Technology never seems to slow down. I have been on the internet for hours discovering more publishing options for online content providers. My latest finding is a means of creating a custom widget which displays your blog’s pictures and content.

As I write this, I’ve come upon enough new findings to keep me busy for days. Consequently, this post will be only a taste, and not a full review of the various widget technologies available. Suffice it to say that web design is advancing rapidly. Once again, WordPress seems to be a core software product that can take you in almost any direction you can imagine.

The widget below can be created in any size to fit even within limited spaces. It’s quite customizable and can be configured to suit different applications. Not sure yet if there will be any unexpected problems, but will test run it in several situations to see how it performs. Looks like a neat way to better publicize your work. At Widgetbox!

Internet Domains web publishing, widgets

On June 25, 2009 Sedo will hold a private auction for the premium domain name, Wealth.com. A separate Career Auction will occur for one week between June 3 and June 10 and will focus on career domain names like Resumes.com.

Job related search queries have increased considerably according to Google. Individuals are looking for new employment opportunities, and internet search is a primary method of scanning the jobs market.

A press release by Sedo highlights the power of generic domain names in the greater business market. A May 19th release states …

By owning a generic domain that describes a company’s product or service, or a domain that contains popular related search terms, such as Wealth.com, an organization can significantly improve its website’s organic search ranking, while saving money on PPC (pay-per-click) advertising costs.

Popular online jobs sites like CareerBuilder and Monster have been joined on the internet stage by the likes of Simply Hired, USAJobs.gov, Dice.com, Job.com, and The Ladders. A healthy field of competition which will only get hotter.

Jobs, employment, career development, and online education are evolving as very high interest areas with special niche appeal to both domainers & general internet users.

Internet Domains career, employment, jobs

The United States official country code, .US, is working its way through American businesses and into the hearts & minds of global internet users.

PoliceReports.US is another example of a unique company working with local police departments and local consumers. They are a turnkey solution for providing police reports either online, or in person at customized kiosks (located onsite in the police dept. lobby).

PoliceReports.US offer everything needed, at no cost, to police departments who would like to offer fee-based accident and crime reports. Citizens can also submit non-emergency crime & incident reports from the privacy of their home or office.

The company is presently operating in 21 states and have grown steadily since 2003. User comments on the site praise how the system has decreased the workload of police department copy clerks also cutting walk-in and mail-in traffic by as much as 40%.

The keyphrase “Police Reports” is an excellent match for the dotUS web address. PoliceReports.US enjoy the # 1 position in Yahoo & MSN, and are on the first page of Google for the search term “police reports”. Compete.com indicate in excess of 24,000 unique visitors per month.

Patients receiving treatment after an accident are often required to bring a copy of the accident report for billing & documentation purposes. A report can be ordered and downloaded anytime & from anywhere 24 hours a day. Excellent product & marketed with a quality, generic domain name.

Internet Domains .us, police

The media industry continues its major sea change. Another traditional newspaper company, Gannett (who publish USA Today plus 84 other daily newspapers), suffered a nearly 8% drop in their stock price Tuesday, May 12.

Why? Because their single biggest investor, AXA SA (a large multinational insurance co.), sold off almost 30 million shares they held in Gannett. Fortunately for Gannett, their online version at USAToday.com has experienced a 12% year over year increase in their online traffic yielding more evidence that people are going to the internet for their news.

In my opinion, Gannett are in a rather poor position to rebound from their decline over the long term. I reviewed their daily newspapers and it appears Gannett have only three premium domains on which to build their news organization: Tallahassee.com, Cincinnati.com, and Hawaii.com (travel portal). These are obviously cream of the crop for those geographical areas.

The real trouble is that Gannett’s money losing newspapers (once their bread and butter) are not represented online with a city domain name. The online presence for each newspaper is based on the local newspaper name = bad plan!

For example, Gannett’s website for their Indianapolis newspaper is IndyStar.com. Boulevards New Media own Indianapolis.com. And PremiumDomains.US own Indianapolis.US.

Gannett’s newspaper in Detroit, Michigan is called The Detroit Free Press. Do Gannett happen to have a premium city domain name for that paper. Unfortunately, no. Boulevards New Media have Detroit.com. And PremiumDomains.US own Detroit.US.

I don’t know what Gannett’s strategy is for surviving, but it better be based on an online model. When your biggest investor dumps 30 million shares in your company, that’s the ultimate loss of confidence. And a clear signal they think you’re headed for a cliff.

Update: Gannett just announced they are completely abandoning the print edition of the Tucson Citizen newspaper (Arizona’s oldest paper), and will be going with an online only version beginning this Sunday May 17, 2009.

Internet Domains newspaper

Domaining can be approached from many angles. You can pursue any number of strategies covering a wide range of risk levels. The “risk” can be a carefully calculated decision … or a wild, high-stakes roll of the dice with no guarantee of a substantial return on your investment.

So check this out! There is an upcoming auction of a portfolio of .com real estate domain names. This particular auction will be held on June 11, 2009 in San Francisco at the Fairmont Hotel & Resort. The auction will be conducted by J.P. King who describe themselves as a ”premier auction marketing firm selling the finest in high value properties”.

The real estate portfolio being auctioned off contains over 2300 geo-targeted domain names. What is most interesting here is the very carefully crafted marketing campaign behind the auction. There is a slick, dedicated webpage. There is a  lengthy & sophisticated white paper. There is a professional mailing announcing the domain portfolio sale. There is an official endorsement of this domain portfolio by Monte Cahn of Moniker (who are acting as the escrow agent). Monte is quoted as saying …

It is extremely rare for such a pre-assembled platform of virtual real estate to become available.

There appear to be several rather positive aspects to this auction in regard to domain names. And also a potentially negative element as well. First, the positive.

Definite Positives:

• J.P King appear to have a successful history of representing sellers of high dollar real estate and other properties. Looks like a classy outfit along the lines of a Sothebys or Christies auction house. Premium domains deserve this kind of association.
• Monte Cahn (and Moniker) appear to be making an effort to possibly lift the auction of domains to a more prestigious level. Premium domains are indeed high dollar assets and in the realm of fine art & rare collectibles.
• This auction has an accompanying mailing (very professional looking I might add). I assume this hardcopy mailing is going out to real estate firms nationwide. End user outreach is monumentally important. I assume there may be a forthcoming press release too.

Possible Negative:

• Questionably, the actual domain names themselves. This large portfolio of real estate domains are almost exclusively constructed on City+RealEstate+Listings.com as in PhoenixRealEstateListings.com. Can you spot a potential problem?

This bears some discussion. The ultimate real estate web addresses are geo-targeted domains ending in “RealEstate” as in MiamiRealEstate.com. A 2300 plus domain portfolio built on this formula would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly even higher. The ultimate gold standard.

By adding “Listings” on to the gold standard we move away from premium and into the arena of a long tail domain that has some competition. There is no substitute for “Miami Real Estate”.

But there are multiple competing substitutes for “MiamiRealEstateListings”, such as ”MiamiRealEstateAgents”, “MiamiRealEstateForSale”, “MiamiRealEstateMarket”, “MiamiRealEstatePrices”, “MiamiRealEstateForeclosure”. All of these examples were just taken from Google’s auto-generated key phrases.

Now this does not negate the value of a portfolio built on City+RealEstate+Listings.com, but it does raise a question as to whether a portfolio of these domains will have enough appeal to generate nationwide interest and high level bidding.

A 2300 name portfolio built on truly prime real estate domains like: City+RealEstate or City+Homes would garner massive, unprecedented interest and sky high bidding never seen before in the history of domaining. Of course, it is impossible for someone to have amassed a comprehensive portfolio containing these types of premium quality domains.

So, June 11 will come and go very soon. And we shall see if the auction was a resounding success, or not. I must say that I am impressed with the look of the marketing and packaging. It appears designed with real estate end users in mind.

However, I’m not sure that City+RealEstate+Listings.com is going to cut it. Long tail domains need to have no substitutes in order to stand out as a truly unique opportunity.

But as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Let’s see what the real estate community have to say on June 11th.

Internet Domains auction, real estate

Around the internet and on the blogs I’m seeing comments about country code top level domains. It seems logical that as the internet becomes increasingly crowded, a system of logic and organization become even more important, more commonplace.

That was the prospective intent of having domain extensions like .US, .info, .biz, etc. There is an intentional meaning contained in the domain extension that works in conjunction with whatever keyword sits on the left side of the dot. Domains like Charlotte.US, Health.info, and RealEstate.biz make good sense.

On the other hand, I have been receiving inquiries if I would like to buy, for example, “AustinCondos.cn”, presumably because I own AustinCondos.US. dotCN is the country code for China. This is an example of poor synergy between a keyword and its extension. I am doubtful that there is a city named Austin in the country of China. However, AustinCondos.US is a fitting domain for real estate in the Austin, Texas area (make that United States, not China).

Many domainers know that the .US namespace was originally created for local government, public schools and libraries. Thousands of these institutions launched their websites using the original .US extension and related subdomains.

For example, the City of Charlotte is located at: http://www.ci.charlotte.nc.us/. Charlotte public schools are located at: http://www.cms.k12.nc.us/. And Charlotte Public Libraries at:  http://www.plcmc.lib.nc.us/. These lengthy, odd domain names are holdovers from the early days of the internet.

In 2002, the U.S. Government opened the .US namespace for general registration. I acquired Charlotte.US in 2002 and have cycled through several website variations and monetization strategies over the years. Charlotte is also a large county in the state of Florida as well as a popular female name. I lived in Charlotte, NC in the 1980′s and can attest to what a well-rounded, exciting city it was … and is.

Country codes are very important and will become increasingly moreso as countries come to preserve and distinguish their unique identities across the globe. In America, .com was the first major unrestricted tld launched and became synonymous with America’s internet. This was a good thing, and .com showed itself to be widely embraced.

That being said, our official country code, .US (for United States), will continue to garner increased support & use, both nationally and internationally. The two letter designation for a country is already globally accepted … such as .CA for Canada, .JP for Japan, and .CN for China.

As a geodomain investor, I love pure city names and geo-targeted domain names. I have always felt they offered the best investment and development opportunities. I still do.

.US Domain Names .us, Charlotte, dot US

Ron Jackson’s DN Journal made my day with this story. Atlanta.com owner, Skip Hoagland, sent out a letter to employees of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution offering them job opportunities with Atlanta.com. Newspapers in America have been laying off news staffers left & right.

Some papers have declared bankruptcy. Most are in steady decline. My wife and I stopped taking the Greensboro News & Record over a year ago. So have many others. A co-worker asked me “Have you seen the High Point paper? It’s about one-third the size it used to be”.

City geo domains are the natural evolution, the next step. With career journalists, writers, and investigative reporters suddenly in search of a new home, what better option than to channel their talents into the ultimate new news medium, The Local Geo City Portal.

Most impressive is Skip Hoagland’s obvious approach to forming mutually rewarding partnerships. He is offering excellent compensation to writers, and providing them a great future opportunity to sustain and/or remake their careers via Atlanta.com.

Reminds me of the way Apple launched iTunes and single-handedly overtook the entire music industry … who, like the newspaper industry, stood idle while the future strolled right by them.

Side Note: Want to see a great city with a great website full of content? So do I. But there’s a problem. Their domain name.

The Charlotte Convention & Visitors Bureau have rebranded themselves “Visit Charlotte”, and the corresponding website is CharlottesGotAlot.com. There is a FULL PAGE ad in USA Today for this new website. I wonder what that cost! This is what is referred to as a domain name marketing catastrophe.

Atlanta.com … will not have that problem.

Keep your eye on Geo Domains! More to come.

Internet Domains atlanta, geo domain

Warren Buffett has weighed in on the declining newspaper industry. Here’s the scoop taken from his comments at the Berkshire Hathaway stockholder meeting which occurred this past weekend.

Buffett states that newspapers run the risk of “unending losses“. That’s a pretty powerful statement. This collapse of the American newspaper industry is an odd development. Local geo domain portals are most likely going to take news in a new direction as traditional newspapers die off. Buffett also said …

For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price.

I am not aware of the status of newspapers in areas outside the U.S., but my suspicion is that this decline is not confined to only the USA. Probably a global occurrence tied to internet proliferation in every country.

I took my family to Wilmington last weekend and we went to several newly released movies. Ironically, both movies had prominent scenes addressing the rapid decline of hardcopy newspapers in America. Check out State of Play (Russell Crowe & Ben Affleck) and The Soloist (Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr). You’ll see what I mean. It’s obviously a hot topic in Hollywood.

Internet Domains geo domain, geodomain