I have a mild addiction to domain name speculation. It’s purely small time (no $10,000 domain purchases here). Just the adventure (if you can call it that) of snagging reasonably interesting domain names when they expire that have fallen under the radar.
I regularly check a few sites that list expired or soon-to-expire names just to see what’s available. You can sometimes find some great local domain names for cheap if you are in the right place at the right time. I attribute this to most big time domainers not caring too much about local domain names, as opposed to names with nation/worldwide appeal.
For example, the following domains are at auction right now (and will end in less than a week) starting at $10 with no bids. Sure, they aren’t $10,000 domain names. But, for the right person with the right idea, one of these could be an amazing find.
- indyrules.com ($10)
- indycomedy.com ($10)
- couponindy.com ($10)
- jobmatchindy.com ($10)
These are listed at the GoDaddy Domain Name Aftermarket. Of which, you need a paid membership (not expensive). So, if you know me and want me to bid on one for you, let me know (I have an account).
If you are using FireBug while using Gmail, it could be slowing down your browsing experience. If you’d rather not turn off FireBug completely, here are some simple steps to improve the speed of Gmail from the Gmail help files.
- Click the green or red icon in the bottom right corner of the browser window to open Firebug.
- Click the Console tab.
- Select Options.
- Uncheck Show XMLHttpRequests.
- Click the Net tab.
- Select Options.
- Check Disable Network Monitoring.
Unfortunately, there is no fix for Mac users other than disabling or removing Firebug completely.
I’ve been reading about all the recent changes at Facebook like integrating information feeds for their user’s actions at other sites and the privacy wall that continues to get lower. A Techcrunch article talks about competitors for Facebook in the “college students only” market and how viable any of them are. Many of the comments on that story point to a resistance by Facebook users to ever want to leave what they have with Facebook. There is, however, one angle to this social networking concept most are missing.
While the initial idea won’t seem as cool or even trustworthy to most students at first glance, University-sponsored social networks are a hugely overlooked opportunity.
Indiana University, as an example, has over 98,000 students spread across 9 campuses. That’s almost 100,000 users already tied together in the same system with usernames and passwords. If IU were to build out a social network, they would immediately have these users in the system (actually using the system is another thing). While this isn’t anywhere near Facebook’s millions of users, I’d be willing to bet that the day to day interactions of the average college student on Facebook is 90% related to his/her friends at the same campus.
In order for this to work, IU would have to be a bit liberal on students usage (read: free speech) and not censor everything it doesn’t like. But, with a strong word-of-mouth campaign and support from a few key on-campus student groups, the social network could take off quite fast. What IU would end up with is a closed social network in an excellent niche. With modest advertising, the site would pay for itself easily. The university would also have a new medium for communication with the student body.
Parting thoughts:
- Savvy IU developers can create a dead-simple Facebook application that exports a file containing your relationships with other IU students for easy import into the IU social network, thereby easing the transition and acceptance
- Savvy businesspeople create a business model around building closed social network systems and selling them to major universities like IU
- An interesting idea would be the option to “connect” one closed social network with another. For example, Indiana University has a campus at Indianapolis called IUPUI it shares with Purdue University.
- My main point here is that universities always have and always will have an amazingly strong position for creating social networks like these because of their endless data on and access to their students (what classes you are taking, who is in your classes, what books you need, how you are doing in a certain class, what books you check out, how often you print things out in the library, where you are logging on from in campus, and so on… think of the Facebooks apps that would exist if that kind of information was available).
Sometime last week, Google pushed their latest update to PageRank out to the world. It had been a long time since the last update and I was starting to lose hope that it would happen this year. But, it did, and the news is mostly good:
- wpstar.com: PR 4 (was PR 0)
- wpzipper.com: PR 5 (was PR 0)
- blogindiana.com: PR 3 (was PR 4)
- collab.ws: PR 3 (was PR 0)
- caption.ws: PR 2 (was PR 0)
- IndyDads.com: PR 3 (was PR 3)
- BuddyAds.net: PR 2 (was PR 0)
- LaserRocketArm.com: PR 0 (was PR 3) That’s what happens when you do nothing with a domain for 8 months!
My good friend Shawn, who runs LiberalIndiana.com, has managed to maintain his PR 4 despite having to temporarily close down shop while he sorts out the spam blog nightmare that befell his otherwise great site. Apparently, having a baby gets in the way of side projects–who knew!
I was reading the latest headlines on CNN.com earlier today when I came upon a story about a plane carrying 10 skydivers that had crashed. 3 of the people on board were currently missing, but presumed dead. As I’m quickly scanning the details of the story, I notice the flash-ad next to the story is depicting a person free-falling in the air, hurdling towards the ground.
Take a look at the story, and then the ad to the right side of the page:
Now, I know this wasn’t on purpose. But, it brings up an interesting issue of what happens when unrelated ads are put randomly next to content that causes unintended connections to be made.
Brian Gardner is holding a contest to give away 3 free copies of his exceptionally designed “Revolution” WordPress theme. The theme is one of the more expensive and well designed themes available. Designed primarily for a newsy kind of website, there is also a sports variation that appears to work quite well.
This post serves as my entry into the contest. Upon discovering this theme, I was immediately interested in using it for my back-burner hobby website LaserRocketArm.com. While I’m still tossing around ideas for the site, the original concept was for it to be a fan site for Peyton Manning. Having the Revolution theme to build upon, I could put together a professional-looking site in short order. There is no shortage of news and interest surrounding Manning. And as it appears the Colts are an even better team this year than last, this fan site could quickly gain traction with the right look, content, and fan connection.
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