New.net lauched today, with their attempt to create their own TLD registrar that seems like a bastardization of DNS. Most people will need to
download a plugin, is there any chance this could be successful? Is ICANN doing anything to stop them or will they just die on their own?
posted by mathowie
on Mar 5, 2001 -
8 comments
Yet Another Domain Name Dispute Develops (YADNDD):
chunkymunky.com gets a Cease & Desist from
chunkymonkey.com. One is a windows software site, the other a fan site about a cartoon character. Is there any cause for confusion on the part of users wanting to visit either site (actually, one would have to misspell "monkey" in order to get to the windows site)? Should the chunkymunky.com site owner have taken down his/her site? Who is going to protect domain owners from future things like this happening?
posted by mathowie
on May 23, 2000 -
21 comments
Unbelievable news nugget of the day: my friend Matt Lavallee has been slapped with a cease-and-desist order from
the Mattel Toy Corporation for his personal domain,
mattl.com. I guess no one with a name that sounds like a misspelled company is allowed to buy domains from now on? Something needs to be done, corporations do
not own the web.
posted by mathowie
on May 8, 2000 -
62 comments
Here's a nice survey of geographic location of domain name ownership. I was surprised to see that people in
Los Angeles own more domains than San Francisco, but I assume the researcher didn't lump all the Silicon Valley cities together to get that number. I'm sure a "Bay Area" grouping would be number one. Of the .com, .org, and .net addresses, the US still leads the world with 2/3 of all addresses in that domainspace, so I guess the web will continue to be American-centric for some time.
posted by mathowie
on Feb 14, 2000 -
1 comment
Today I was once again reminded why I hate
domain squatters so much. I wanted to find the website for
Scream 3, but
scream3.com is some half-assed hacked site. Every domain with "scream3" in it
seems to be taken (some by Miramax), but none of them resolve to a movie site. The only one that looks halfway official is
in french. Here it is, opening weekend, and there doesn't seem to be an official site up that I can use.
posted by mathowie
on Feb 6, 2000 -
3 comments
The delay in adding new top level domains drags on, and there seems to be no solution in sight. ICANN can't agree on whether or not to add new TLDs like .biz, .cars, or .corp., but they are discussing it at an upcoming meeting in March. I would hope they add enough domains to make domain squatting difficult, but I bet large corporations will just buy everything with their name it anyway, and fight over others' use of their name with a different TLD. What a mess.
posted by mathowie
on Jan 28, 2000 -
0 comments
Finally! eToys.com drops the suit against ETOY.com and agrees to pay up to $40,000 of their legal fees. Finally! Now, I wonder what the group of people I built
etoys-sucks.com with are going to do with the domain?
posted by mathowie
on Jan 25, 2000 -
1 comment
Here's a gross mis-use of the web:
800-357-7766.com. This mail order company is spamming the airwaves with commercials for their goofy 'tap lights,' and at the end of each commerical, they advertise their website with this unwieldy address. For less than $50, the company could have bought '
taplights.com' and directed customers there, but instead they force people to write down an address that goes against all the reasons why we have the domain registry in the first place. Why don't they just give our their IP address instead? It's about as useful as their phone number domain name.
posted by mathowie
on Dec 25, 1999 -
0 comments
Network Solutions has pulled etoy.com's domain record and email sent to any etoy.com address is bouncing. Since when did a judge in Southern California and a domain registrar in Virginia ever get the idea that they control the internet and can make these decisions that affect the world? In response to this, one of the protestors bought
fuck-you.com, which is currently pointing at etoys.com.
posted by mathowie
on Dec 15, 1999 -
0 comments
A group of folks from the
evolt.org mailing list decided to do something to protest etoys's recent actions. One person purchased a domain, another setup web space, a couple people wrote some articles and
I designed the site. Keep that boycott going.
posted by mathowie
on Dec 9, 1999 -
0 comments
Thanks to the scarcity of good domain names, we're stuck with stupid ideas like
piiq.com. Here's their deal: you put the letter 'p' and 'q' around anything you want, and their site will come up, like
pbookq.com,
ptoysq.com, and
pfoodq.com. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
posted by mathowie
on Nov 28, 1999 -
1 comment
I'm quickly realizing that
everything I buy comes with a URL. Tonight I ordered a pizza, which came in a box emblazoned with
www.DominosLA.com, and I noticed that now I can even
order my pizzas from dominos online. Even with all this new tech, Domino's still needs to add one thing: an extra field in their customer database for tip rating. I tip heavily and would love to get better service as a result.
posted by mathowie
on Nov 11, 1999 -
0 comments
I noticed today that
zipper.com's available domain name list isn't working as well as it used to. Now that
Register.com is a registrar, the zipper dictionary database isn't picking up names registered at Register.com. I also noticed that anything remotely cool or useful on the zipper list has already been bought by domain speculators (squatters).
posted by mathowie
on Oct 14, 1999 -
0 comments
