Walmart Has Officially Euthanized walmart.horse, R.I.P.
R.I.P. Walmart.horse, a very good, three-month-old website whose content consisted solely of an image of a horse standing in front of Walmart.
Website Addresses Will Never Be the Same
ICANN, the international organization in charge of web domain names, has just decided to allow people to register pretty much anything as a top-level domain. That means instead of boring old .com and .net, we could be visiting "www.cute.dogs" soon.
Facebook's Insanely Aggressive War on Critics
Facebook really doesn't want you criticizing its technology. Especially via a domain name you bought for that very purpose. That's why the social network has assumed control of such incredibly specific domain names as IHateTheFacebookLikeButton.com. Paranoid much?
Get Ready for Filthy .XXX Domain Names
ICANN, the international governing body responsible for doling out website domains, has approved the .xxx domain for porn sites. According to PC magazine, the purpose is to "carve out a portion of the Internet that will be set aside for the adult entertainment industry." Already, over 200,000 .xxx sites have been…
Bank of America Now Controls BrianMoynihanSucks.com
Considering a website about Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan? You'll have to think of something more creative than "BianMoynihanSucks.com," since it and "BrianMoynihanBlows.com" were registered by Bank of America, possibly in advance of Wikileaks revelations. Don't worry, though!
Sex.com Sells for $13 Million
A Caribbean corporation agreed to pay $13 million to buy Sex.com from its bankrupt owner. The domain changed hands in 2004 for $12 million. So while sex might sell, it apparently doesn't appreciate.
Get Ready for .xxx
The shadowy Masonic cabal that controls the internet will likely approve the ".xxx" domain name system—intended for porn sites and Mötley Crüe drummers—tomorrow. Your "x" key will be worn out by next week. [Reuters]
High on Tumblr's Resin: Tmblr.com
Mis-type the Web address of hipster blog network Tumblr, and you get to an Indian provider of "reefer trucks." Apparently "reefer" is short for "refrigeration" in India. Still: Fucking hipsters are everywhere. Tumblr founder David Karp commented via email: "HAHAHH!"
No, You Cannot Be BMW (Or Any Other Big Corporation) on Facebook
Facesquatters beware: Facebook is coming for you. The social network rolled out short usernames less than two months ago, now it's starting to revoke the ones it doesn't like.
GoDaddy Advises Against Buying a Domain Name from a Disappearing Island
If you want to buy a .tv domain name, Bob Parsons's GoDaddy registrar will sell it to you. But not without a tsk-tsk lecture about how the island of Tuvalu, which owns .tv, is sinking.
Bill Clinton Wants His Domain Names Back
In the late '90s, private investigator Joe Culligan registered presidentbillclinton.com and other Clintonesque domain names as a joke. Now Bill Clinton's lawyer is pursuing legal action to get the website addresses. It's payback, says Culligan.
Bush Library Pays $35,000 to Reclaim Domain Name
Dubya's Web-design contractors forgot to pay for georgewbushlibrary.com — and ended up paying $35,000 to get it back.
The Cityfile Collection
Given the lengths to which prominent New Yorkers go to control their public profiles, you'd think they would have purchased their domain names by now. It's a $4 investment, which we're pretty sure billionaires like Jonathan Tisch, Steve Feinberg or Edgar Bronfman Jr. can afford, even if this is the greatest depression…
Why eBay's star CEO isn't famous enough for politics
After making billions of dollars by changing the world, tech moguls start dreaming of ruling it. But the political career of former eBay CEO Meg Whitman seems stillborn. Why? She's just not a household name.
Meg Whitman asks for her websites back
Tired of endless campaigns for higher office? Sorry! California's 2010 race for governor is right around the corner. Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman hasn't formally entered the race, but she's already busy
making gaffes and working on her Web presence. Her reps are pursuing trademark claims against Thomas Hall, a…
Facebook.co.uk offline — but check out who owns it
Another embarrassing outage for Facebook: The homepage for Facebook.co.uk is displaying a set of directories, as if the server had been wiped clean. Before you blame Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg for this one, check out
the domain-name registration. Facebook.co.uk is registered to one Cameron Winklevoss; last year, it …
Your typos keep 200 Googlers employed
Harvard professor and
professional Internet gadfly Ben Edelman has released a study that says Google may be making $32 million to $50 million a year from "typosquatting," a practice in which cunning linguists register mistyped domain names in the hope that slips of your fingers will translates into pageviews and ad…
Kentucky can take your domain name if it feels like it
A judge's
ruling last month to allow Kentucky's governor to seize domain names to gambling websites is being upheld. One reprieve that the judge did grant was to let site operators keep their domain names if they install Internet filters to block out any IP address from Kentucky. []
Debate's "Joe the Plumber" not cashing in on Web fame
If you weren't live-tweeting the debate last night, you have missed out on all the hoopla concerning Joe the Plumber — the Ohio Mr. Clean doppelganger that asked Obama about his tax plans for small businesses — now being used as the archetype for American blue collar. But it's another Joe, one from Texas, who owns…
Alaskan Web designer squatting on sarahpalin.com
How has the McCain campaign let a key domain name, sarahpalin.com, escape their grasp? The domain was first registered back in 2004, and renewed in April of this year, well before there was any talk of Alaska's governor as a vice-presidential candidate. The owner of the domain, Peter Torkelson, has taken measures to…
