Not sure where 2014 went but ready or not, here comes a New Year! The last one has been a whirlwind with the pace of change in the domain industry - which has always been quick - accelerating at a mind bending pace. New gTLDs arrived and many people, companies and conferences came, went or consolidated. 

In 2014 we also saw a vigorous rebound from he recession with the domain aftermarket performing the best it has in years (with Chinese buyers adding some rocket fuel to the fire). Domain sales (especially 

 2015 graphic from Bigstock 

for short .coms) and the influx of new money being invested in new gTLDs made it a good year for many players and I believe 2015 will be even better. Yes, I am an eternal optimist but there are so many positive things happening I think that forecast is based on more than wishful thinking.

Like 2014, the new year will get off to a quick start with NamesCon returning to Las Vegas bigger and better than ever for their January 11-14 conference at the Tropicana Hotel. With over 800 expected to attend it feels like just about everybody is going to be there, so 2015 deal making is going to get a powerful jumpstart.

New Year's Day also marks the 12th anniversary of DNJournal.com and we are again looking forward to bringing you all of the interesting news and information that will be unfolding in the year ahead. Our wish as always that the new year will be the best ever for each and every one of you and your loved ones - now let's go get 'em!  

The 2nd annual NamesCon conference is just 12 days away. The event gets underway Sunday, January 11 at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas where it will run through January 14, 2015. To give you an idea of what is in store here are 12 previously unpublished photos from the debut edition of NamesCon last January at the Tropicana. 

Above: The conveniently located Tropicana Hotel (just minutes from the airport) gives you easy access to the restaurants and amenities of two major hotels. The MGM Grand is directly across the street with a pedestrian bridge (seen behind the classic 57 Chevy that is permanently parked in front of the Tropicana) connecting the two properties. 

Below: Your NamesCon adventure begins at the registration desk in the hotel's conference area.

Above: NamesCon Founder Richard Lau, flanked by two Las Vegas showgirls, welcomes NamesCon attendees to the debut event in January 2014.

Below: Part of the a crowd of 500 attendees at one of the first 2014 sessions. For 2015 organizers  expect over 800 to attend!

Above: DNForum.com owner Adam Dicker was one of the featured speakers last January and he will be again at the 2015 edition of NamesCon.

Below: Sedo.com CEO Tobias Flaitz welcomed visitors to the company's booth in the Exhibit Hall last January.

Above: Donuts, the biggest company in the new gTLD space, knew how to draw visitors to their booth. They kept a fresh supply of real donuts on hand for visitors!

Below: Another popular part of the Exhibit Hall is the lounge area where you can kick back and make a call or meet with fellow attendees.

Above: You never know what you'll find going on at NamesCon. Last January a hard fought table tennis tournament drew a crowd of both players and spectators. In this match Donuts Co-Founder Daniel Schindler at top left squared off against NameNinja.com's Bill Sweetman (with back to camera).

Below: The biggest social event at NamesCon is the Water Night Party to raise funds for the Water School. Guests at last January's event, that raised over $111,000, included Bill Lozado (seen with a model he enlisted to help promote his domain portfolio)."

Above: Also at Water Night 2014 were NamesCon Co-Producer Jodi Chamberlain (right) and LegalBrandMarketing.com's Braden Pollock.

Below: Most of the money raised at Water Night 2014 came from pledges made to three brave men who volunteered to have their heads shaved in exchange for donations. Left to right, after the deed was done, are 101Domain.com's Joe Alagna, NamesCon Co-Founder Jothan Frakes and HasTraffic.com's Yancy Naughton.

If it looks like NamesCon 2014 was a great event - you're right, it was - and 2015 promises to be even better with greatly expanded floor space, an even more ambitious agenda and a crowd expected to be more than 50% larger than last year. We look forward to seeing you there!

We are fortunate to have some of the world's brightest and most compassionate businesswomen in our industry. When they join forces with one goal in mind you can bet good things are going to happen. You are about to see another example of that at the NamesCon conference coming up January 11-14, 2015 at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas. 

Today NamesCon Co-Producer Jodi Chamberlain announced a Women in Domaining Cocktail Social will be held Monday evening, January 12 from 7-9pm in the Whoisology Room (right across from the main Exhibit Hall) at the Tropicana. When the Social ends the big Water Night fundraising party for the WaterSchool  will begin just down the hall at the hotel's Havana Room night club. The ladies plan to get that special event off on the right foot with a gift of their own to the life saving charity.  

Jodi Chamberlain
NamesCon Co-Producer 

Part of the wall to wall crowd that filled the Tropicana Hotel's Havana Room in Las Vegas 
last January for NamesCon's big Water Night Party benefiting the Water School.

For those who want to bring a donation to the Women in Domaining Social,  Jodi noted several ways to do that:

1. You can make a donation on site at Women in Domaining by filling out a donation card.

2. You can bring a check to Women in Domaining (checks made payable to WaterSchool).

3. You can email her directly - Jodi at Namescon.com - and she will  help you make payments directly to the Water School. 

In addition to their collective effort as individuals, our Women in Domaining are also getting  corporate support. .CLUB, Igloo.com and DomainHoldings.com have all signed on to sponsor the upcoming Social. 

You can learn more about the Women in Domaining Social here and learn more about the WaterSchool here.

The headline above paraphrases one of my favorite Christmas quotes (from the late newscaster Eric Sevareid). Poet Edgar Guest said it in a more expansive way decades ago: 

“A man is at his finest towards the finish of the year;
He is almost what he should be when the Christmas season's here;
Then he's thinking more of others than he's thought the months before,
And the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for.
He is less a selfish creature than at any other time;
When the Christmas spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime.” 

Image from Bigstock

We wish each of you and your loved ones a sublime Christmas Day and pray that the Christmas spirit of joy, love and giving will live within you in every day to come! 

Nativity image from Bigstock

The 2nd annual NamesCon conference coming up January 11-14 at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas will have something the debut show last January did not - a Premium Live Domain Auction that will be staged by RightOfTheDot.com. NamesCon sent out an update on the event today noting that the auction is scheduled to run from 4:30pm-7:30pm (Pacific Standard Time) on Tuesday, January 13 and that it will be the only session running during that time frame (NamesCon has a multi-track format for most of the show with multiple sessions going on at the same time).

With the auction being the lone session the vast majority of the 800+ expected at attend the show will likely be in the auction hall - especially since a food and cocktail hour will be held there during the sale too! So, whether you are bringing a bidding paddle or just a big appetite, that will be the place to be - and if you can't be in Las Vegas you can still bid online during the simulcast video stream of the auction. You can also bid by proxy/left bid and by telephone. In the meantime pre-bidding has already opened.

After the conference, an extended online auction will start on January 15th and run through February 5th on Snapnames.com. That sale will feature another set of premium names that will not be in the live auction as well as any names that did not meet their reserve in the live auction. 

Whatever stage of the auction you may want to bid in, keep in mind that to participate an active SnapNames account is required. If you do not already have one you can set up a new SnapNames account here: https://www.snapnames.com/add_acct_1.jsp.

Make no mistake about it - veteran domain investor and educator Page Howe loves his hometown. The Los Angeles native (who was profiled in our August 2008 Cover Story) is now combining his passion for both LA and domains by opening a new office in Los Angeles to promote the .LA TLD. A building on Hollywood Boulevard will be his base in the real world while Howe's ILove.LA website carries the flag online.

While several new geo TLDs like .berlin, .london, .vegas and .nyc have been released this year as part of ICANN's new gTLD program .LA has been around for a long time. The extension was created as the country code for Laos, but was later re-purposed under a marketing agreement to serve as a designation for Los Angeles - in the same way that Montengro's .ME and Colombia's .CO were re-purposed to have different meanings. 

The latter two TLDs have enjoyed a good bit of success and Howe believes the massive Los Angeles market offers a similar ripe opportunity for .LA.

He Loves .LA!

Below: ILove.LA
Founder Page Howe

In a press release announcing his new office today Howe said, "Local is everything in online marketing. The time is right for companies and inside and outside Intellectual Property advisors to consider adoption in the .LA extension in advance of wider publicity and relaunch in 2015. Los Angeles is unlike any city in the world and a .LA domain allows a company to market to the tastes and styles found in Los Angeles." 

Howe said plans are also in the works for a "Rancho" Founders Program to help websites, companies and causes/initiatives with additional advertising and promotion across the .LA network, adding "Opportunities also exist to acquire discounted premium names in exchange for joint promotion and publicity."

You've got to hand it to Bill McClure - when this guy gets an idea he doesn't mess around! Just over six weeks ago Bill stunned the crowd at a closing night T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference party by announcing he had cut a deal with the .CLUB registry to buy the Coffee.club domain for $100,000 spread over 10 years.

Bill, who was already in the coffee business with his Coffee.org empire, promised to have a full blown coffee subscription club operating on the domain within a month. True to his word a Coffee.club website was up and taking orders before the end of November - and this week  customers began receiving their first shipments from the new company. 

Seeing a new business go from the registration of a domain name to creating a website to packaging and delivering a product this quickly is like seeing a sports car go from 0 to 60 in a split second. It just doesn't happen - but in this case it did. 

Bill McClure
Coffee.club Founder

After Oversee.net sold off the last of their high profile domain divisions, DomainSponsor.com, earlier this year (following the 2012 sales of Moniker.com and SnapNames.com) most have expected them to also jettison the Domainfest conferences they have been staging over the past decade (the last of which was held in Hollywood, California last spring).

That has now happened. On Wednesday (Dec. 16), Richard Lau, the founder of the NamesCon that just debuted last January in Las Vegas, announced that NamesCon has acquired Domainfest from Oversee for an undisclosed price. NamesCon promptly re-christened the opening day of their upcoming January 2015 show as Domainfest@NamesCon. 

With its rich history, the big question now is whether Domainfest will be given a new life of its own beyond its initial "name for a day" use at NamesCon. It looks as though it will. NamesCon acquired the Domainfest.com name along the with the conference and is already using it to promote NamesCon 2015. On the new home page at Domainfest.com, Lau states that Domainfest day at NamesCon will be "the first in a series of international DomainFest regional events."

NamesCon Co-Founder Richard Lau

If so, that would be a return to the roots of Domainfest which go back to smaller regional meetings in places like Los Angeles and Barcelona. It wasn't until 2007 that the large scale Domainfest Global events began with a show in Hollywood and a new domain in Domainfest.com that Donna Mahony had donated to Oversee (Donna staged her first Domainer's Choice Awards at the second Domainfest Global event in 2008). With Richard Lau and the entire NamesCon team focused on their upcoming sophomore show, now less than four weeks away, it will probably be awhile before they are ready to release more details on their plans for future Domainfest events. However, given what they have been able to do with NamesCon in such a short period of time, there will be a great deal of interest in the game plan they end up unveiling.

For the past three years Escrow.com and Hanna's Restaurant has staged an annual golf tournament in Southern California to raise money for the Semper Fi Fund and America's Fund. These funds provide immediate financial assistance and lifetime support to post 9/11 wounded, critically ill and injured members of all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces and their families, ensuring that they have the resources they need during their recovery and transition back to their communities.

This year's tournament at the Coto de Caza Golf and Racquet Club was staged November 10th (which happens to be the Marine Corps birthday!) and the total proceeds have now been tallied. Escrow.com wound up cutting a $95,000 check to each fund - $190,000 total - and that is only half the story. Go Daddy and The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation matched every dollar raised - bringing the total to $380,000!

As many of your know, Go Daddy Founder Bob Parsons is an ex-Marine and a long time contributor to veteran related causes. This 

year he and Renee's foundation are matching  anyone's donation to the Semper Fi fund dollar for dollar up to $5 million. If you want to donate between now and December 31, they will match your donation too.

With non-stop promotion from  Escrow.com and Hanna's Restaurant this year's Orange County Supports Our Troops Tournament (OCSOT is a 501(c)3 registered charity) attracted 233 players (with another 75 donors attending the tournament dinner) as well as some big time sponsors including FedEx, Cox, PepsiCo, Bank of America and others. 

Above: Among those standing out in the crowd at this year's tournament were (L to R): retired  Master Sergeant Davey Lind (Davey is a 20-year Marine veteran who lost both legs during his second deployment to Iraq in 2007 when his vehicle struck an IED), NHL hockey great Teemu Selanne, Escrow.com President Brandon Abbey and Golf Pro Rick Booth.

Below: Escrow.com's Jessica Schirner and Lisa Fikejs were on hand to welcome the more than 200 golfers who helped raise $360,000 for the Semper Fi Fund/America's Fund. 

This kind of support for our wounded veterans and their families is, of course, always good to hear about but with it coming in the Season of Giving, it seems especially timely right now. We hope everyone involved and all of our veterans have the happiest of holiday seasons and are richly blessed in the new year ahead.

A common complaint about ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution (UDRP) process is that decisions handed down by UDRP panels or individual arbitrators can be wildly inconsistent if not downright inexplicable. A perfect reminder of that came today when we got an interesting domain sale report (more on that in a moment) on the same morning that Michael Berkens published an article at TheDomains.com about a troubling UDRP decision involving EasyTrain.com that went in favor of London's easyGroup Limited.

Judge image from Bigstock  

Michael noted that the decision by a lone arbitrator, William R. Towns, appeared to give EasyGroup the right to every domain containing the word "easy" that the company holds now or may decide to trademark at any time in the future.

EasyGroup has claimed the rights to terms like EasyTrain, EasyCar, EasyGym and many others including EasyHotel. That last one brings us to the new domain sale I mentioned above. This morning I got a documented sale report (including a copy of the completed Escrow.com transaction) from Pascal De Vries showing that he sold EasyHotel.ch (a Swiss country code domain) last week for $21,800. De Vries said the buyer, represented by an agent from a negotiating company, was none other than easyGroup IP Licensing Ltd! 

Dates have been set for the 7th edition of the Domaining Europe conference in beautiful Valencia, Spain. Show founder Dietmar Stefitz will oversee the event set for April 23-25, 2015 at the Sorolla Palace Hotel. 

The Sorolla Palace, which also hosted the previous conferences in this series, offers a a show rate that is a remarkable bargain - just €70 a night for a double room with single occupancy (€75 for double occupancy).  We've stayed there and it is a very attractive modern hotel that is located close to Valencia's many attractions, including its waterfront on the Mediterranean Sea. 

The local hop on hop off bus stops at the hotel and is a great way to see the popular resort city that has some of the world's most stunning ultra-modern architecture as well centuries old historical landmarks. It is a great place for a conference which is why many attendees keep coming back year after year.

While the agenda is still be formulated you 

 Dietmar Stefitz
Domaining Europe Founder 

can also expect a diverse program that will feature domain experts and company representatives from around the world. We'll have updates on speakers and specific sessions as those are set leading up to the show.

Some of the attendees at the 2014 Domaining Spain Conference gathered  
on the front steps of the Hotel Sorolla Palace in Valencia, Spain for this shot.

This past Friday (December 5, 2014) was a memorable day for the management team at Rightside - the parent company of four well-known domain industry brands - registrars eNom and Name.com, aftermarket sale platform NameJet and new gTLD registry operator Rightside Registry. Leaders from the Kirkland, Washington based company spent the day in New York City where they hosted their first Investor & Analyst Day at the Nasdaq MarketSite, and capped off 

the day with Rightside CEO Taryn Naidu ringing the closing bell (Rightside trades in the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol NAME). NASDAQ and Rightside provided some photos from the busy day in the Big Apple. 

Rightside CEO Taryn Naidu presenting at the company's Investor & Analyst Day 
Friday (Dec. 5, 2014) at the NASDAQ MarketSite in New York City.

Above: CEO Taryn Naidu in front of the NASDAQ video wall 
shortly before ringing the closing bell Friday (Dec. 5, 2014).

Below: A wide view of the full Rightside team at the ringing of the closing bell Friday.

Above: A close up view of the Rightside team after ringing the NASDAQ closing bell.

Below: NASDAQ's video wall changes to display Rightside's ticker symbol: NAME

All told eight members of Rightside's management team presented during the day, providing investors and analysts with an in-depth look at how Rightside's new generic top level domains (gTLDs) are being used, how the company's end-to-end vertical integration has positioned it to capitalize on the new gTLD opportunity, and how the new gTLD program is transforming every aspect of the company's business.

Howard Lefkowitz
Founder & CEO, One Degree World

Las Vegas based One Degree World launched the first of what they say will be hundreds of revolutionary new travel and entertainment partner websites today and all of them are being built on new gTLDs. One Degree World (ODW) is a new company founded by Howard Lefkowitz (the well-known entrepreneur was once President and CEO of Vegas.com) who has put together a management team that includes executives who’ve worked for some of the world’s biggest brands including Wal-Mart, Google, Caesars, Amazon, Travelport, American Airlines and others. 

Lefkowitz said “One Degree World has reimagined and reinvented travel as a unique destination experience within the sites powered by our platform, taking travel beyond Point A to Point B to include what happens after you arrive, No longer will customers have to

search multiple websites to plan their trips, or even their entertainment and activities in their home market for that matter. We’ve developed patent-pending capabilities for booking everything from an airline ticket and hotel room to VIP table service at a club, restaurant reservations, or a ticket to a college football game, all self- contained for the consumer within each of our partner sites. It’s a game-changer for the travel and entertainment industries and this is just the beginning.”

All of the ODW sites have corresponding Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest accounts. Links to the social sites can be found on each website. The company said that each of the partner websites will include Guaranteed Best Pricing, Certified Rate Protector™ (Should the rate drop post purchase, for the same dates and terms, the reservation will be rebooked at the lower rate and the difference refunded to the customer.  This is automatic and the customer will receive an email about their newly lowered rate and newfound cash) and Curated Content and Reviews.

·     In addition the company said partner websites operated by the One Degree World e-commerce solution can orchestrate reservations for:

• More than 300 cities

• More than 500,000 hotels

• Nearly 900 airlines

• 26,000 tours and attractions

• Concert, sports, theme parks and event venues globally

• A myriad of restaurants that number in the thousands

• Accessibility in 58 different languages and 93 currencies

It is certainly an ambitious initiative and having a proven entrepreneur like Lefkowitz behind it makes the One Degree World launch one that people will be paying close attention to. It will be a major test of how well consumers will receive new gTLD websites.

For the 3rd time in as many weeks a 7-figure domain sale has come to light (with the most recent two both uncovered by George Kirikos). George dropped us a note today to report a $1 million sale of QNB.com that he discovered while  going through an SEC filing made by Pennsylvania's QNB Corp. (the parent company of QNB Bank). QNB Corp. sold their three-letter domain to foreign bank - Qatar National Bank - and filled the gap by moving their site to QNBBank.com.  

Million dollar image from Bigstock

We will be charting this sale in our next weekly domain sales report that will be out Wednesday evening (December 10). It will be the 11th 7-figure sale charted so far this year with four of those coming over the past five weeks. 

The hot streak started when we charted the $1,261,000 of  Power.com on November 12. A slow week followed by then on November 26 our weekly chart was topped by the biggest sale of the year to day, Z.com at $6,784,000. Then this week we were able to tell you about a deal George alerted us to that has Invest.com changing hands for more than $5 million. We haven't been able to chart that one yet for two reasons - 1) the buyer, while confirming the amount was over $5 million has not released the exact price paid and 2) the domain is still in escrow (perhaps being paid for over time). Now comes QNB.com which can be charted next Wednesday.

It is always good to close out a year with momentum on your side and if this trend continues 2014 will have a nice swan song indeed and leave many excited about the prospects for the new year ahead. 

Verisign released their latest quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief (.pdf file), covering 2Q-2014 this week and it contained a lot of good news. The operator of the .com and .net registries reported that 18.6 million domain names across all extensions have been added since the end of the same quarter a year ago - a healthy 7.2% year over year jump. 

That brought  the total number of domain name  registrations worldwide to over 280 million. 4 million domains were added in the 2nd quarter alone, a 1.4% boost from the previous quarter. 

Percentage-wise, the country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) performed even better than the market as a whole, growing 11.5% year over year to a total of  129.3 million domain names.

Verisign's .com and .net TLDs also continued to grow. The two extension, combined, totaled 128.9 million at the end of 2Q-2014, 3.7% higher than one year ago.  .Com, the world's most popular extension, accounted for the bulk of those with 113.7 million registrations. .Net stood at 15.2 million domains making it the 4th most popular in the world. Tokelau's .tk (which is given away free) was #2  and Germany's popular cctLD, .de, #4. China's .cn rounded out the first five (up two notches from the previous quarter, pushing Great Britain's .co.uk down a notch to 6th and .org to 7th).