“A thought-out domain name can save you a lot of time and bring you a lot of traffic. Search engines love topic-related domain names and they seem to be an important aspect which is being used to evaluate web-pages. Besides, if you have a popular web-site with enviable reputation, you might be willing to make sure that your visitors don’t get to some surprising web-sites mistyping your site’s URL… Let’s take a look at essential, hand-picked domain-related tools, articles and resources we’ve found in the Web during our research.”

“Kevin Ham is the most powerful dotcom mogul you’ve never heard of, reports Business 2.0 Magazine. Here’s how the master of Web domains built a $300 million empire.”

“I had no idea that this form of spam existed. I ran ‘whois amazon.com, and got this…” (Thanks a.wholelottanothing.org!)

Seen via MeFi Projects: “Okay I own a lot of domains. Most of them have websites running on them, and I was having trouble keeping track of all of all them. Domain Log Book is the place for you to track all your domains, simply add them to your log book, and see their Google page rank, and Alexa traffic rank on one page. More stats are coming in the next few weeks.”

“AdSense for domains allows domain name registrars and large domain name holders to unlock the value in their parked page inventory. AdSense for domains delivers targeted, conceptually related advertisements to parked domain pages by using Google’s semantic technology to analyze and understand the meaning of the domain names.”

“Of course we’re generalizing here, so not all of these types of sites are as bad as they may seem…oh wait, yes they are. Some of these sites produce little fluff ‘reviews’ of web hosts, and some don’t even bother to go that far, instead making lists to the ‘Top 10 Web Hosts’ and waiting for unsuspecting prey to come along and make their next yacht payment for them. We’re here to bust this thing wide open. We had always suspected these sites were crooked, so last month we decided to prove it when we were approached by hosting-review.com to appear on their ‘Editor’s Picks’ page.”

“You’ve thought up a brilliant idea for a new Web 2.0, AJAX-enabled web app, or you’re about to release a thus-far-unnamed killer software app. Now you just need to find the perfect domain name for it to live at (and, in true new-economy fashion, you’ll base your corporate name upon whatever available domain name you find… PILLAGEANDPLUNDR Corporation). You pull up GoDaddy and start punching in clever names, along with their many variations, only to find that they’re all seemingly taken. ‘This can’t be!’ you cry. ‘Has every possibility already been registered?’”

“I am in the process of setting up a new website. I have been planning it for a week or so now. A few days ago I visited a certain domain name seller to check on the availability of a domain. It came up as available. Super… I thought. Quite a good name there. However…… Today I came to set up the name and hosting for the new website. And what do you think I discovered? The domain name was purchased 2 days ago. And who is the name registered to? The exact same domain name seller I searched the term on on the first place!”

This script quickly finds the whois information about a domain. It is also available for download.

“I recently found myself in the position of wanting to register a domain which was owned by someone else. The domain was set to expire in a week, and I figured there was a decent chance that the person who owned it wouldn’t be renewing it. Upon consulting the WhoIs registry on the current owner, I discovered the guy was a bit of a domain shark and didn’t seem to be around anymore.”

“This complaint is regarding Verisign’s recent decision to claim all non-registered .com and .net domain names for itself. It has done this by inserting a wildcard into the DNS registers, meaning an IP of 64.94.110.11 is returned for any domain name that has not yet been registered. That page is an advert for Verisign’s domin registration services This is unfair competition with existing registrars — there is no means for myself, for example, to gain a similar foothold without actually purchasing each and every currently unregistered .com/.net name.”

“Search for soon-to-expire names available for back-order. The SnapBack back-ordering system helps you secure desired domain names and protect the names you already have, all for only $69 a year.”

“This is [the] ultimate resource to find / compare / research … cheap web hosting and domain name registration. Try our search engine / directory / review to find a reliable with low cost / budget / affordable web hosting server.”

“This is a joint bid between the Internet Multicasting Service (IMS) and the Internet Software Consortium (ISC). We are both public benefit corporations with a long history of operating public works and creating freely available software for key infrastructure services on the Internet. The .org Top Level Domain (TLD) is the home for the noncommercial organizations of the world, and we would operate the .org registry service as a public trust…”

“Network Solutions is a company owned by Verisign that registers and administers top-level domain names for customers throughout the world. These companies engage in a variety of business practices that are, in our opinion, unethical, fraudulent, and calculated to be opaque and unfriendly to consumers. Despite many well-publicized, and in some cases, frankly nefarious, scandals involving these companies, millions of people continue to patronize them as the registrars for their domain names.”