Author Archives: The Domains

About The Domains

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 5K domain names . Michael is also a Director of RightoftheDot.com which is a consultant in the new gTLD space and a broker of super premium domains. Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest this year.

Tue 28th January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
GigaOM “How GoDaddy skeleton to turn a genuine tech association for genuine people” - GigaOm did a very lengthy piece earlier today on Go Daddy and on the maturation process the company has embarked upon to become more of a technology company. Blake Irving certainly has shaken things up with a lot of the focus being on small business. The company has made acquisitions like Locu and will be heavily marketing its new “Get Found”  product. GigaOm wrote, The product, which starts at $4.99 per month, uses machine learning algorithms to pull company information from store websites, ... read more ...
Mon 27th January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
OMGChrome.com Takes A demeanour during what .chrome competence demeanour like - Omg Chrome did a piece on how Google will use dot chrome. Of course Chrome is ubiquitous all throughout the Google landscape, from  netbooks,  to the most popular web browser  on the planet, to ChromeCast for your tv. There were a couple Chrome related news items today, Google is offering a $2.7 million bounty for cracking ChromeOS  Forbes is out with a story on an add on that turns your browser into a BitCoin wallet. From the OMG Chrome Article: Google hasn’t officially commented on what ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
DotAsia and Momentum Events Announce Partnership for Major Hong Kong Domains Conference scheduled for May 2014 - DotAsia, and Momentum Events have announced that they will be joining forces to create a new domain industry event coinciding with the prominent International Trademark Association (INTA) Annual conference and exhibition, taking place May 13-14 in Hong Kong. This new event which combines DotAsia’s “Internet of Names” meeting and Momentum’s “Digital Marketing gTLD Strategy Congress” is designed to bring together existing and new TLD applicants, brands, domain investors and other industry ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Daniel Schindler of Donuts Says gTLDs Better Than .Com But .Com Values Will Go Up - In a blog post appearing in iparkavenue.com,  Daniel Schindler of Donuts is quoted as saying gTLDs Better Than .Com. You might expect that from a co-founder of a company which applied for 3x more new gTLD’s than any company on earth, however in all fairness Dan’s comment that a new gTLD is better than a .com seems to be limited to end users looking for available domain names: Here are the most interest parts of the story: “First, he is firmly convinced that the new gTLDs are better than the ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
TRAFFIC Picks Halloween For Its Florida Show & Promises A Live No Reserve New gTLD Auction In Vegas - In an email sent out this morning by the organizers of the TRAFFIC conference, the Florida TRAFFIC conference will be held for the first time on a weekend, at the Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach from October 30th, until, November 2nd, 2014 with cabana networking starting on the 29th. “This will be our first weekend show and the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Premiere Party promises to be a spectacular Halloween Masquerade Ball.” “The Hotel is working with us to provide a program for families of all ages, ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Report: Dailymail.com “Sold For As Much As £1m-plus” (1.65 Million) - According to a story in TheGuardian.com, whose parent company operates Mail Online otherwise known as the  Daily Mail General Trust “has paid potentially as much as £1m-plus to secure the valuable domain name. DailyMail.com” One Million British Pounds Equal just over $1.650,000. According to the story “Mail Online is switching from a .co.uk to .com homepage address, following protracted negotiations with the US paper that owned the dailymail.com domain name”. The technically challenging ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Web.com Has 50 New gTLD For Pre-Registration - Web.com Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:WWWW), which owns two of the top to 10 domain name registrars now has over 50 new gTLD’s domain extensions available for pre-registration and purchase. The following new domain names are now available for pre-registration or Sunrise registration: .ACADEMY .CLOTHING .EMAIL .INSTITUTE .PHOTOS .TECHNOLOGY .BIKE .COMPANY .ENTERPRISES .KITCHEN .PLUMBING .TIPS .BUILD .COMPUTER .EQUIPMENT .LAND .RECIPES .TODAY .BUILDERS . CONSTRUCTION .ESTATE .LIGHTING .REPAIR .TRAINING .CAB ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Acquires Artificial Intelligence Firm Deep Mind - Google is acquiring Deep Mind for reportedly  $400 million although some are reporting it may have been as high as $500 million.  Deep Mind is involved in the field of artificial intelligence. The news came out on a Sunday and many publications are covering the story. Recode.net posted that, DeepMind has only a landing page for a website where it describes its business as building learning algorithms for simulations, e-commerce and games. Profiles on LinkedIn indicate the company is about three ... read more ...
Sun 26th January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Has Frank Schilling been a impulse behind one company’s XXX spending debauch ? - Sometimes there is a lot of information that is provided in a long comment thread that goes unnoticed, many may not keep up with string of comments and some miss them entitrely. It was big news this week that Tube.xxx and Tubes.xxx sold for $750,000. The buyer of those names Really Useful out of Turks and Caicos is owned by JT who was one of the founders of You Porn. Really Useful launched the first ever .xxx domain Casting.xxx. That was covered in several non adult publications such as The Register. JT ... read more ...
Sat 25th January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Fadi Chehadé: If We Fragment The Internet, ‘It Will Not Be The Internet As We Know It’ - In an article in the Huffington Post, the CEO of ICANN said that fragmentation of the Internet was a primary concern. From the article: Fadi Chehadé, CEO Of ICANN, told HuffPost Live at Davos he thinks the “biggest threat” to innovation is a fragmented Internet. “The biggest threat is to start building walls that create frictions. Frictionless Internet, where innovation is permissionless… is critical,” he said. ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Go Daddy “thousands and thousands” of people have preregistered 25 new gtlds” - This week we did hear from some companies within the new gtld space and what kind of demand they were seeing. Donuts put out a blog post yesterday where they said they have already received total orders and commitments over $5million. Now some of this number is most likely including the DPML product that Donuts is offering trademark holders. The DPML works like this: (Courtesy of 101Domain.com) How Does DPML Work? Brand owners must submit an exact match of their mark(s) to DPML, or a term that contains ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
There are 700,000 daily reasons because King.com is perplexing to Crush other diversion developers - King.com tries to explain they are not really looking to crush the competition but rather make sure they are protected. Over the last couple days stories have come out about the maker of the famous Candy Crush Saga game trademarking the word “Candy” for video games and clothing, and they are also looking to trademark the word “Saga”. King made a statement about the Saga situation, King has not and is not trying to stop Banner Saga from using its name. We do not have any concerns that Banner ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Justin Bieber Arrest Inspires Over 55 Domain Registrations From Funny To Scary - As most of you know 19 year old pop sensation Justin Bieber was arrested down here in South Florida yesterday for DUI and some other charges related to allegedly drag racing down South Beach The arrest has led to over 55 .com and .net domain registrations in just about 24 hours. Some of the domain names are one’s that naturally fit the situation such as BieberArrest.com,  BieberArrested.com, BieberMugShot.com, bieberbusted.com and JustinBieberDUI.com Other domain registrations seem to be for planning ... read more ...
Fri 24th January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Registered In 1994 Graceland.com Hit With UDRP - Someone, presumably the Elvis Presley Estate just filed a UDRP on the domain name Graceland.com The domain name Graceland.com has an original registration date of December 23rd 1994. The domain is owned by a  Simon Higgs of  Burbank California  who has seemed to have owned the domain name continuously since at least the earliest Domaintools.com entry which is from 2004. The domain names is not parked but instead seems to be a religious site and seems to have the same look to it as far back as ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
IBM/ Deloitte Goes With Trademark-ClearningHouse.Uno & TMCH.Uno to Promote Spanish Brand Awareness.” - IBM Deloitte which operates the Trademark Clearing House for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) announced they will use the domain names TRADEMARK-CLEARINGHOUSE.UNO and TMCH.UNO to Promote Spanish Brand Awareness.” Dot Latin LLC announced today the delegation of two key domain names to Deloitte IBM to support the Trademark Clearinghouse. Deloitte manages the Trademark Clearinghouse , as part of the brand protection component of the new generic Top Level Domain ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Inc and a Los Angeles Times import in on a new gtlds - More and more non domaining publications continue to come out with stories about the new gtlds.  As we get closer to new strings being available to register many want to cover the upcoming release. Inc Magazine came out with an article, Carolyn Cutrone took this approach when it came to Start ups, From the article: Critics argue that the added gTLDs could spur mass confusion, while supporters suggest it could help small businesses stand out without having to wield inanely long Web addresses or ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
22.CN Joins SedoMLS Continuing a Network’s Asian Expansion - Sedo announced a few minutes ago that 22.cn joined their SedoMLS. As demand for domains in Asia grows this is certainly a smart decision to keep building their network with Asian registrars. Recent auctions for premium .CN domains previously reserved by CNNIC have shown demand is strong in the region. 22.cn Joins SedoMLS, Continuing the Network’s Asian Expansion Sedo, the world’s largest domain marketplace and monetization provider, today announced that Chinese registrar 22.cn has joined the ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Rolls Out a Few New Features - Here are a few new features Google is rolling out. Stan Schroeder  at Mashable covered that now there is a new feature to Google search that will provide more info. You can now find out more about every search result by clicking on the page name next to the actual link. Courtesy of Mashable This apparently only works for sites that are very well known and will not be there for just any website. Matt McGee at Search Engine Land wrote a piece about a new feature associated with Knowledge Graph. Google ... read more ...
Thu 23rd January 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Unveiled Smart Contact Lens, we demeanour during who owns a best domain names - A week ago Google introduced their smart contact lens project. Google wrote on its blog in a post which has over 5800 comments: We’re now testing a smart contact lens that’s built to measure glucose levels in tears using a tiny wireless chip and miniaturized glucose sensor that are embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material. We’re testing prototypes that can generate a reading once per second. We’re also investigating the potential for this to serve as an early warning for ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Why Google Wants to Give You 101 Alternatives to .Com - Leo Mirani is on a roll he wrote an excellent piece yesterday on the new gtlds with co author David Yanofsky He is out today with a piece entitled, “Why Google wants to give you 101 alternatives to .com” Mike has spoken in the past that Google is a big wildcard with regards to what extensions they end up with and how they distribute them. Google giving away domains for free could be something that impacts existing extensions and new gtlds alike. Mirani delves into why Google wants to do this ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Verisign: Rise In Value Of Bitcoin Causes Surge In .Com/.Net Domain Registrations: 22K In 2013 - Verisign just published a blog on how the rising value of Bitcoin has led  to surge of .com and .net domain name registrations.   The value of a Bitcoin surged from roughly $13 at the beginning of 2013 to an eventual high of $1,137 at the end of November (The chart below, courtesy of Coinbase, documents the ebbs and flows of a Bitcoin’s value).       By doing a search of the word “bitcoin” for the past six months, it is fairly easy to see a correlation between the two Bitcoin price surges ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Domainfest Is Back & Hits The Loews Hollywood Mar 31- Apr 2nd - Oversee.net has made it official  announcing that the 9th Domainfest will return to Hollywood, California at the Loews Hollywood which includes three full days of sessions. Early registration is now open with a price of $695. Onsite registration will be $1,495 Rooms are as low as $249 a night. “This year is proving to be the most impressive line-up of content, speakers and networking opportunities that DomainSponsor has ever assembled. DomainFest 2014 will give you the game-changing information ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Tube.xxx and Tubes.xxx Sold for $750,000 - JT also asked me to post here part 2 of his GFY.com post……. he also told me he bought in the secondary market viral.xxx yesterday also, in addition to the further 4 names for us. “I am not looking for justification on anything I do, not least the price I have paid for the recent acquisition of tube.xxx and tubes.xxx. But I do feel that an explaination as to why I have made this purchase will hopefully help you understand better. I was part of the team that grew YouPorn from zero (Aug ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Cobb International Of South Africa; Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Cobb International (Pty) Limited of Wynberg, Sandton, South Africa, represented by DM Kisch Inc., South Africa. has been found  Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) on the domain names cobbamerica.com and cobbq.com The Complainant contends that the Domain Names are identical or confusingly similar to the Complainant’s registered trade marks, that the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the Domain Names and that the Domain Names are being used in bad faith within ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
WSJ: There Real End Users Looks Forward To Moving Their URL To A New gTLD - The Wall Street Journal has become the another major publication to publish a story about the launch of the new gTLD program and has actually talked to some real people, small business owners who are looking forward to registering a new gTLD to replace their longer .com The Story is entitled “Sell Bike’s? There’s a Web Domain For That” “The World Wide Web is about to get a lot wider.  Starting Jan. 29, the first of hundreds of new top-level Web domains—the suffixes that appear at the ... read more ...