I have mixed emotions about this post. It's both really frustrating & reassuring for me at the same time. I've been working (with a partner) on a very similar concept for the past couple of months.
Though I'd say that the features of ours are far more developed (we're implementing most of the ones I've seen suggested in this post); you're first to market. I guess the list of MVP features we've been working towards was just a little too long. Lesson learnt.
Sigh! I'll just have to get that signup page finished a little bit quicker.
I'm not sure it's as evil as you make it out to be. It's certainly not clear-cut domain-squatting.
They're adding value to a domain & selling it at (what I believe to be) a reasonable price. They're clearly investing time coming up with ideas for domains that they can create decent logos for. You would easily pay $500+ for a 'good' logo.
Domain squatting with fancy window dressing is still domain squatting. I'll admit, however, that this is a very clever form of domain squatting. I begrudgingly admire the player here, even if I hate the game.
This is sort of like the domain-squatter's equivalent of department store mannequins: visual aids that help shoppers picture what the items could look like in practice, sparking their imaginations, and thereby convincing them to buy. In this case, the logos are really just giveaways to sell visually and tangibly what would otherwise be abstract names. Again: it's kind of a stroke of genius, but it's a stroke of genius in a questionable profession.
So I end up with very mixed feelings here. Kudos to this guy for innovating, and for doing a good job at it. But I fear the rise of a second domain-squatting gold rush, when/if a bunch of squatters copy this model en masse and set up squat + design sweatshops to crank them out.
Domain squatting has a fairly specific legal definition. We aren't squatting. We actually came up with the idea after being frustrated by domain parking and squatters and frankly the whole domain industry.
And you are sticking it to that industry by ... doing the same?
It doesn't matter if you call it squatting or "domaining", in the end you are blocking thousands of domain names on the hope that someone needs that name so much that he will pay ransom for it.
(Kind of related: Anyone interested in a URI-dnsbl of squatted domain names?)
"(Kind of related: Anyone interested in a URI-dnsbl of squatted domain names?)"
I'm curious how you think that it's related. A blacklist directly impacts the startup purchasing the domain from purchasing it because of the murky ground involved in removing a domain name from blacklists.
And then, if you have a clear-cut mechanism for getting domain names off a blacklist when they cease to be squatted, what's the point of it? Domainers don't tend to build websites on theses domains, so blacklisting them out of being indexed on search engines is simply fixing a problem that doesn't exist. And as such, it doesn't lower the projected value of the domain in the eyes of either the purchaser or seller.
So it's not clear what purpose a URI-dnsbl would serve in regards to domaining.
It is only tangentially related because it is about domain squatting in general.
> removing a domain name from blacklists.
Of course the list would only carry squatted names, not names that have been brought from squatters. It would have to be regularly updated with a simple way to remove domains.
Some squatted domains do show up in search engines, so it could be used as a filter for that. Even better, when you accidentally land on a squatted domain (by following a link to a now-dead site, or by typoing a domain name) you get automatically redirected to Google or another search engine instead.
Gabriel Weinberg from Duck Duck Go has a similar list that he uses for his search engine, but he also had a Firefox toolbar that would prevent you from visiting squatted domains and instead get you to the correct domain when it was a typo. (The toolbar doesn't exist anymore).
I've just had a quick look at your demo video. 2 minor things struck me.
1) It's really blurry. Can I suggest you either re-encode it at a higher resolution, or perhaps record it on a smaller screen resolution (that way you can keep the file-size down, but can keep the bit-rate higher).
2) The timeline has no markers. It might be nice to add some little indicators to give the user a visual indication of where the versions lie on it.
The video is a bit blurry, yes. For the moment, might be best to head over to vimeo and watch it in HD. We'll likely take another pass at the demo and address the quality issue.
As for the timeline markers - if you hover over the timeline, you get a nice tooltip that indicates where you're scrubbing to in the file's history.
It's still a first iteration, so we're open to suggestions if you have some input on how we might do that better. Hope to get you into layervault soon — would love the feedback.
Ace work on the site!