I want to thank everyone for coming out to dinner last night, and I would like to give a special thanks to Domain Capital for surprising us all and picking up the tab. It was very nice of them to “quietly” and unexpectedly sponsor the dinner, and we are all appreciative.
The turnout of 23 was strong despite the poor weather, and we had a good chance to network with others in the industry. We had a diverse group involved in all aspects of the domain industry, which made for good conversation. Even nicer was that I had the chance to network with people I didn’t know before the dinner, and I expect to stay in touch. We work in a small industry, and it’s nice to have an opportunity to socialize with like minded people who live in the same area.
Details about the next get together will be posted soon. If you would like to be added to the list, please let me know. Thank you again to those who came to dinner and to Domain Capital.
NYC Domainer Dinner a Success!
Follow Up Post: Anti Phishing Legislation
I just read Mike Berken’s blog post about the proposed Anti-Phishing Bill I blogged about earlier this morning, which upon full review, goes much deeper than simply fighting phishers. Mike goes into much further depth and really sounds the alarm regarding the proposed legislation.
If you are invested in the domain industry, I would advise reading Mike’s Blog today. Those invested in domain names domain industry need to stand united to ensure that the bill (as currently written) isn’t passed into law without modification. I know the ICA is working on a response to this, and I think supporting them is important.
Salinas.com Launch – Behind the Scenes
I went live with Salinas.com yesterday, and I wanted to share some information about the development process for those of you who have good names but fear developing them. First off, I would like to thank a few people who helped me develop the name and/or who gave me some fantastic advice on development. Without the help of Brad, Mike, Anna, Kim, Janis, Perry, David, and Michael, I wouldn’t have been able to build the site. I sincerely appreciate their help and advice. I have little to no technical expertise, so development is new to me.
In my opinion, Salinas.com is more of a mini-website than a fully developed site. Eventually I hope to develop Salinas.com into a directory site, but I am planning to test this development model first with Lowell.com – which should launch in the next 3 weeks. Although revenue is important, my current goal for Salinas.com is to increase traffic and provide a value for visitors. Revenue generation will be more important to me with the fully developed website.
Content is king for Salinas.com. I hired
Potential Concern on Piece of New Legislation
I wanted to share a concern I have with a potential piece of new litigation sponsored by Senator Olympia Snowe and cosponsored by Senators Bill Nelson and Ted Stevens. The Anti-Phishing Consumer Protection Act (APCPA), which is being publicly supported by the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA), sounds like a consumer and business friendly Act, but I have a concern about an implication of some of the language that makes up the bill.
The goal of the bill is to protect consumers from “phishing,” defined as an “attempt to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.” While this is something we would all like to see stopped, I believe some language in the bill may be detrimental to generic domain owners.
According to CADNA’s press release, part of the APCPA aims to address the “practice of using deceptive Web site domain names, which appear confusingly similar to well-known businesses’ Web site addresses, and may be used to facilitate phishing attacks and deceptive spam attacks, or to divert consumers from their intended online destinations to Web sites peddling unrelated or objectionable goods and services, including those harmful to minors.”
I am concerned that this is
DNN: Network Solutions Sued
According to today’s post on DomainNameNews, a class action lawsuit was filed against Network Solutions and ICANN by the law firm of Kabateck Brown Kellner. The firm issued a press release announcing the action earlier today.
This is the second article written by Frank and Adam today about Network Solutions, the first being an article about the company monetizing a racially sensitive domain name owned by the NAACP, presumably to prevent links like this from being displayed.
Spamming From Your Domain Name
People have asked me to speculate on why a domain name of theirs could possibly be banned by Google. There are many potential reasons, but an acquaintance of mined mentioned that spam related to the domain name could potentially be a reason for banning. From what I understand, it isn’t very difficult to spoof a spam email to make it look like it came from a particular domain name. If this happens and the domain name is put on a spam list, it could potentially lead to other negative ramifications.
One possible way to see if your domain name is being used for spamming is to create an email account with your hosting company, and have it act as a “catch all” for any email that comes to any email address associated with the domain name. While your inbox



