Colleagues, I was recently pointed to the following article on CNNMoney: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/06/01/100050... The article is relatively long, but if you read through it provides some interesting background in the various commercial returns being derived from domain trading as well as some of the more "cunning uses" - typos, re-directs and such. There are several "business models" being used related to domain names to generate revenue. I would like to hear your thoughts on these (apart from domain tasting which has been discussed before). An excerpt follows below: The man who owns the Internet 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. By Paul Sloan, Business 2.0 Magazine editor-at-large May 22 2007: 2:17 PM EDT (Business 2.0 Magazine) -- Kevin Ham leans forward, sits up tall, closes his eyes, and begins to type -- into the air. He's seated along the rear wall of a packed ballroom in Las Vegas's Venetian Hotel. Up front, an auctioneer is running through a list of Internet domain names, building excitement the same way he might if vintage cars were on the block. As names come up that interest Ham, he occasionally air-types. It's the ultimate gut check. Is the name one that people might enter directly into their Web browser, bypassing the search engine box entirely, as Ham wants? Is it better in plural or singular form? If it's a typo, is it a mistake a lot of people would make? Or does the name, like a stunning beachfront property, just feel like a winner? .................... ..........Ham's people installed a line of software, called a "wildcard," that reroutes traffic addressed to any .cm domain name that isn't registered............ Full article: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/06/01/100050... -- Kind regards, Rajnesh D. Singh COO, PATARA www.patarapacific.com Chairman, Pacific Islands Chapter, Internet Society www.picisoc.org President, IPv6 Forum Pacific Islands www.ipv6forumpacific.org Director, Pacific Internet Technology Centre www.pacificit.org 310 Princes Road Tamavua Suva Fiji Tel: +679 332 0606 Fax: +679 332 0800 Read my ramblings at http://singh-a-blog.blogspot.com/