2007 June archive at Conceptualist.com, By Sahar Sarid

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Archive for June, 2007

Moniker To Continue Auction Momentum, Bringing Domain Auction To Affiliate Summit

Published on June 30, 2007 in Domain Names. 0 Comments

Spotted via the Affiliate Summit blog:

Moniker’s successful Live Domain Auction will be taking place at Affiliate Summit on Monday, July 9 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami.

The domain auction will provide an opportunity for affiliate marketers to secure premier web addresses. The master inventory of available domain names has been announced and they are now available for download.

Featured domains include”

AffiliateDirectory.com
AffiliateProgram.org
AffiliateSoftware.com
BirthControl.com
Commercial.net
DiscountedBooks.com
DiscountMall.com
Elections.com
eSports.com
FantasyFootball.org
GED.net
InsuranceRates.com
KIX.com
MusicTV.com
NewYorkRealty.com
OneWayFares.com
PDA.net
PokerAffiliates.com
Slots.com
SpecialSavings.com
Vodka.net
WineGallery.com

Brett Tabke of WebmasterWorld interviews “Domain King” Rick Schwartz

Published on June 30, 2007 in Domain Names. 1 Comment

Brett Tabke, WebmasterWorld editor, interviewed Rick Schwartz, AKA the domain king, AKA webfather, founder of the industry leading show, Targeted Traffic conference. The interview took place during the record breaking NYC Traffic show (07).

Spotted via “Digital I.T. Blog“:

(Source: WebmasterWorld)

Blogging Blunder #1 - Not Owning Your Own Domain Name

Published on June 30, 2007 in Domain Names. 0 Comments

This is becoming Video day here at The Conceptualist.

(Note To Franky - Watch this one carefully)

Rick Schwartz Declares IPhone A Winner

Published on June 30, 2007 in Business. 2 Comments

Rick has a way to see things long before they happen. If he says something that involves the future, I tend to listen carefully.

From RicksBlog.com:

The net just got a little more mobile. Email just got easier and I am still counting how many devices are actually in the iphone and what is to come in the 2nd generation. Summer surfing just got a little better.

WELL DONE!! The bar has not only been raised, it has been moved and it will take years for anyone to catch up.

I would like to hear more of Rick’s perspective how the iPhone will effect the way business is done in the future, especially in terms of web navigation. I will ask Rick to come and comment here. Wish me luck! (edit: Thanks Rick for the comment!)

On that iPhone note, I just went to Youtube and did a search for “iphone” to see search for some user reviews. I came across this video, Conan’s iphone coomercial. Enjoy!

Lawrence Ng, CEO Of Oversee.net, Wins Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2007 Award

Published on June 29, 2007 in Business and Domain Names. 1 Comment

Spotted via Frank Schilling’s SevenMile.com:

Ng’s Dedication To Developing Cutting Edge Online Marketing Solutions Establishes Oversee As A Leader In The Los Angeles Business Community

Lawrence Ng, Co-Founder and CEO of Oversee.net (Oversee), a leading technology-driven online marketing solutions company, was named a winner of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2007 award for the Greater Los Angeles program in the technology category. The award recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs who are building and leading dynamic growing businesses.

Oversee was founded in 2000 by Lawrence Ng and Fred Hsu, who were among the first to recognize the importance of the direct navigation business. Oversee has a portfolio of some 600,000 names, and its domain monetization service, DomainSponsor, monetizes more than 2 million domains for third parties. Oversee recently completed the acquisition of SnapNames, operator of the largest available source of expired and deleting domain names. The strategic purchase establishes Oversee as one of the most powerful domain name companies in the marketplace. The Company also operates a marketing services business, acquiring consumer traffic and converting it into qualified leads. Oversee offers marketing services in multiple verticals including mortgages and travel. Its brands include Low.com and Lowfares.com.

“It’s a privilege to be recognized by Ernst & Young for their Entrepreneur of the Year award, especially given the talented group of finalists who competed this year. This is an honor that I share with all members of the Oversee team, who have dedicated themselves to developing cutting edge technologies and online marketing solutions that lead to measurable results for our partners,”? commented Ng.

Oversee.net was recently ranked as the third fastest growing private business in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Business Journal, and received the 2007 “Internet and New Media Company of the Year”? Award by the Technology Council of Southern California.

(Direct source)

A year ago Lawrence and the DomainSponsor gang invited me to LA for a couple of days. Treatment of kings is an understatement, and the time spent with Lawrence — priceless.

Congratulations Lawrence, well deserved !!

Read/WriteWeb Suggests StandardURL

Published on June 28, 2007 in Business and Domain Names. 4 Comments

Calling it “Standard URL’s”, Read/WriteWeb’s author Alex Iskold suggests the following:

We are used to a Web where each site has its own copy of the information. Each web site is a silo. But that does not need to be the case. If web sites agree on how to represent things like books, music, movies, travel destinations and gadgets, then we would spend a lot less time searching. Imagine that the URL for the Harry Potter Goblet of Fire book is this:

amazon.com/books/j-k-rowling/harry-potter-and-the-goblet-of-fire

In other words, if there was a standard way to turn things into URLs, then finding information would be a lot easier.

The basic idea behind standard URLs is simple - given a type of object, like a book or a movie or a music album, create a URL schema that can be used by any site. Here are some basic examples to get us started:

* /music/jack-johnson/in-between-dreams
* /movies/alejandro-inarritu/babel

First, the objects are divided into categories such as books, music and movies. The category is followed by a major attribute such as author, artist or director. Finally there is the title of the object. So for example, if this scheme worked, we could type in:

netflix.com/movies/alejandro-inarritu/babel

…to get to that movie on Netflix. Or:

http://www.blockbuster.com/movies/alejandro-inarritu/babel

…to get to the movie on Blockbuster.com.

In terms of technology there’s nothing new here. All that is needed is to put a proposal out for web sites to agree on, or if you want to get mass reach quick, get the big search engines to adopt such a proposal and give benefits to those who structure accordinally. On a Second thought, I’m sure search engines will want nothing to do with it as it reduces their value offering. More direct navigation, any sort of it, is less power to search engines.

How do you get mass scale quickly? team up with the biggest and largest influential group that can benefit from it - domain owners. The more address bar usage, the better it is for domain owners, and with StandardURL, the better it is for content owners as by bypassing the search engines, they reduce dependancy and increase savings (less ad purchasing needed).

BMW Goes After The Cat

Published on June 28, 2007 in Domain Names. 0 Comments

(image source)

From CircleID:

In one of the first (if not the first) UDRP cases for .cat, the auto giant BMW appears to have filed a WIPO case over the BMW.cat domain name.

Hope they lose so I can write about how BMW got scratched, or otherwise, I would have to write about a dead cat..

(image source)

Flowchart.com - The Reviews Are In

Published on June 28, 2007 in Business and General. 2 Comments

So it’s been about a month and a half since our initial beta release. So much is coming in V.2 in a couple of months but I was just wondering, what are they saying so far? Here’s a small collection of reviews from across the web.

Going With The Flow

Of these three, I think you’ll find Flowchart.com to be the most refreshing and versatile. It offers you the standard shapes you’ve come to know in flowcharts.

But one of the things that wow-ed me was it’s extensive library of other objects in clip art and photo formats: food, construction, computers, people, animals, and lots more. It was easy to create and modify my sample. You can also share your creations with the public, collaborate with others, and save as a PNG or PDF.

Flowcharts: Free and Easy with Flowchart.com

Here’s a Web 2.0 site that makes flowcharting as easy and enjoyable as it could ever be. Flowchart.com has a beautiful and intuitive interface, requires no downloads or plugins, and is free. That’s a sweet combination.

Note: Did I mention we have applied long ago for “web 3.0″ trademark? I find it a little offensive they call our product “web 2.0″. So mid 2006!

Flowchart.com - The MS Visio killer?

Just to add some spice to the Office20 space, FlowChart.com seems to be shaping up nicely to take on the flowcharting market controlled by MS Visio and the upstart Gliffy. While the machine spoken demo at FlowChart.com is one of it’s kind that I have come across in the recent history, the app looks feature rich enough to keep an eye out for. , I especially like the real-time collaboration piece, which looks similar to what Writely enables. Again the editing might be locked down to the object/shape being manipulated.

if you have not signed up yet, it’s Flowchart.com - Feedback is highly appreciated!

Life @ Google

Published on June 28, 2007 in Business. 0 Comments

If you run a growing organization this will give you a great insight into the way Google thinks and operates. That 20% “free time” from Google looks like it is really a more complex offering then just what it’s initially sounds like, and seems to be more of a marketing spin to make you feel good when you join then actually giving you free time to play with your own projects, whatever they are.

What is the culture really like? How many hours are people actually working? What are the least amount of hours you can work before you are looked down upon?

The culture at Google is very much like the old culture at Microsoft - back when the company felt like most employees were in their mid 20’s. These kids don’t have a life yet so they spend all of their time at work. Google provides nearly everything these people need from clothes (new T-shirts are placed in bins for people to grab *twice* a week!) to food - three, free, all-you-can-eat meals a day. Plus on-site health care, dental care, laundry service, gym, etc. Imagine going from college to this environment and you can see how much everyone works. People are generally in the building between 10am and about 6pm every day, but nearly everyone is on e-mail 24/7 and most people spend most of their evenings working from home.

This culture changes a bit with more experienced folks. They generally work 10a - 6pm like the new hires, and most of them are on email until around midnight. It’s pretty common for them to be working most of the evening, too.

20% of your time on personal project. How many people actually get to use it? If so, how do they use it? Does Google own your personal project?

“20% is your benefit and your responsibility.”?

In other words, it’s your job to carve out 20% of your work week for a project. If you don’t carve out the time, you don’t get it. Your project needs to be tacitly approved by your manager. Whatever it is, is owned by Google. If you’re organized, you can “save up”? your 20% and use it all at once. It’s not unheard of for people to have months and months of “20% time”? saved up.

Most people don’t actually have a 20% project. Most managers won’t remind you to start one.

Read more here.

Marchex 100K’s SEO/Content Play

Published on June 27, 2007 in Domain Names and Search Technology. 4 Comments

Once ahead of the pack (set the standards for domain portfolio purchasing), now they are at it again. Marchex is leading the pack with a massive SEO/content play by releasing over 100K sites simultaneously.

SearchEngineLand coverage:

If you can believe it, Marchex has simultaneously launched more than 100,000 local and vertical search sites representing over a billion pages. The move is probably unprecedented outside of a search index. In May of 2006 Marchex acquired local search site OpenList and has used its technology assets and methodology to enable this launch. Before this acquisition, its domain portfolio business was essentially a collection of links to advertisers.

But now sites like Cuisine.com or BayAreaHotels.com or 10013.com, among scores of others, are real sites with navigation, search, user-generated content and refinement filters.

These sites still contain ads but they’re mostly content sites in which people can rate businesses and perform the kinds of local searches they would do on a yellow pages site or local search engine. See, for example, this result for “Sushi, New York” from Cuisine.com.

Smart folks but be careful. When you do such a massive update you also raise all flags from search engines to find the pattern and address the issues. Not sure if they are aware of it. Either way, it’s a step in the right direction.