The flexibility that RSS extends to our users is that they don’t need an email client to monitor our alerts. One of the obvious uses is setting up a scheduled web process to check the RSS feed and do something based on the results it finds in the RSS location. The more obvious use is plugging those feeds into an RSS reader like Google Reader.

We have two types of RSS feeds available on all things. The first is a rich-HTML markup RSS feed like you would expect in an email. The other if an XML style that is strictly for parsing by a computer on the other side and is designed for only computers. This will allow more computers around the world to interface with DomainTools.

This release only has four group feeds available right now, but in the near future we will be releasing the Domain Monitor alerts and other missing products to the Global Feed as well. We are very committed to RSS feeds on every service we offer.

Just a quick security note: Do not share your RSS feeds with other people, there is only one RSS access key per account and you are giving away all your RSS streams to every feed you have if you give away just one stream. If you make this mistake, just login and reset your security key inside the RSS Feed Management System. It will be impossible for people to guess your key which means all your RSS feeds are secure unless you disclose the RSS feed URL to the other people.

If you want to drive by and check it out the address of the building is 11300 W Olympic Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064.

It was a book Kesmodel said had to be written, there was just too much to uncover. When an investigative journalist gets embedded inside a secret industry a lot of dirt and details are going to come out and they did. Readers are able to follow as people in the Industry got those million dollar domains for $50.

The Domain Industry has always been shrouded in secrecy so I was surprised how many people opened up for this book. Kesmodel went beyond interviews, he searched public records and talked to neighbors and friends of some of the people he investigated.

When reading the book I started jotting down notes about when people where mentioned in the book, it may not be completely accurate but hopefully it is 95%. There was no index in the book so I am sharing the one I made so anyone can quickly find people as you skip through the book. The book is 9 chapters and hands down the best Tutorial/Introduction on the domain space I have seen. I hope there is a second book in the series because I know several hidden chapters that have not been told yet!

Official Description of the book:

Almost everyone has heard a tale of someone getting rich by selling an Internet domain name for a staggering price. But few understand the secretive world of domain investing, a game that a growing number of people are playing around the globe. The Domain Game chronicles the exploits of leading domain investors and explains how this mysterious market works. Learn how an Oklahoma watermelon farmer wound up owning some of the world’s most valuable Web addresses, from recipes.com to chairs.com, and how a college dropout became a multimillionaire by scooping up domains that others abandoned amid the dot-com bust. Find out how the rise of Google and Yahoo has helped boost the fortunes of domain investors. And explore the shenanigans of investors who snag names associated with corporate trademarks. Finally, read how you can jump into this exciting market with a relatively small initial investment. It’s a market with high risk, but huge potential reward.

You can order the book for $19.99. So I highly suggest it.

With this Registrant alert I was able to see I had lost the domain, so therefore and was able to quickly act and get the domain back by renewing it. It would have sucked if I had needed to go to auction to get my domain back. When buying domains at multiple registrar I would highly recommend setting an alert on yourself.

Registrant Alert
The system spots strings that are Newly place on a whois record which were not on the previous historical record.? The system now supports the exact opposite too; It will alert you if your strings get removed from a current whois record. I have set a few alerts on public domainers and I see when they buy or sell domains.

Los Angeles, CA and Seattle, WA, May 6, 2008 — Thought Convergence, the industry-leading provider of domain management, monetization and development tools and technologies for premium domain owners and aggregators of high-quality domain portfolios, announced today that it has completed its acquisition of Name Intelligence, the company behind the highly-acclaimed DomainTools service and the Domain Roundtable conference. The acquisition expands Thought Convergence’s already extensive suite of industry-leading domain tools, services and technologies, and paves the path for management’s vision of a unified Domain Ecosystem.

“We are proud to welcome Jay, Ray and the entire Name Intelligence team into the Thought Convergence family”, said Kevin Vo, Thought Convergence Founder and Chief Executive Officer. “The addition of Name Intelligence further strengthens our industry-leading technology platform and lays the groundwork for the continuing expansion of our comprehensive suite of tools and services for domain professionals. Further commenting on the acquisition, Thought Convergence Director and Chief Operating Officer, Ammar Kubba, added that “Name Intelligence shares our passion and drive to create technology-driven solutions and innovation within the domain industry. By combining our award-winning monetization and development platform, deep industry relationships and extensive resources with Name Intelligence’s unparalleled research, analysis and data aggregation tools, we are putting into place a robust and scalable framework for the creation of a symbiotic Domain Ecosystem.”

In commenting on the close of the transaction, Jay Westerdal, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Name Intelligence, said, “We are incredibly excited to join forces with Thought Convergence and to leverage our core competencies and proprietary technology in order to create the next generation of DomainTools, our auction and marketplace platform, intellectual property protection services, and semantic suggestion technology.” Name Intelligence operations will remain in Seattle, Washington, and will continue to be led by Jay Westerdal and Ray Bero. In addition to their responsibilities at Name Intelligence, both Westerdal and Bero will collaborate with senior management at Thought Convergence to develop and execute on the Company’s long-term strategy.

About Thought Convergence
Founded in 2001, Thought Convergence is an industry-leading service provider of domain information, management, monetization and development tools and technologies for the domain name industry. Widely regarded as a pioneer in the domain industry, Thought Convergence provides its award-winning services and technologies under several brands, including TrafficZ, DomainTools and Idea.Net. By leveraging its comprehensive suite of fully-integrated domain services, tools and technologies, Thought Convergence is pioneering the industry’s first symbiotic Domain Ecosystem and is working to promote the continued evolution, success and sustainability of the domain industry. Thought Convergence is a privately-held company, growing profitably since inception, and headquartered in Los Angeles, California, with offices in Seattle, Washington. For more information, please visit http://www.ThoughtConvergence.com.

Thought Convergence Media Contact:
Ammar Kubba
310.909.7900
PR@ThoughtConvergence.com

Update by Jay: This is the official announcement. However, I thought I would personally comment as well, I know there have been a lot of rumors about this deal and lot of incorrect speculation. I wanted to set the record correct and say, I am extremely proud of the team we are putting together with this deal, the entire Thought Convergence team will number at around 100 strong after the acquisition. We are going to have more resources at our disposal now to focus on bigger projects, the synergies in this deal were awesome. I would not have signed onto the deal unless it allowed DomainTools to better serve the entire Domain Ecosystem. I will be joining the board of Though Convergence and look forward to working with the entire team in both LA and Seattle. The integrity of our DomainTools data is not in jeopardy with this deal and DomainTools website will remain as a trusted third party to everyone regardless of their affiliations.

Domain: Harmony.com
Private Reserve Price: $5,000,000.
Contact: harmony[at]domaintools.com
Auction Date: May 12th

About DomainTools.com
DomainTools is the leading source for information on domain names and domain sales. The site has brokered and auctioned Millions of dollars in domain names over the last few months. DomainTools serves millions of customers a month and is ranked as a top 1000 website in the world.

Deal specifics
- Consideration: US$50m
- Revenue US$29m
- EBIT of US$4m
- Over 2,000 premium enterprise clients
- More than 300,000 digital brands under management
- 120+ staff
- Experienced management team & staff
- World-class digital brand management portal
- Annualised cost synergies in excess of US$1.5m

Fast-forward to 2008 and I think these new servers have more memory then the entire Seattle Memory company sold in the 90’s. I can imagine that in another 10 years someone will find this blog article and think I am crazy for being so happy with 64GB in a one box. In the future I can imagine my car’s dashboard will have more random access memory then this.

These 10 servers will allow us to store all of our most valuable information in random access memory, each server will have 10% of the data stripped across them. We are going to be able to cross reference and use information in brand new ways with this cluster. We have the ability to do it right now, but we find that it takes 30 seconds to complete each operation and we have far too many operations to complete right now. This will allow us to complete the same 30 second operation in a few milliseconds. The number of operations we can complete in a day will be jumping 1500X.

Each new server was only about $6,000 per server which is super cheap compared to how much computer we got for our money a few years ago. Our top of the line computer in our arsenal back in 2001 held 4GB of ram. When Domain Tasting started we moved to 16GB of ram for our one top end processing boxes. These new servers will be configured and process information before the end of May.

This is what will process the information behind DomainTools for the next 3 years.

We are very excited about the live auction on Monday, April 21. There are excellent domains on the list with a broad appeal. The auction will start at 11:00am PDT and ends at 4:00pm PDT. If you are in San Francisco, please come join us for the live event at Palace Hotel the auction day is FREE to attend. You can find the details at: www.domainroundtable.com/2008/venue. It is also available on line at: www.domaintools.com/live-auction/bid.html

We had to make some tough decisions at DomainTools about the Live Auction. Reviewing the submissions to determine value and strength of a name is both interesting and challenging. With over 35,000 domain submissions, we identified roughly 350 domains that we would like to have in the auction.

With the top names selected, we then worked with a domain consulting team to review the auction list. The group, Domain Consultant is a collection of top domainers in the community. Their experience in the industry and knowledge of domains is impressive as you can see from the list of appraisers. With their input, adjustments were made to the list of onsite Live Auction versus those in the Extended Live Auction. We appreciate their perspective and input on the final auction list. And, believe working with this team will prove beneficial to buyers and sellers in this auction.

Recognizing auction fatigue occurs, we have continued to trim the list. Also, we have a hard close time of 4:00pm PDT of the onsite Live Auction. However, we have an Extended Live Auction for additional domains submitted that were identified as potential for Live. The names that sell in the Live Auction will immediately close. Any domain not sold will remain open for 1 week following the live in the extended online auction. In addition, those names that we originally acknowledged as potential listed domains for the Live Auction are going to be available in the Extended Live Auction. That auction closes on Monday, April 28^th at 1:00PDT.

Do not wait for the last minute to figure out if you can bid. Visit the bidding page and look in the second yellow box. If the auctioneer is telling you that you are not eligible go through the wizard and become eligible. If you have ever purchased ANYTHING on domaintools then you are eligible, just sign the contract. If you have never shared your credit card with us and we do not know who you are, we ask that you purchase a $1 verification item prior to the auction so that we can verify your identity and make sure you are a real person.

The latest list of domains in full auction are available at: www.domaintools.com/live-auction/bid.html

LIVE AUCTION: starts at 11:00am and the last lot will be called at 4:00pmPDT. Anything not sold or called out in Live Auction will go to the extended Live Auction.

EXTENDED LIVE AUCTION: Monday, April 28^th at 1:00PDT.

For the pre-bidders, the current winner can set a proxy bid and defend their position while not even attending the auction. No one can see the proxy bid price including the Auctioneer. This means a leader of an auction can successfully defend against auction snippers while sitting on a beach without Internet access.

Testing the bidding system
If anyone wants to test the bidding system, we have setup a test spot on lot 1. The domain is called “Xx–Practice-Domain.com“. Anyone is free to bid on this domain, the current price is $1,500,000. This is the only domain in the auction that is for testing the interface and getting used to our controls. The domain is currently not registered, so hopefully no one goes out and registers it and tries to claim $1,500,000.00 from us. Once again, the domain is xx–practice-domain.com, please do not register it.

Are you eligible to bid?
Don’t wait for the last minute to figure out if you can bid. Visit the bidding page and look in the second yellow box. If the auctioneer is telling you that you are not eligable go threw the wizard and become eligible. If you have ever purchased ANYTHING on domaintools then you are eligible, just sign the contract. If you have never shared your credit card with us and we don’t know who you are, we ask that you purchase a $1 verification item prior to the auction so that we can verify your identity and make sure you are a real person.

Domain Roundtable
The conference begins today and I am extremely excited, I get on the plane this morning and hope to see everyone soon. I am looking forward to hearing all the speakers and moderators. I want to personally thank, Susan Prosser, she has done a fabulous job selecting speakers and coordinating the whole event. The Domain Roundtable would not be possible without her and the rest of the wonderful team. As the founder of the conference people look to me, however she is the one that truly deserves the respect for putting on such a great show. When you see us, be sure to thank her, I am more of just an observer.

Secret Announcements
We have so many cool things to share with everyone. We have not officially announced this one yet, but I will let you readers in on a small secret. We quietly launched Thumbnail History this week (The service is still in beta, don’t try it in IE8!). It allows people to see what domains looked like years ago. Sort of like Archive.org except we take thumbnail images and not just HTML copies. The thumbnails have been taking by us with Internet Explorer over the years, so they have Flash and the other things that archive.org doesn’t seem to capture. We have hundreds of millions of these thumbnails, several Terabytes actually. More on the thumbnail system later… There are a lot of details I can tell you about it but I will use a dedicated blog post after the conference to really tell you the ins and outs of the service.