Monthly Archives: December 2009

Fri 11th December 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Dell Wins 7 Domain Name Arbitration Cases - Dell scores victories in domain disputes. Computer and technology services company Dell has received an early Christmas present, winning seven domain name arbitration cases in the span of just one week. For the Dell brand, the company won five cases covering 8 domain names. One is an obvious typo, wwdell.com. The company also won a case for four gaming related domain names: DellConsole.com, DellGaming.com, DellVideoGaming.com, and DellVideoGames.com. Other domains ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
An Interesting Outside View on a Domain Industry - What happens when an amateur shows up to a domain meetup. I came across a blog post today by a self-proclaimed “amateur” domainer who attended the South Florida Domainers event last week. It’s an interesting read because the author, Craig Agranoff, showed up to the event thinking he’d be surrounded by prolific domainers. Instead, he claims, the majority of them were amateurs like himself. In his own words: I’ve dabbled in domain trading and development ... read more ...
Thu 10th December 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
American Express Does It Again; Launches The “Zinc Card” Without Securing The Domains - Back earlier this year,  we told the story how American Express failed to secure the rights to BlackCard.com allowing its main competitor Visa International to grab the domain of one of its best known products. Today AMEX announced the launch of a new branded credit card geared to twenty somethings, the Zync Card, an obvious typo of the proper spelling which would be Zinc Card. On October 9th the domains zinccard.com and zinccards.com were registered by a company using a London England address and ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
HitWise: Google’s US Search Share Now Up To Almost 72% - According to the data provider HitWise Google’s share of U.S. Internet searches rose 1.4% in November to 71.6%, Yahoo’s U.S. search share fell 4.6% to 15.4%. Bing’s search share also slipped 2.4% to 9.3%, Ask.com edged up to 2.7%. Hitwise, said Google’s percentage of traffic grew for the automotive, shopping and travel categories. Bing, saw double-digit growth among those three categories and health. Yahoo reported declines in all four categories, with the biggest drop, 20%, in health. Google+Michael ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Arbitrator Asks Good Questions About Expedited UDRP - Domain name arbitrator asks good questions about Expedited UDRP. The Hon. Neil Brown, a UDRP domain name arbitrator, has submitted comments to ICANN regarding Czech Arbitration Court’s plans for expedited UDRPs. He actually phrases them as rhetorical questions, but they certainly raise a number of issues. They’re worth reading in their entirety, but here’s a summary: Can the Expedited Decision proposal be implemented by amendments to the Supplemental Rules ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Good Luck Finding a UDRP Arbitration Provider Contract with ICANN - No contract exists with UDRP providers. With two UDRP arbitration providers trying to change up the rules, attorney Jim Davies tried to get his hands on the contract between ICANN and its approved UDRP providers. He hit a stumbling block: there is none. You can see the details of his request for the contract in his public comments (submitted as an individual, not on behalf of his firm or clients) on ICANN’s web site. But it’s worth reprinting them here. I ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Making Sedo’s Multi-Bid Interface Better - Four ways to improve the Sedo bulk bidding interface. If you missed the conclusion of Sedo’s December Great Domains auction, you missed some great deals. I picked up five good domains at nice prices. Don’t say I didn’t give you a heads up. This was the first time I was bidding on multiple domains that closed at the same time on Sedo, so it was my first experience with Sedo’s “bulk” bidding system. It worked fine, but there are several ways it can be ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Great Domains Auction Ends Today during Noon EST - Final Great Domains auction of the year ends today. December’s Great Domains auction at Sedo ends today at noon EST. As of the time of writing, the top domain to have met its reserve is ddm.com at $11,000. The top bid overall is 48,000 EUR for ZM.com. But this is shy of the reserve range of 50,000-99,000 EUR. There may be some bargains to be had for astute buyers. Take a look at Irish.com, currently at $20,000. The reserve range is $50,000-$100,000, and this ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Telnic Wants to Release .Tel IDNs - .Tel registry asks ICANN to let it register IDNs. .Tel registry Telnic has sent a letter to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom requesting permission to issue internationalized domain names (IDNs). The letter (pdf) from Telnic CEO Khashayar Mahdavi requests ICANN authorization to release domains that contain hyphens in the third and fourth positions from the pool of reserved domains in the .tel registry agreement. This would enable IDNs. In his letter, Mahdavi writes that Telnic ... read more ...
Wed 9th December 2009
Written by The Domains in EN
A Test To Trick Search Engines Convinces A Credit Union To Buy More Domains - According to story in the AP, a new study by security researcher Jim Stickley shows how even search engines can get tricked into ranking phishing sites. “Stickley created a Web site purporting to belong to the Credit Union of Southern California, a real business that agreed to be part of the experiment.” His phony site got a No. 2 ranking on Yahoo and landed in the top slot on Bing, ahead of even the credit union’s real site.” “””The experiment convinced Credit Union of Southern ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
CNN.com Invests Millions In A .IN - According to reports CNN.com is investing in Outside.In, a start-up that feeds neighborhood blogs and other local news and information to sites of newspapers, TV stations and other media. Also CNN.com, plans to put Outside.In information on its own home page in the local news section. Outside.In already feeds neighborhood information to several news organizations, including the Chicago Tribune and the New York Post. Outside.In’s existing lead investor is Union Square Ventures, but yesterday announcement ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
December Domain Names for Sale - Frequent Domain Name Wire readers know that I rarely, if ever, post my personal domain names for sale on the site. But I’ve decided to give it a one time try to see if there’s any interest. The domain names below were registered as far back as 1997. Many of the .com’s have corresponding .net and .org domain names registered by other companies, and some of those are in use. Although the domains are listed below in a range, just send an email to me at andrew ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Use Valuate.com to Find Targeted End User Buyers for Domain Names - Valuate.com quickly tells you which TLDs are registered. In August I wrote about contacting owners of .net and .org domain names that you own the .com version of. It’s an easy way to find end users to buy your domain names. But my explanation of how to bulk check for domains you own with .net and .org taken was a bit involved. So here’s a simpler solution: use Valuate.com. Today I plugged in about 50 domains I’m thinking about selling, and Valuate.com quickly ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
European Company Threatens Baidu Search Engine - Baidu Europe hopes to extort big bucks out of popular search engine. Remember Baidu? Not the Chinese search giant, but the European software company that has promoted its trademarks and baidu.tld domain names for sale? Well, it’s putting its brand and domain names up for sale. And it’s not hiding the fact that it hopes the big search engine buys them. In a brash press release about the sale on eBay, the company specifically cites Baidu the search company: In ... read more ...
Tue 8th December 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
12 Three Number .Mobi’s Are Dropping Tomorrow - It’s pretty unusual to see three number domains dropping, but tomorrow it looks like there are at least 12 three number .mobi doing just that. I’m not big on .mobi but I know some of you are and 3 numbered domains are always in demand. 386.mobi 463.mobi 532.mobi 636.mobi 638.mobi 669.mobi 673.mobi 692.mobi 729.mobi 872.mobi 932.mobi 937.mob Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Making New Law? WIPO Decision On DotHomes.com: “A Trademark By Itself Is Not Enough” If A Domain Is Used For A Site Rather Than A Parked Page - In another example where WIPO panels seem to be making new law, given different legal rights to domain holders that park their domain rather than developed them, we have the case of the domain name; dothomes.com The Complainant owns United States of America trademark registrations for DOTHOME (filed on April 26, 2007 and issued on August 11, 2009) and for .HOME (filed April 25, 2007 and issued February 10, 2009), both in respect of residential real estate marketing and advertising services. It also ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
2GoMedia Acquires 7,500 .Travel Domains & Plans To Build Out A Real Estate Network Around Them - 2Go Media, a Ft. Lauderdale company announced today probably the biggest investment to date in the .travel domain space. The company, announced today: “It has acquired the largest real estate domain name portfolio in the world, all within the .travel Top Level Domain. Each domain name is comprised of the top searched real estate keywords for more than 7,500 cities throughout the United States. “2Go Media developed a location plus keyword domain name strategy based ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Files Suit Against Sites and Domains Promoting “Making Money With Google” - I’m sure you have received spam advertising promoting programs that promise that you can make money at home using Google Adsense. Yesterday, Google filed a federal lawsuit in district court in Utah, alleging that Pacific WebWorks and other companies, infringed on  Google’s trademark by incorporating it name into ads for unauthorized, and what Google says are phony products. According to the suit: “Defendants deceive the public by misusing the famous Google brand and Google marks to sell to ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
How About A Domain With 335,000 Monthly Visitors For $18K? Checkout The Auction On Godaddy For MyHotterSeachBox.com - A very interesting domain name is currently at auction at Godaddy.com. The domain, according to Godaddy receives 335,000 visitors a month. That’s Right 335,000 visitors. That is the highest represented amount of traffic on any domain I have personally seen on Godaddy. The current high bid is $18,000. Godaddy.com values the domain at $61,000. The auction ends on December 10th. Alexa.org ranks the site as the 104,413 most popular site, however Alexa says only  5% of the traffic is coming from the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Hostess Gets Pie on the Face in Domain Dispute - Decision in domain dispute favorable to non-use of domains for bad faith argument. No Twinkies defenseneeded in domain dispute. Hostess, the bakery that sells treats such as Twinkies and Ding Dongs, has lost a domain dispute over Hostess.com. The domain name was purchased at the TRAFFIC auction in New York in 2007 for $44,000 and hasn’t been used since then. That proved to be a problem for Hostess, since the panel was not persuaded the domain was registered in ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DNW Radio: Jeff Kupietzky on DOMAINfest Global 2010 - Oversee.net CEO Jeff Kupietzky talks about next month’s DOMAINfest Global conference. DomainSponsor’s DOMAINfest Global conference returns to Los Angeles next month with a few changes. I interviewed Oversee.net CEO Jeff Kupietzky (Oversee is parent company of DomainSponsor) to learn more about the conference. DOMAINfest is typically the largest domainer-focused domain conference of the year, drawing in 600+ people. In this episode of DNW radio, you’ll learn: -Why ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
AdBlade Has Laughable Ad Delivery Problem - Strange pictures make me question AdBlade ads. A couple weeks ago I saw an ad on Statesman.com for refinancing your home: The ad caught my attention because, while the couple on the bottom looks like they had success refinancing their home, the man on the top looks like he missed his refinance closing because he was stoned. The ad was served by an online advertising company called AdBlade. Today another AdBlade ad, this one running on Accuweather, caught my eye: Let’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New (Lower) Click Pricing Coming to Yahoo Parking Next Quarter - Changes at Yahoo! are just around the corner. A new categorization of types of Yahoo advertising traffic, thanks to a class action lawsuit, is on tap to start early next quarter. With the release, Yahoo advertising customers will be able to choose between only getting Yahoo Search traffic or getting traffic from partners as well. Customers will be able to place premiums or, more likely, discounts on partner traffic. While this is no different from what Google offers ... read more ...
 
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Paxfire: Enabling a Biggest Typosquatters - Typo-redirect service Paxfire adds to patent portfolio. Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. patent 7,631,101 (pdf) for “Systems and methods for direction of communication traffic.” Here’s the abstract: An Internet traffic redirection architecture is disclosed that allows for directing of trash traffic to specified sites. The system or method allows a controller, such as an ISP, to benefit from mistyped Internet addresses so that participating ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
8 TLDs I’ll Express an Interest In - At $100 a pop, I’d submit an Expression of Interest for a bunch of new top level domain names. Tomorrow ICANN’s board will consider accepting “expressions of interest” for new top level domains from applicants. On DNW Radio a couple weeks ago, Minds + Machines founder Antony Van Couvering suggested that these expressions of interest require a $55,000 payment. I agree that a substantial fee should be required to make it predictive of actual applications. Others ... read more ...