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.

Wed 25th February 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
EnCirca Becomes 1st Registrar For .Bank & Teams Up With The ICBA - According to a press release just out,  EnCirca.com is the first approved ICANN-accredited registrar for the new gTLD .BANK fTLD Registry Services LLC is the operator of the .BANK top-level domain. The Independent Community Bankers of America® (ICBA)   announced that they will be working together with and EnCirca to help community banks understand and register for the soon-to-be launched .BANK top-level domain. “The new .BANK domain extension, which offers enhanced security, will have a more ... read more ...
 
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.co.com Hits 1 Year Anniversary & 10K Registrations: It Would Be 83rd Most Registered New gTLD - .co.com announced today that it has hit its one year anniversary since launching and has registered over 10,000 domain names. You can read the official post here. The company wrote in part that its 10,000 registrations are “more than most ICANN new gTLDs – and demand is accelerating” So while  co.com is not a new gTLD, since its anniversary is right around when the first of the new gTLD’s started to launch I thought it would be interesting to see how the numbers stack up to new gTLD registrations. So ... read more ...
 
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.Science Gets Almost 14,000 (Mostly Free) Registrations - Yesterday we told you that .Science could be registered for free on AlpNames.com, wound up its first day of general availability with almost 14,000 registrations. .Science only had 13 domain names registered in Sunrise by trademark holders and wound up their first day with 13,397. Not surprisingly almost 94% of all .Science domain names were registered for free at AlpNames.com, some 12,590 of the 13,397. The .Science registry  is owned by Famous Four. For the record we registered 3.     ... read more ...
Tue 24th February 2015
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Sedo Transactions Total Led By Heika.com For $300K - Over the past week, 514 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $900,000 All sales were led by Heika.com I of course did a Google search and it looks like a “lovely shrubbery” as Monte Python would have said like 100 years ago, when I was like 100, I’m told that is also translates to “black card” but that is a whole different issue. Nice sale for the seller If you looking for my pick as the great buy off this list for the week OnlineChat.com sold for $24K ... read more ...
 
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The .Me Registry Declares Mar 16th As .Me Day At South by Southwest Festival - The .Me registry has decided that March 16th will be the first-ever “ME Day” in the U.S., as a day to celebrate and share what makes each of us unique and to indulge, nourish and develop our personal passions and skills. The Domain.ME community will celebrate the first-ever ME Day at the annual South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas on March 16th with a ME Day Party. ME Day ambassadors will be live tweeting the event. Anyone celebrating his or her own ME Day is invited to the conversation ... read more ...
 
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Click Fraud? Report Says Bots Made Up To 98% Of Charged Ad Clicks on Google - A paper published by Oxford BioChronometrics SA, which is a company that sells click fraud protection to clients published a report last month concluding that: “Our research found that at best, 88% of the ad-clicks were made by bots on the LinkedIn ad platform, while at worst, 98% were from bots on the Google ad platform” The company said it set up pages as follows: How the research was conducted In order to limit the level of non ad-platform bot activity being recorded, individual web pages ... read more ...
 
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.Club Offering Free Domains & $10K In Prizes At LAUNCH Hackathon in San Francisco - .Club announced today that they will be is awarding $10,000 in prizes to an entrant of this year’s LAUNCH Hackathon taking place February 27- March 1, 2015 in San Francisco. .CLUB is offering every LAUNCH Hackathon participant a free .CLUB domain name from GoDaddy, and any teams that choose to use a .CLUB domain name for their LAUNCH Hackathon project are automatically eligible to win the $10,000 prize for the best project in the .CLUB. The winning entrant (best project using a .CLUB domain name) ... read more ...
 
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.Science is Live and AlpNames.com is Letting You Register Them For Free - .Science just launched into general availability this morning and at least one register is allowing you to register them for free. Alpnames.com isn’t advertising it on the front of their site, but if you try to register a .Science domain name you will see the cost is $0.00. By comparison Godaddy.com is charging $9.99 for a .Science registration. I don’t know what the limits are or how long it will last. ... read more ...
 
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Google Going To Make Blogger Platform Porn free - Google is saying goodbye to sexually explicit images and videos on their Blogger platform. The news has been covered by quite a few places obviously, I found the discussion in the comments on Engadget to be a bit entertaining. From the article: Many X-rated Blogger accounts might cease to exist in the near future, as Google will no longer allow anyone to post sexually explicit or nude videos and images starting on March 23rd, 2015. It doesn’t end there, though: Mountain View also wants old account ... read more ...
 
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.ZA Domain Registrations Pass The 1 Million Mark - According to itnewsafrica.com, the ZA Domain Name Authority (ZADNA), the regulator of .ZA, which is the ccTLD for South Africa, says the number of registered .ZA domain names has reached and exceeded 1 million for ths first time this week. .ZA becomes the first country domain in Africa to reach 1 million registrations. The bulk of registrations continue to be in co.za, which accounts for a little more than 971,000 registrations as of 19 February 2015, and continues to grow by a few thousand new ... read more ...
 
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Minds + Machines Generates £2.29m From Operations: $36m From Losing Private gTLD Auctions & Spends $25.9M Winning -

Michael Berkens, Esq. is a owner and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also a co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. that sole around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in Dec 2015 and now owns around 5K domain names . Michael is also a Director of RightoftheDot.com that is a consultant in a new gTLD space and a attorney of super reward domains. Michael was also one of a 5 Judges comparison for a a Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com competition this year.

Via: thedomains.com

 
Written by The Domains in EN
Marijuana Now Legal In Alaska – A Few Related Domains Registered - Huffington Post along with several other news outlets covered the legalization of Marijuana in Alaska. From the article: Marijuana is now legal for adults in Alaska. Alaska on Tuesday becomes the third U.S. state to end prohibition of marijuana, officially putting into effect Ballot Measure 2, approved by 53 percent of state voters in November. Alaskans age 21 and older may now legally possess up to one ounce of marijuana, grow as many as six marijuana plants in their homes (with no more than three ... read more ...
Mon 23rd February 2015
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UDRP Filed Again The Domain Name Major.com Bought For € 48,000.00 EUR In 2010 -     Major Wire Industries Limited has filed a UDRP on the domain name Major.com. The domain name Major.com is owned by DigitalOne AG and seems to have bought the domain using Sedo, in November 2010 for € 48,000.00 EUR. It appear according to Screenshots.com, the domain was parked until November 2011. The domain resolves currently to a blank page. The company Major Wire Industries Limited uses the domain name MajorWire.cc, for its website, however that domain name is owned by Les Industries Fil ... read more ...
 
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Operators of NameBright.com & HugeDomains.com Launch Expire.com Domain Auction Service - According to a press release out today, TurnCommerce Inc., operators of NameBright.com (an ICANN accredited domain name registrar), HugeDomains.com (a domain name aftermarket), and DropCatch.com (a domain back-order service) announced the launch of Expire.com, a Dutch-style auction service that will sell between 15 and 30 premium domain names per day on a first-come first-served basis. A Dutch auction is a type of auction where the initial price starts off at a pre-determined amount and is lowered ... read more ...
 
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DomainHoldings Sells Almost $31 Million In Domains In 2014; Over $8M In 4Q - Domainholdings.com in a company blog post today, said they brokered almost $31 Million dollars in domain names in 2014 Domain Holdings issued its combined Q4 and Annual 2014 report today In the 4th Quarter  Q4 Domainholdings.com sold  $8,086,642 in total domain name sales. Some of the sales brokered in 2014 included: Some of the main highlights from Q4 include: $622,049 Average Weekly Sales $26,323 Average Domain Sales. 72.38% of ALL Sales End Users ** The top two markets for buyers of domains ... read more ...
 
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CargoWiz.com Registered 2 Years Before Trademark Saved in UDRP - Brian Rayle of Apollo Beach, Florida, who was self-represented lost his attempt to grab the domain name CargoWiz.com which is owned by Portmedia Holdings Ltd of Hong Kong, China, represented by ESQwire.com P.C., USA. The three member UDRP panel of Tony Willoughby, R. Eric Gaum and The Hon Neil Brown Q.C. found that although the Complainant filed for a trademark on the term CARGOWIZ with the USPTO back in 2007, failed to carry the day since the domain had been registered in 2005. However the panel ... read more ...
 
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A opposite spin on a estimation scam - A bit of a new spin on the old appraisal scam, a reader sent us an email he received, for a law related domain, three word.com that makes sense, has value. Hello! I represent a big investor from UK. He needs personal*******.com for his new business project to be launched in September, 2015. Your domain name is at the top of his shortlist of names, and he would be prepared to pay up to US$10,000 to secure this domain name. Time is of the essence as he needs to secure the domain name as soon as possible, ... read more ...
 
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Fast Company: Rips .Green Calling It "An Idea Whose Time Has Passed" - Over the years I have read a ton of stories on new gTLD program and certainly some particular new gTLD’s, but few have gone as far as FastCompany just published on the new gTLD .Green in a story entitled: “Why The New .Green Domain Name Is An Idea Thankfully Past Its Time” “The problem is that (.Green) maybe an idea whose time has passed.” “Ten years ago, setting up a .green domain may have made sense; so few companies were doing green things.” “These days .green seems passé and ... read more ...
Sun 22nd February 2015
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Media Company Awarded $7million in Online Piracy Case - Torrent Freak reported that the largest media company in the Philippines was awarded $7million in damages and that several domains were forfeited in the process. From the article: In its ongoing crusade against sites said to infringe its copyrights, TV outfit ABS-CBN has just netted a couple of big wins. A pair of cases filed in a Florida district court have gone in the TV company’s favor resulting in damages awards of $7m and the forfeiture of several domains. During 2014, ABS-CBN, the largest ... read more ...
Sat 21st February 2015
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Government Set To Auction Another 50,000 Bitcoins Seized from Silk Road Bust - Joel Dalais reported on BitcoinMagazine.com that the third government auction of Bitcoins that were seized during the Silk Road bust will take place March 5, 2015. Joel points out that some of the coins seized were not used in any illegal business. There were merchants on Silk Road that operated perfectly legit businesses. From the article: The U.S. Marshals Service is holding its third Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR) bitcoin auction this March 5th, 2015. These bitcoin were seized from Ross Ulbricht, ... read more ...
 
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For a 3rd Time This Week UDRP Panel Awards Domain To Company That Dropped It - For the third time this week a UDRP panel has awarded a domain to the company that previously owned the domain and allowed ti to drop. In this case, WesTrac Pty Ltd of South Guildford, Australia was awarded the rights to the domain name Westrac.com which is owned by Mike Mann’s Domain Asset Holdings. Westrac owned the domain for 12 years until 2012 when the domain dropped and Domain Asset Holdings got the domain on the drop. Subsequently Domain Asset Holdings quoted $50,000 to Westrac to buy the ... read more ...
Fri 20th February 2015
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Del Monte Foods Loses UDRP ON Delmontefarm.com, Delmontefarms.com & Delmonteexpress.com - Del Monte Foods, Inc. just lost a UDRP on three domain names delmonteexpress.com, delmontefarm.com and delmontefarms.com The three member UDRP panel of Robert A. Badgley, Michelle Brownlee and Gregory N. Albright Complainant is a leading purveyor of food and beverages in the United States, and has used the mark DEL MONTE for 120 years to identify and distinguish its various offerings. Some of Complainant’s DEL MONTE marks have been registered for more than 40 years. Complainant asserts, and there ... read more ...
 
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Coca-Cola Puts Smiley Face Emojis Into Web Address Using .WS Domains -   Ad week is reporting that Coca-Cola Puerto Rico that puts smiley-face emojis right in the brand’s web addresses. The brand registered URLs for every emoji that conveys happiness. Entering any of these happy icons into a mobile web browser, along with the .ws suffix, leads users to Coca-­Cola Puerto Rico’s website. Ad Week goes on to say: Why .ws, which is actually the domain suffix for Samoa? “Emojis are not accepted on domains such as .com, .net, and .org,” DDB Puerto ... read more ...
 
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MediaOptions Brokers Sales Of 50.com After Being Listed In Newsletter For $3.5 Million - The domain name 50.com has been purchased and the domain transferred to its new owner, Wang Yi of China. The domain was brokered by MediaOptions.com under a NDA. All we know is that the domain was sold and was listed in MediaOptions.copm newsletter back in December 2014, with an asking price of $3.5 Million dollars. The last reported two numbered .com sale was for 37.com which was sold for $1,968,000 according to DnJournal.com Congrats to the seller, buyer and MediaOptions.com on what appears to ... read more ...
 
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Afnic Takes A demeanour during Year Zero For The New gTLDs - Afnic published a report on the new gtlds and looked at “Year Zero” for the new extensions. The report covered, looking back at 2014, the fee or free business model, the valuation proposition and where the new gtlds are heading. Read the full report here From the report: 2014 ended with 470 gTLDs (generic top-level domains) in the root, including 39 using non-Latin characters, and 290 ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) of which 41 used  non-Latin characters. In all, there were no less ... read more ...