In case you don’t know, Lifetime is a 50/50 joint venture of Hearst Corporation and The Walt Disney Company. They now own sites such as:

• FathersClick.com
• MothersGroups.com
• MotherClick.com
• MomBlogNetwork.com (which has 2,500 registered blogs)

“We’re very excited to have the technology and leadership of ParentsClick Network join the Lifetime Digital family,” said Dan Suratt, Executive Vice President.

The company reports a 48% increase in traffic for July for MyLifetime.com. This equates to 3.7 million unique visitors and more than 75 million page views. Very impressive.

On the 15th of August, Oversee.Net told its staff that 10% would be cut across the board. It’s expected that up to 30 staff in total will go from middle level management downwards, across DomainSponsor, SnapNames and Moniker.

While general economic weakness has been cited as reasons for the cut - as an entrepreneur I can see that you need to shuffle the decks, especially post any merger of companies. So to me, this is just business as usual.

Once all the dust settles (especially around Snapnames), it would be good to see things getting back to normal.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and its been announced that Sam Nunez will handle Product Development, Marketing and Strategy.

You’ve just gotta love those warm, fuzzy, cuddly Germans.

It appears that Nunez has been around the traps. He has worked at both Oversee.net, Ask.com and SGI.

“I look forward to helping Sedo strengthen its market position in the global domain name marketplace,” said Nunez.  “Sedo will continue to leverage its tremendous success with online auctions, as it extends other services such as live auctions, globally.”

Good luck Sam. We will be watching closely to see what pops out of Sedo.

Edit 29/8/8: A point of clarification. I’ve just been contacted by a representative from Sedo who tells me that Sams role is purely product management and Matt is still an advisor with Sedo.

People are speculating that its due to CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) banning Internet domain names that are based on gold medal winning athletes.

So what is the real reason? We will never know.

Last year, Reporters Without Borders covered a story about Godaddy withdrawing hosting for Chinese Human Rights sites.

Since 2003.org registrations have increased more than 250%. Alexa Raad, CEO said “.ORG continues to be the domain of choice for individuals and organizations who seek to brand their efforts under a globally trusted and respected address.”

Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia has also come to the party around .org saying “We can’t imagine Wikipedia as a .com — .ORG is a core part of our identity,” “.ORG is available to anyone in the world, and it is a great way for an organization to signal an ambition to be inclusive and global.”

Has .org become that alternative? Is it the bio diesel of the domaining world?

In the case of Jamica, the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office JIPO is now involved.

JIPO executive director Carol Simpson told The Jamaica Observer that the athletes’ rights are secured globally - “Usain is a protected trademark and we would discourage anyone trying to infringe on his intellectual property rights.”

UsainBolt is currently listed at Sedo - but for how long?

• OBAMABIDEN.ORG -> +16 variants = $100k on eBay. Good luck with that!
• Even the believers have seen the light - catholicsforobama-biden.net is online now.
• electobamabiden.com is live and allegedly paid for by the Republican National Committee.

In any case, it doesn’t matter, Diebold (the company that does the electronic voting) has accidentally leaked the results of the 2008 US Election.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Enjoy!

Anyway I didn’t feel like paying $10.95 for renewals so I went hunting and found two good coupons:

• chill3 - $6.95 .com renewals. I used this one tonight.
• CJCONEOFF - save $1 off renewals. Tested and it works, but I ended up using the other one.

Anyway I just thought I’d let everyone know. Hopefully it will save you some $$$.

It’s been reported that their Police Department has allowed their domain name to expire.

The new owner of eurekapd.org in Russia has allegedly kept some of the content.

Police Chief Garr Nielsen told the Eureka Reporter that he wasn’t aware of the domain name being taken over and made it clear he didn’t want the Web site online anymore, but the city of Eureka has not yet decided if it is a “problem” or not.

Well… my guess is that it will be - especially when Jack Bauer comes looking for an answer!

What do you do when both parties want the same domain? You can’t exactly call the police. Luckily the Indians have made the decision to tack on the word india. Now everyone can use www.punjabpoliceindia.org.

But what about that SEO benefit? Domain age? Ohhhh the shame of it all.