Hope you’re having a nice, long weekend if you’re in the US and if you’re not US-based, I hope your week gets off to a strong start. Here are a few updates and thoughts from me as the week begins.

– There was an interesting article on Econsultancy this morning.   According to the author, Ian Harris the CEO and founder of Search Laboratory, “Parked domains are generally low quality resources.” I tend to disagree with this, especially on generic domain names that people type-in to their browsers in lieu of using a search engine. If someone wants a personal loan and they end up on PersonalLoans.com, I would imagine these visitors are good prospects for the advertisers whose links they click.

– I was really surprised when Rick Schwartz announced I had 3 TRAFFIC Award nominations.   Thank you to whomever nominated me for the awards. I personally believe Juan Calle is deserving of the Domainer of the Year award for his big successes so far this year with the .CO Registry, not to mention his other Internet companies that operate on great domain names. He knows this business well, and it’s been fun learning about Juan and what he has done.

– It is an honor to be nominated in the Developer of the Year category with several friends. Keith’s primary website, Vibrator.com, has done extraordinarily well, and he’s on the road to success with Rio.com. I’ve mentioned Fred’s projects several times, and we’re obviously close with his company building out Burbank.com for my company. Rob Grant’s portfolio of real estate and Adirondacks-related domain names and websites is unmatchable. Rob Monster’s Epik platform is helping domain investors earn money with their underperforming domain names, and his Epik conference is going to help a whole lot of domain investors. Finally, Shaun’s Kelowna.com design was an inspiration for two of my geodomain names, not to mention his recently launched TorontoJobs.com website. There are a lot of successful developers working in the domain space these days, and it is cool even to be considered.

– I continue to receive emails and blog comments offering names for sale that need to be sold “urgently.” I assure you that this isn’t the right way to go about things, unless you either have great domain names or I know you well. If you are urgently trying to sell domain names, you should either hire a broker, post on forums (not spamming blogs), or seek out end users rather than domain investors.

– I heard a horrible story this weekend. A fraternity brother of mine (two years older than me) was fishing with his father on Lake Oswego in New York a couple of weeks ago. They weren’t wearing life jackets and their boat capsized a couple miles from shore. My fraternity brother was able to hang on to the boat until help arrived but his father couldn’t and drowned. They were both experienced boaters and fishermen. Makes you realize the importance of life jackets when you’re on the water.