Sorry for the delays as of late, this is our busiest time of year on the Internet, so I have seemed to fall behind just abit on blogging. We have been working on some really cool new projects lately, and trying to put some finishing touches on some other ones. We have 2 new sites launching this week which I will announce on the blog this week. One is music related and the other one, Squads.com, I have spoken about before. We will also be finalizing the details for the TDADC, with final scheduling etc, and will start our promotional bazaar. We will also be reworking a few things to get them to their final states. Keep your eyes on the blog this week!
Posted on My Blog
So this weekend we had a bid in on NameJet for a domain name. In the final minutes we placed a high bid, and by some miracle a guy won the auction with a lesser bid. After a few hours of being mad and talking to their customer support on the phone, who in turn said they would just have to check with the programmers, we gave up. On Monday morning we recieved an email stating that it was an accident in the programming, and that these things happen and there is nothing they can do about it. So in effect, these guys have all the power to not only snap domains that they have no rights to, sell domains that they have no rights to, and then when you do bow to the pressure and actually use their marketplace they have no responsibility when they mess up. This is exactly why the domain industry as a whole does not get the respect it deserves. Unfortunately that is just how it works.
Posted on My Blog
Sorry for the delay in my recent postings. I messed up some tendons in my shoulder and typing was not exactly the funnest thing to do for a few days. We have some new sites running and we are working on some really exciting stuff that I will be able to share with everyone next week. We will also be updating the blog on a daily basis again starting next week. Hope you all have a good week!
Posted on My Blog
One of the author’s of the Snowe Bill to fight cybersquatting, (while hiding legislative language to help companies reverse hijack domains, was indicted on 7 counts of failing to disclose political gifts. Here is the full story from MSNBC:
WASHINGTON - Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator and a figure in Alaska politics since before statehood, was indicted Tuesday on seven counts of failing to disclose thousands of dollars in services he received from a company that helped renovate his home.
Stevens, the first sitting U.S. senator to face federal indictment since 1993, has been dogged by a federal investigation into his home renovation project and his dealings with wealthy oil contractors.
The investigation has upended Alaska state politics and cast scrutiny on Stevens — who is running for re-election this year — and on his congressional colleague, Rep. Don Young of Alaska, who is also under investigation.
Prosecutors said Stevens received more than $250,000 in gifts and services from VECO Corp., a powerful oil services contractor, and its executives.
From May 1999 to August 2007, prosecutors said, the 84-year-old senator concealed “his continuing receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of things of value from a private corporation.”
Posted on Industry News
- Posted on July 28th, 2008
- By Gabriel
- 1 Comment
The New York T.R.A.F.F.I.C. convention will feature a 5 auction house line up this fall. Including Rick Latona and industry newcomers Bido. While I think competition in the live market place is great, I just hope that the professionalism of the transactions picks up. At the spring auction I won a $xx,xxx priced domain name only to have Moniker call me a few days later to say that the domain was “accidentally” put in auction and was not supposed to be sold. I’m just going to sit back and watch and see how this all unfolds, I hope for everyone’s sake it goes smooth, but if recent auctions are any indication, it might not.
Posted on Industry News
There have been several recent $1 million dollar market mistakes reported in the news. Two of them that caught my attention were:
The sentencing of Carolyn Gudmundson, 46, who was sentenced for defrauding Microsoft out of almost $1 million dollars while acting as their domain manager. She milked the company with fake invoices and other scams between 2000 and 2004. She was sentenced to 22 months in prison and ordered to pay $923k+ in restitution fines.
The second was the story published on July 17th when “Best Online Casino Gambling” (BestOCG.com) agreed to pay $1.1 million US dollars in stock and cash for the domain name GamblingForumOnline.com. Sam Jackson, CEO, said he is proud of their newest domain purchase as it accurately describes their business.
Ok, so maybe I just don’t get it. Can you imagine the brandable and generic premium names this company could have had instead of GamblingForumOnline.com? I mean several come to mind instantly like GamblingOnline.com and GamblingForum.com (they probably could have bought both for 100k).
Posted on Domain Names
I have been working really hard this past weekend on stuff for the Convention doing everything possible to make it a huge success. We have some great sponsors and some great partners so far, and are working to sign more sponsorship agreements in the coming weeks. Tickets are available for purchase now and I will be updating the payment links soon.
I have divided the blog up into categories as you can see in the sidebar and the posts will all go through their cycle on the main page, but you will now be able to quickly search through them in the categories sidebar now as well.
Posted on My Blog
This past week was pretty hectic. We added a new speaker to the 2008 Texas Domainers And Developers Convention schedule. Dan Altman is a highly experienced domain name and intellectual property attorney here in Texas and we are glad to add him to the schedule. We also had alot of server migration work to do and we should be finalizing the TDADC website this week. We have also been doing some more programming on some of our upcoming projects and we are really excited about that. Longer post coming tomorrow. Have a good weekend!
Posted on My Blog
Sorry for the lack of posts, we were upgrading to a new server at SoftLayer. Anyway seems the .me landrush started today and from word on the forums there are lots of issues. NamePros members are reporting lags in the whois system causing GoDaddy, the official .me registry, to allow registration of domains that are already registered. To be honest I don’t get in on new extensions as they are full of fraud, speculation, and stupid rules. Premium level domains was the cause of slow growth in .tv and .mobi, and other new extensions have followed their leads.
Do you ever wonder why .com is the most popular extension? I will tell you. In the beginning .com’s were registered by people and companies who were building sites on them, this brought them mainstream attention. Now when a new extension comes out 99% of them go into the hands of domainers and speculators with no intention of development, and this causes the vast majority of those speculators to simply lose money on the domains. Mainstream surfers make a major impact on the success of a new extension, and if they do not use the extension then there is no demand for it. That was the death of .mobi in my opinion. Fortunately .tv has enjoyed some minor success due to a great PR campaign and the quick acceptance by television stations, media companies, etc.
Well enough ranting today, have a good one! I will start posting available domains again tomorrow once my new server is stable.
Posted on Domain Names
Short post for today, I have alot to catch up on. Just wanted to post about my new “pet project” called Retinal Therapy. It’s an art blog relating to all kinds of art from tattoo to graffiti to traditional mediums. I have been an artist for many years and have done illustrations for some large publishers. We are hoping to turn Retinal Therapy into a yearly traveling expo to reach out to artists and bring together some of the best and brightest in that industry. It is off to a slow start but if you like art check it out! Have a great day!
Posted on My Blog
