Wikipedia-Wikia plans Open Source Search Engine, rival Google ?
Recently Reuters reported “Wikipedia Plans to Rival Google”.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said on Friday he is putting the building blocks in place for a community-developed Web search service that would rival search engines such as Google or Yahoo.
Wales told a conference of software developers in Portland, Oregon, that his commercial start-up, Wikia, has acquired Grub, a pioneering Web crawler that will enable Wikia’s forthcoming search service to scour the Web to index relevant sites.
“If we can get good quality search results, I think it will really change the balance of power from the search companies back to the publishers,” said Wales, chairman of San Mateo, California-based Wikia. “I could be wrong about this, but it seems like a likely outcome.”
But this is not something very new, in December, last year
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July 27th | News | Comments (0) |
iPhone Domainers Beware : Apple might get you
Founder and chief editor of MacRumors.com recently wrote this in his blog ..
After Apple’s aggressive defense of the iPod-related domain names, it seemed obvious they weren’t going to let people get too comfortable with the many iPhone domain names.
Vincent Nguyen of MyiPhone.com writes that he was excited to meet Steve Jobs at D: All Things Digital, but that excitement quickly turned to a sickening feeling:
Turns out, Steve isn’t such a great fan of MYiPhone as we are about the phone itself. His comment to me about the site was “I recommend you changing the name, we have a team of lawyers to go after that kind of stuff.” Well, you could’ve knocked me over with a Mac mini. He mentioned that we should change it to anything other than iPhone in the name.
Apple has been aggressively pursuing commercial websites using the “iPod” as part of their domain. The most prominent move was iPodLounge moving to iLounge. While I have no official confirmation that Apple “forced” this particular move, Apple’s interest in the iPod name was certainly a factor.
I personally don’t thing that the name could do any harm to apple as whole website was related to iPhone and indirectly promote iPhone ….. on second thought, why would they need anymore popularity 
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July 26th | Apple, Legal Issues | Comments (0) |
ICA Warns Domain Name Industry
The Internet Commerce Association (internetcommerce.org) recently addressed more than 50 domain name owners at the SedoPro conference in New Paltz, New York to discuss potential threats to the value of domain names.
Phil Corwin, a representative of the ICA, says the domain community should try to prevent the disorder the private equity industry faces right now due to the introduction of a bill to tax private equity profits at a higher rate. Corwin says mainstream press has already brought attention to the wealth the domain name industry has been creating, which could get the attention of legislators in Washington and cause a similar situation. However, he says it’s not too late to influence policy making.
In his presentation, Corwin mentioned a few specific threats to domain names including domain name classification as a property versus a license. He says the ICA wants domains to be classified as property and the domain industry should take the lead on getting this position solidified. Another issue is the fact that many registrars are retaining the best expiring domain names, which creates a conflict of interest.
July 2nd | Legal Issues, Domain Names | Comments (0) |