Sunday Weekend Updates and Thoughts

If you’re a dad, today is probably a special day for you, as it is for me. I’ll be spending time with my wife and daughter, and hopefully I will be able to get a long bike ride in while my daughter is napping. I am participating in the 2014 Pan Mass Challenge bike ride, and I need to train! With your help, I have raised over $1,000 in  my Pan-Mass Challenging fundraising effort. My goal remains $5,000 and I could really use some help getting there! All funds raised benefit Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a great organization helping people with cancer.

Here are some updates, bits of news, and some of my thoughts on the weekend. As always, your feedback is encouraged and appreciated.

• Who are you rooting for in the World Cup? Of course I am rooting for Team USA. It’s going to be difficult getting work done with some great matches on the calendar. I spent half my day watching soccer on Friday, and I will probably do the same this coming week!

• It looks like the new Bitcoin.com  website was recently launched. As you may recall, Blockchain worked out some sort of deal to manage the Bitcoin.com domain name. The new website looks great.

• Speaking of Bitcoin, it looks like the BTC.com domain name is now listed for sale with Domain Guardians, according to a press release that was published last week. I have no idea of the asking price, but I am sure it’s expensive.

• If you ever post a comment here and the comment doesn’t show up immediately and it doesn’t say “awaiting moderation,” please contact me ASAP. This most likely means that the comment got caught in the Akismet spam filter, and I simply need to mark it as “not spam.” It’s easier to email me than to keep posting comments because when I get to reviewing the spam folder, I tend to approve everything that looks like a valid comment without checking to see if the same thing was already posted.

• I was at a wedding yesterday, and while talking to another guest, I learned he works for a startup in the app space. When I mentioned my domain name business, he told me about his company’s recent domain name decision. They are operating on a .CO domain name.

• You’ll notice that I added a link to the disclaimer in the author box below each article I write. I did this to make sure everyone continues to be aware of the blog’s Terms of Use, Disclosures, and Disclaimer. I am active in the domain name business, and I likely have lots of conflicts with respect to articles I write and companies/services I discuss. I do my best to be as impartial as possible, but obviously everyone has some level of bias and I want to make sure people know who I am and what I do.

• I tend to shy away from writing about controversial topics, and even though some people dislike this, it allows me to sleep better at night. I am not the type of person that is going to crap on someone else’s business model or business decision unless it impacts my business. I have no interest in stirring up trouble for the sake of pageviews or attention. Sometimes that gets people upset, but my feeling is that if people want to vent and complain, they can do it on their own and don’t need me to write about something that isn’t of interest to me or my company. There are domain forums, Twitter, and of course, it’s very easy to start a blog.