DomainsBot News

Surviving the ‘Dot-Crunch’

Wed, 14 May 2008 16:10:59 +0000

Domainers Must Adapt…Again It’s a funny thing how domainers always expect their stank to rise…and continue rising. Funny because if you’ve been in this business long enough you’ve likely weathered, or not, a few industry tempests and cycles. We’re hardened sailors who have seen tough squalls and lived to tell the tale. Truth is, over time things [...]

Sedo Sales for the week up to May 13, 2008

Wed, 14 May 2008 15:36:38 +0000

.COM Sales taz.com 40,000 USD GreatDomains chianti.com 28,500 USD GreatDomains posse.com 24,500 USD diw.com 12,500 USD ylc.com 10,100 USD textr.com 8,750 USD yachtshop.com 7,600 USD wzb.com 7,100 USD GreatDomains gonk.com 7,000 USD motionsports.com 6,700 USD vko.com 6,100 EUR zoyo.com 6,000 EUR gimena.com 5,900 EUR lale.com 5,403 USD marginal.com 5,100 USD cux.com 5,100 EUR GreatDomains eventmanager.com 5,000 USD overstockmall.com 4,999 USD GreatDomains gotdirt.com 4,600 USD bangbangbang.com 4,500 USD depositosbancarios.com 4,500 EUR (banking deposits in Spanish) urgently.com 4,150 USD GreatDomains discussed.com 4,050 USD GreatDomains nofa.com 3,720 USD organic-food.com 2,800 USD stopcalling.com 2,800 USD polarweiss.com 2,750 EUR mylifeid.com 2,700 USD frenchtutor.com 2,600 USD zoth.com 2,550 USD yy1.com 2,550 USD colitel.com 2,500 EUR hightop.com 2,500 USD GreatDomains personalenergy.com 2,370 USD efectosjavascript.com 2,300 USD cuzo.com 2,050 EUR idiaper.com 2,000 USD Other Sales nightlife.net 20,000 USD newyorkbiz.com 18,000 EUR versa.net 9,100 USD anuncios.mobi 7,400 USD (classifieds in Spanish) thc.mobi 3,700 USD chef.pro 3,650 USD negocios.org 3,600 USD [...]

BPHG Launches Prices.com

Wed, 14 May 2008 06:45:26 +0000

BP Holding Group announced today the launch of another development project on one of their premium domain names, PRICES.COM. The company has partnered with Shopping.com, an Ebay company to create a comparison shopping engine on the domain name. Company CEO Michael Bahlitzanakis informed Domain Name News about the release and their efforts to build more [...]

Call Girl Goes After Girls Gone Wild For Cybersquatting

Tue, 13 May 2008 22:05:11 +0000

Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the reported mistress of former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, has filed a $10 million lawsuit against MRA Holdings, producers of the popular Girls Gone Wild videos. Among the many allegations, the filing cites violations of the Lanham Act including cybersquatting domain names. Other Lanham violations include profiting from trademark infringement, false [...]

.Asia and Pool.com Come Under Fire

Tue, 13 May 2008 20:28:01 +0000

Domain Name News received a “press release” today from Thomas Rucker of Madunia GmbH. In the emailed article, he refers to the sunrise auctions of .asia domains as “shady” and “dubious”. Rucker’s claims that the CEO of Pool.com, Richard Schreier, is benefiting from the company’s relationship as auctioneer of the .asia domains. [Update]: DNN has [...]

Maveron Plays Both Sides, Backs Citizen Hawk with $3 Million

Tue, 13 May 2008 06:14:15 +0000

As reported by Tech Crunch, Citizen Hawk, a “digital brand management” company is now funded with $3 million courtesy of Maveron LLC. “CitizenHawk helps companies protect their online brands by targeting cybersquatters.” The interesting angle that goes unmentioned at Tech Crunch is that Maveron already has a history of investmenting in the domain space with their funding [...]

Generic IPTV Set-Top Box Domain Names For Sale

Mon, 12 May 2008 17:31:49 +0000

Six generic IPTV Set-Top Box domains are now listed at Sedo. These IPTV Set-Top Box domains are listed in Sedo featured domains section, with private reserve prices. The listed domains are: IPTVBox.com, IPTVBoxes.com, IPTVSetTopBox.com, IPTVSetTopBoxes.com, IPTVSetTop.com and SetTop-Boxes.com [via Press Release] (c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com Visit our Calendar of Domain Industry Events.

Targeted TRAFFIC East Auction List released

Mon, 12 May 2008 14:19:27 +0000

Moniker has released the full auction lists for the Targeted TRAFFIC East low reserve and premier auctions.Some names from the premier auction to be held May 23rd, 2pm ET: Action.com Anger.com Assorted.com Athlete.com BlueRay.com BodilyInjury.com CarWax.com CertifiedDiamonds.com Doug.com ForSale.mobi GasPrices.com Grass.com Greek.com HonorRoll.com Hoodia.com HotPotato.com Idol.com InsuranceRates.com Israel.com Jackpot.com Ladybug.com Lemons.com LuxuryGifts.com Men.mobi Minerals.com Mortgage.mobi OH.com Pay.com Records.mobi SpecialOffer.com Susan.com Wagering.com Some names from the low reserve auction to be held May 20th, 8pm ET: BroadwayShows.info Clerks.net DayCare.org GED.net iGadgets.com Refinancing.net RingTone.mobi SpaceForRent.com XXX.sc (c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com Domain Convergence, October 6-8, 2008, Niagara Falls

dotMobi Purchases Mowser

Sat, 10 May 2008 05:57:47 +0000

dotMobi, the registry for .MOBI domains, has purchased the intellectual rights to Mowser, a software that automatically converts regular web pages into sites that are compatible with the mobile web. The deal was made less than a month after Russell Beattie, the founder of Mowser, said he didn’t believe in the mobile web anymore and was [...]

.ORG registry to increase prices by 10%

Sat, 10 May 2008 01:42:47 +0000

The .ORG registry operator, Public Interest Registry (PIR) has sent a letter to ICANN announcing their intention to increase their registration fees by 10% as of November 9th, 2008. The price increase brings the price for registrars up to $6.75 from $6.15 after last year’s price increase by 2.5%. The letter did not cite a [...]

Do We Need Two Internets?

Jonathan Zittrain's recent book, The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It, has spurred a lot of discussion both online and offline, with blog posts lauding his insights or criticising his over-apocalyptic imagination. The book itself makes fascinating reading for those who have watched the network grow from its roots in the research community into today's global channel for communications, commerce and cultural expression... One of the reasons that Zittrain puts forward for the growing popularity of closed or, as he prefers 'tethered', devices, is that they are less vulnerable to hacking, security flaws, malware and all the other perils that face any internet-enabled system. More...

Spammers Handed Record $230 Million Anti-Spam Judgment

A federal judge in Los Angeles has awarded MySpace close to $230 million in its lawsuit against "Spam King" Sanford Wallace and his business partner Walter Rines. Judge Audrey B. Collins of United States District Court in the Central District of California ruled in MySpace's favor on Monday after the two men failed to show up in court, according to MySpace... While many spammers have been designated "Spam King," Wallace earned the title back in the late 1990s as a result of spam messages sent by his company Cyber Promotions. More...

ICANN Preparing for Mass Introduction of Top-Level Domains?

At the request of ICANN, Paul E. Black, a computer scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed an algorithm that may guide applicants in proposing new Top-Level Domains (TLDs). As new TLDs are added to the familiar .com, .info, and .net, the algorithm checks whether the newly proposed name is confusingly similar to existing ones by looking for visual likenesses in its appearance. More...

CEO’s Advised to Wake Up to Cyberthreats

Paul Twomey, chief executive of ICANN and member of the British-North American Committee, advises chief executives of the risks to business from cyber-espionage and how to deal with them... "There are reports of cyber-espionage against the US defense industry and the UK by China," said Twomey on Wednesday. More...

Google Officially Announces Introduction of IPv6

Google search is available over IPv6 at ipv6.google.com (you'll need an IPv6 connection to view it)... From the official blog: "We hope that by allowing every computer and mobile device on the network to talk to each other directly -- an idea known as the "end-to-end principle" that was crucial to the original design of the Internet -- IPv6 will allow the continued growth of the Internet and enable new applications yet to be invented." More...

NATO Nations Sign Agreement on Cyber Defense Center

Seven NATO nations gave their backing on Wednesday to a new cyber defense centre in Estonia, the ex-Soviet state which last year faced weeks of attacks on its Internet structure after a row with Russia. Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Spain agreed to help fund and staff the centre in the Estonian capital Tallinn. The United States will initially send an observer to the project, aimed at boosting defenses against such attacks. More...

Are Botnets Run by Spy Agencies?

A recent story today about discussions for an official defense Botnet in the USA prompted me to post a question I've been asking for the last year. Are some of the world's botnets secretly run by intelligence agencies, and if not, why not? Some estimates suggest that up to 1/3 of PCs are secretly part of a botnet. The main use of botnets is sending spam, but they are also used for DDOS extortion attacks and presumably other nasty things like identity theft. But consider this... More...

Serious Gmail Flaw: Security Group Demonstrates Sending Unlimited Spam Using Google’s Own Servers

Researchers at Information Security Research Team (INSERT) have dissevered a serious flaw in Google's Gmail service. The group demonstrates how anyone with no special Internet access privileges other than being able to connect to SMTP (TCP port 25) and HTTP (TCP port 80) servers is able to exploit a single Gmail account in order to be granted nearly unrestricted access to Google's massive whitelisted SMTP relay infrastructure. Read more from the report... More...

Fees for .org Top-Level Domain to Increase by 10%

Public Interest Registry, the organization in charge of ".org" top-level domains, disclosed a planned fee increase in a May 1 letter to ICANN [PDF]. The fee increase does not require the ICANN's approval. PIR did not cite a reason in its letter. Earlier this year, VeriSign Inc., the company in charge of managing ".com" and ".net," also announced price increases. More...

The New Clearwire

The new Clearwire could be game-changing, but the rules of the game may not be quite as Clearwire presents them. I have been wondering since last July whether something significant would happen in the Google/Sprint world. The deal announcement earlier this weekseems to be that key development... In a nutshell, Sprint will contribute its substantial spectrum licenses in the 2.5 GHz range and its WiMAX-related assets and intellectual property. Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks will invest a total of $3.2 billion. More...

NGN is Not the Internet, and Never Will

I see and hear a lot of confusion about next generation networks (NGN). In most cases people are using the term roughly as the ITU-T defines it: "A Next Generation Network (NGN) is a packet-based network able to provide services including Telecommunication Services and able to make use of multiple broadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies and in which service-related functions are independent from underlying transport-related technologies." but many people don't realize how little this has to do with the Internet... More...

IPv4 Shortage and Trading Concerns as Hot Marketable Goods

With IPv4 addresses in short supply, they could become increasingly interesting and marketable goods. This is a concern for Regional Internet Registries (RIR) that are in charge of managing IP address allocations. Heise Online reports: "If they officially permit transfers or sales in the future, they will be implicitly accepting commercialization and privatization. Any attempt to insist on the return of addresses to the RIRs could drive trading, which is probably inevitable, underground..." More...

A Patent for SiteFinder-Like Resolution

I saw an interesting news item that broke Monday courtesy of DomainNameNews and SlashDot that hasn't been broadly covered yet. I'm surprised no one has posted on this yet on CircleID, so here goes. Apparently VeriSign has been awarded a patent for the resolution of mis-typed domain names. This was at the heart of the controversy back in 2003 around their SiteFinder Service. Amidst a storm of criticism ICANN insisted VeriSign shut down the service, and the company eventually agreed. More...

Coders, Crackers and Bots, Oh My!

There are more than just blue, black and white hat hackers. There are a few more types of folks out there that don't fit into the above categories. This article is taken from Stratfor with some commentary by myself... Many of the hackers described in my previous post are also coders, or "writers," who create viruses, worms, Trojans, bot protocols and other destructive "malware" tools used by hackers... More...

Black Hats, White Hats, Crackers and Bots

One of the other web sites I subscribe to is Stratfor. It's a global intelligence website and doesn't really have much to do with spam. But I like politics so I read it. They have some articles which you can get for free, but the better stuff you have to pay for. About two weeks ago, they ran a three-part series on Cyberwarfare. The first article was the title of this post, which you can access here (requires registration). In the article they described different types of cybercriminals and not-so-criminals which they referred to under the umbrella as "hackers." More...

Opinion: Sending Domains to Auction At Sedo

Wed, 14 May 2008 07:14:59 +0000

I don’t know who came up with this idea, but it seems to be a new trend of 2008. Several domainers came up with the idea to send your domain to auction by posting the starting bid at Sedo. Which seems ok when you first think about it. Now the topic of shill bidding arises. [...]

New Domain Auciton Site - BQB.com

Mon, 12 May 2008 02:56:03 +0000

Finally, a fresh new marketplace. I came across BQB.com, which stands for Better Quality Business. This is a auction site, similar to Afternic and Sedo, where you can list your domain names for sale. The best part about this website is that there are no fees. The only time you have to pay a fee [...]

Afternic - Another Hoax Sale

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:03:26 +0000

Once again, another domain has been listed on Afternic that has turned out to be a hoax. This time it was Auto.com. This domain was listed on Afternic, with a BIN price of only $10,000. Who in there right mind would pass this baby? A fellow NamePros member decided to take the gamble. He knew [...]

NamePros Approaches 90,000 Members

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 18:28:04 +0000

Our good friends at NamePros, have done it again. We reported to you in early 2007, that NamePros had passed 50,000 members. In just a little over a year, NamePros has doubled in size. Now if that is not impressive, I don’t know what is. We have noticed several changes over at NamePros. They recently added [...]

.ME To Screw End Users? The New Extension To Haunt Domainers!

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:21:18 +0000

It’s just about that time again! Recently, ICANN announced that the .ME extension will be replacing the current .YU Sub domain extension. How did the .ME extension come upon us? In 2006, the country of Montenegro declared independence from Yugoslavia. Then ICANN gave them there own ccTLD. Well now that you know a new [...]

New Extensions in 2008

Fri, 18 May 2007 02:26:51 +0000

ICANN has stated that we will be seeing new domain extensions in 2008. No these aren’t the average ccTLD’s, we will be seeing gTLD’s. Whats up with this? I have heard many opinions from users. Most of them will agree with me and they feel it’s a bad movie. We already have so many extensions [...]

Results from TRAFFIC Auction

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:51:42 +0000

The TRAFFIC Auction really did show some great sales. We also got to see some bargains too. Everyone has been wondering why the LLL.nets and LL.nets went for so cheap. Fox.net - $19,000 LP.net - $12,000 Faq.net - $12,500 KO.net - $10,000 VO.net - $8,000 Of course you can see the rest of the results here. Families.com was the largest sale [...]

NamePros Passes 50,000 Members

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 00:10:13 +0000

One of the most popular domain name forums on the web, NamePros, has recently hit the 50,000 member mark. It’s now averaging 100 members per day! NamePros is very well known as the best ‘free’ domain name forum. Like other forums, NamePros has great members and is a great source of information. Many say it’s [...]

Transfering Out Of Register Fly

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:55:58 +0000

I recently heard from someone who had spoke to a rep over at Moniker, they were told that we must wait at least 15 days to transfer out of Register Fly. This time period was put in place to see what happens with ICANN. I guess we will have fun waiting another 15 days! [...]

GoDaddy Reseller Club

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 03:43:47 +0000

I recently found at that GoDaddy has a reseller club? Whats the advantage of this? Hopefully this blog post will clear up some of the misunderstandings and the urban legends. Lets take a look at the reseller club. To sign up, it costs $89.99 per year….. But, will you even save with this club? Why [...]