.com: Hey Guys Here Is A Plan To Fix The Halvarez Scandal - On Friday in response to a post on our finding from our research of our own Snapnames auction history we got into a discussion with Mr. John Berryhill, an attorney I very much respect. During a heated back and forth discussion he asked: “”Hypothetically, what would you do, right now, if you were Oversee, that would make everyone in the world happy over this crappy situation?”” So I answered him and that answer is now forming the basis of this post. Its been two weeks since Oversee broke the ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Worth $160 Billion Less; AOL.com Goes Back To The Future & Starts Trading All Over Again On Dec 10th - Earlier this year Time Warner, Inc. announced that it would be spinning AOL off back into a separate public company. Today Time Warner announced that AOL will begin trading on December 10th, 2009. It will mark the return to the stock market for AOL, which was bought by Time Warner about 9 years ago in what is largely regarded as being one of the most disastrous corporate mergers in history. Time Warner shareholders of record on Nov. 27 will receive one share of AOL stock for every 11 shares of Time ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Jury Trial Date Set in Thought Convergence v. Jay Westerdal - Date set for trial over troubled acquisition. A jury trial date of April 6, 2010 has been set for the lawsuit between Thought Convergence and Jay Westerdal et al. Thought Convergence (TCI) filed the lawsuit against Westerdal on May 1 over TCI’s purchase of Westerdal’s company Name Intelligence. Name Intelligence is best known for its DomainTools web site, but it also owns web hosting company Spry. In the suit, TCI claimed alleged breach of securities exchange ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Pssst. No One Cares About a Domain Industry. - Let’s kill the hubris. Hey, I’ve got a little secret for you: no one gives a crap about the domain name industry. It’s small potatoes. It’s a speck on a fly. It’s nothing. And people don’t like it, too. I personally think the domain industry is great and incredibly important. But the fact remains that most people outside our industry don’t care or know about it. We’re tiny. And if they know about it, they certainly don’t care for domainers. I ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Canadian Input About .Bank Shows Complications of International Internet - Canadian regulator questions .bank top level domain name. There are many challenges to introducing new top level domain names. International norms certainly play a part, such as issues over morality. But who would have thought .bank would create controversy, especially from from a bank regulator? For background, a group of financial organizations has suggested that a .bank top level domain name might help reduce phishing and instill confidence. Only real banks that ... read more ...
Mon 16th November 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
Want To Rank High On Google? In 2010 Your SEO May Depend On The Speed Of Your Site - Matt Cutts from Google gave a video interview last week discussing what changes lay ahead for Google for the new year. According to Mr. Cutts, the most important new factor for SEO rank maybe the speed at which your site loads. “We are thinking more and more that site speed should be a factor in search ranking.” “Maybe its fair to say it you have a very fast site you should get a bonus or if you have an awfully slow site, maybe users don’t want that” To see a video from Google on how to ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Our Picks For The SnapNames.com Monthly Showcase Auction - The SnapNames.com monthly showcase auction closes tomorrow, Tuesday November 17th at 3:15pm EST, according to Snapnames normal closing procedures. As we typically do, we have selected some of what we regard to be the better or more interesting domains. The first group of domains currently have bids on them and if they have hit reserve they will have an (r) by the price, otherwise just have bids, but as of time of publication, have not hit reserve. To join or watch any of the auctions please click ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Live Current Turns Profit in Q3 - Live Current Media pulls out a profit after cutting costs. Live Current Media has reported a profit for the third quarter of 2009. The company released earnings of $703,000 on quarterly revenues of $1.757 million. The move from the red to the black wasn’t due to a better top line; it was due to drastic cost cutting. Revenue was down 10%, but gross margin was up from 18% in Q3 2008 to 32.7% in Q3 2009. General and administrative costs were down 74% compared to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New Jersey Indicts Alleged Domain Thief - New Jersey hands down first every indictment for domain theft. New Jersey today handed down an indictment (pdf) against Daniel Goncalves, alleged thief of the P2P.com domain name. The Division of Criminal Justice Major Crimes/Computer Analysis Technology Unit obtained a seven-count state grand jury indictment for theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, computer theft, and identity theft, all in the second degree, and three counts of fourth-degree falsifying ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cheech and Chong Smoke Out Domain Name - Domain owner: pack that in your pipe and smoke it! Comedy duo Cheech Chong have won rights to the CheechandChong.com domain name through arbitration at World Intellectual Property Organization. Did you ever think you’d see “Cheech Chong” and WIPO in the same sentence? I first wrote about this story back in September, predicting that the comedians would win the case. But it wasn’t as clear cut as I originally thought. As it turns out, Cheech Chong first ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Nelson Brady on SnapNames Scandal - Don’t expect an explanation from Nelson Brady any time soon. When I cover a major domain industry event, I like to get both sides of the story. So when the news about the SnapNames insider bidding scandal broke, one of my first calls was to the man allegedly at the center of the controversy, former SnapNames VP Nelson Brady. Instead of writing about the conversation then, I wanted to wait until I had a chance to have a more in-depth discussion with Brady or his ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
LaFontaine.com Sells for $50,000 to Lead Sedo Sales List - LaFountaine.com leads sales chart, but also interesting .cc and .mobi sale. Sedo has completed the sale of LaFontaine.com for $50,000, its top reported sale of the past week. LaFontaine is a common last name, and means “fountain” in French. The domain broker also completed a number of sales from its one and two character .de auction and its one character .biz auction. .DE auction sales over 5,000 EUR a.de 32,111 EUR ok.de 21,956 EUR 18.de 16,500 EUR uk.de 14,000 EUR fm.de 10,100 EUR cs.de 10,000 EUR nu.de 7,000 EUR ua.de 5,355 EUR u2.de 5,352 EUR cu.de 5,200 EUR pl.de 5,100 EUR ro.de 5,000 EUR .BIZ ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Linking Automated UDRP Filers CitizenHawk and Alias Encore - CitizenHawk founder created competing firm for typosquatting recovery. This morning I was reading a couple articles about FreeCreditReport.com’s win of over 1,000 domains in a single UDRP. (See DNW’s story here.) I was going to write a post about how so many blogs get information wrong, spreading falsities. These aren’t willful, but still hurt companies. In this case, I was reading an article at one of AOL’s blogs that said the company behind the cybersquatting, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Rate of Domain Cybersquatting Hits All Time Low - Rate of cybersquatting continues decline. The rate of cybersquatting, as measured by arbitration filings under Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy, has hit an all time low. A Domain Name Wire analysis of UDRP filings dating back to 2000, the first year UDRP was widely used, showed marked declines. UDRP filings were compared to the total number of .com domain names in existence each year to calculate an effective rate of cybersquatting. Although .com domain names ... read more ...
Sun 15th November 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Can Now Incorporate Your Company - Domain registrar Go Daddy rolled out a new product this week providing businesses incorporation services for both corporations and LLC’s.in all 50 states Like many online incorporation sites, Godaddy asks some basic questions, and then files the necessary paperwork on behalf of the applicant and send the the filed incorporation documents to the applicant within a few weeks. Bob Parsons, Go Daddy CEO and founder. “Go Daddy wanted to help make the whole incorporation process affordable and painless, ... read more ...
Sat 14th November 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
Domainer & Lawyer Launches MalpracticeAttorneys.com - A well known lawyer in the domain industry, and fellow domainer has just launched a site on  MalpracticeAttorneys.com. Howard Neu,  a lawyer practicing in South Florida, purchased the domain at the  TRAFFIC New York 2008 Moniker auction. The site will contain a blog with news and views about cases and developments in the Malpractice field including medical malpractice and legal malpractice. The site will eventually list malpractice attorneys in every major metropolitan area around the country. Its ... read more ...