Missouri.com is owned by Telepathy's StateVentures, LLC, but LocalMatters.com developed the site under a licensing agreement with Telepathy. I am starting to see the Denver-based provider of local directory and specialized portal services pop up everywhere. 

Christian Zouzas, the owner of America.us, recently announced the roll-out of a full-blown website there. Again, this is the handiwork of Local Matters who developed the site in a revenue sharing arrangement with Zouzas.

Given the vast scope of a site trying to cover the entire United States, the kind of services provided by Local Matters (and several other companies who compete in the directory space) are real Godsends to domain owners who want to ramp up development on their properties as quickly as possible. 

Incidentally, America.us is just one of many top tier .us domains that Zouzas holds. He told us he is seeing a lot of encouraging signs for America's country code. One of those was a post on Bido.com co-founder Sahar Sarid's blog yesterday. In giving a progress report on his company's auction platform Sahar noted "just a market observation, .Info and .US are on the move, with very decent trading numbers (volume, prices, activity)." 

Scott Smith (President of TelCartel.com) and two other leading .tel owner/developers, Mark Kolb and “Freaky Steve” are hosting the camp. Smith said, “Telcamp 1 is a community-driven event where attendees define the agenda and collaborate on themes and issues surrounding .tel domains. Attendees will also learn techniques to help create new and compelling uses for the domains from community experts." People wishing to attend this event can sign up on the TelCamp 1 Toronto wiki at http://www.telcampus.org/wiki/TelCamp.

Interest in development continues to grow among domain owners  who want to free themselves from dependence on PPC revenue, especially now that those earnings have fallen off a cliff. I've always felt that the best chances for development success lie in finding an underserved niche and building the best resource within that niche. That is exactly what 

Bruce Marler
Founder
LocalTek, LLC

Missouri's Bruce Marler is trying to do right now with development of a statewide portal at Missouri.me that is focused on serving the advertising needs of small to medium sized businesses in Missouri's underserved rural communities. 

Marler, who quit a six-figure a year high tech job this summer to follow his entrepreneurial dream, set up a new company, LocalTek, LLC, to serve as a one stop shop geared to making a web presence a no brainer for local businesses.  Marler said that LocalTek provides web development, advertising, and targeted online marketing packages that virtually any business can afford. 

Missouri.me serves as the foundation for a network aimed at tying together over 1,000 communities across the state. Each town within the network has its own site on a sub-domain of the main platform. For example a site for Linn, Missouri is located at Linn.Missouri.me. 

Marley got the Linn site off to a flying start by contacting the county government 

there, which had no website of their own, and offering to build one for them at no charge. They accepted and with that stamp of approval local businesses started buying ads on the site (much to the chagrin of the local newspaper who lodged a furious protest to no avail). Marler has started hiring people across the state to personally call on small business owners with an offer to put them on the web at a price they can afford.

Marler is so convinced that he can cash in on the migration of media consumers from traditional sources to the web that he has gone on to acquire nearly half of the 50 U.S. state names in the .me extension. 

As much as we love domains, content is still king and his appears to be strong enough to give him a realistic shot at making "me" part of a unique "brand" that people will remember, especially with his focus on catering to businesses who aren't used to such personal service. "We created LocalTek and the Missouri.me concept to level the playing field," Marler said. "Missouri.me allows each and every community in the state to have their own online presence while LocalTek’s web development and targeted marketing services provide value that cannot be matched by traditional advertising only firms, newspaper and even radio." 

One other thing that could work in his favor from a branding standpoint is the fact that Missouri's nickname is the "Show Me" state! 

Rick Latona Auctions is looking for submissions for the themed online auction they have coming up August 21-28. The special sale will be devoted to domains representing the CPA (Cost Per Action) -  Lead Gen - Affiliate Marketing sector. If you have appropriate names you would like to offer for sale you can submit them through this link.

Latona Partner David Clements said this domain category is currently experiencing unprecedented growth so the company decided to design an event that will bring together buyers and sellers of domains suited to this business. 

"Some of the top categories are: banking, insurance, weight loss, credit cards, herbals and nutritional supplements," Clements said. "For this reason, we are asking for domain name submissions in these categories as well as other categories that do well in the CPA space.”  

If you are more interested in buying rather than selling these kinds of domains, Clements said to keep an eye on http://www.RickLatona.com/auctions for up to date information and posted inventory for the auction.

Registration and bidding will conducted at www.proxibid.com/ricklatona starting August 21.  All technical questions regarding Proxibid registration and bidding can be answered by calling toll free 877-505-7770 from inside the U.S. or +1-402-505-7770 from outside the U.S.

David Clements
Partner, Rick Latona Auctions

The windows they have to choose from are either late January or late April. In a post on his blog yesterday, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. co-founder Rick Schwartz said that if  they run the Las Vegas show in January they would do it right before the DOMAINfest Global conference that will be held Jan. 26-28 in Santa Monica, California. Dovetailing their event with the DOMAINfest dates would cut down on travel expenses (especially from the East Coast) for those who want to catch both shows. However they are concerned that being away for 7-10 days would be too long a stretch for some.

Schwartz said they were leaning more toward the late April window until they learned there would be a conflict on those dates wit the GeoDomain Expo that will run April 28-30 in New Orleans, so they decided to seek input from show goers as to their preferences. Schwartz said the best way to convey your thoughts on that would be to leave a note in the Comments section of the blog post he made on this topic Monday. 

In a related note, if you plan to go to T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New York October 26-29, the early preferred admission rate of $1,295 expires Friday (July 31). The regular rate is $1,995. The special $249 rate for spouses also ends Friday so if you are going to the show you may as well take advantage of the savings and book this week.

category being highlighted is Real Estate which gets a dedicated page listing several dozen domains ranging in price from $500 - $5,000. Sedo said the spotlight pages are sent to the general media, to their domainer contacts and are featured in the company's monthly newsletter. For exceptional domains they also plan to incorporate banners for added exposure.

Sedo has already selected the categories for their next three Industry Spotlights. In August it will be Gambling domains. September will be devoted to Pharmaceutical domains and the October list will feature Dating/Relationship domains. 

If you own domains that relate to any of their upcoming industry spotlights, you can send 

New Sedo Industry Spotlight feature 
will highlight domains from 
specific categories every month.

them to Tiffany Cuddihy (tiffany.cuddihy at Sedo.com) so  they can be reviewed by Sedo's brokerage team. They will notify you if your domains made the cut.

On Friday we ran an item about another new feature coming to Sedo next month, a Price Suggestion Tool meant to give sellers some guidance on how much to ask for domains they put up for sale on the Sedo platform. We didn't have an exact release date for that tool in our post but we saw a release on Sedo's site today that says the Price Suggestion Tool is scheduled to go live next Monday, August 3.

site. Sedo has been beta testing an iteration of the feature that had been labeled Auto Appraisal Tool. In a newsletter sent to clients this afternoon they said the new name for the public rollout in August (the exact date has not been set) will be Price Suggestion Tool. 

Incorporating the word "suggestion" in the title is a good idea. It will be up to the user to decide to go with something near the suggested price or come up with their own number. I haven't seen Sedo's tool yet but to this point in time I have never seen an auto appraisal tool that didn't frequently produce wildly off the mark results. Some may make entertaining parlor games but I haven't seen much value beyond that, especially since some novices take even laughable results seriously.

Professional domain appraisal?

To be honest, I have very little faith in human appraisals either (including my own). There are too many unknowable variables involved, not the least of which is how motivated is the seller? How badly might a specific buyer want a given domain? With those and many other other considerations involved, I don't think there is any way for anyone to consistently predict what individual domains will sell for. Yes, appraisals can have value for tax purposes if the IRS recognizes the appraisal company as a credible source - but as a reliable indicator of what the name would sell for on the open market - not so much. Another problem with paid human appraisals is that there is a big incentive for unethical appraisers to give customers an inflated value for their domain so they will be happy and spend more money for additional "feel good" appraisals that have no real value to anyone, especially the mislead customer. In real estate homes have enough in common (and enough historical sales data) to make recent prices paid useful in appraising homes that are currently on the market.

However most domain names are unique in terms of how individual buyers with varying needs would value them. iReport.com was worth $750,000 to CNN but others with a use for the domain might not have paid more than $5,000. As is usually the case, any appraisal for that domain would have been meaningless.

Every week, after we post our domain sales report, people comment on names that have been sold, often saying things like  "how could that name go for that much?" Or "I have names that are a hundred times better than that and can't sell them for a fraction of the price that name went for!" Again it comes down to what name did the buyer, for whatever reason, decide was a name they really wanted for their business or domain portfolio. 

Having said all of that, if Sedo has improved on the other models out there they may have a tool that is good enough to provide inexperienced sellers with some guidance to consider and there would be some value in that. I think that over time the more successful domain investors develop a "feel" for pricing domains and I  think that is about as good a handle as anyone can get on the ever elusive "value" of a specific domain name.  

Devin founded NetXposure in Portland in 1995 and the digital asset management software company also has ofices in Tokyo, London and Bangalore, India. He was also an active domainer. Devin, his mother Jan Donnelly and sister Jill Donnelly own several thousand domains and many of our readers will remember meeting them at one of more of the many T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conferences they have attended.

I also wrote about Jan and JillXan in a November 2, 2007 Lowdown post after they were both named as finalists for the prestigious Stevie Awards for Women in Business. They were honored because of the work they had done in creating the Career Exposure Network and its leading women’s online recruiting site, CareerWomen.com.

In its obituary article about Devin's untimely death, 

NetXposure CEO Devin Donnelly

The Oregonian newspaper noted that "Devin graduated from Lake Oswego High School and attended the University of Arizona. He was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. He studied at Waseda University in Tokyo and worked at the U.S. Embassy there. During his time in Tokyo, he developed a passion for the Japanese culture and became fluent in Japanese."

Regarding his professional career at NetXposure, The Oregonian said "Over the past 14 years, the company grew under Devin's leadership through acquisitions and strategic partnerships to become an innovator and leader in its industry. His intense focus and progressive thinking resulted in his firm winning many industry awards."

Our condolences and deepest sympathy goes out to the Donnelly family and the many people whose lives Devin touched. As The Oregonian noted, "Devin was a loyal friend. His close friends knew him to show great tenderness, compassion and humor: he was always there when it mattered."

"The eNom team is working diligently to address the issue of the domains missing from Warren Weitzman’s account. We are working with the gaining registrars and are confident Mr. Weitzman’s domains will be recovered shortly.  eNom would like to stress that 

this issue is not related to the security within our platform.  This unfortunate situation is related to Mr. Weitzman’s account only.  eNom has invested heavily in its security protocols and particularly understands the concerns and needs of domain name professionals.  We would like to assure our customers that their domains are protected and their account information confidential."

Weitzman first learned something was wrong on Thursday when Rick Waters, who is developing Adios.com for Weitzman's company, called to tell him that suddenly Adios.com had stopped resolving at the assigned DNS.  "I immediately went into my account at Enom and saw that Adios.com was there, still locked, with the same normal email for me, and everything appeared to be fine," Weitzman said. "But when I did a WhoIs lookup at DomainTools it showed a ‘John Thalacker’ as the registrant, 000domains as the registrar, and fastpark.net as the dns and lander, plus a phone number that didn’t work." (Editor's note: John Thalacker is a veteran domainer whose name was apparently picked at random by the thief for the false WhoIs info on this domain. So John is also being victimized by the criminal).

"I immediately called Enom, emailed them transfer-

Warren Weitzman
domain hijacking victim

disputes and inquired how the domain could be in my account while showing another owner in the public record simultaneously.  I alerted everyone I knew, but no one could understand how this could happen,' Weitzman said.

"After contacting Enom, we learned that all of the domains were still locked but Adios.com was no longer in Enom's database.  It had been transferred out. How could this happen without a notifying email, EPP, without a hack at the Verisign level or some kind of cooperation from Enom?  We also found that other domains had been transferred out to the same DNS (fastpark.net) and those names now showed various registrant information (mostly privacy WhoIs)," Weitzman said.   

Weitzman said the initial list of names taken from two different accounts he has at Enom includes these domains:

"All of these names showed in Enom’s transfer-out report as moving over the last 2 weeks, Sou.com being the first, moving on the 8th of July," Weitzman said. "While I received a response from the transfer-dispute department at Enom, there has been no explanation nor any guess as to how this could happen."

Meanwhile, some of the names that have already been taken from Weitzman's account continue to move (a common situation with stolen domains). "We noticed that Sou.com, the first of the hijacked domains, was transferred again, this time to NamesDirect as registrar and again, fastpark.net as the lander and another private Whois," Weitzman said. "I hope that by publicizing this, we can find out if anyone else has had this experience and what the resolution might be.  It is also our hope that no one will purchase any of these names," Weitzman added.

If you have any information that could help Warren recover his stolen domains, you can send it to Warren at Warren.com. We will follow up with new developments as they occur.

Washington D.C.) on our 25th wedding anniversary last month (I will continue to make it up this summer with other long weekend getaways like this). Don't get me wrong - we both had a great time at Roundtable and enjoyed celebrating the event among friends - but an occasion like this also needs to be marked in a non-business setting. 

So, even though I took my laptop along, I only went online briefly a couple of times after we made the two hour drive from our home just north of Tampa to Mount Dora Friday morning. But you know me - I never stop paying attention to domain names and the trip to Mount Dora gave me plenty of fodder for a new Lowdown item - this one.

We would be visiting Mount Dora for the first time so I did a lot of Internet research on the resort town before going, picking the place we would stay (that wound up being the Magnolia Inn bed & breakfast, a delightful place that was even better than it looked online), plus restaurants and shops we wanted to visit and things we wanted to do when we got there.

The first thing I did was go to MountDora.com to see who owned it. That turned out to be the local chamber of commerce. They have a serviceable site but their business directories didn't give me the reviews I was looking for so I could start making choices. So I typed "Mount Dora" into Google to see what the search engine would turn up. The second search result (after MountDora.com) was the city's official website  located, unfortunately, at a very unsightly address, so bad it is hard to believe they use it - ci.mount-dora.fl.us! No joke. Three dots and a hyphen thrown in for good measure. 

As a .us fan myself, I have no quibble with the city using a .us domain (they have always been popular with government sites and in fact were available to government entities only until April 2002 when there were opened to everyone else in America). However why use a name like this instead of oh...just grasping at straws here...say something like MountDora.us? Out of curiosity I looked up who owned that and was surprised to find that I did. 

Again no joke. I have no recollection of picking it up, but with over 6,000 domains I've been surprised like this a number of times in the past. Still, I do know the city could have taken it before .us was opened to the general public (it wasn't registered for the first time until a couple of weeks after .us was available for general registration). The city site's high Google ranking shows that the extension (and laborious name) is not an impediment to finding them in search engines, but I can't imagine how much ci.mount-dora.fl.us must get butchered when people try to type it in (and forget about trying to remember a name like that).

I came across another inscrutable choice of domains while researching Mount Dora in Google. The third free result (and top paid result) was for a site at WhatToDoInMtDora.com. I kid you not. A six-word domain name - actually five words and an abbreviation. The name for this  general city guide again shows content can overcome a tortured domain name in search engines - but for giving people an easy name to remember so they can type it in, this one would not have been high on my list (to their credit they were smart enough to also register WhatToDoInMountDora.com and redirect it to their site to eliminate at least one obvious typo. Mount Dora is the common spelling, not Mt. Dora). I think something simpler like MountDoraGuide.com would have worked better for them. When I looked it up, I found that name was unregistered and I liked it well enough to take it.

The Donnelly House (above) was built by Mount Dora's first mayor, John Phillip Donnelly, in 1893. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places and was one of the first places we stopped as we love Victorian architecture.

The Magnolia Inn in Mount Dora - good reviews on TripAdvisor.com steered us to this marvelous bed & breakfast two blocks from downtown and it was even better than we expected. They have a decent domain name too - MagnoliaInn.net.

Diana in the parlor at the Magnolia Inn.

Sunset on Lake Dora.

This wooden boardwalk meanders through a spectacular 8-acre nature preserve on the banks of Lake Dora.

One of these days I could see myself doing local city guides for underserved destinations in Florida like Mount Dora. I never did find one for Mount Dora that gave me what I was looking for. I wound up going to TripAdvisor.com and basing my decisions on the many customer reviews there. The lodging and restaurant choices I made based on that information worked out very well for us and we wound up having a great weekend. There was also that added bonus of getting one new domain name out of the deal and even better, discovering I already owned one that I like a lot, especially after visiting the lovely town the name represents.

the new location will be the posh Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica where attendees will be treated to a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean. Oversee said, "To enhance the intimacy and networking at DOMAINfest Global, the entire hotel property has been reserved exclusively for this conference. 

Online registration will open August 15 with an Early Bird discounted registration rate of $895 available through September 30.  The registration rate increases to $1,095 on October 1. 

Oversee said "The 2010 conference will focus on the importance of domain names in online marketing, with additional focus on how to use domain names to get the most out of the pending economic recovery.  The conference theme and specific agenda session topics will be announced in the coming weeks. The event also will feature two live Moniker ® domain name auctions, powered by SnapNames Live™ technology." For more information visit DOMAINfest.com. Our comprehensive review of this year's January show in Hollywood is here.

Hayward started with 125 randomly selected generic .co.uk domain names that host active websites. At each search engine he then determined the position of each site within the first two pages (20 results) for a search on the keyword (or words) contained within the domain name (for example, SpecialEffects.co.uk and the keywords "special effects").

Hayward found that Yahoo UK (default mode) and Google (default mode) each produced a similar numbers of domains ranked within the first 20 results - 56% and 57% respectively. Bing UK (default mode) gave even greater weight to generic keyword domains with 62% of the tested names ranked within the top 20 results. 

Hayward noted, "While it's impossible to calculate the exact contribution of the domain name to the overall ranking probability, it would seem evident from the above that it is an important factor. It's clear that the domain name is even more relevant in determining the position of a particular site within the overall search results. This is a straight like-for-like comparison since Google, Yahoo and Bing are all attempting to rank exactly the same sites. On all 3 search engines, ranked sites fell on average within the top 7 results, and the domain name clearly played the most important role in the case of Bing, with ranked sites ending up inside the top 3 results."

marketing budgets by shifting money away from traditional media. According to a Research Brief article at MediaPost.com, direct mail is the category the largest percentage of marketers planned to cut, with 40% of them saying they would make reductions there. Newspapers were the #2 target on the hit list, named by 35% of respondents. 28% said they would spend less with magazines and 12% cited television as the medium where they were most likely to cut back. 

The study says the biggest winners among interactive platforms will be social media and mobile marketing platforms. Over the next five years, social media is expected to enjoy a 34% annual growth rate (compounded annual basis) with mobile marketing increasing by 27% a year. That means social media would explode from $716 million in 2009 to $3.11 billion by 2014. Mobile marketing would zoom from $319 million this year to $1.27 billion by 2014.

The revenue drain at traditional media 
outlets is accelerating as advertisers 
shift their marketing dollars to the web.

Online display advertising is expected to go from $7.83 billion this year to $16.9 billion in 2014 - a 17% annual growth rate.  Today's 800-pound gorilla, search marketing, is expected to grow more slowly, but still a very healthy 15% annually, which would take it from this year's $15.39 billion to $31.59 billion five years from now. Email marketing is projected to go from $1.25 billion to $2.08 billion - an 11% annual rate of growth.

To show just how bad things are going for the traditional media platforms, a a corollary report from Forrester says budgets for old standbys like television, print, radio and magazines, along with staff and training expenses and branding/advertising expenditures have been slashed by two-thirds from last year's levels. When it comes to media and advertising, the Internet is obviously where you want to be.

Edwin Hayward is featured in a new 
podcast interview at OzDomainer.com

start the tour at OzDomainer.com where Ed Keay-Smith just posted the 12th episode in his very well-done series of podcast interviews with industry pioneers.  Ed's guest this time around in veteran domainer Edwin Hayward from MemorableDomains.co.uk. 

In addition to starting one of the very first domain news and information sites, iGoldRush.com (which he later sold), Hayward has been buying, selling and developing domains for more than a decade now. In the past year he has also been releasing research papers that illustrate why generic keyword domains are so valuable. 

Hayward has a wealth of experience to share and Smith does a very good job of drawing out what you might call "The Best of Edwin Hayward" in a show that runs just over an hour and a quarter. 

Cities Internet Network, led by brothers Michael Castello and David Castello, has just made a creative move of their own that promises to bring more local readers to their thriving PalmSprings.com site. 

Rather than raid local publications for talent, the Castello Brothers have forged a win-win partnership with Bob Marra, the well-known owner of three popular local publications; The Public Record, Wheeler's Market Intelligence  

Michael Castello & David Castello
Castello Cities Internet Network 

and Travelhost Magazine Palm Springs & Desert Cities. Marra has agreed to write a new weekly column, The Palm Springs Valley Business Update with Bob Marra for PalmSprings.com and in return the site will promote his print publications. 

there are good people everywhere I am convinced that our business is blessed to have more than our fair share of them. I was reminded of that again last night when I got a letter from Gregg McNair, the International Director of Strata PPX Services, asking for help in publicizing a project with the potential to save thousands of lives.

Gregg has been a fervent backer of The Water School, a charitable organization dedicated to eliminating waterborne diseases in Africa and other parts of the world. A United Nations report estimates that there are roughly two million child deaths every year as a result of people not having access to clean water. Almost 40% of total child deaths from water related problems occur on the African continent. 

In April McNair led a group of domain industry 

Gregg McNair
Strata PPX Services

people to Uganda to show them the problem (and the solution) first hand. He is now organizing another trip for September when he will take another group to Kenya. Gregg plans to mail out the details to friends and acquaintences in the industry this weekend, but in case you are not on his mailing list, here is a copy of the information he is sending out: 

Dear Friend,

As many of you know my partners and I have for some time been passionate supporters of the Canada based charity, TheWaterSchool.org (please have a good look at this site!) introduced to us by long time supporter Richard Lau.

It is only 6 days out of your life and I ask you to consider seriously coming with us…if the people don’t win you over the wildlife certainly will! (no trip to Kenya would be complete without a Serengeti safari experience!). Cost excluding return airfares to Nairobi is US$2,000 including all
accommodation and meals in Nairobi and on safari.

For those who cannot make it for whatever reason can I ask you to encourage and/or assist others to be there. We are thrilled to know that Sedo have already discussed support and having a representative there.

We all enjoy an incredible industry and despite so called tough times we have it so easy compared to many we will see and meet in Kenya. The dates September 23-29 have been fixed and planning has begun. The proposed trip schedule is attached.* It will be refined as we get a handle on how many will attend.

The following people are either committed or are seriously working on attending: Yoni Belousov, Merlin Kauffman, Ammar Kubba, Greg Dumas, Kelly Keesee, Richard Lau, Hakan Ali, Daniel Negari, Rick Latona, Simon Mills, Daniel Law, Susan Prosser, Sam Dennis, Alphan Culha and many others.

I am hoping that you can get behind this initiative and pass it on to others whom I may have missed.

Warm regards
Gregg

* A copy of the detailed trip schedule Gregg referred to in his letter is here. This page also has more information on the Water School's unique and effective Solar Water Disinfection Program.

Editor's Update (8/24/09): One change on the trip schedule linked to in the paragraph above. The hotel in Nairobi has been changed from the Fairview to the Nairobi Safari Club (www.nairobisafariclub.com).

If you do not receive this letter from Gregg in your email and would be interested in joining the group going to Kenya, you are invited to drop Gregg an email at [email protected].

The big event will be staged in one of the world's greatest convention cities, New Orleans, with the event running from Wednesday, April 28 through Friday, April 30, 2010. Those dates will also coincide with the 40th anniversary of the world famous New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Dan Pulcrano, the interim Chairman of Associated Geos LLC (the parent company of Associated Cities) and CEO of AC member Boulevards New Media said, “Not only will the sessions be top flight and useful, but the music, food and entertainment will make this a memorable and enjoyable experience for anyone who joins us.” 

Donald F. Jones, President of AC member,  NewOrleans.Com Media, LLC, said

The 2010 GeoDomain Expo logo designed
by Kara Brown includes "winged globe" 
and bottlecap images made famous in 
New Orleans folk art (the city's street 
dancers use the bottle caps as shoe taps). 

"NewOrleans.com is very excited to be hosting the Geodomain Expo next year in New Orleans. Attendees can enjoy the incredible music of our famous Jazz Fest, wonderful food and the historic architecture and ambiance of our city. Did we mention Bourbon Street?”

I am especially happy to see Associated Cities give themselves this much lead time to promote the 2010 show. Their 2009 show in San Diego and the 2008 event in Chicago were both staged just a few weeks after they were announced. Both were successful despite the short notice, primarily because this show, with its single minded devotion to developing domains into full blown category killing businesses, offers something truly unique. The last two shows have proven that even if they have to scramble to make last minute travel arrangements, people want to be there. 

pioneering the live auction platform at  T.R.A.F.F.I.C., Moniker lost the opportunity to sell there when the Latona deal was announced. Last night we found out at least part of what is next for Moniker when Oversee announced a new monthly online domain auction that will combine the resources of Moniker and their sister company SnapNames.com with the sales events being held on a new and improved platform at SnapNames.com.

The first auction of the series, entitled "Summer Stimulus," begins July 16 at 12 noon U.S. Pacific time (3pm Eastern) and 

concludes July 21 at 12:15 p.m. Pacific (3:15pm Eastern). Subsequent auctions will begin the second Tuesday of every month and end two days later on the second Thursday. Oversee said the sales will feature low or no reserve pricing. The catalog for the first auction can be seen here. 

To submit a domain name for their future monthly auctions, go to http://showcase.snapnames.com where you will also find a calendar of upcoming events. The deadline for submitting names for the August showcase auction is July 28. 

As I write this the public memorial service for Michael Jackson that will be televised around the world is just getting underway at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. An amazing 1.6 million 

people registered for a lottery in which just 8,750 winners were drawn to receive two tickets each to today's star-studded event. 

I was wondering if anyone from the domain community would be among those in the live audience when I got word from David Castello of Castello Cities Internet Network that he and Natalie Lambert were there. They had each entered their email addresses in the lottery and Natalie's name was pulled. They arrived at the Staples Center around 7 o'clock this morning (Pacific coast time), six hours ahead of the start, to avoid the traffic snarl around the arena. David sent me the photo below taken shortly after they arrived (as you can see dozens of others were already on the scene with them.)

If you read our December 2006 Cover Story about David and his brother Michael, you know that they are both accomplished musicians. I'm sure the opportunity to be at this event in memory of one of the most influential artists of all time has special meaning for David and Natalie as a result.

(Posted July 7, 2009) To refer others to the post above only you can use this URL:
http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2009/dailyposts/07-07-09.htm

In a nutshell, if ICANN adopts the recommendations made by the IRT committee (that was stacked with representatives of trademark interests) you will lose the small amount of protection you still have against over-reaching trademark holders through the current UDRP system. It would be replaced by a new URS (Uniform Rapid Suspension) system that would make it far easier for someone who has designs on your assets to put you out of business. 

Internet Commerce Association Legal Counsel Phil Corwin has written a concise letter detailing what is involved and what is at stake that you can read here. If you wish you can take his commentary on the issues that are of the greatest concern to you and use those in your own post to ICANN. To leave your comment just send it in an email to this

address: [email protected] (put whatever you wish in the Subject line - something as simple as IRT Comment will work). You will get an e-mail back from ICANN asking you to confirm your submission. Be sure to respond to that email with your confirmation, otherwise your comments will not be posted for ICANN to take into consideration. You can see what others have already posted to ICANN here. Some of the best commentary on this issue has consistently come from George Kirikos as you can see in this example. 

Check out Barbara's Amsterdam photos here: photobucket.com/TRAFFICccTLDs2009 
and her Silicon Valley shots here: photobucket.com/santaclara2009.
For both galleries, you can click the Slide Show link on the upper right of each page then sit back and watch the good times roll! Speaking of good times have a great holiday weekend and we will see you back here on Monday.

over year against 2Q-2008. You've undoubtedly heard people talking about how many bargains there are on the aftermarket these days as the recession has forced many to sell assets. The lower prices people are paying showed up clearly in our sales data for the just concluded quarter. 

The total dollar value of all sales reported to us in 2Q-2009 was just $21.1 million, a $7.2 million drop from the $28.3 million reported in 1Q-2009. More disheartening was the fact that the $21.1 million total was worse than the $21.5 million reported in the final quarter of 2008 when most felt the market had hit bottom. In 4Q-2008 fear ruled after the historic 

collapse of major financial institutions left consumers too scared to buy much of anything. After a very nice upturn in 1Q-2009 it looked like things in the domain business were looking up but clearly we're not out of the woods yet.

The year over year results were about the same as those from Q1 to Q2 of this year. In the same quarter last year, total sales came in at $27.7 million, $6.6 million more than Q2-2009. 

As is usually the case, a few very high ticket sales impacted the results from one quarter to the next. The 1Q-2009 uptick was fueled by a trio of seven-figure sales; Toys.com ($5.1 million), Fly.com ($1.76 million) and Auction.com ($1.7 million). 2Q-2009 had a pair of seven figure sales; Candy.com ($3 million) and Webcam.com ($1.02 million), plus last week's half million dollar deal for Talk.com. So, the top three sales of 1Q-2009 totaled just over $8.5 million while the top three in 2Q-2009 came in $4 million lower at a bit over $4.5 million. The difference between just those three sales accounted for $4 million of the $7.2 million decline from the first quarter to the second this year.

This declining price cloud has an obvious silver lining for one group - domain buyers. Many are finding deals on high quality domains that would have been almost unimaginable just one year ago. 

Go America, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOAM), changed their name to Purple Communications (NASDAQ: PRPL) and in the process abandoned their GoAmerica.com website for a .us replacement - Purple.us. 

The more obvious choice, Purple.com, was registered in 1994 and according to a FAQ on its site, the domain is not for sale. That left Purple 

Communications to find the next best option and the Novato, California based company decided that was the .us version of their new name. 

It has been fairly common for foreign corporations, who are intimately familiar with ccTLDs in their home countries, to use .us domains (for example BMW, Club Med, Hitachi and Iceland Air ), but ironically Americans companies scarcely know their own country code even exists. Obviously, rare cases like Purple Communications making the move to .us are not going to change that overnight, but it is another example of the American ccTLD slowly building recognition one brick at a time.