With world markets going up and down like a game of Donkey Kong (well actually more down than up) its having a serious impact on our cost of goods.

As of today, 1 USD = 1.52384 AUD (Australian dollar), or to flip it around, 1 AUD = 0.656154 USD. If you look at the chart, you will see that six months ago, the Australian dollar was worth US$.96.

Great For Parking

The rest of the world is making MORE money (in their local currency) as they take advantage of being paid in US$ or Euro.

Bad For Buying

The cost of bidding against US domainers has increased.

Great For Selling

While this may seem all “doom and gloom”, there is a hidden upside. If you are a non-US domainer who is selling, then now is the time to sell in US$. Why? It should be worth more in your local currency.

If you are a domainer outside the USA, please feel free to post a comment. I’d love to hear your situation.

“when it comes to making an offer… don’t…..instead…. ask the domain name holder what they would be prepared to sell the domain for“

“While you wait to hear from the domain name holder, do what research you can into them, their business, their business model, their web statistics, etc. You want to get an idea of what the value of the domain is TO THEM.“

“the more certain you are about the value of the domain to you… and the value of the domain to THEM… the better the price you’ll be able to negotiate.”

The last one is particularly relevant because in 2001 I negotiated a very high 5 figure sum for a domain name that I owned. Believe it or not, the CEO of a well known company called me directly and said he wanted to buy it. Grin… I was very happy with that negotiation – as was the company that bought it. They still own the domain name 8 years later.

If you have any tips, feel free to post them in the comments.

I’ve always maintained that now is a great time to buy domains. Those that are focused on the short term (or need cash to pay off their mortgages) are selling or simply not renewing. Those with cash (who are buying), have less competitors in auctions because some people don’t want to spend.

Here is an example of a name that went for more than $2,300 this morning over at NameJet. It was InternetMarketing.org. To be honest, I was in the auction but decided to sleep in on Sunday. The drop times are not that attractive to those outside the USA.

After I got up and had a coffee, I decided to have a look over at Snapnames and found some great domains with low starting prices. Check them out:

• tuition.com – $60 min bid
• corporateevents.com – $79 min bid
• rentalpackages.com – $79 min bid
  
• punishable.com – $79 min bid
  
• socialiser.com – $59 min bid
• letteropener.com – $79 min bid
• ferriswheel.com – $79 min bid

My favorite is of course tuition.com, followed by ferriswheel.com. Tuition is highly searched on, just think of all the college students! People are addicted to going on FerrisWheels, so having FerrisWheel.com might be a good novelty / niche site.

A big thank you goes to Fabulous for a mind-blowing conference. They have set the bar extremely high – I seriously doubt that someone is going to top that event.

Enjoy.

Being the domainer, I had to park and take a photo. The strange thing is, their website doesn’t even have a picture of the building. You’d think you were almost dealing with an online mailorder company.

At the top of the site is this quote – “When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. So let’s all get drunk and go to heaven!” – Brian O’Rourke.

Maybe they got the idea to make those HUGE letters over a few bottles of red wine?

luv.me is for sale at Sedo and is currently at 5,600 EURO. That’s quite a lot of $$ love for a .me.

Anyway, what got my attention was the research they sent through. At first I thought the person was a domainer, but then I found out that the domain is currently owned by two partners of Brands-and-Jingles, an advertising firm. Here is a cut down version of what they sent through:

• Date.me went for $70,000
• Love.me went for $32,000
• A three-letter domain is the shortest you can have with .me
• It sounds better as a statement

According to Wikipedia, Luv or LUV may refer to:

• Luv (song), a song by Janet Jackson.
• Luv (television series), a BBC sitcom.
• Luv, a Broadway play and 1967 film.
• The Dutch pop group Luv’
• The Chevrolet LUV, a “light utility vehicle”
• Linux Users of Victoria (http://www.luv.asn.au)
• The New York Stock Exchange symbol for Southwest Airlines
• The IATA airport code of Dumatubin Airport in Langgur, Kai Islands, in the Maluku province of Indonesia
• Large unilamellar vesicle: a type of phospholipid bilayer micelle.
• The L*u*v* color space, a perceptually uniform color space used in computer graphics
• A heart-shaped friendship token used on Bebo that can be giving out daily
• The windward or “upstream” side of a dune; compare “alluvial”
• Lava (Ramayana), a son of Rama in Hindu mythology

What do I think? Its a good name, very brandable, short, sharp and probably going to end up being a dating site. Best of luck with the bidding. Would I buy it? If I was planning to run a dating site, absolutely.

• Over the lifespan of the UDRP, the total number of pages filed with WIPO alone is estimated at some ten million (roughly equivalent to over one thousand trees).

• The approximate number of paper pages from Respondents is over 300,000.

The letter outlines a number of reasons including:

1. Environmentally friendly
2. Efficient – leading to cost savings
3. Most already file electronically anyway
4. 4% email bounce back in 2008
5. The average time that elapsed between WIPO’s receipt of the electronic Compalint and its receipt of the hard copies was four days. “A delay in receipt of a Response in hard copy may also delay the Panel’s review of the complete record“.

I think this is a great move. Although I’m not surprised that its WIPO taking the initiative to suggest an improvement to an ICANN process. It just goes to show how inefficient ICANN is.

Although this week I did have similar, strange technology interactions with two companies:

1. Company A – a webhost asked me to print out, scan in and email them a copy of an invoice that I received via email. Apparently their process said that email (text) wasn’t good enough.
2. Company B – asked me to email them, post a hardcopy and fax them the same document.

Its 2009 and we are still using fax machines and printing stuff out – unbelievable. Shouldn’t we all have jet-packs by now?

Name.com just had a promotion where $.50 from every .ORG registered until 12/31/08 was donated to Kiva.org.  On top of that, they were selling .orgs for a crazy $6.49 – which means you should buy them anyway. In case you didn’t know, Kiva lends money to entrepreneurs in the developing world, empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty. It’s the “teach the man to fish” approach using micro-transactions.

Earlier today I came across another headline – Verizon Wins $33 Million in Suit Over Domain Names. Apparently, “the default judgment of $50,000 for each of 663 addresses registered by the Internet company, OnlineNic, was issued last Friday by United States District Judge Jeremy D. Fogel in San Jose, Calif. Judge Fogel froze OnlineNic’s assets and ordered the transfer to Verizon of all identical or confusingly similar addresses. Verizon sought as much as $66.3 million in damages over names that included myverizonwireless.com, iphoneverizonplans.com and verizon-cellular.com.”

So, it got me thinking. What about donating a large chunk of that to charity? Of course I don’t know how much of the $33M will go in legal expenses. The point is (assuming they get the money) that Verizon have scored $33M. What about doing something good with a % of that?

Apparently the First Minister Alex Salmond visited the Spanish region of Catalonia and found this thing called the Internet. It turns out that Catalonia has .cat and so he wants .sco – just don’t tell him about SCO Unix. By the way – pussy.cat is taken.

“It is not only for Scots who live in Scotland but for our extensive Diaspora and it will be particularly appropriate for a bid to be made during the 2009 Year of Homecoming” Salmond said. I’m wondering if that means that all the Scots are leaving us to go home now its the new year?

It might come as no surprise that there is strong support for dot scot; according to the UK Press Association “Two government surveys showed support among Scots organisations running at 58% and in an international poll, the figure rose to 82%”. Scotland’s governing party, the SNP has got together a working group and is preparing for the submission to ICANN (assuming .anything-goes).

Word also has it that Groundskeeper Willie wants bigwillie.scot. So what do you think? Should Scotland have it’s own TLD or be made to share with those lovely English folk for a little while longer?