T-Error

USPS wins domain dispute for mobile domain name.

I wonder if the final decision was sent to the United States Postal Service via Fedex.

USPS has prevailed in a dispute over the domain name USPS.mobi, in a case heard by National Arbitration Forum. The decision is written in Chinese, but a crude Google translation tells the story.

According the the case files, the registrant of the domain name managed to get it in the sunrise period. USPS alleged that he provided false information about a non-existent Chinese USPS trademark in order to obtain the domain during the .mobi sunrise, a period in which intellectual property holders can stake claim to a domain. The complainant seems to deny that he knew he was doing this, and had only responded to a phone solicitation. (If anyone can read Chinese and confirm this, let me know.)

Now for the forty-four cent question: will USPS use the domain it just won?

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

Related posts:

1. .mobi gears up
2. Big Companies Go After .Mobi Domain Names
3. Auction Results: Games.mobi Headlines Lackluster .Mobi Auction

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UK domain name will clear six figures.

The domain name Rent.co.uk is set to sell on Sedo this Friday for at least £65,000 GBP. That’s about $107,000 USD at today’s exchange rates. So far there’s only one interested buyer in the domain name, which would chart itself well for sales of .co.uk domains.

8q.com will also close on Friday. It has attracted two bidders and a top bid of $10,100.

The most active auction at Sedo right now is for xoxide.com. It has 71 bids and a current price of $7,611. The auction includes the popular web site for computer modification tools. The current owners are shutting it down and putting it up for sale. According to the sales page at Xoxide.com, the site does roughly $200,000 in monthly revenue. The key measure — profits — is not disclosed. The site received over 300,000 unique visits in August. The xoxide.com auction ends September 17.

Here are some other auctions at Sedo this week worth keeping an eye on:

Motel.info 3,500 EUR
Ballpointpens.co.uk £1,000
61.eu 950 EUR
World.im $650
Trailer.org $410
Important.org $365
Ocean.info $240

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

Related posts:

1. Sedo’s Numeric Domain Auction Picking Up Steam
2. Auction Watch: Poker Domain Hits $87,500, Moniker Auction Ends Today
3. Domain Auction Watch: DOMAINfest and Sedo

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News bytes to start your Tuesday.

Here are a few domain name news items for the week:

Domain Name Wire Radio is coming. More later.

Parked/Why Park Forum. Parked.com and WhyPark have created a user forum at forum.parked.com. Parked’s Donny Simonton has always been active on message boards, so you can rest assured you’ll get direct access through this forum. Hint: register for the forum to get more content.

Got travel traffic?. If you have a good portfolio of travel domains getting xx,xxx visitors per month, shoot me a note. I have someone who wants to talk to you.

Yahoo’s updated traffic quality algorithm has gone into effect. Some domain parkers are complaining, but many of them probably only make a dollar a day, anyway. Remember: quality of traffic matters!

XsitePro thoughts. I’ve long raved about Xsite Pro. The only problem is I still can’t find anyone that creates good custom templates for it. They’re always so amateur.

SedoPro Partner Forum. Just a few weeks until Sedo rolls out the red carpet for VIP parking clients. Most enjoyable few days you’ll ever spend with fellow domainers.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

Related posts:

1. Domain Name News Bytes for Wednesday, July 22
2. Top Domain Name News Stories of September 2007
3. Top 5 Domain Name News Stories September 2008

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Got the .com? You have a right to ccTLDs and other TLDs, says arbitrator.

Here’s a World Intellectual Property Organization case that should raise some alarms.

A panelist has awarded the domains sexywebcam.mobi and sexywebcam.tv to the owner of SexyWebCam.com, which also has a trademark for SexyWebCam.com. Arbitrator James A. Barker noted that the trademark includes .com, and is very different from having a trademark to the term ’sexywebcam’. Nonetheless, he found the domains were confusingly similar to the .com owner’s mark.

To be fair, the respondent argued his case poorly. As Barker writes:

The difficulty with this argument is that the Respondent provides little evidence to support it. It seems plain that the term “sexywebcam” cannot be found in a dictionary, and so is not generic is that sense. No evidence is provided that the conjoined term “sexywebcam” is generic or descriptive. No evidence is provided of the use of that term by third parties, which might demonstrate that it has the descriptive value suggested by the Respondent. While the Panel believes that the term “sexywebcam” may have descriptive connotations, no evidence is provided that it is, in fact, used in that way.

In other words, the respondent’s arguments may have been valid, if he had just provided a little bit of evidence.

But this case should have still gone the other way. Finding confusing similarity sets a bad precedent. By Barker’s logic, if I have a trademark to domain.mobi, I could win the confusing similarity argument to the owner of a .com. If he bought the .com from someone after I registered the .mobi, I could win the .com.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

Related posts:

1. Refreshing Discourse from a Domain Name Arbitrator
2. Arbitrator Has Harsh Words for AOL in Domain Dispute
3. Arbitrator Says Complainant Harassed Domain Owner

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Sedo, discusses the benefits of building a domain portfolio of keyword domains to improve traffic to your site while improving conversions…

Many savvy publishers are looking at cost effective ways to drive traffic to their sites and many are going back to the building blocks of Internet traffic; they are remembering the importance of generic, keyword domain names. 

For any publisher, quality keyword domains…

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Some Engineering crew at Google have banded together to form a new Google team called the Data Liberation Front. Their main goal? – to make it easy for users to “liberate”  their personal data out of Google products. The Data Liberation Front’s motto:

Users own the data they store in any of Google’s products. Our team’s goal is to give users greater control by making it easier for them to move data in and out.

Google’s Data Liberation Front also believes that users should not be charged for taking out their data from any online services. And so Google is offering tools which users can use freely to export their data from Google products and services.

The National Data Liberation Front has already started their work, liberating over half of all Google products from Blogger, Gmail and Google App Engine. User data from Google sites and Google Docs will soon be liberated easily as well.  So the next you opt out of these Google products,  for sure you won’t have a hard time exporting your data to other online services.

More information can be found the the Front’s official blog and official site.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

All Your Data Belong to You, Says Google’s Data Liberation Front

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Bing has just taken web search into  new heights via a beta feature called Visual Search. Launched today at the TechCrunch50 event,

“Visual Search is a new way to refine search queries through imagery, particularly for sets of results that tend to be more structured.”

Basically what Bing’s Visual Search does is to present search results arranged into virtual data grouping galleries which can be used to refine user search results.  Whereas traditionally search engines would let us refine search by typing search parameters, Bing’s Visual Search feature will only let you click on images to drill down onto your search results.

You can try the beta of Visual Search by going to Bing.com/visualsearch or watch a demo of  Bing’s Visual Search here. Visual Search is currently available for the following categories. If you want to see it in action, check out the following categories:

Entertainment
100 heroes and villains
Billboard’s past albums
Billboard’s past songs
Film legends
Greatest movies
Movies in theaters
Popular books
Popular celebrities
Popular DVDs
Popular TV shows
Pulitzer winning fiction
Top albums
Top songs

Famous People
FBI’s most wanted
Popular celebrities
US politicians
US presidents
US vice presidents
World leaders

Reference
Dog breeds
Periodic table
Travel destinations
US politicians
US presidents
US states
US vice presidents
World leaders
Yoga poses

Shopping
Cell phones
Digital cameras
Handbags
HDTVs
New cars
Popular books
Popular DVDs
Portable GPS
Pulitzer winning fiction
Top albums
Top iPhone apps

Sports
MLB players
MLB teams
NASCAR drivers
NBA players
NBA teams
NFL players
NFL teams
NHL players
NHL teams
UFC fighters

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Bing Innovates with Visual Search

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I have taken a look at how free web-based dictionaries can be useful for keyword research.

Now, there’s one more way to use those (and other) dictionaries: research English idioms and set phrases.

While most copywriters are surely getting the idea why this may be useful, some SEOs may be unaware of what I am actually talking about.

So, researching idioms may be useful for:

• Getting more keyword and content ideas;
• Gaining a deeper understanding of the topical language;
• Finding more catchy domain names ideas; etc

UrbanDictioanry.com

Urban Dictionary is a great tool to research contemporary slang and Internet jargon. While most people know how to use it, not everyone knows where to find derived terms and phrases. So the steps to take are:

1. Search for your base word;
2. See the letters in the top menus;
3. Click the letter your base term starts;
4. Now you should see all the terms and phrases starting with the same combination of letters:

2. Phrases.net

Phrases.net seems to be quite a new dictionary of idioms (hence not really large database) but what I liked about the tool is that it searches not only the idioms but also the definitions and even sample sentences (thus you will get the list of all related phrases and idioms).

You’ll have to scroll down to actual search results under the ads:

3. TheFreeDictionary.com

The Free Dictionary also offers separate section for idioms: for every word searched it lists:

• The idiom;
• Its definition;
• A few examples of usage:

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Taking Advantage of Idioms Dictionaries

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There are two main reasons searching without having to load search results page may be useful: (1) save time: no need to open a new tab; (2) search without getting distracted from your working process (writing, brainstorming, etc).

1. Search Results in Your IM

Supported IMs (add the following accounts to your buddy list; search bots by techbangalore.com and the100rabh):

• Google Talk – sbot@bot.im
• Yahoo Messenger – searchbot@ymail.com
• Windows Live Messenger – searchbot@live.com

Supported search engines:

Now, send a message to the bot following this format [identifier search term], example:

[t seo]

The tool will list top (most recent) Twitter search results for "SEO" (I was using GTalk):

[g SEO]

Note 1: only first 4 results will be displayed for Google (because of the API limitations)

Note 2: shortcuts (Google calculator, define: search, currency converter) won’t work

(hat tip to MUO)

2. Search Results in the Preview Pop-up 

Ubiquity is an awesome addon that allows to speed up plenty of various tasks (which deserve a separate review post, I guess) including search.

Supported search engines: almost any (you can teach the tool new commands in case it doesn’t know the search engine you are using)

To search Google for example, you will need to do the following:

1. Install the extension and restart the browser;

2. Use CTRL+space (Windows) / option+space (Mac) / alt+space (Linux) to see a command input box in the upper-left of your browser.

3. Type G and the tool will "guess" you want to search Google, so you can click "Enter" to open Google in a new tab OR you can keep typing and the search results preview will be displayed in the preview window:

You can go to any result in the preview by pressing CTRL+ALT+Result#

3. Search Results in the Preview Drop-down 

With the FireFox addon called Peers (reviewed by me previously) you can see first search results while you are typing. The tool is installed like a regular search plugin and works rather fast.

(Supported search engines: Yahoo, Google, eBay, Amazon, Wikipedia, etc)

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

3 Ways to Search Without SERPs

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Posted by Michael Cohen, Product Manager, Video Search Team

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