Domainer's Gazette-Home

Elliot has his Lowell.com,

Sahar has his Bido.com,

Latona has his DigiPawn,

and MacDonald has his Marietta.com.

Me? Well, sure I’ve got developed domains, but over the years, I’ve been searching for my “Big One”.. or at least big one or two.

In other words, a site I hang my hat on. A site I’m feverishly passionate about. A site I live and breathe.

Well, I’m happy to say I have my first “Big One”. So I thought I’d share it with everybody:

Introducing InspectionScores.com

A centralized database of restaurant health inspection scores.

It’ll soon be nationwide, but for now, we’re covering the Southeast during the alpha (I should probably make that notation on the site..hmm)

The Goal?

Well, like above, to incorporate every state, city, county, and municipality in the USA. To create a central spot for folks to research this (sometimes shocking, sometimes re-assuring) data. To provide free XML plug-in for any and all partners, to access this data and provide on their own properties.

It’s currently score or letter grade based… and down the road, we’ll be including raw violation information (fyi)

Currently, this data is horribly fragmented across the country. And I guess you could say, it’s our goal to bring it all together. Cause we think it should be : )

I’m fortunate to have some very talented partners in this endeavor with me, Nick Downey & Allen Graber, who’ve been bootstrapping this project since day one. Without them, this project would have never happened.

Check it out, though. See what you think.

Feel free to blast it. Feel free to make suggestions. Feel free to say whatever you want.

It’s in early alpha, so you might come across some snafus. If you do, drop me a line, and we’ll jump on it.

Enjoy

I was part of the .Mobi landrush. And I’ll be honest, months after the acquisition, my taste for the tld quickly soured. And rather than ‘waiting to see where the extension goes’, I bailed, and sold out.

From there, I pretty much honed all my attention to .com.

Now, months later, as I surf around the web on my mobile phone, visiting yahoo, visiting techmeme, stacounter, npr … I notice they all resolve to .coms.

so my next logical thought was, ‘I wonder what random sampling of top 100 sites actually use the .mobi extension’

So I checked.

Here’s my random sampling (from Alexa’s Top 100 Sites list), plus a few sites that I tend to visit quite often. In no particular order. Top listing denotes assumed .mobi name, then secondary listing is where the domain resolves (if it wasn’t apparent enough)

espn.mobi
http://mobileapp.espn.go.com/wireless/espn/redesign/index

foxsports.mobi
http://sports.mobile.msn.com/en-us/default.aspx

cnn.mobi
resolves nowhere

ebay.mobi
doesn’t resolve

craigslist.mobi
doesn’t resolve

google.mobi
http://www.google.com/mobile/

amazon.mobi
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/h.html/002-3758616-3976054

imdb.mobi
doesnt resolve

flickr.mobi
doesn’t resolve

npr.mobi
http://m.npr.org/

techmeme.mobi
doesnt resolve

mozilla.mobi
doesn’t resolve

ask.mobi
doesn’t resolve

digg.mobi
doesn’t resolve

wachovia.mobi
http://www.wachovia.com/mobile

netflix.mobi
http://www.netflix.com/Register

dictionary.mobi
doesn’t resolve

worldofwarcraft.mobi
parked

walmart.mobi
doesn’t resolve

pogo.mobi
doesn’t resolve

cnet.mobi
doesn’t resolve

monster.mobi
doesn’t resolve

linkedin.mobi
parked

wordpress.mobi
doesn’t resolve

washingtonpost.mobi
parked

circuitcity.mobi
http://mobile.circuitcity.com/feature.aspx?p=7600&c=76000

myspace.mobi
parked

facebook.mobi
doesn’t resolve

msn.mobi
http://info.mobile.msn.com/en-us/default.aspx

aol.mobi
http://wap.aol.com/portal/

blogger.mobi
doesn’t resolve

att.mobi
http://www.att.com/gen/landing-pages?pid=3308

usps.mobi
http://kit.hichina.com/ (crazy odd asian site)

youporn.mobi
parked

about.mobi
doesn’t resolve

imageshack.mobi (uses .us as main tld)
parked

statcounter.mobi
parked

popurls.mobi
active and operational (oh my lordy)

soo, out of random sample, 38 total, here’s what we’re looking at:

47% resolve nowhere

18% are parked

29% forward to .com

1 forwards to a .org

and 1 is actually being used. And it’s a site that’s not even in the top 100, just a site I personally visit alot.

I can’t say that’s a big vote of confidence from the big boy site operators out there..

I’d have let it go, even though they’re showing a Spaniel.. but they added a cat as well.. and that’s just not acceptable..

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