I’ve heard a great deal of glowing things about Dr. Chris Hartnett, but I didn’t have much background about who he is or how he became so successful and well-liked. As the title of this post says, once you read the DNJournal cover story this month, you are going to be “wowed!”
It seems that everything Dr. Hartnett touches turns to gold, and this is another inspiring story written by Ron Jackson. The domain industry is made of people who come from diverse backgrounds, with many of the leaders achieving great success in other industries. This is certainly the case with Dr. Hartnett, and his story is inspirational.
Wow… The Chris Hartnett Biography
Breaking: Castello Brothers Partner with Monster
Just received an email from David Castello announcing that CCIN will be partnering with Rob Monster of Monster Venture Partners in the development of Traveler.com. Together, Monster and CCIN will develop Traveler.com into a global travel website.
Monster has recently signed on for joint development projects including HealthCare.com, WiFi.com, and Patents.com. CCIN are leaders in the Geodomain space, operating websites such as PalmSprings.com, LagunaBeach.com, Nashville.com, and many others. They also own non-geo names such as Whisky.com and Daycare.com.
For more information about this deal, check out DNJournal’s Lowdown.
Extra Security for Domain Names While on Vacation
I would like to know if any registrars offer any special security lock that a domain owner can place on his account if he will be away for a period of time without email access. If someone goes out of the country on vacation and doesn’t have email access, I would think his domain names would be at greater risk, as any change to the domain names would be undetected until his return, which could be too late to take preventative action.
I would think it would be easy for a registrar to place the entire account into a lockdown so domain names in the account couldn’t be transferred or have their DNS changed. This feature should be easily to implement by the domain owner, and it should require something more than an email upon return to re-activate the account.
With domain security a high priority these days, this feature is something that I think would be very important for every registrar to have.
Domain Investor Creates Valuable iPhone Application
Congratulations to fellow domain investor and fellow New Yorker Arlo Gilbert whose company iCall made news with their software, which allows users to reroute ongoing calls on their iPhone to their free VoIP service. This service has the potential to save users a ton of calling minutes. While the application is still being beta tested, it should be made available in the iPhone Apps store.
BTW, If you are looking for a job, iCall is hiring!
Combating Content Theft
One of the things I’ve learned about search engine optimization is that search engines such as Yahoo and Google really like unique content. The more unique content you write, the more the search engines will reward you with better placement in their rankings, obviously driving more traffic to your site. Sometimes when unique content is written, others steal it, either trying to pass it off as their own or because they are lazy and want to put up information but don’t feel like writing their own content.
Lately, I’ve noticed an increase in the later. There are people stealing (or borrowing) from various domain blogs and posting either full posts or posting partial posts without adding their own commentary and without seeking permission. While I don’t mind if someone quotes me for the sake of writing an informative blog post, I do mind when people just take my content without even asking.
When I notice this, I do my best to contact the domain owner via Whois lookup to let them know I have an issue. I don’t want them to gain rankings in Google at my blog’s peril. More often than not, the offending person apologizes and takes down my content. However, there are times when the offender has Whois privacy on their domain name and doesn’t have their contact information readily available. This is annoying, and through a hosting company, I found out a way to stop it.
If a website steals content and you either can’t get in touch with the owner or the owner refuses to take down the material, you can file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint with the host, and the host legally has to take action within 24 hours of receiving the complaint. The one caveat is that you need to file an official complaint. It’s not difficult though, and you don’t need an attorney to do it for you, as there are several DMCA complaint templates available online at no cost. Simply find out the web host and email them your complaint. The issue should be resolved fairly quickly.
Take Advice for What It's Worth
When I had to write reports in high school and college, I was usually required to cite many sources rather than a single source. This was to ensure that the information was accurate and factual instead of simply one person’s opinion. Sometimes a person’s opinion is accurate and factual, but it is important to see what others say to make sure of it. The same goes when you are looking for advice in the domain industry.
Whether you are looking for advice on whether to buy, sell, develop, park…etc or anything at all in this industry, you should try to get as many opinions as possible and make the best determination yourself. Before Frank Schilling started his famous blog and before the domain forums became as popular as they are now, most industry pioneers had to go out on a limb and go solo for many of the things we openly discuss today. They didn’t have (many wouldn’t want) the luxury of openly discussing strategy. Today, it is an important part of the domain industry.
Just like anything else, it is important to know about who is giving the advice and their motivation. I was reading one of the popular forums the other day, and someone was asking how they should reply to an offer/solicitation. Some of the answers were not only unhelpful, but they probably would have been harmful. There are plenty of sources of information out there, so the best advice I can give is to use all of your trusted sources carefully.
Free advice is cheap, but it can be very expensive.