.ME opened for public registration today. Though the extension is officially the country code for Montenegro it has been opened for unrestricted global registration and is now being marketed as an extension for "personal" use. The world's biggest registrar, GoDaddy, is 

partnering with the registry operators to promote .me and many of those who have been trying to register .me domains today have been trying to do it at GoDaddy. 

According to a long thread at the NamePros forum, it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing with many reporting they were charged for domains they thought they got, only to find out later that they had already been registered by someone else. GoDaddy will issue refunds of course, but it has still resulted in a lot of disappointment and upset customers. Some in the thread reported having better luck with smaller registrars like Dynadot.com that were not as besieged by registration requests as GoDaddy has been today.

On Tuesday we told you about Video.us being back on the market after the domain had been stripped from its non U.S. owners twice in the past year. After the previous owners paid (and lost) $75,000 and $18,500 respectively, the name was auctioned off again today by Galcomm.com. The price slipped again, with the winning bid coming in at $12,000 this time. Let's hope the new owner has better luck meeting the .us Nexus requirement (be a U.S. citizen or have a business presence in the U.S.).

Elsewhere Sedo's latest GreatDomains.com premium online auction opened today with names including Color.com, Villas.com and House.net up for bid. Like all of the GreatDomains monthly acutions, the event will run for one week, ending July 24. You can see the full auction inventory here.
(Posted July 17, 2008)