NameIntellegence (the folks behind whois.sc, domaintools and the Domain Roundtable Conference), have announced a live auction for premium domain names.

The auction will happen during the Domain Roundtable Conference on August 15, 2007 in Seattle Washington.

You can also bid on the domains live via the internet.

They are now accepting submissions for (premium only) domains to be auctioned at the event. Only the top 450 names will be included, so bring your a game (and A domains :)

I submitted one of my better domains, but I don’t know if I’ll make the cut. It’s a bit difficult figuring out what the reserve price should be, hopefully they’ll give me some guidance.

No need in me reinventing the wheel on this one.

Here’s a link to the best discussion on how to buy a quality domain name from a domainer.

Best discussion evar.

Recently, I found myself in the market for a wiki.

To be honest, I wasn’t completely sold on the idea that wikis actually worked. The more
I read and researched, I found that a wiki, when done right, can be a powerful source for distributing information. It is a great way to build an information resource, and to extend a community of people who are helpful by nature.

I’m not a huge wikipedia fan (it does have it’s flaws), but I do find myself there sometimes looking up odd bits of information that are hard to find elsewhere. Like a list of free vector graphics editors, or where the “more cowbell” phrase came from.

So my first thought was to use MediaWiki (php based/opensource), the same software that powers wikipedia. I mean, it’s clear that it works; it’s running the largest wiki on the web. It’s scalable (see point number one :) It has a pretty wide userbase and community, which is very helpful for getting updates and help along the way. At the time, it was really the only wiki software that I knew about.
That was my first issue with MediaWiki: it’s all I knew. While that might be a good thing for some (narrows down the choices to make selecting a good option easier), for me, I like to do way too much research to find the product/service that fits my particular needs. I’m the kind of guy that actually likes to go and listen to knowledgeable salespeople in the stores try to sell me on something, just so I can learn new terminology and see what features people are looking for.

So I went googling for more wiki alternatives, and I came across WikiMatrix. It was perfect for what I needed. It gave a nice comparison chart of all the different wiki software packages that were out there and even had a handy dandy wiki wizard that asks you a few simple questions that help you decide which wiki was right for your perosnal/business needs!

The wizard helped me learn about features that I didn’t know were possible with wikis (like a WYSIWYG editor) and features that some wikis didn’t have that I thought were must have features (like a stored revision history so you can revert back in case of distructive edits).

Some things to consider when you are selecting a wiki for your site:

• what database will store the wiki pages? mysql, postresql, flatfile, microsoft access
• how much do you want to pay? open source only, support fees ok, paid licensed products preferred?
• linking structure preferred? simple URLs, query strings OK, CamelCase
• how active is the project? is it being actively developed, is there a strong userbase for peer support, is the project stable, but not being developed anymore. Read the member mailing lists for each, check the changelog to see how often new releases and security patches are deployed.
• Who can edit your wiki? Do you want the traditional open editing ability where anybody can edit any article, or do you want approved authors or user registration.
• Ease of installation and upgrading. Some wikis may require shell access (or even root access) to install. Some may require knowledge of php, manipulating mysql databases, and others may have easy to follow installation and upgrade procedures. How comfortable you are in handling technical stuff will sort of shape which one you should select.

I personally ended up going with PmWiki.

While it didn’t have some of the features I thought I might want (like WYSIWYG editing for non technical authors with great information to contribute), it did shine brightly in many other areas.

A lead developer who is passionate about the software. A changelog that almost reads like a daily stardate update from Captain Kirk. Frequent and succinct :) The frequency of the updates might scare some, but for me, once I realized how easy it was to upgrade from one version to the next without destroying your live wiki (or putting the site in maintenance mode for hours/days), I grew to love the constant updates.

PmWiki is easy to “skin” so it can match an existing site’s “look and feel”, and it has a lot of user contributed plugins (called Cookbook Recipes), that extend the already deep featureset of the software.

There are lots of wiki software packages out there, and wikimatrix is a great way to check them all out, kick the tires, and see which one fits your wikineeds. For me, PmWiki was the way to go. It was “free” under the General Public License (GPL), but I always contribute to free projects that make my life easier :)

It looks like Dotster has been named in a typo-squatting lawsuit filed by Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman.

The high end retail companies claim that dotster abused its status as an official icann registrar by mass registering names that are common typographical errors of federally registered trademarks.

Sample domain names referenced in the lawsuit include:

NeimuMarcus.com
playboibunny.com
oldnavyt.com

I’m not exactly sure how retailers Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman came to the conclusion that Dotster is actually the official registrant of the domains, since they all seem to be “protected” by private whois records (through privacypost, which is also run by dotster).

It’s not uncommon for registrars to monetize unused domains that their customers register. Often times when you initially register a domain, if you don’t change the nameservers right away, when the domain propogates, it will resolve to a domain registrars “parking page” that lets others that type in the domain know that the domain is reserved.

Over the years, this parking page has gone from a simple text notifying the web surfer that the domain is registered, but not is use, to a more commercial page with the registrars higher profit margin offerings (web hosting accounts) and even paid advertising in the form text ads.
I think the scary part here is the boundary that appears to have been allegedly crossed by dotster as an official registrar (who also runs their own ad network for parked domains at revenuedirect).

Did dotster cross a line? Is the lawsuit aimed at the wrong company/individuals? I guess we’ll find out in the upcoming months.

Recently The Register published a news story (and another) about a man (Paul Dell) who is being sued by the computer manufacturer (Dell Computers) for acts of “parasitism and of unfair competition”.

It seems Dell, Inc feels that the Spain based web designer’s domain name (dellwebsites.com) is deliberately infringing on their trademark because the company allegedly issued a press release in 2000 stating they were going into the Small Business Website Hosting market.

I’m definitely not a lawyer, but this seems like a BIG stretch for Dell, Inc’s intellectual property rights attorneys. Seems like an extreme case of reverse domain name hijacking.

Maybe Dell is worried about the direct navigation aspect of the DellWebsites.com domain name?

For example, maybe some of the Dell Corporation customerstype in dellwebsite.com into their browser looking to buy a Dell computer. Dell, Inc seems to have owned dellwebsite.com since 11/2001.

Unfortunately for Dell, Inc, Paul Dell has owned dellwebsites.com since 4/2001 (7 months prior) and looking at archive.org, it seems he has never tried to even remotely take advantage of the similarity in names.

From day one Paul Dell’s website seems to have been about website design services for his local clients and from his meta tags to his footer, it doesn’t seem like he has ever even made mention of Dell computers. I don’t see how a customer could get confused.

Maybe the fact that he didn’t mention his non association with Dell Computers in a disclaimer hurts his cause?

I can sort of see how Dell might try to stretch the direct navigation aspect of it, but in my non-lawyerly opinion, it seems like it would be a big stretch.

This seems like a misguided case of intellectual property rights laywers gone wild. I have a feeling that this matter is also caught up in the jungle of corporate bureaucracy. Michael Dell couldn’t have had this type of action in mind when he started his computer manufacturing company back in 1984.

Unfortunately for Paul Dell, he is forced to spend his hard earned money fighting this (seemingly frivolous) lawsuit.

Although the cases are different, maybe Paul Dell can take a page from Hank Mishkoff’s story and fight back. It would be great to see foundations like citizen.org or eff.org get involved.