The article which goes on to chat about Frank Schilling, Mike Mann, Rich Schwartz, Kevin Ham, Richard Lau and Brian Wick starts with this:

“”Have you ever visited TheDomains.com? ”

“The owner of the domain blog runs MostWantedDomains.com and WWMI.com. ”

“Michael Berkens is a master of misleading the end-user with unreliable sale data to score major domain sales. ”

“You want proof? VisitBerlin.com article/check comment section. Michael assumes his former VisitBerlin.com domain is comparable to VisitFlorida.com. ”

“He owns many top domain names worthy of high domain sales, but he seems to oversell less than appealing domain names at much higher prices.”

“Michael’s blog readers are essentially his robots, acting as he is like Moses leading them through the Red Sea.”"

So welcome all ye sinners who dare to sell a premium domain at premium prices to end users who know exactly what domain they want and why they want it.

All kidding aside I’m confused by the article which starts out insulting me for asking for I guess what he considers to be “too much money” from the poor innocent end users, and ends with don’t be the guy who sells Klout.com for $5K.

I’m also confused of why VisitFlorida.com isn’t excellent comparison for the valuation of VisitBerlin.com or why that sale isn’t an excellent FMV for other like domains.

In my experience most “end users” who write you are all college students, unemployed down on their luck guys with offering the last $1,000 they have in the world for your domain, or those who are going to use the domain for charitable purposes.

Funny never got an email from anyone who says ” We are a Fortune 500 company with a huge budget, what do you want for this domain?” or “We are a company that just got $5M in VC money and have an idea to turn your domain into a $100 Million dollars company what do you want for it?”

So are we are now 40 days into the new year I can tell you we have sold including domain names pending in Escrow.com almost $400,000 in domain names.

Two are under NDA but the rest are opened to full disclosure once they all close.

I guess Lady Gaga has her “Little Monsters” and now I have My “Robots”

Welcome to the club.…

Shares of the company are up  7%+ today on the news

Here is the press release:

“The Directors of Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (AIM:TLDH.L), the only publicly traded company focused exclusively on acquiring and operating new generic top-level domains (“gTLDs”), are delighted to announce that the Company has today conditionally placed 109,468,353 new ordinary shares (the “Ordinary Shares”) at a placing price of 8.25p per Ordinary Share (the “Placing Price”) with institutional and other investors to raise £9,031,139 before expenses (equivalent to approximately US$14.2 million at current exchange rates) subject to admission (the “Placing”).”

“The Company intends to use the Placing proceeds to provide additional working capital and in particular, to fund the application slots and subsequent fees for new gTLDs on behalf of itself and clients of Minds + Machines. ”

“The Company expects to submit multiple batches for application slots during the application window having already submitted for its first twenty application slots. In January, TLDH announced that Minds+Machines will also be providing the back-end registry services for the proposed new .BAYERN domain.”

Antony Van Couvering, CEO of TLDH, commented:
“We are delighted that both existing and new investors have responded so positively to our plan.  With a new cash balance of approximately US$25 million, no debt, and a public stock, we believe that TLDH is ideally positioned to participate in the new gTLD opportunity.”

Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman of TLDH, added:
”TLDH management believes that the increased capital will allow it to increase significantly the number of applications it is able to make, allowing it to develop a wider, more diversified portfolio of names in multiple languages and scripts.”

The new Ordinary Shares being issued pursuant to the Placing will, on issue, rank pari passu with the existing Ordinary Shares in issue and application will be made for the new Ordinary Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM. Trading in the new Ordinary Shares on AIM is expected to commence on or around 17 February 2012.”…

The seller was the .Co registry.

The buyer was Dolphin Energy which is a big oil company out of the United Arab Emirates.

Dolphin  put out a press release on January 26th last week (without the price listed) announcing the acquisition:

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, January 26, 2012:

“”Dolphin Energy Limited today announced that it has acquired the Internet domain name ‘dolphin.co’ from .CO Internet S.A.S., the company that manages the .CO root domain.”

“The company will use the domain name ‘dolphin.co’ to enhance its existing online presence with a short, memorable domain that will help the company to engage with its stakeholders locally and across the Middle East region more easily.”

“The company has also taken the opportunity to register the both ‘dolphin’ and ‘dolphinenergy’ names under the Arabic .emirates and .qatar root domains respectively.”

“Dolphin Energy transports natural gas from Qatar to the emirates of the UAE and Oman. The move to acquire the ‘dolphin.co’ domain name comes at a time when there is an increase in the number of companies acquiring .CO domain names.”

More about the company:

“”Dolphin Energy was established in March 1999 as an initiative of the Government of Abu Dhabi.

The founders had always conceived Dolphin Energy as a force for international cooperation – one that would unite the vision and resources of the region with multinational capital and expertise. Total of France was accordingly invited to become a shareholder in Dolphin Energy during 2000. After a further selection process, Occidental Petroleum of the USA became the company’s second international partner in 2002.

The three Dolphin Energy Limited shareholders are Mubadala Development Company with 51 percent, and Total and Occidental Petroleum with 24.5 percent each. Mubadala Development Company is wholly owned by the Government of Abu Dhabi.

Now that the price has been released it another nice .Co sale to a major company.

Congrats to the .Co registry and Dolphin Energy

 …

The application was filed by TBGK Trademark Holdings,  Beyoncé’s company to cover all things fashion as well as baby carriages, baby cosmetics, and diaper bags.

The article goes on to say that two other trademark applications filed after the babies birth have already been turned down:

“Fashion designer Joseph Mbeh, who submitted an application to trademark “Blue Ivy Carter NYC” on Jan. 11 — just four days after the baby was born. Another applicant filed on Jan. 20 for “Blue Ivy Carter Glory IV” to use on a line of fragrances. The trademark office has already denied both filings, saying the name belonged to a “very famous infant ” and consumers would falsely assume that the products were approved by the celebrity parents”

Of course since we are a publication concentrated on domain names, we checked it out and the domain name BlueIvy.com was registered way back in 1999 and goes to a placeholder for the registrar.

The domain name BlueIvyCarter.com on the other hand was registered on January 8th, 2012.

The baby was born on Saturday night January 7th and announced to the world on January 8th along with the name of the baby.

Were some of the most successful people in the entertainment world with their own highly successful businesses on top of the domain game and smart enough to register the .com domain name of their baby?

Look like they were not.

The domain name is under privacy at Godaddy.com, but if you check DomainTools.com to see the original registration it looks like the parents missed on registering the .com version of their baby’s name that they just trademarked.

The domain name BlueIvyCarter.com is going to a Godaddy default registrar PPC page.

BlueIvyCarter.net was also registered on January 8th and is going to a “tribute page” which indicates the domain is for sale.

The same person that registered the .net also registered the .org but that domain is going to the Godaddy default PPC page.

BlueIvyCarter.me didn’t get registered until January 13th, also not owned by the parents.

As for BlueIvyCarter.xxx that domain was registered on January 11th to an address in NY.

Hum

That domain does not resolve.

The bottom line this is a good lesson for all celebrities actually all parents,  maybe you should secure the matching .com domain name of your baby before announcing it to the world, especially if your planning on trademarking the name.…

In its new updated timeline ICANN under the date of  November 30, 2012 says:

“”In the ideal case, an application that has encountered no problems has passed evaluation by this date.

“The applied-for string can begin a transition that will result in being delegated into the root zone, and eventually the string will be live and reachable on the Internet as a TLD. ”

“However, some applications will be subject to special processes depending on the circumstances. For example, if more than one party has applied to operate the same TLD (a circumstance referred to as string contention), attempts to resolve the contention begin.”

“As you can see, the New gTLD Program forecasts a busy 2012.”

“Some new gTLDs will clear the process late in the year, and be ready for delegation in early 2013.”

“Other new gTLDs will have a longer path.”

You can read the ICANN announcement with the new gTLD time frame here

 …

In a story a couple of days ago the University of Hawaii (UH)  is none to happy that someone registered universityofhawaii.xxx and put up some porn on the domain and is trying to sell the domain name on eBay.com for $100K.

The UH has already threatening the porn web site operator with legal action if it doesn’t stop using the school’s name as its domain name and has given the site until Friday to stop using its name or the university has threatened to file a suit a federal suit.

Now “UH wants lawmakers to consider amending a bill on unauthorized computer use to include fraudulent use of Internet domain names.”

“We believe that individuals who willfully and purposely attempt to profit through misleading the public by misrepresenting governmental organizations should also be held accountable as the wrongdoers they are,” wrote University of Hawaii President M.R.C. Greenwood in written testimony to the State Senate Committee on Economic Development and Technology.”

“The committee’s chair, State Sen. Carol Fukunaga, said Wednesday she planned to work with the university to amend the bill to incorporate UH officials’ concerns.”

“One approach might be to update Hawaii’s decade-old statutes on ‘cybersquatting’ to include the fraudulent use of domain names, such as the kind of malicious representation we are now seeing.”

“I think it’s important to us that people who try to besmirch us don’t get to do it without some penalty,” Greenwood said.

It would be yet another attempt by the state to regulate the Internet.

However there is an old saying in the legal profession that basically says bad facts make bad law.

In this case, it could only take one domain name registration for a state to impose criminal and/or civil sanctions on those who register domain names.

 …

“The service called Drive”….will allow users to upload photos, documents, and videos to Google servers for sharing with others and later retrieval”"

Drive, which is expected to launch in the coming months, will be free for most consumers and business, with a premium service offered for those who want to store a large amount of files, the paper reported.

The domain name Drive.com has been owned for many years under semi privavy with a Paul Ginsburg listed as Administrative contact.

The domain name Drive.com inexplicably is going and has been going to a Network Solutions holding page.  The domain does get traffic with an Alexa rank of 2.1m, and gets according to compete.com between 1K-5K per month.  Of course that was before the news that Google is going with Drive.

The domain name TheDrive.com, is owned by Marchex.

 …

“In fact, we are prepared to transform our domain from a great place to find out everything you need to know about baseball’s past, present and future, and virtually become the “Facebook” of the baseball genre!”

“It is the wish of everyone here at Baseball.net to create a place for baseball lovers to share their videos, news, pictures, and other information. It is our hope that you will publish an article about Baseball.net to help us in our efforts to introduce our site to the baseball-loving masses.”

The domain name last sold in 2008 for $52,500

At the time, in 2008 many thought Baseball.net at $52,500 was a steal.

Although Arbel wouldn’t say how much he paid for the domain, the price was in the five figures.

It’s obviously a great domain name.

We congratulate them on the acquisition and wish them the best of luck in creating a must visit site for all baseball lovers.…

The high bidder’s ID was Maxbid.

In all there were 174 bidders in the auction with 7 bidding $5K or more.

The domain name ePhoto.com was a pure drop domain, meaning it didn’t drop to a certain service, and could have been caught by anyone.

According to DomainTools appears to have been last owned by Verisign and registered at melbourneit.com.

Whether Verisign actually owned the domain or took possession of it years ago on an earlier drop, and why they would simply allow it to drop again is anyone’s guess.

According to Screenshots.com the domain has been parked for a number of years.

Here is the old whois record:

Domain Name.......... ephoto.com
  Creation Date........ 1995-10-18
  Registration Date.... 2009-09-27
  Expiry Date.......... 2011-11-19
  Organisation Name.... Verisign Inc.
  Organisation Address. 21355 Ridgetop Circle
  Organisation Address.
  Organisation Address. Dulles
  Organisation Address. 20166
  Organisation Address. VA
  Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

Admin Name........... Verisign Hostmaster
  Admin Address........ Verisign, Inc.
  Admin Address........ 21345 Ridgetop Circle
  Admin Address........ Dulles
  Admin Address........ 20166
  Admin Address........ VA
  Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
  Admin Email.......... vshostmaster@verisign.com
  Admin Phone.......... +1.7039484300
  Admin Fax............ +1.7039484331

Tech Name............ Melbourne IT Tech
  Tech Address......... 636 Ellis Street
  Tech Address.........
  Tech Address......... Mountain View
  Tech Address......... 94043
  Tech Address......... CA
  Tech Address......... UNITED STATES
  Tech Email........... tech@melbourneitdbs.com
  Tech Phone........... +1.8669073267
  Tech Fax............. +1.6509633266
  Name Server.......... f4.nstld.com
  Name Server.......... g4.nstld.com
  Name Server.......... l4.nstld.com
  Name Server.......... a4.nstld.com…

“”Online video network Blip.tv announced a $12-million round of funding, and a rebranding. Now it’s known simply as “Blip.”

I went to DomainTools.com and see that Blip Networks, Inc.  acquired the domain name Blip.com in August of 2011 from Marvel Characters, Inc.

Of course we don’t know what Blip paid for Blip.com but now that they own both the .Com and .Tv domain name they simply changed their domain to Blip which they couldn’t have done if they didn’t own the .com

Interestingly enough Blip.com forwards to Blip.Tv not the other way around.

 …