iEstates.com

We ran two polls over the past couple weeks, one for the auction of Slots.com and one for the Domainfest Live auction.

You guys suck.

Out of 196 votes on the Slots.com auction only 13 of you correctly predicted that the domain would sell between $5M-$7.5M and only 22 predicted the domain would sell for over $5M at all.

Yikes.

For Domainfest over 25% of you didn’t think any of the $100K+ reserve domains would sell.

2 did.

To your credit, of those of who voted for any domain to sell at DomainFest, the majority, 37, voted for dating.com and in second place came boardgames.com selected by 15 of you.

Now there was a bunch of you who got both the slots.com and Domainfest auction wrong.

Here are the names and e-mail address of all those who got it wrong:

Ok just kidding, voting as always remains anonymous (but I know who you are).

Thanks for playing and look for a new poll soon.

While the live auction from DomainFest Ft. Lauderdale is still going, so far two of those category killer domains have sold.

Dating.com just sold for $1,750,000 and BoardGames.com sold for $450K a little while ago.

The bidding got as high as $2M on Jeans.com, but no sale.

You can see the final results of our poll, which I closed for voting right before the auction started.

So far you guys picked out the two domains that sold (of course not counting the 37 of you that thought none would sell)

We will be back later

The Social Security Administration publishes an annual list of the 1,000 most popular baby names for boys and girls and just released its list for 2009.

It may not surprise you to learn that every matching .com for each of the 1,000 most popular boys and 1,000 most popular girls is taken.

The most recently registered domain, by creation date was Jazlynn.com, which has a creation date of March 10, 2010.

Interesting to note that out of the 2,000 domains, only 52 have a creation date after 1/1/2005 and almost 1,600 of them have a creation date of before 2000.

Over 400 have a creation date before 1995.

The oldest domain on the list, Ray.com registered way back in 1986.

Of the 2,000 domains, We own 101 of them.

It was during a TRAFFIC auction that Sahar came up to me with the idea of a one domain a day, domain auction.

So when I say it the idea of Bido was born during a TRAFFIC auction that’s exactly what happened.

As the TRAFFIC auction was going, Sahar sat next to me, in the auction room and drew out his vision for what became Bido.com

Sahar wrote out his plan on the fly, and then asked me “are you in or are you out”?

I was out.

Not because I didn’t trust Sahar, or believe in his vision, or his abilities.

I’m just not the kind of guy that decides to get into a business in a minute.

Yet although I opted out, I always wanted the best for Sahar on a personal and professional level.

So I took many opportunities to share my opinions on Bido as it progressed.

Bido.com in my opinion failed for one reason and one reason only.

Quality of inventory.

Or in this case,  the lack thereof.

Its not news to anyone in the domain industry that Bido had, on a daily basis, pretty poor inventory.

And there lies the problem.

If you have an inventory of 100 domains in a day, none of which seemed to be worth the $28 minimum bid, you have a pretty crappy lineup.

Then the problem snowballs.

The more crap domains you have, the worse your results will be.

The worse the results, the worse the next submissions get.

Quality attracts quality.

Crap brings more crap.

Let me be clear, Bido’s failure brings me no joy.

And I wouldn’t say anything here, that I didn’t tell the Bido folks many times in an attempt to stear them in the right direction.

Bido spent a tremdous amount of time and money building out a fancy back end system with a lot of complicated bells and whistles.

But at the end of the day having a great system only works if you have the goods to sell.

According to CourthouseNews.com, a class action lawsuit was filed in Phoenix and Arkansas federal courts, claiming that Go Daddy is “unlawfully generating and retaining revenue derived from these online advertisements each time an Internet user clicks an online advertisement appearing on plaintiff’s domain names.”

The class action claims GoDaddy.com is advertising on registered domain names without consent of the domain owners.

Of course Godaddy.com is just one of the registrars that place a placeholder page up on a domain when the domain owner has not specified servers.

These pages appear as opposed to non-resolving page, but contain PPC ads of which Godaddy according to the suit retains 100% of the revenue from, even though its customers has paid for the registration of the domain.

The class claims to have acquired the exclusive use of their purchased domain names when they registered the names through GoDaddy.com and paid the fees.

Class representative Matthew McBride says he registered 4 domain names with GoDaddy, which later placed “advertisements for products or services that they believe are contextually relevant” to the domain names to generate pay-per-click revenue.

McBride says he did not authorize Go Daddy to use his domain names, and the company did not disclose that it would use the domain names for ads to pad its bottom line when he bought the names from it.

The class action seeks to enjoin Go Daddy from “converting and using domain names registered by plaintiff and the other members of the class for defendants’ own benefit.”

It also wants Go Daddy enjoined from keeping any pay-per-click revenue from registered domain names, and from posting any ads without the parties’ agreement.

Reading through Godaddy.com terms of service, I don’t see anything that allows Godaddy to place PPC ads on domains registered by third parties and keep the revenue generated from those ads.

Should be interesting to see what happens here.

I’m sure with the tens of millions of domains under management, PPC earnings on the placeholders adds up to a pretty tidy profit for Godaddy.

I being playing around with the Apple iPad for a little over a week and although I like it everyday more I use it I would say its definitely not a game changer out of the box  like the iPod or the iPhone were, but it sure will be one day.

When your talking about the iPad, the discussion has to start with it as a e-book reader and the natural comparison to Amazon’s Kindle.

Although actually there is no comparison; the iPad Kicks the Kindle’s ass.

The iPad certainly looks and feels like a book.

It’s in color.

You flip pages of the book, with your finger, just like you do it when reading a hard book.

As you flip the pages over you can even see the words leaking through on the backside of the page your flipping.

And of course you touch to navigate, rather than to use the mouse and click like on the Kindle.

The store for ibook is just like iTunes and you can search by author, or title or type of book or simply check out the many lists like the New York Times bestsellers list for new material.

Like the Kindle, if you find a book that looks interesting you can preview the first 40-50 pages for free.

The free sample download takes less than 5 seconds.

But the ibook store is navigated by touch rather than that wheel and click of the Kindle.

While your reading your book on the iPad you can also listen to your music using the  iPod function,  glance over to see your e-mail or the latest news. sports or stock results, then go back to your book.

Because at the end of the day the Kindle is just a book reader, whole the iPad.com is a computer

A computer that is REALLY easy to use.

Its so simple even a 99 year old can do it.

Is the iPad a laptop replacement?

For me absolutely not.

Yet

First of all, at best your going to get 64g of memory.

If I took my entire iTunes library with all the music, movies, TV shows and videos and moved it to the iPad, I would be out of room.

A typical Laptop has at least 200g-250g of room on the hard drive.

64g is simply not enough for use as a laptop replacement.

There are other limitations.

No Flash.  The battle between Jobs and Adobe is becoming legendary.

You can’t install Firefox and have to use Safari.  It’s not the worst thing in the world, but I prefer Firefox.

I guess if all you were going to do is check your Facebook, surf around the internet and run your Apps, and check your e-mail (assuming you only got a couple of hundred a day)  it wouldn’t suck just to use the iPad.

However, I would hate to have to rely on it to write blog posts, or have to work on excel files on it or even to have to use it to handle the thousands of  e-mail’s I get a day.

Down the line, I can see uses for the iPad that would make it a game changer.

Every student in a class room could have one, and could use it to take quizzes or tests or learn lessons a virtual chalk board.

Test scores could be computed instantaneously, compared against the rest of the class, graded on a curve and back to the student within seconds.

Everyone at a meeting could have an iPad to follow a presentation rather than having to look up at a screen, they could make notes and comments that everyone else could see.

You could see one installed in the wall of every room in a house and used to run the lights, sound, air conditioning, TV;  the brain of a true smart home.

The possibilities for the iPad are really endless and there will be an App for that.

Undoubtedly there will be a lot of companies making millions selling Apps for the iPad.

I don’t think its a stretch to say that when its all said and done, that the iPad, and iPhone will create more millionaires then any devices in the history of mankind.

It’s not a game changer today,  but it will be.

According to a study by the University of Maryland, American college students are hooked on cellphones, social media and the Internet,

In the study, 200 students were asked to give up their Internet and cell phones and after 24 hours many showed signs of withdrawal, craving and anxiety along with an inability to function, showing symptoms similar to drug and alcohol addiction.

So are we as a society addicted to the Internet?

Are you?

When was the last day you went without checking your e-mail, or used the internet?

I personally don’t remember what day that was.

Yahoo reported earnings after the market closed today.

Yahoo! said its first-quarter profit was more than double that of a year ago.

Yahoo earned 22 cents per share, better than the 9 cents analysts had anticipated.

However Q1 search advertising revenue down was down 14%.

“We stabilized our search share and we believe it will tend up in Q2,” Yahoo Chief Executive Carol Bartz said in a conference call with analysts on Tuesday.

Yahoo’s revenue per search increased 2% from 4Q, but were down 14% year-over-year.

Yahoo shares were down 3.5% after hours.

According to allhiphop.com Jay-Z sued David Ortiz of the Boston RedSox today, for not only opening a night club in the Dominican Republic using the same name as Jay-Z ’s club, 40/40 but for also using the domain name fortyforty.net.

According to Jay, Ortiz’ club opened in October of this year, while Jay-Z’s first 40/40 location in New York opened in June of 2003.

Jay-Z claims Ortiz is capitalizing on the fame and value of the club, by using the name according to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal Court earlier today

Jay-Z further says that Ortiz is aware of the club’s name, because he has patronized Jay-Z’s famous flagship location in Manhattan in the past.

For the record so have I.

Latonas.com, first daily auction starts closing in just about an hour at 10am EST,and already there is around $40K in bids.

The auction’s closings are staggered almost over 4 hours.

Today’s auction features 120 domains and here are our picks:

ePayments.com a really nice domain is already at over $15K while its brother, e-Payments.com is almost $3K making it a nice combo for $18K.

BasicAccounting.com is a nice pick up and its under $1K.

Gymnasiums.com is a nice one word domain at around $2,500.

There are several interesting ‘i” domains, my favorite being iPrograms.com, which is just under $500, and iClothes.com which is at $3K.

I also like iAdults.com which is just over $100 and iCloset.com which is under $100 and iRoads.com seems like a great name for a Map App, and its cheap.

With the new iPad and its book reading App, iBooks, its hard not to like iFiction.com especially for the price.

Nebraska.net looks like a nice buy as its currently less than $3K, as does NorthDakota.net which is currently under $2K.

Practicing.com a nice one word .Com which when I wrote this post had a  $500 high bid but this morning is up to $25,000.

Guess I wasn’t the only one to think its a bargain.

PrisonJobs.com is currently under where is sold at just this January at TRAFFIC.

Purebreds.com is another nice one word .com which is currently under $2,500.

That’s enough for you guys.

I have my eyes on a few others.

But here is the bigger story.

This auction is good.

I mean there are good domains, with low reserves and deals to be had.

If Latonas can keep up this level of quality in his daily auction, this is going to be a huge winner.

Quality brings sales and sales brings quality domains.

Successful auctions create more successful auctions and Latonas if off to a great start.

For sellers this appears to be a quick way to get your domain sold.

I’m told that it will typically take only take a couple of days for a domain to go to a daily auction from the time its submitted, assuming it is an acceptable domain with a reasonable reserve.  Commission are set at the higher of 15% or $200.  Sellers set the reserves.

The auctions are going to run daily Monday-Friday.

Now for the site itself, I like the way its set up.

The look and feel of the site.

The navigation of the site.

Clean.

Easy.

Simple.

I like that each domain has its Alexa ranking, Google searches, cost per click and age of the domain in its heading.

I like the countdown clock for each domain in minutes and seconds.  As I guy who often just misses the deadline of auctions which only shows the number of  minutes left, I appreciate the real time countdown to the second.

We wish Latonas.com the best of luck with its daily auction.