With much fanfare Verisign is having a celebration to honor the most popular domain extension to date and the industry that it spawned; Bill Clinton, MoRocca and Arianna Huffington are slated to speak at the Verisign event honoring the 3 letters that pay many of our salaries.

Some industries, such as the telephone, have seen a reduction not just from cell phones, but because more people now communicate via online mediums rather than picking up a land-line phone.

This has not stopped the phone industry from purchasing domain names and websites however. We could possibly even see phone company extensions in the future such as .bell or .sprint?

Along these lines, other domains that seek to get their own domains in the industry have made the news lately.

Canon for example announced its intention to register “.canon” when ICANN gives its final approval to allow virtually unlimited tlds.

The argument could be made either way about whether this change will simplify or complicate online enforcement.

Consider for example the .xxx domain and the possible ramifications of allowing that extension to exist?

A global Internet oversight agency on Friday deferred a decision until June on whether to create a “.xxx” Internet suffix as a virtual online red-light district.

Some opponents suggest that it could legitimize pornography sites, while proponents believe that it could prevent accidental traffic and create the security from viewing pornography that many opponents seek.

Further to the security desire, the e-crime division of the UK’s Serious and Organised Crime Agency, said the proposals formerly introduced the idea that “mandatory minimum standards” should be imposed on domain name registries when they were accredited by ICANN.

This would essentially remove the anonymity of domain ownership.

Personally, I see the massive potential for abuse unless there are watchdog agencies similar to ICANN with the power to regulate, enforce and oversee possible police abuses.

There is a term for things ran by the police, and that term is “Police State”.

I am not sure that anyone, short of the police, believes that is a good idea.

Moving on, Lets look at how we got from .com to .cannon:

In 1992, fewer than 15,000 .com domains existed, now there are 84 million domain names.

According to a recent survey 81 percent of Americans visit five or more dotcom websites a day while two-thirds visit between five and 25 dotcom websites a day.

One in five persons reported finding a job on a dotcom site while six percent said they met their spouse or significant through a dotcom website.

I know that personally I owe the last 10 years of employment to the internet myself.

The annual economic benefits of the commercial Internet equal $1.5 trillion.

This figure is suggested to be “more than the global sales of medicine, investment in renewable energy and government investment in R&D combined.”

In addition, the Internet should add $3.8 trillion to the global economy by 2020.

From a timeline standpoint, here are the first 100 registered .com domains. As a point to note, the first 6 companies registered their dotcom names with DARPA, the Pentagon technology research agency which was behind the precursor to the Internet.

1.    15 Mar 1985     Symbolics.com
2.    24 Apr 1985     BBN.com
3.    24 May 1985     Think.com
4.    11 Jul 1985     MCC.com
5.    30 Sep 1985     DEC.com
6.    07 Nov 1985     Northrop.com
7.    09 Jan 1986     Xerox.com
8.    17 Jan 1986     SRI.com
9.    03 Mar 1986     HP.com
10.    05 Mar 1986     Bellcore.com
11.    19 Mar 1986     IBM.com
11.    19 Mar 1986     Sun.com
13.    25 Mar 1986     Intel.com
13.    25 Mar 1986     TI.com
15.    25 Apr 1986     ATT.com
16.    08 May 1986     GMR.com
16.    08 May 1986     TEK.com
18.    10 Jul 1986     FMC.com
18.    10 Jul 1986     UB.com
20.    05 Aug 1986     Bell-ATL.com
20.    05 Aug 1986     GE.com
20.    05 Aug 1986     Grebyn.com
20.    05 Aug 1986     ISC.com
20.    05 Aug 1986     NSC.com
20.    05 Aug 1986     Stargate.com
26.    02 Sep 1986     Boeing.com
27.    18 Sep 1986     ITCorp.com
28.    29 Sep 1986     Siemens.com
29.    18 Oct 1986     Pyramid.com
30.    27 Oct 1986     AlphaCDC.com
30.    27 Oct 1986     BDM.com
30.    27 Oct 1986     Fluke.com
30.    27 Oct 1986     Inmet.com
30.    27 Oct 1986     Kesmai.com
30.    27 Oct 1986     Mentor.com
30.    27 Oct 1986     NEC.com
30.    27 Oct 1986     Ray.com
30.    27 Oct 1986     Rosemount.com
30.    27 Oct 1986     Vortex.com
40.    05 Nov 1986     Alcoa.com
40.    05 Nov 1986     GTE.com
42.    17 Nov 1986     Adobe.com
42.    17 Nov 1986     AMD.com
42.    17 Nov 1986     DAS.com
42.    17 Nov 1986     Data IO.com
42.    17 Nov 1986     Octopus.com
42.    17 Nov 1986     Portal.com
42.    17 Nov 1986     Teltone.com
42.    11 Dec 1986     3Com.com
50.    11 Dec 1986     Amdahl.com
50.    11 Dec 1986     CCUR.com
50.    11 Dec 1986     CI.com
50.    11 Dec 1986     Convergent.com
50.    11 Dec 1986     DG.com
50.    11 Dec 1986     Peregrine.com
50.    11 Dec 1986     Quad.com
50.    11 Dec 1986     SQ.com
50.    11 Dec 1986     Tandy.com
50.    11 Dec 1986     TTI.com
50.    11 Dec 1986     Unisys.com
61.    19 Jan 1987     CGI.com
61.    19 Jan 1987     CTS.com
61.    19 Jan 1987     SPDCC.com
64.    19 Feb 1987     Apple.com
65.    04 Mar 1987     NMA.com
65.    04 Mar 1987     Prime.com
67.    04 Apr 1987     Philips.com
68.    23 Apr 1987     Datacube.com
68.    23 Apr 1987     Kai.com
68.    23 Apr 1987     TIC.com
68.    23 Apr 1987     Vine.com
72.    30 Apr 1987     NCR.com
73.    14 May 1987     Cisco.com
73.    14 May 1987     RDL.com
75.    20 May 1987     SLB.com
76.    27 May 1987     ParcPlace.com
76.    27 May 1987     UTC.com
78.    26 Jun 1987     IDE.com
79.    09 Jul 1987     TRW.com
80.    13 Jul 1987     Unipress.com
81.    27 Jul 1987     Dupont.com
81.    27 Jul 1987     Lockheed.com
83.    28 Jul 1987     Rosetta.com
84.    18 Aug 1987     Toad.com
85.    31 Aug 1987     Quick.com
86.    03 Sep 1987     Allied.com
86.    03 Sep 1987     DSC.com
86.    03 Sep 1987     SCO.com
89.    22 Sep 1987     Gene.com
89.    22 Sep 1987     KCCS.com
89.    22 Sep 1987     Spectra.com
89.    22 Sep 1987     WLK.com
93.    30 Sep 1987     Mentat.com
94.    14 Oct 1987     WYSE.com
95.    02 Nov 1987     CFG.com
96.    09 Nov 1987     Marble.com
97.    16 Nov 1987     Cayman.com
97.    16 Nov 1987     Entity.com
99.    24 Nov 1987     KSR.com
100.    30 Nov 1987     NynexST.com
Also as a side effect, the domain names became somewhat of a commodity and became more valuable than the $10 average purchase

price. What would Google, Dell or any other online dependent business pay for their domain name now?

Here are a few answers to that question:
1.   $9,999,950    Fund.com
2.   $9,500,000    Porn.com
3.   $7,500,000    Business.com
3.   $7,500,000    Diamond.com
5.   $7,000,000    Beer.com
6.   $5,500,000    Casino.com
7.   $5,100,000    Toys.com
8.   $5,000,000    AsSeenOnTV.com
8.   $5,000,000    Korea.com
10.   $4,900,000    Clothes.com
11.   $3,850,000    YP.com
12.   $3,500,000    Shop.com
13.   $3,300,000    Altavista.com
13.   $3,300,000    Wine.com
15.   $3,200,000    Software.com
16.   $3,000,000    Candy.com
16.   $3,000,000    Loans.com
16.   $3,000,000    Vodka.com
16.   $3,000,000    CreditCheck.com
20.   $2,900,000    Wines.com
21.   $2,858,945    Shopping.de
22.   $2,750,000    CreditCards.com
23.   $2,500,000    Tom.com
24.   $2,200,000    Autos.com
24.   $2,200,000    Coupons.com
26.   $2,100,000    Computer.com
27.   $1,900,000    Savings.com
28.   $1,800,000    Express.com
28.   $1,800,000    Mortgage.com
28.   $1,800,000    Seniors.com
31.   $1,760,000    Fly.com
32.   $1,750,000    Telephone.com
33.   $1,700,000    Auction.com
34.   $1,659,000    DataRecovery.com
35.   $1,600,000    Branson.com
36.   $1,525,000    Ticket.com
37.   $1,500,000    Cameras.com
37.   $1,500,000    Deposit.com
37.   $1,500,000    Russia.com
37.   $1,500,000    Tandberg.com
As with most everything 25 years down the road, the end product vaguely resembles the original.

Given the current trend, the Internet may change so much over the next year we may not recognize it over its current incarnation.

One thing that never changes, is that whenever someone figures out a way to make money, at least double that many people will figure out a way to steal it or capitalize upon that good name.

If you have problems with people capitalizing on your name or making it difficult for you to do so yourself, you don’t  need to register a new extension with ICANN; Metamend has dedicated online reputation management and can help you protect your online identity.

Facebook itself started life as a college only application and many of the other now famous social media sites were dreamt of or “beta tested” during the respective developer’s college careers.

While not necessarily a social media site, Napster started life and gained popularity through college sites.

The access to sheer numbers facilitated the growth of that massive online community. More people created more choices which attracted more people and so the cycle begins and grows. This was bittersweet for Napster in the fact that as the numbers grew so did the usefulness of Napster but the new size attracted new attention of those who wanted to shut it down.

Now it appears, the same cliche’ “Double edged sword” that bit the Universities during the heyday of the the Napster vs. RIAA lawsuits is going to bite these Universities again with social media.  A sad fact of life is that where there are a collection of people, there is also a collection of complaints.

To illustrate; I once read a compelling paper which essentially made the observation that the entire human race was a loose collection of tribes, especially and more so today than ever. Granted while that isn’t much of a revelation on the face of it, what was compelling was the fact that we still pursue this drive in modern society.

We are always looking for a tribe to belong to, that we can align ourselves with and share the recognized identity. Your family is a tribe, your workplace is a tribe, the after-work drinking “crew”, your very neighborhood, your state, your country, etc. Even “loners” belong to a “Loner” tribe as that is a societal distinction; you can’t escape.

You decide to put a tag on yourself for others to see how you are aligned, and that, no matter how subtle, is a tribe.

So what do we stereotypically assume that tribes do? In my perception, tribes mostly hunt and go to war. While you can make analogies all day in this regard, and its entertaining to do so, I just want to stick to one of the two functions I described: war.

In the past, and to some extent today, war is declared when a majority or all of the tribe feels wronged about something that they can assign blame to another tribe for. This is the psychology of “mob rules”.

Picture the tribe of “Unnamed College” students, and their shared outrage over some new policy or difficult educator. How it starts is immaterial, but how it ends can be disastrous. If the shared outrage becomes a riot, you can call the Police, but what do you do if the way they make war is online?

Consider the following statistics:

According to a February 23rd 2010 study the average U.S. college student has 87 email contacts, 146 cell phone contacts and routinely has approximately 438 friends across a number of social media networks.

The same study found that college males gravitate toward email and cell phone while college females overwhelmingly have more social media interaction.

Four out of every 10 college students report having a recognized brand on a social network as a friend. The same week a study indicated that there are 50 Million Tweets Per Day.

When you look at other statistics such as a November 2009 Ruder Finn study which reflected that 91% of adults use their Mobile Phones to Socialize, imagine how quickly the fire can start?

This study further revealed that Americans are spending nearly three hours a day on their mobile devices;  more than even desktop users.

45% of the study respondents report posting comments on social networking sites, 43% are connecting with friends on social networking sites, 40% are sharing content with others and 38% are simply sharing photos.

Now imagine that a university has put its self in a situation that everyone is talking about……negatively.

In the fall of 2008, more than 4.6 million students took at least one online course—a 17 percent increase over the previous year.  73 percent of schools reported increased demand for their online classes. Now factor in social media sites and their reach.
The U.S. Department of Education analyzed research studies undertaken from 1996 to 2008 and has concluded the following:

1) Online education is more effective than face-to-face learning;

2) Online learning combined with some face-to-face learning (blended learning) is the most effective;

3) Face-to-face learning alone is the least effective method among the three types studied.
This clearly demonstrates a definite need for ORM for school administration, especially the online programs. We have entered a time when Andy Warhol’s prediction of 15 minutes of fame seems conservative, given the many technological ways to make your voice heard and your opinions known.

Everyone has the ability now to create content that is easily accessible, for good or bad.

Thankfully for Universities, there are ways to combat this wave of unsolicited media and solutions to minimize the damage.

There are proven techniques and solutions that can help keep your online reputation intact. If you need to protect your tribe’s online reputation from the many challenges that exist, Metamend has industry proven Reputation management solutions and expertise to assist you.

To many of us in this industry, especially in the ORM field, this is not really news, but validation of what we already know; companies are focusing on making the best use of the intellectual property they already own, especially in a down economy.

The change in strategy has become one of defensively changing search engine results not defensive registrations; basically, trading a shotgun for a scalpel.

Does that mean that everything short of a .com should be forgotten?  That would be un-advisable.

What really is being said by “reading the tea leaves” is that many companies believe that now is the time to act smarter, and explore whatever that strategy entails from their perspective.  This is the time to subtly protect the client from themselves.

Most are turning away from turning corporate budgets over to a service provider and taking whatever advice it gives on blind faith in favor of Corporate legal taking a more active role than ever before.

We all have to take a careful look at what we are doing in this industry, and try whenever possible to make sure that money spent shows a more tangible return to our clients.

Consider the recent registrations of the following domains:

ANT-MAN-THEMOVIE.COM.

Rumor has it that Paramount ( via Disney) is going to do an “Ant Man” movieand yesterday ANT-MAN-THEMOVIE.COM was acquired under a masked registration. ANTMANTHEMOVIE.COM however was publicly registered in 2005.

At the time of this writing, the .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us and .mobi were still available for both domains. ANTMAN-THEMOVIE is available across all the extensions. It doesn’t appear that Paramount is very concerned with regard to Antman the movie, as both owned sites are not functioning right now.

Disney has registered these names in the last few days:
ATRUESTORY-MOVIE.COM
ATRUESTORY-THEMOVIE.COM
CARANCHOFILM.COM
CLASSYLADYMOVIE.COM
EATSLEEPPOOPMOVIE.COM
ESCAPEARTIST-MOVIE.COM
GENNERIS.COM
GENNERISMOVIE.COM
GOODLOOKING-THEMOVIE.COM
GREATLENGTHSMOVIE.COM
HOMEMOVIES-THEMOVIE.COM
INVESTIGATORMATER.COM
ISAWYOU-THEMOVIE.COM
LUNARMATER.COM
MATERPI.COM
MEHARMONYMOVIE.COM
MOONMATER.COM
NONSTOP-MOVIE.COM
RA-MOVIE.COM
RIGHTSTUFFMATER.COM
ROBOPOCALYPSE-MOVIE.COM
TAKINGTHECROWN.COM
TAKINGTHECROWNMOVIE.COM
TRIPLECROWNMOVIE.COM
WARHORSE-MOVIE.COM
WHENTHETRUMPETSSOUND.COM
WIFEVSNINJAMOVIE.COM

and my personal favorite:

DENVERINTERNATIONALAIRPORTMOVIE.COM.

Take note that ALL the above domains are dot -coms, and that is all that has been registered; .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us and .mobi are still available.

Does this mean that you can squat Disney names?

I doubt it.

Disney has some of the finest Trademark Attorneys anywhere.
Despite the industry wide pulling back of domain registration, domain name registrations themselves actually increased in 2009 by about 7% over 2008. Note that the .com and .net extensions however accounted for most all of those increases.

In what appears to be a related move, on July 1, 2010, VeriSign® who is the registry for .COM and .NET, will increase its prices; .COM will go up 7%, and .NET by 10%.

It seems that the days of cheap squatting are mostly behind us, and domain tasting is not as widespread.

However what is still around is keyword infringement, typo-squatting and plenty of ways to use Intellectual property in bad faith.

Going forward, online property monitoring is poised to be more important than ever, and experience in enforcement in these matters will be key.

If you need a scalpel or effective online reputation management, Metamend has industry expertise to professionally manage your online reputation.

Italy would like to think so.

This week the most serious threat to Freedom of Speech online since the internet has been in existence may be the Italian court descision to indict 3 Google executives.

Italy has sentenced them to prison time for content in a video that some anonymous Italian YouTube user uploaded. This Italian user has since been punished with community service only.

This event marks a serious change in the censorship, or prior lack of, that exists on the internet.

Many people in and outside of our industry, are extremely concerned over what this could mean to providers of online content; Many theorize that it signals the beginning of the end for free speech and blogs online.

Left unchecked, this movement could spiral out of control and nations with less freedom of speech than the United States could dictate how Americans use their freedom online.

This however is not an isolated incident; a German court has sued Google over its feature called “street view”.

Germans are notoriously protective of their privacy, and Google street view is simply not anonymous enough for their liking. Its not as though Google is giving out that sensitive of information from the US perspective, but the fact is that the German decision has the potential reduce functionality everywhere.

Google’s initiative to digitize all the world’s books may end after a Paris court ruled that “Google had committed acts of copyright violations” by digitizing 4,000 of works from one of France’s biggest publishing houses, La Martiniere. This French lawsuit will prevent people from all of the nations of the world from having online access to the 4,000 literary works.

Are the Italian, French and German courts actually trying to serve some measure of justice here, or make a scapegoat of yet another American company?

As we have seen all too many times with companies like Microsoft, foreign courts love to levy torts and summary payment judgements against American entities.

Then, if that wasn’t concern enough, for American business, they have stepped up their campaigns against each other! Microsoft is now going after Google in conjunction with another company.

I suppose that Microsoft was desirous to see what the view was like from the “Plaintiff” box instead of their long stretch lately in the “Defendant” seat.

Having said that, both Microsoft and Apple have had their own lawsuits between each other but this find themselves also sharing a defendant box against the Plaintiff “Emblaze” over an intellectual property issue.

If this still isn’t strange enough for you; consider what is happening with XEROX.
The company who has probably been responsible for more acts of “copying” protected work, directly or indirectly, by the use of its products, has decided to file suit against Google and Yahoo for pilfering intellectual property.

Kettle and Pot, enough already!

A newer site is just tempting fate with an application entitled “Chatroulette“.

Essentially it is a web cam chat site that utilizes Russian Roulette style play because you randomly get a web cam of a stranger to chat with. The potential lawsuits for decency, pornography, child exploitation, etc are endless here.

Given the litigation industry’s business model which currently taxes Americans approximately $250 billion annually. and as a percentage of the US GDP, America spends twice as much on tort litigation as Germany and three times as much as Britain or France.

In the aftermath of the outcome of these new lawsuits, and in the wake of legally irresponsible websites such as “Chatroulette” we need to prepare ourselves to endure the next challenge or lawsuit, foreign or domestic to our business and reputation online.

If you are concerned that your online reputation is more “Lawsuit Roulette” than strategy, Metamend has online professionals to assist you in protecting your business from these very challenges.

Smith had reportedly purchased three seats for he and his wife for the flight to Burbank, but Jennifer was unable to make the trip. According to the podcast, Kevin was desirous to utilize two of his tickets, and save one, but the clerk inadvertently printed up all three according to Kevin, and long story short, he was allowed to board an earlier flight as a standby passenger.

Even though he had paid for three seats, only one seat was available on that flight. Kevin was fine with that, apparently the airline wasn’t.

This is where the problems began.

According to the story, (and I am paraphrasing), after Kevin was let on the plane, stowing his bags, buckling his seat belt and awaiting takeoff, he was promptly and embarrassingly asked to leave, in front of an airplane almost full of people. Safety and security concerns were stated as the reason for his removal, although the airline refused to elaborate at the time.

Upon leaving the plane, he questioned the Southwest personnel and was not given sufficient answers in his opinion and was subsequently offered a $100 voucher for his embarrassment. Kevin politely as possible given the position he was in, refused the voucher, boarded the next flight, all the while using his Twitter account to its fullest.

The well known movie director has 1.6 million Twitter followers.

Kevin typed out several messages on his Twitter, his blog and his podcast stating his position in no uncertain terms.

He has developed his personal social media presence into a powerful outlet for promoting his positions on issues. He has the Twitter following to possibly effect change on certain levels, due mostly to a combination of the amount of time he invests and the level of following he possesses.

Bottom line: his social media build works.

If you were wondering, some of his messages were:

Dear @SouthwestAir – I know I’m fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?

Dear @SouthwestAir, I flew out in one seat, but right after issuing me a standby ticket, Oakland Southwest attendant Suzanne (wouldn’t give last name) told me Captain Leysath deemed me a “safety risk”.

Again: I’m way fat… But I’m not THERE just yet.

But if I am, why wait til my bag is up, and I’m seated WITH ARM RESTS DOWN. In front of a packed plane with a bunch of folks who’d already I.d.ed me as “Silent Bob.” So, @SouthwestAir, go **** yourself. I broke no regulation, offered no “safety risk” (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?). I was wrongly ejected from the flight (even Suzanne eventually agreed). And **** your apologetic $100 voucher, @SouthwestAir. Thank God I don’t embarrass easily (bless you, JERSEY GIRL training). But I don’t sulk off either: so everyday, some new ***-you Tweets for @SouthwestAir.

Southwest followed suit by blogging right away with the title “not-so-silent-bob“.

This was perhaps an ill-advised move on Southwest’s part, as I don’t think the situation called for levity at that point.

Southwest’s Twitter rebuttals were not so effective either. While Southwest had a social media build in place, their information outlet was not working so well.

Their customer service was not there, and they didn’t do effective damage control; they quite possibly alienated 1.6 million potential customers.

While Kevin Smith was glad to have a Twitter account, other celebrities have not been so happy.

John Mayer has also had it with certain public issues but unlike Kevin Smith, he does not seem to be as much of a fan of Twitter.

Mr. Mayer has had a few days of Twitter “silence” and in all likelihood, that will be the situation going forward; as with any social media, it can be a double edged sword.

With a proper social media build, and professional reputation management, you have it within your power to control what is said about you and your company. You can minimize and control reputation issues. In this instance, it appears that Kevin Smith had his ORM properly utilized and Southwest to some degree, did not.

If you have concerns with regard to your online reputation, Metamend has proven solutions and experienced professionals to address your concerns and help you prepare for situations like this.

Another Toyota wrongful death lawsuit has been filed over a fatal auto accident allegedly caused by the uncontrolled, sudden acceleration of a Toyota Corolla. Toyota has been doing its due diligence here, but its hard to put the genie back in the bottle when the lawsuits start.

McDonalds should sell its coffee in bottles as it is sued again for selling overheated coffee. The suit this time is only on the order of $7,000 or $8,000 and is expected to settle out of court. The reprocussions will make us all endure barely warm coffee eventually if this pace keeps up.

Hugh Hefner is also being sued, but by some of his Playboy shareholders who are claiming that he is not taking up any offers to sell Playboy since the business is falling apart. These suits have little or nothing to do with intellectual property, but they are interesting reading. Just like Playboy, for the articles of course.

Have no fear though, there are plenty of suits that concern Intellectual property this week.

Nintendo was awarded $1.3 million for its New Super Mario Bros title. In a Nintendo Wii piracy lawsuit, a 24-year-old Australian gamer, is facing a debt that he will probably be struggling to pay for the rest of his life after uploading and sharing the title online, pre-release. I probably wont spend $100,000 on video games over my lifetime, and I am a fan; this man wont be able to afford to rent them after this.

Along the same lines, Twilight and Summit Entertainment, which owns the stylized “TWILIGHT” trademark, is suing a company that is selling a “Twilight” DVD. While this DVD is a fan release about the actual town, Summit is not flattered.

Then, a district court judge in San Francisco on Monday denied the N.C.A.A.’s motion for dismissal in a class-action lawsuit headed by the former U.C.L.A. basketball star Ed O’Bannon. This ruling leaves the N.C.A.A.’s licensing contracts open to discovery; the danger of any lawsuit can be the fallout.

All of this, while compelling, is overshadowed by the big story in Intellectual property this week:

The World Intellectual Property Organisation or WIPO heard a bulk complaint by Inter-Continental Hotels Corporation and Six Continents Hotels which are both subsidiaries of the InterContinental Hotels Group or ICG. This suit is against a German man who owned 1,519 domain names found to contain terms which were identical or similar to owned trade marks by ICG.
The basis of the suit is the notion that the domains appeared to be associated with the hotels and caused customer confusion.

To establish the basis of the lawsuit is that the domain name is identical to, or confusingly similar to, terms to which IPC has rights.  The current owner must have no rights to the domain name; and the domain name was registered, and is being used, in bad faith.

The named Defendant is Daniel Kirchhof, who was found to hold 70,000+ domain names! Of those, 1,542 possessed undeniable references to trade marks of ICG, such as holiday-inn-swindon.com. These were found to cause consumer confusion to the extent that internet users would believe that they had arrived at an official ICG website. However, the user was given a link through to other websites offering bookings at IHG and even booking in rival hotels!

This issue highlights the need for portfolio consolidation and effective online reputation management. By picking up the gtlds, at the minimum for your brands, you not only gain a significant traffic benefit, but you prevent the need for this type of lawsuit.

If you need effective Online Reputation Management, Metamend has solutions to help keep your brands where they belong.

Nobody likes a slow website, and now officially Google doesn’t. And by “now” , I mean a couple of months ago. Yes ironic I know, a slow response with this post.

Google is constantly checking your site’s performance and all indications point to this being a ranking factor in future. This was reported a late last year by WebProNews, after an interview with the venerable Matt Cutts from the Goog.

By their own admission Google is all about the ”user experience”, with their prime SEO mantra being; “make websites for users, not for the search engines”. And page load time is one if the most important user experience issues that you’ll encounter when browsing the web.

It’s a well known “statistic” that if a web page does not load in less than 3 seconds a user will ”bounce” from the site, return to the search results and probably pick one of your competitors. So, how can you speed up a slow site?

Examine your site’s performance

First off, you should analyze all information available about how your pages load using some readily available tools. As a good SEO or webmaster you’ve probably already signed up for Google’s Webmaster Tools. A recently added feature is the “Site Performance” section, which is found under the “Labs” menu item.

This will give you a general indication of whether Google sees your site as being fast and provides a few tips on how your pages can be improved for speed. We can also see over time how your work in improving web site speed is taking effect.

For a more immediate read-out of a webpage’s performance we use the Yahoo YSlow plugin for Firebug (a Firefox plug-in). YSlow can be run on a live page that you are viewing and gives instant (depending on page load time of course :) ) feedback on what areas you can address to improve load time. It will also give you an indication of the “emtpy cache” (first time visitor) and “primed cache” (repeat visitor) performance.

For an advanced metric of page load time, Google Analytics can be configured to record a page load time metric and gives a reasonable representation of the issue from the user perspective. Analytics can be made to track the load time based on internet connection speed in so giving a broad indication of your site’s performance.

Enable GZip Compression

All modern browsers support webpage GZip compression and are able to decompress the data sent from your server. The less data that is transferred for each page, the less time it takes for a page to load in a browser. For those site owners who have a restriction on the amount of traffic with their host, GZip compression will reduce the amount of data that you have to serve.

You can use a GZip compression test to check if your pages are currently compressed and if not, this tool will estimate of the size of savings to expect. If GZip compression is enabled, the actual % of data saved during compression is shown. This tool can also test CSS and JS files.

Apache and Microsoft IIS web servers both support GZip, and quick and dirty instructions for enabling GZip compression is shown below:

Apache Server

The module that deals with GZip compression on an Apache server is “mod_deflate”. Create an “info.php” file and add the code <?php phpinfo() ?>, upload to your server and browse “/info.php” to get a readout of the Apache modules installed. If mod_deflate is loaded on your webserver then the following .htaccess declaration will enable GZip for a lot of file types.

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/javascript application/x-javascript application/x-httpd-php application/rss+xml application/atom_xml
</IfModule>

If mod_deflate can’t be loaded by your host or server admin (it requires a core recompile for installation) then the following .htaccess declaration will enable GZip compression for php files only. The “gzhandler” is not as efficient at compressing data than “mod_deflate”, so will be marginally slower and the savings will me slightly less but for most sites will suffice.

php_value output_handler ob_gzhandler

If your pages are .htm or .html (as opposed to .php) add the following lines at the top of your .htaccess to get Apache to parse those files as .php so that they will be compressed.

RemoveHandler .html .htm
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .htm .html

Microsoft IIS

If you’re running a Microsoft IIS server, the following document will explain how compression can be activated: http://g.www.ms.akadns.net/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/25d2170b-09c0-45fd-8da4-898cf9a7d568.mspx?mfr=true

Reduce Image Size

These days websites are very graphicy, with most sites having appealing header images, product images and so forth. Unfortunately the more graphics on a site, the more data needs to be sent to the user’s browser leading to longer load times. This is especially an issue for first time visitors who don’t have the images cached.

Most competent web designers keep this in mind and will try to maximize the JPeg compression versus the image quality to speed up page loading. But there are some cool tools out there that can further improve things.

One of the most useful image tools that we use is SmushIt (found in the YSlow plugin that is mentioned earlier in this post). SmushIt is able to examine the images on a web page and compress them even further with no noticeable degradation in image quality. Smushing your header and background images is a must, and the data savings are often surprising.

One of the big no-no’s that we often come across is using the browsers image scaling to fit a large image into a small space.  We often find this is the case in product catalogs, when a large product image is used for the shingle thumbnail on the category listing pages. In this case, use a small thumbnail in the shingle instead of scaling.

For all other cases browser image scaling should be avoided, as the web browser is slow at scaling, not to mention the extra time spent downloading the large image. Always  ensure images are scaled to the correct size before use on your pages, and you’ll notice an improvement in load time.

If your website template uses a lot of background images, header images and image buttons  then the number of HTTP requests for a webpage will be quite high. Each request takes time and can slow down a page. To reduce this delay combine these template images into a CSS sprite image. This is basically one “big” image that contains all of your template images and using CSS classes you can pick out the correct part of this image that you need for each of the graphic elements on the page.

CSS and JavaScript Code

There are a few strategies for improving CSS and JavaScript file load time. At a minimum you should externalize all CSS and JS files so that they can be cached by the users browser. In addition, if you have more that one CSS or JS include file, combine all the CSS includes into one file, do the same with the JS includes, and this will reduce http requests. For the hardcore guys out there, try to Minify the CSS/JavaScript which will remove unnecessary white-space and line-breaks. Minify can be also found in the YSlow plugin for Firebug.

Reduce the amount of database calls in your application

A lot of websites out there rely on an SQL database to store information that is shown to your users. If your site runs a product catalog or a CMS systems then the odds are that a database is involved. Every time a page is requested by a browser, the database is queried for the information that the user will see on the page. This back and forth takes time and can be a bottleneck.

To speed things up, only run the minimum database queries that are required and only request the actual table fields from the database that you need. Avoid “SELECT * FROM” in your SQL queries. Optimizing things in this way can get quite quite knarly, so be prepared for a lot of hard work. For large sites that get a lot of traffic this can help in page load time tremendously and is worth the effort.

Wordpress

Wordpress is the most popular blogging software out there, and due to it’s flexibility is increasingly being used as a CMS system. Wordpress uses an SQL database to store all your posts and pages.

Hundreds of “plug-ins” are available for Wordpress to help customize it in countless ways. Unfortunately the more plugins that you install the slower Wordpress becomes. The less plugins that are activated the faster your Wordpress blog will be. You should also go as far as removing all unactivated wordpress plugins from your “plugin” directory.

A useful addition to Wordpress are “Widgets”, which allow for “real time updated” areas within your template. There are Widgets available to show latest posts, most popular posts, dynamic menus and much more. The problem is that each one of these widgets will poll the database to get the information required, thus increasing the load time of the page. Try to reduce the number of widgets that you use and if a widget is showing content that doesn’t change too often, try to hardcode the HTML with what the widget would display.

Summary

There are many more things to look at to speed up a website and those listed above are the areas that we initially tend to look at for our search engine optimization clients. Depending on the size of a site and the amount of traffic it gets, even the simplest change can have a significant effect.

If there are any other ways you have found to speed up a site, we’d love to know of your experiences.

He emerged in Western Pennsylvania on Tuesday to see his shadow, which traditionally means winter will last another six weeks.

12,000+ people from as far as Chile and the Netherlands, came to watch the pseudo-German tradition unfold. It has mutated from the original holiday of “Candelmas” and has become somewhat of a pop-culture tradition more than anything.

People stand around in near freezing, and sometimes below freezing, temperatures to watch a Marmot look for a shadow.  This is all with the understanding that a superstition will forecast the weather for the next month and a half, approximately.

Far from a factual undertaking, the whole circus is now geared towards entertainment.

You can see “Phil” at his website;   www.punxsutawneyphil.com .  The site header is carefully worded;

“Greetings from Punxsutawney! A tribute site to the world’s most famous weather-forecasting groundhog”.

However, a direct search for the Marmot today, puts his site at 3rd place, behind “news” and then “groundhog.org”. This begs the question, why wouldn’t Phil want his traffic pointing to his site and then monetize it heavily?

Maybe because Marmot’s have no real use for money, and less use for people and attention?

Reference PETA and their recommendation, not surprisingly to, “stop waking Phil up because taking pictures of him is cruel,and he should be replaced with a robot.”

Personally, I think perhaps we might all be better served if all protestors would be replaced with robots; They could circle and hold signs and broadcast propaganda from speakers, but then who would be able to tell the difference, honestly?

Practicality aside, let’s pretend that Phil is the Capitalist that we all would be in his shoes (if he wore any).

Further internet searches related to Punxsutawney Phil today topped out at 3rd most searched items:

punxsutawney phil, groundhog day, punxsutawney phil 2010, punxsutawney phil video, will punxsutawney phil see his shadow, national hurricane center, empire state building, punxsutawney phil 1986, and punxsutawney phil pictures being the most relevant searches.

For example, when you enter “punxsutawney phil” on a Google search, you get a sponsored link for “eBay”; Sponsored Links Punxsutawney Phil -Beanie Babies & Other Plush Dolls. Bid on Punxsutawney Phil.
For the search “groundhog day” you will get a set of sponsored links for “www.alliedcreditsolutions.com” and

“www.PartyCheap.com“.

Who knew that there would be parties and credit solutions associated with burrowing rodents? Usually those kind of Marmot parties in the Northwest involve using ”credit solutions” to purchase a rifle and/or some ammo, and then the “party” portion involves some beer and “downsizing” the Marmot population from your tailgate, but I digress.

If you would like to follow Phil on some of the social media outlets, there are a number of sites he is purported to use:

On facebook this is supposedly the one to use:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Punxsutawney-Phil/103061141793

Then there are a number of videos to watch, and youtube is no exception.

Then on Twitter, it starts to get confusing since there are two: GroundhogPhil and PunxsutawnePhil.

Amazingly, the little guy while unable to speak human dialects, is able to text you in English by  text “Groundhog” to 247365.

They will get a text message with the prediction on Feb. 2 (today).

The revenue and traffic can’t all be benefiting the marmot, so what is a “groundhog” to do?

First, the Marmot needs to take stock of what he owns and is entitled to protect.

Has he done a sufficient job of protecting and registering his intellectual property?

How much of what is irritating him is considered “fair use”?

Next, he needs a good strategy to both protect what is acquirable, enforceable, and still available.

Last, he needs a team or solution that involves expertise and experience with online legal and enforcement issues.

If you find your self in a similar situation as our furry friend, Metamend has online reputation management solutions to prevent you from having your own groundhog day with regard to your online identity.

The somewhat “quakeresque” public perception of religious leadership is that anything “tech” is bad and living in an 1800’s way of life with a candle, and wooden shack and a Holy Bible is something we should all aspire to.

Possibly contrary to the stereotype, Pope Benedict XVI is encouraging his priests to become more versed in internet and technical things. The Vatican has been very much near the cutting edge, believe it or not, for most of the internet’s existence.

For example; The Vatican / Holy See has had its own internet ccTld since inception of the naming standard. The registration web site is http://www.nic.va, which is currently offline. The only used .va extension is vatican.va and the website is live.

Some of the content on the Vatican site is the PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS.

Here is where the Vatican explains its position with regard to the internet. The site is very content heavy, and perhaps a bit wordy, but very thorough. The Pope has also weighed in on internet issues in the past.
Last year he warned ICANN of the “perils” of allowing new internet domains such as “.catholic, .anglican, .orthodox, .hindu, .islam, .muslim, and perhaps .buddhist”. The Pope felt there was the danger of over or under acknowledging each religion and the problems that could follow sanctioning and not sanctioning each possible extension.

Given the overall Muslim reaction to Israel, fundamentalist cartoons, and even our own World Trade Center, its hard to argue with the Pope’s opinion to err on the side of caution when mixing religion and law.
In addition to the Vatican’s multilingual Web site, it has recently launched the “Pope2you” portal, which offers a Facebook app, iPhone app, YouTube channel, and selected videos.

The pope has cautioned his internet handlers to use discretion and be mindful of social media content. Executives from Facebook, Wikipedia and Google also attended a Vatican meeting to brief officials and Catholic bishops about the Internet and digital youth culture.
He says: “Priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart, their closeness to Christ. This will not only enliven their pastoral outreach, but also will give a ’soul’ to the fabric of communications that make up the Web.”

The meeting which addressed Internet copyright issues and hacking, included testimony from a young Swiss hacker and an Interpol cyber-crime official. The Vatican’s top communications official, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, has said a key priority of the Catholic Church is to be able to use new technologies to spread its message, particularly to the young.

“Our dream in this global village created by new technologies is that the church and Jesus’ disciples can have their tent – Jesus’ tent – so that the attention of men and women who walk the streets of the world is turned toward it,” he said recently on Vatican Radio.

Coincidentally, there is an internet cafe near the vatican called “Hackers” which is a Restaurant that serves pizza, beer, has state-of-the-art computers on-site and also provides internet access. In case anyone would like to add it to their travel itinerary, it is at address: Via Sebastiano Veniero 10-16 in Vatican City, tel: 06-3973-9268.

The Vatican has a notable history on the internet starting with the founders of Apple computer.

Using a captain crunch whistle, Steve Wozniak actually called the Vatican as a prank. He asked for the pope, and said, this is Henry Kissinger calling on behalf with Richard Nixon at the summit meeting in Moscow. He actually didn’t get anywhere as the Archbishop had spoken to Henry Kissinger early that day, and would not grant access to the Pope, as the story goes.

Later, Pope John Paul II used mass media and information technology to get out his message, overseeing the 1995 launch of the Vatican’s Web site, http://www.vatican.va. Virtual tours, and audio feeds from Vatican Radio can be found on the website.
The radio stations are: Vatican Radio Ch1  Vatican City, Vatican Radio “One-O-Five live”: Italian, English,
French and Spanish, Vatican Radio Ch2  Vatican City, Arabic, Czech, Croatian, Esperanto, French, English,
Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish,German, Hungarian.
Vatican Radio Ch3  Vatican City Albanian, Armenian, Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Esperanto,
Philippine, Latvian, Lithuanian, Rumanian, Russian,Scandinavian, Ukranian
Vatican Radio Ch4  Vatican City  Amharic, Chinese, French (Africa), Hindi, English (Africa),
English (India), Kiswahili, Malealam, Portuguese (Africa),Somali, Spanish, Tamil, Tigrino, Vietnamese.
Vatican Radio Ch5  Vatican City Arabic, French, English, Portuguese (Portugal, Brazil),
Spanish (Spain, Ispanoamerica).
But even in the wake of the Vatican trying to stay current, it still has online shortcomings.
Earlier in the year, Pope Benedict stated that he was disappointed that Vatican officials hadn’t done a simple Internet search to discover the Holocaust-denying comments of an ultraconservative bishop whose excommunication he had lifted.
Pope Benedict wrote a letter to his bishops saying that he had “learned the lesson” after public outrage over Bishop Richard Williamson’s re-instatement. The Pope assured all the Vatican would in the future pay greater attention to the Internet as a source of news.

This is a situation where a carefully crafted Online Reputation Management strategy would solve the problems at hand. Metamend has such solutions to help you fix your internet reputation issues.

It appears we are all not quite seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with the latest economic slump. It has hit everyone hard regardless of business size or industry and in many cases marketing dollars are the first to disappear.

Truth be known, many companies that do succeed during tougher economic times are the ones who actually increase their online marketing budgets.  In many cases this strategy is used to take advantage of the competition dropping their strategies all together and the benefits are far reaching well after the economy woes are over.

Everyone can understand the incredible value in this economy of having highly relevant traffic directed to your website showcasing your products or services. A skilled SEO company is your best and most cost effective option to handle the daunting task of continuously growing relevant and converting search engine traffic.

There are a large amount of key points to consider when deciding whether or not to outsource your SEM / SEO initiatives. The following points are two that are common throughout regardless of industry.

Keeping Current and Connected

The search engine marketing environment is a fast ever-changing world and typically reputable SEO /SEM firms stay current with tactics and trends. In-house marketing and IT employees are commonly wearing many hats and it is difficult to be up to date with current developments and news throughout the industry. This can include certifications, training and industry specific tips and tricks.

Enterprise level search marketing firms have an extensive network of professional colleagues and other contacts operating within the major search engine companies. The majority of SEM company employees have spent a great deal of time and effort participating within their own industry via social media channels such as twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. These added benefits can be a huge advantage to you and your company and in every case is a significant time saver if these resources need to be tapped for information during a search engine optimization of paid advertising campaign.

Can Our In-house Developer or Marketing Manager Do It All?

Perhaps, although these skilled individuals is very rare.  Surprisingly enough it is common to find even mid-sized firms employ a single staff member to handle not only their web properties, social media management, paid advertising management but their search marketing strategy as well. The most skilled of professionals would find this an impossible juggling act and those who can manage this multi disciplined work load should be well coveted.

The potential danger of your company losing this individual over time and not finding a suitable replacement could be devastating.  Companies that place a high value on this type of risk management should consider seeking outside professional search marketing assistance.

Freeing up in-house resources to focus on other vital business aspects of your company during these troubled economic times can be an extremely cost effective move.