Dabbling in domains

I’ve been researching the wild world of domaining in recent months with an eye toward dipping my toe in the water and seeing what happens.  I’ve been using the free tools over at Domain Tools and reading several related blogs like Frank Schilling and Dominik Mueller.  In fact, this recent auction results post from Dominik should give you an idea of the potential that exists in this field.  As you can see, generic words and phrases are all the rage and the prices are staggering if you’re just finding out about it now.

Yes, domaining is going mainstream in a big way these days and I’m looking to capture a small piece of the action.  Last night I bought ten domains through GoDaddy purely as an investment.  I already owned about half a dozen assorted domains including the one you’re reading and a few that I plan to develop, but this is the first time I bought for the sole purpose of domaining.  This particular batch of domains has a common theme and it’s something that happens in April.  That should be a big enough hint for everyone.

So my strategy right now is to hold them until about February and then get a sense of what they’re worth.  I may choose to auction some or all of them at that time or just hold them for another year.  Between now and then, I’m researching the various domain parking services looking for the best fit.  Yeah, I’m perfectly capable of building ad-supported sites on these domains myself, but my time is valuable these days so I’m going to leave that aspect of things to the pros.

One thing I love about domaining is that individual domains with good potential can be bought for a few bucks from a registrar.  I also appreciate that brainstorming, trend spotting, and just plain language skills are critical to making good purchases.  It’s hard work and takes some time and imagination, but it’s also fun.

It kind of strikes me as the 21st century equivalent of panning for gold.  The equipment and techniques are a lot more sophisticated, but the process is very similar.  We’ll see if I actually find anything valuable.

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October 23, 2007 | Filed Under Internet | 1 Comment 

Six months at the Statesman… and counting

Yesterday marked six months since I started my job at the Idaho Statesman and I must say the time has flown by. I have probably learned more about the news business than I have about Web development, but I fully expected that to be the case early on. That’s not to say I didn’t learn some new Web tricks though. I’ve mastered many of the ins and outs of the McClatchy Interactive publishing system that runs our main site and I’ve also picked up the basics of Drupal development for our new Voices community site. In addition, I have scratched the surface of jQuery and dabbled a bit in the Zend Framework for PHP. My Linux and MySQL skills are being used every day, but I don’t think I’ve really learned anything new in those areas.

I want to thank the Academy

I’d like to share a list of accomplishments for the first six months. Please bear in mind that most items on this list were a group effort not just within our online team, but also involving the staff at McClatchy Interactive, our resilient vendors, and often my counterparts at other McClatchy papers like Anchorage and Fresno. Don’t worry. I’ll spare you the “shoulders of giants” speech. Here is the list:

There were many other smaller projects that I worked on, but these are definitely the highlights. Story commenting has probably been the most interesting for all of us. We launched the feature about six weeks ago and we have roughly 6,500 comments on 1,000 stories by 1,400 different people! This is far more than anybody expected and the pace is still increasing each week. It is not without its challenges, though. I have created a rudimentary profanity filter using regular expressions, we are employing Drupal’s spam module, and a healthy dose of human moderation is also in the mix to catch the innuendos that computers can’t identify. For the most part people have behaved, but the conversation does get heated quite often and many of our reporters have had to become a little more thick-skinned. Overall, though, it’s been a huge success.

And now the music is playing

I should wrap this up. I will probably make these updates more frequent – every three months seems reasonable. We have quite a lot on the horizon including a new search plugin, user submitted photos and video, and several custom mini-sites that I’m not at liberty to discuss until they launch. I would hate to tip off the competition. ;) So look for another round-up of Web news in January if not before.

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October 17, 2007 | Filed Under Web development | 6 Comments 

Thoughts on the double bottom line

Before I begin, check out the entry for double bottom line on Wikipedia.  In a nutshell, a double bottom line consists of two parallel means of measuring one’s performance.  One is typically financial while the other is more for the greater good.  Got it?  All right.

For me personally, I have noticed a similar trend in my ever-evolving career.  Reading about the concept mentioned above just brought my vague thoughts into much clearer focus.  The simple fact is that I have a double bottom line and have had one for quite some time.  This helps to explain why working at traditional for-profit companies has never really appealed to me in the way it does for most people.  Sure I’ve worked for a couple of them, but something was missing from the equation.

In the physics of my career development, the double bottom line has played the role of gravity.  It’s a constant force exerting influence over my professional decisions.  From time to time I’ve strayed, but it has always pulled me back.  This past spring was an excellent example of this.  When we were looking to move away from the Seattle area, I considered a lot of different jobs.  I applied for most of them even if they didn’t seem like they would be a good fit.  Many of them were corporate jobs for Fortune 500 companies or regular consulting gigs for large corporations.  Quite a few of the opportunities sounded really great on the surface and would have certainly been financially rewarding, but that was about it.

It’s hard to know if it was serendipity, fate, or just my own personal career “gravity” taking over, but I knew immediately that the job of Web developer at the Statesman newspaper was where I was supposed to be.   It’s not a glamorous position by any means.  The online team generally toils in obscurity until somebody needs something (or something breaks).  And I could definitely make more money elsewhere with the skills I have.  However, there is an element of public service to the job that makes it more than worthwhile.  Bringing local news and information to people around the clock and providing opportunities for them to interact with each other as well as with our news staff is more than a job, it’s a calling.

Okay, I’ll stop there before this gets sappy.  Suffice it to say that I enjoy my current job on many levels despite the challenges of being in what many consider to be a dying industry.  The opportunity for innovation is virtually unlimited and the work that we are doing is definitely important.

So will I work here for thirty years and retire with a gold watch and a pension?  I honestly can’t say for sure, but I really doubt it.  This job is great experience and a unique challenge, but I believe that it is preparing me for something bigger.  What that will be and when it will happen, I have no idea.  I just hope that I’m ready and willing when the time comes.  I’m sure I will be.  It’s not like gravity is suddenly going to stop working…

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October 14, 2007 | Filed Under Personal growth | Leave a Comment 

Google Reader down to zero

Yes, I finally managed to “read” everything in my Google Reader.  Truth be told, there was a lot of skimming involved as well as judicious use of the “Mark all as read” button.  My feed count is down from 300+ to 267.  My target right now is 250 and that should be fairly easily reached in the next week or two.  Now that I’m caught up on all my feeds, it will be easier to determine which ones are worth keeping and which can be dumped.

I’m also noticing some subtle shifts in my reading habits.  I used to read mostly blogs about Web development, open source, SEO, and blogging.  I still read a lot of those, but I’ve dumped several of them to make way for new interests like business, domaining, and new media.  The new media category is sort of a catch-all for blogs about newspapers trying to survive in the digital age.  Seeing as how I now work for a newspaper, I’ve taken a particular interest in the topic lately.  I’m actually planning to make it a focus on this blog along with Web development, open source, and Africa.  I have an idea for tying all those together that I’m starting to explore, but the details of that particular venture will have to wait for another day.

So have your blog reading habits shifted at all recently?

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October 7, 2007 | Filed Under Internet | Leave a Comment