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| Domain Names Some people say it's too late to enter the domain market as they start with the premise that all the good names have gone. However, to this day I am still finding excellent opportunities and hidden gems. There's a never ending flow of buzzwords, fads, celebrities, news and technologies to keep us going for a long time. Moreover, through natural progression, domainers increasingly transform themselves into webmasters. Taking a tiny subset of their best domains and building them out into virtual properties; moving from parking to applications and content. In this sense, the global village can still be seen as very much in it's infancy. For me, one of the biggest clues to the future explosion in web development and consolidation is when I see obvious destinations as either under-developed or non-existent. Take, for example, thailand.org... previously bought in March 2007 for $10,000 yet in 2009 there is no web presence! For sure, it is the owners prerogative to do (or not) with their property as they choose. Right now, their main objective may simply be capital gain on resale.. who knows.. but the opportunity for this great domain to be developed is surely an itch that must be scratched? Domain Names On Snapnames, auctions have a time remaining estimate in one minute decrements. If you refresh the page frequently, you can figure out when the time estimate is revised. I did this and noted the following... When the time remaining estimate says "1m" (one minute remaining), you will get that minute to bid and then for another 59 seconds it will say "<1m". So actually, "1m" remaining is pretty much 2 minutes. Business Earlier this year, in the midst of a recession (2009), Shriti Vadera was famously lambasted for being too optimistic, seeing possible "green shoots" of economic recovery. I never understood why some people responded so harshly, as though insulted, by a simple analytical opinion. Likewise, while many people were bombarding me with the negativity of "the worst recession since blah blah blah", I always held to the belief that the rich were still rich. That given any economic downturn for the masses, there is always money to be made selling to the rich. And so now, I turn on the television and stumble upon a high value shopping channel with diamond rings costing thousands. My point is simple, don't listen to ANYONE except your natural instinct. It's times like these that reaffirm for me that money can be had in any economic circumstance. Better to be optimistic and ignore the naysayers. Business I was just looking at a website which was selling a well known brand of high-end luxury watches. These particular watches easily sell for GBP 6000 apiece. Depending on the product, this can be a great investment as much as self-indulgence. In this instance, however, they would probably fail to gain my custom.. not because of the high price but for having the cheek to put an "Add To Cart" button underneath. Just how many am I going to buy? - it looked so tacky! At this price level, you can bet the seller will execute comprehensive checks for credit and fraud. And at this price level, the buying process itself should be a joy, an experience with human-to-human contact, even if the transaction is completed solely on the phone. Can you imagine going to an offline equivalent - a high-end jewellers - and being given a shopping basket? - hardly so. Think! | Web Development and Business Your business is better than google. How so? - because the relationships you make with your customers can be direct, fast and far more personal. Have you ever tried to contact google? For a company that shouts the virtues of simplicity, ask yourself this... * Is there a "talk to us" link on their front page? * Where is their email address / contact form? * Why are they so hard to contact for support? Ah yes, the wonders of being a big company and too busy making money to worry about small things like customer relations or support! Business What is a monopoly? Recently, a proposed video-on-demand project between the BBC and commercial providers such as ITV was blocked due to concerns of unfair competition. As a result, us users must continue to use separate video players for each of these television services, instead of doing the logical thing of allowing a single player. The move was welcomed by Virgin who presumably felt that they would of been excluded from such a player; like buying a television without the facility to watch Virgin channels. While the likes of youtube continue to grow and while video on the net bypasses old school regulations... and while television stations lose audiences and revenue to a diversifying online population... the government is going to claim they're doing The Right Thing. People live around such dinosauric behaviour and the government proves, yet again, how out of touch it is. Traditionally, a monopoly is when an industry such as telecoms has insufficient competition to the detriment of the public need. But there's also a different class of monopoly which is rarely considered; where a company supplies to many diversified industries, examples include Apple, google and Microsoft. Consider some of the things google offer; email, maps, marine maps, star maps, chat, voice, photo sharing, blogs, aggregated news, financial research, translation services, operating systems, web browsers and more, much more. The days when one person can build an empire from their bedroom are fast disappearing when you consider the sheer wealth of resources available to such companies. These companies benefit from brandwashing - they're everywhere! - and complete cross service integration. If I start any of the above services, what's going to differentiate me with the big boys? - and if I manage to pull it off, how is it good for users if I sell it to one of these monopolies? To my mind, that is not innovation and it stands in stark contrast to those decisions mentioned above regarding unfair competition for an all-in-one video player. | Net Get a grip and lose that fanatical love for all things google. For your next online project,.. 1. Don't choose a name that sounds like it came from a baby's mouth. 2. Don't colour each letter of the name like it belongs in a child's colouring book. Unless, of course, you really are trying to appeal to the kids market. 3. Keep in mind, people don't know what a "googol" is. 4. The world is already full of "less is more" copy artists. A little more creativity and risk would be appreciated. Web Development Building for the web is sometimes a real pain. XHTML and the browsers that decode it, are some of the most useless and under-performing standards you can come across. Well, I say that when you consider how long XHTML has been around. Excluding XHTML5, how do you create rounded corners? Or how about translucency or multi-column layouts? It should be real simple but it's not. Considering how long XHTML has been around, why is building for the web such a technical nightmare, full of gotchas and get-arounds? A constant battle against all the quirks and limitations of each browser. And then there's javascript and that oh-so-cool Ajax that slows my computer down to a slug. These have always been stop-gap technologies, trying and often failing to deliver a modern web page in the way the original webmaster intended. One day, thankfully, the web as we know it will die and it will be replaced with interactive environments faithfully reproducing the authors original work, not a horridly interpreted bastardisation by the user agent. Domain Names FinanceInternational.com and InvestmentsInternational.com were recently sold for $5,054 and $2,388. Sure they are good keywords but hey, at 20 and 24 characters long they aren't *that* good! Net For too long, google have had some insane policies for the front page of their web search. They won't sell advertising on the front page and they have strict limits on the number of words that appear on it; too much clutter etc. So it seems strange that a large 300 x 163 logo is deemed okay. I've never bought this minimalist "less is more" argument, it just demonstrates how scared they are of stepping outside of their comfort zone. |
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