Domain Names

I typo'd gmail.com as gmIAl.com (flipped I and A).

They know they are a gmail typo, they even say "You’re right, this isn’t Gmail.com. You accidentally mistyped Gmial.com into your address bar. "

Then they pitch their own email service.

That domain is getting a TON of traffic too:

Does it meet UDRP requirements?

(i) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; and
Google has at least two TMs:

Honestly, I am not quite sure what this will turn into. I've seen hundreds of buzz monitoring tools, I've written some stuff in the past to do data mining of this type of information.

I am thinking why not build something with a front end as well?

What I am planning:

1. Pull data from Twitter about pre-defined keywords (Brands)
2. Run Sentiment Analysis
3. Graph over time
.
.
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#. Maybe put mashup other data (stock price)

How this makes money? Probably doesn't right away. Licensing the code, building something more complex/target a niche for a later version. Use it to build credibility to sell other services.

Video Game Music is basically done.

The only thing missing is a header image to replace those silly looking coins.

Drupal Amazon Store module was a lot more painful than I expected. I had to:

• hack around the default sorting
• edit a lot of CSS to make it align properly (#edit-submit {margin-top:20px;} in amazon_store.css if anyone is having trouble)
• hack the item processing because the thumbnails linked to the bigger picture for some reason instead of the item (amazon_store_search_results.tpl.php on line 54 change the print value to url("amazon_store/item/{$result->ASIN}"); instead of $result->LargeImage->URL;)
• finally changing titles on pages from Amazon Store and Amazon Cart to something else in amazon_store.module (its in function amazon_store_menu()).
  

Ad Proof - Ad Blocking Software and Reviews

It's live.

What's done:

• Setup - Drupal 6 and CCK+Views worked like a charm
• Content - there are 10 pieces of software listed to help you block ads and keep better privacy.
• PPC Ads (Google AdSense)
• Google Analytics

What's left:

• Affiliate Programs - still signing up for/getting approved with various companies
• Design - theme is installed, I modified header image, need a logo
• Marketing - I realize I didn't include this in my last post, it needs some links and *real* content

What Didn't Work:

• Reddit and Quora both failed me. I got one response on each saying AdBlockPlus. My personal opinion is it's a pretty damn good tool, but I thought there would be more options/responses. Maybe it was when I asked it or how I phrased/tagged. May try again later.

Video Game Music used to be a developed site using the Amazon API. I was using a script called Associate-o-Matic. It wasn't open source (encoded) and wasn't particularly friendly on the backend. My license ran out and Amazon changed the way their API works.

Long story short, the site has been broken for a while.

I want to get it functional again on something open source that I have a lot more control over.

Plan

• Technical:

Drupal 6 with Amazon+Amazon Store

I may use CCK and Views again, not sure. I will probably use a youtube module of some sort. Need to see how well the Amazon store works and what sort of content I can include around it.

Standard other modules will probably be used again like Token, Pathauto, etc.

• Monetization:

Logo is being designed at LogoNerds.

I searched around at a lot of options, I didn't want to troll the forums for someone because that's not really scalable. So I looked at companies. I used Logo Design Creation in the past but I found LogoNerds cheaper (27$ vs 39$) and it gives me 1 more concept (3 vs 2). The only downside is a potential for up to 2 more days in turnaround time (3 days vs 3-5 days).

Another interesting option if I wanted something more professional rather than a quick affiliate site I found was pre-made logos from Biz Logo. You pick a shape/design you like, browse the categories for something. Some really nice looking stuff in there and since it's pre-made, you're buying something you can see what you're getting.

I want to start with something simple to warm up. This fits within my comfort level quite well because I have built many comparison sites before, for example:

• Host Charts - Web Hosting Information
• Proxy Host - Proxy Hosting Inforation

Plan

• Technical:

Drupal 6 with CCK+Views

This gives me the flexibility to create my own content types like 'Ad Blocker' which could consist of: Title, Description, Link, Operating System, Browser, Price, License, etc (That's my list of fields so far, but CCK allows me to change any time).

Views should let me display/sort the data any way I want.

I feel like I need to challenge myself. Since I moved last month, I have been doing a lot of little things here and there (see: consulting, freelancing). My own projects have stagnated and I haven't been nearly as productive as I would like.

I have a lot of ideas for different websites I own but have had a very hard time committing to one. I enjoy projects, building a first implementation and testing a concept.

In an effort to try and get creative and find a project or two to really work on, I decided why not build a lot of websites/projects and see what happens?

Seven Sites in Seven Days Challenge:
1. I will try and build 7 websites in 7 days.
2. There is no limitation/minimum requirement on what each will be.
3. Some will probably suck (likely most/all of them).
4. I may get help from freelancers (paid).
5. I may use existing resources - old code, domains, servers, etc.

I just finished reading The Domain Game by David Kesmodel and it was a very fun read (A huge thanks goes to Tim Davids who sent me a copy of this book!). I am in awe of how Kesmodel found enough material to write so much. It was published in ~2007 which made it especially interesting because not much has changed since he has written it. The biggest thing that came to mind was the domain tasting loophole was closed and the new gTLDs. Other than that, it's still relevant.

The same issues plague us, mainly surrounding trademark infringement / cybersquatting. I kept reading statement's from these big portfolio holders over and over about how it's hard to actually filter an entire portfolio and keep it clean.