Monthly Archives: July 2010

Thu 15th July 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ChatRoulette Launches New Services Without Domain Names - More domain name issues for ChatRoulette. ChatRoulette.com has become somewhat of a hot button topic in domainer circles thanks to the CamRoulette.com saga. So it’s interesting to see a new set of features from ChatRoulette with domain implications. First, the company launched ChannelRoulette and LocalRoulette. The site doesn’t own the corresponding domain names. ChannelRoulette.com was registered by a Florida man in March; LocalRoulette.com was registered ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tucker Carlson Buys Keith Olbermann Domain Name - Tucker Carlson’s publication The Daily Caller buys domain name KeithOlbermann.com. From one political pundit to another: I own you! Tucker Carlson has acquired the domain name KeithOlbermann.com. Actually, it’s Carlson’s The Daily Caller that acquired the domain name, and now shows this: Apparently Olbermann has been blasting The Daily Caller of late. So the publication bought the domain name from the current owner, a Virginia man who was parking the domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Warning: Your Yahoo Search Traffic is Going Away Next Month - Yahoo to transition to Bing search results very soon. It’s time to stop talking about Yahoo search rankings and the traffic the search engine delivers to your site. Starting as early as next month, no one will care how well you’ve tricked Yahoo into ranking your site well. Today Yahoo! sent out a communication to its advertisers telling them about the transition of organic search results to those of Bing. According to the email: Assuming our testing continues ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
dotBerlin Wants Special Status with New gTLDs Because of Its Early Involvement - First .music, now .berlin wants extra credit for being early to the new TLD game. I wrote previously about how one applicant for the .music top level domain name requested favored status since he had been working on the concept for so long. Now another group is asking for similar status. dotBERLIN GmbH Co., which hopes to release a .berlin top level domain name, has submitted a comment to ICANN asking that companies that have been involved in the new top level domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Releases Information About Anti-Trust Lawsuit - Company files information with SEC regarding legal setback. Shortly after receiving an adverse decision in appeals court last week regarding an anti-trust lawsuit, VeriSign filed an 8-K with the SEC explaining the opinion. The disclosure summarizes changes to the court’s original order, and says the allegations are without merit: On July 9, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (the “Court”) issued an order (the “Amended Order”) ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Soap.com Web Store Launches from Creator of Diapers.com - First diapers.com, now soap.com. It’s been a couple months since I first became aware that the company that owns Diapers.com was getting ready to launch a new store at Soap.com. Today the store went live. Soap.com is an online store for toiletries and other household products. Think of it as the section of Target that has the vitamins, detergent, and razors. The idea is to make it easier, cheaper, and more convenient for people to get all of these products. ... read more ...
Wed 14th July 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
TCM.Org Sells For $9,300 On NameJet.com; MGU.com is At $26K With Days To Go At Godaddy - The Domain TCM.org sold today on NameJet.com for $9,309. It looks like this domain was the official site for the Museum of Science in Boston which is now at Mos.org. Another .org,  genie.org sold today on NameJet.com for $4,415 projector.org sold for $1,778 Meanwhile a pretty unexceptional three letter .com, MGU.com is already over $26,000 with over 6 days to go at Godaddy.com. According to Godaddy.com MGU.com only gets around 350 visitors a month so it seems like a pretty high price to pay for ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Google Picks Enom & Godaddy As Exclusive Domain Registrar Partners In Its Apps Program? - If you are a web developer and want to start selling Google apps,  and don’t already have a domain name, Google is going to prompt you to register your  domain, using one of two partners; You have the choice of using Enom or Godaddy.com. I’m not sure where I have ever read that Google entered into an exclusive arrangement with any domain registrar but it looks like they have done so Either registrar will set you back just $10 for a domain registration but that are the only two choices you have. Google ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Battle Over .Jobs is Growing - .Jobs debate “ends” Thursday. I wrote last month about a move to open up the .jobs domain name. Currently only companies can register .jobs domains, and only with their company name (e.g. ATT.jobs). The group behind this sponsored TLD wants to open it up, with the idea of creating a ton of (million?) job boards using the domains. From Policy.jobs: Previously, Employ Media [which runs .jobs under contract] began the process of creating a self-managed class of ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Official WordPress Backup Now Available with VaultPress - VaultPress secures WordPress in a vault. Backing up a WordPress blog has never been particularly easy or efficient. Earlier this year I wrote about the first truly “easy” backup tool. It works fine and costs me only 10 cents a month in hosting. But now Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has launched an official backup tool called VaultPress. Although it costs money, it’s worth it for anyone who makes a business out of their WordPress site. VaultPress ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
12 Things to do in Austin During HostingCon - Your guide to enjoying Austin during HostingCon. Visiting Austin next week for HostingCon? Want to get away and experience Austin? Here are some things to do while you’re in town. 1. Bats – no visit to Austin is complete without watching North America’s largest urban bat population ascend for its nightly feeding. Just before dusk, over 1 million Mexican free-tailed bats depart from the Congress Avenue bridge to consume 10,000-30,000 pounds of insects each ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
FreeMarket.com Proves It’s a Free Market during $93,000 - FreeMarket.com leads domain name sales for the week. Hey, it’s a free market out there. That means the price of a domain name is dictated by how much someone is willing to sell it for and how much someone is willing to pay. A prime example: FreeMarket.com, which Sedo just brokered for $93,000. Another example of the free market at work: HighInterestSavingsAccount.com, a four word, 26 letter domain that sold for $18,000. Now if only I could find a savings account ... read more ...
Tue 13th July 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Find.com Sells For $16.5m? - From a press release SEC filing from today: Generation Zero Group Inc. (OTCBB: GNZR), an Atlanta-based Internet marketing company, has entered into an agreement to buy nearly all of Find.com URL Holdings LLC for $3.19 million in cash and notes plus shares worth $13.5 million, most of which will go to Scientigo Inc. (OTC: SCNG) for foregoing its option to buy a 40 percent stake in URL Holdings, according to an SEC filing. The value of the shares is based on Generation Zero’s trading price ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Does A Web Deginer Own 84% Of Facebook? He Says Yes In A Lawsuit Filed Against a Company - In a civil lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court of New York’s Allegany County last month, Ceglia vs. Zuckerberg Facebook, , Paul Ceglia said he signed a contract with Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2003 to develop and design a website called TheFacebook.com (I like the sound of that better). A New York judge’s recently granted an temporary order blocking any transfer of the company’s assets, based on Paul Cegliaas clain that he owns 84% of Facebook According to Ceglia he signed a ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DevHub’s Social Web Site Building Off to Strong Start - Web site builder gaining new users — and new developed sites — every minute. Last month I wrote about DevHub’s latest web site builder release and noted that the company was adding a social element to building web sites. The social functionality just went live this week, and so far user engagement is up significantly. Most importantly, new users are spending more time developing their web sites. Over 1,500 sites have been created in the past 12 hours and ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Owner of Casino.com Busts on Caisinos.com - A generic, a typo, or neither. The owner of Casino.com has failed to convince a World Intellectual Property Forum panel that it should get the domain name Caisinos.com. The case was filed by Mansion (Gibraltar) Limited of Gibraltar, which claimed that Caisinos.com is merely a typo of its Casino.com domain name. There are a few problems with this argument: 1. Casino is a generic term, although this is the weakest defense 2. If anything, it’s a typo of Casinos.com, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tea Party Patriots Fighting and Failing Over Domain Names - Political group trying to retroactively create and protect brand. One of the many “Tea Party” political groups, Tea Party Patriots, is running into some problems doing retroactive brand management. Tea Party Patriots, Inc. has filed three UDRP domain dispute cases, and only won one of them. The first case was for six domain names including teapartypatriotspac.org. Tea Party Patriots won the case, despite some good arguments from the respondent. The second case ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Microsoft Gets Patent for “Cybersquatter Patrol” - Company granted patent for typosquatting and cybersquatting tools. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today granted Microsoft U.S. patent number 7,756,987 (pdf) for “Cybersquatter Patrol”. The patent is for a system of generating lists of typo and cybersquatted domains and peeling back the onion to determine their ownership and revenue source. It also refers to methods to block these cybersquatted domain names. An exemplary method includes providing a typographically ... read more ...
Mon 12th July 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Is “Google Me” In The Works as a Facebook Killer? Google Owns Both Versions - CNN is reporting that a new service called “Google Me” maybe in the works, The report also citing Tech Crunch says that Google Games is a definate go, in conjunction with the gaming company Zynga maker of the “FarmVille” game. Google owns the domain GoogleGames.com. However the report says that Google may have its eye on Facebook and may go with “Google Me” to launch a site that would compete with FaceBook. Google owns the domain Googleme.com as well as Google.Me. Yahoo recently announced ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
The Next BIG Thing Is 3D: Who Owns Best Domains? (Hint: Its not Me, Frank, Kevin Or Even Rick ) - I sure blew this one. But at least I’m not alone. The next big thing is going to be 3D. 3D was the talk of the Consumers Electronic Show in Vegas in January. 3d Tv’s are already on sale and the World Cup was broadcast by Directv in 3D. ESPN is launching its own 3D channel any day now on Directv. Yup its going to be huge and I missed to boat completely. However it doesn’t look like I’m alone. Looking through the best 3D domains I could think of it doesn’t look like Frank, Kevin or even Rick  ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Is a .Net Worth 10% of .Com? - Answer: rarely. There’s an old adage in the domain name industry that a .net domain name is worth 10% of the same .com. Some also like to say that other extensions (.biz, .info, etc.) are worth 1% of the .com’s value. The problem is it’s simply not true. Or rather it’s impossible to determine. The main problem is that the sample size is too small. Believe me, I’ve tried too look through the data and figure out what these ratios are. Here are the problems ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Local.com Gives Octane360 More Octane - [Editor’s note: Last Friday I interviewed Local.com CEO Heath Clarke and Senior VP of Corporate Development Peter Hutto about their company’s acquisition of Octane360. In doing research, I realized the first article I ever wrote on DNW — March 9, 2005 — was about their company’s purchase of the Local.com domain name for $700,000. That was 3,575 posts ago.] I’ve long thought Octane360’s business model was one of the most innovative monetization strategies ... read more ...
Sun 11th July 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Federal Court Rules Against Toyota In Domain Case: Buy-A-Lexus.com; BuyorLeaseLexus.com - While URDP are decided daily its pretty rare to find a Federal Court decision involving domain names and ever rarer to find a court that rules in favor of the domain name holder, but that’s exactly what happened in the case of TOYOTA MOTOR SALES U.S.A., INC. v. TABARI a decision just released on Thursday by the Ninth Circuit for the United States Court of Appeals. In that case a couple who are auto brokers, beat Toyota on appeal winning the right to a new trial on whether they can regain their ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
About 1,500 .Co Sunrise Applications Denied; Now Available in Landrush - Denied sunrise applications and additional releases from .co registry now available. [Update: the full list has been published by some registrars this morning.] About 1,500 applications for .co domain names through the trademark sunrise process have been denied, and the domain names are now available for registration through Landrush. If any of them are not claimed during the Landrush period, they will be available for pre-registration before July 20 and general ... read more ...
Sat 10th July 2010
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
90 Domains, $5,800 a Month In Revenue; Zuccarini’s Suit Is An Eye Opener - I been reviewing the lawsuit that John Zuccarini filed this week against NameJet.com, NetworkSolutions, Enom.com and VeriSign. (pdf) Here is some quick background. There were 14 domains that were owned by Zuccarini, but held by a Receiver which managed the domains on behalf of a creditor of Zuccarini,  which were auctioned off by NameJet.com for a total of $80K, when the receiver appearently did not pay the renewal fees on the domains. Zuccarini then filed along with the creditor, a motion for temporary ... read more ...