Live Current Media continues to grow cricket channel.

Live Current Media (OTC: livc.ob), formerly Communicate.com, owns category killer domains such as Perfume.com, Boxing.com, and Brazil.com, but it’s looking more like a cricket media company than anything else.

The company just announced a new cricket site in agreement with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (“BCCI”): bcci.tv. That is in addition to its existing Indian Premier League web site which is under a long term contract.

But the company’s holy grail is Cricket.com. The company said it turned down a $6 million offer for the domain so it can develop it. Over the past couple months Cricket.com has hosted a blog, but it looks like the next big feature for the site will be fantasy cricket.

Cricket.com, even as a lightly developed web site, gets significantly more traffic that the Indian Premier League web site, so I’m sure the cricket.com site will be central to the company’s overall strategy. Compete.com ranks Cricket.com in the top 11,000 web sites on the internet.

As Live Current’s strategy starts to take hold, the company’s stock has been battered. The stock has traded as high as $3.48 in the past year, but currently sits at $1.36 at the time of writing.

Dell registers some interesting domain names.

Either computer manufacturer Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) is making some defensive domain name registrations or it is getting ready to release a line of highly interactive computers. Domain Name Wire has discovered that the company just registered a handful of its trademarks preceded by the f-bomb.

Among the domains Dell registered last week are:

fu–inspiron.com
fu–latitude.com
fu–poweredge.com
fu–precision.com
fu–vostro.com
fu–xps.com

Personally, I think the PowerEdge sounds like the most fulfilling, um, interactive product.

It’s not uncommon for companies to register derogatory domain names based on their trademarks. Typically this involves registering domains like DellSucks.com (not owned by Dell, by the way). But registering the 4 letter f-word in front of a domain is not as common. Typically, registration of such domains including a trademark by unaffiliated parties is permitted by trademark law if the corresponding web site is used to criticize the company.

Although it certainly appears these are defensive domain name registrations, Dell registered another domain name last week that may make computer geeks get a bit excited: LoveByDell.com.

Now we’re talking.

$3 million auction was well executed.

If anyone was scared about how yesterday’s live domain auction at TRAFFIC would go, their fears dissipated about 30 minutes into the auction. Domains were selling and bidding was intense.

Sure, the final tally of $3 million ($4 million for all auctions this week) was much less than the $10 million last year, but it’s a coup given what’s going on in the economy.

So how did Monte Cahn and his crew at Moniker pull it off?

1. Good mix of low priced and high priced domains. Moniker managed to list some killer domains at no reserve and low reserve, guaranteeing that bidding would be intense. It also mixed up the high priced and low priced domains, so there weren’t exceptionally long periods of domains not selling. Perhaps they were a little heavy on $1M+ domains, but selling just one of those can make a show. FinancialAid.com et al at $800,000 is a case in point.

2. Great auctioneer. These guys are professional and know how to pull bids out of the audience.

3. Monte. It’s hard not to get sucked into his enthusiasm on stage.

4. Good execution of online bidding. Although I again had difficulty completing the download/registration process using Firefox 3, the auction flowed smoothly and internet bidders were always given the option to bid the same amount as floor bidders.

5. Trust and experience. Moniker has built up a reputation of trust in online auctions, which means a lot of people were willing to sell their domains at low and no reserve, knowing that the combination of Moniker and the TRAFFIC conference almost always delivers.

Governor of Kentucky’s drastic step to seize domain names may backfire.

Beshear: Public Enemy #1

I haven’t written about what’s going on in Kentucky yet. Frankly, I was so dumbfounded by Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear’s action to seize online gambling domain names that I didn’t know what to write.

Yesterday I got a call from a reporter for The Courier-Journal and I spent about a half hour talking through the issues with her. (You can see her article here.) This helped me clear my thoughts and think about what this really means for the domain industry, and what it really means for Beshear.

Bottom line: scary for the domain industry, scarier for Beshear.

Scary for the domain industry

It’s rather unsettling that the governor of one of the 50 U.S. states can decide to seize domain names, and all he needs to do is find one elected judge to say “yeah, let’s do this”. Scarier still is that the domain owners didn’t really have any warning. The order was to seize the domains first, then talk through the details later. At that point much of the damage has been done.

To be sure, the governor didn’t just pick an industry and seize the domains. He cited Kentucky law that allows the state to seize instruments used in illegal gambling. I’m sure this law was never intended for online gambling, but you get the point. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t a slippery slope. And it doesn’t help that the only reason he went after online gambling was to prop up his states’ industries. What’s next, the governor of Michigan banning foreign cars?

Further, it appears there wasn’t much thought into selecting the domains that should be seized. I’ve been told that the state named web sites if it was able to login and create an account on them. If this was the threshold for calling out a casino, it’s rather weak. Most of these sites offer play money gambling, and they may not even accept your money if you’re in the U.S. Credit card companies block casino transactions, so that would mean sending a check or wire transfer. I doubt the government went through that pain. One of the domain names – IndianCasino.com – isn’t actually a casino web site. It just forwards to one.

Scarier for Governer Beshear

I think Beshear has bitten off more than he can chew. He has drastically underestimated the forces he’s dealing with, and probably thinks it’s limited to offshore casinos. He’s wrong. Here are some of the groups that will make Beshear pay:

Free speech advocates. I’m sure the Electronic Frontier Foundation won’t be happy about the precedent. It wasn’t happy about the Snowe Bill, either.

Adult entertainment industry. If anyone should be worried about what’s next, it’s online operators of adult entertainment. I’m sure Beshear wants to protect his state’s strip clubs, too. If not him, some other conservative governor could take this step.

Domain industry. We’re small but impactful.

His constituents. I got the impression from talking to the reporter yesterday that people in Kentucky like to be left alone. They don’t like the government telling them what to do. Even those law abiding citizens who don’t gamble online won’t like their government spending millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to see this challenge through.

Lawyers for the online casinos will convene for a hearing in Kentucky this afternoon.

Outlook getting rosier by the minute for Moniker Auction.

[Update: FinancialAid.com sells for $800,000.] Earlier today I wrote about how financial uncertainty is peaking and this has weighed down on the live domain name auctions this week. I also said that Moniker’s timeslot — 3 PM EDT today — may end up being a very lucky happenstance. It’s looking more that way. Democrats and Republicans have apparently come up with a bailout plan and the stock market is up. It’s not like the cloud has been lifted in one day, but it’s certainly not as gloomy.

Add to that Moniker’s good job of getting choice names and offering them up at very good reserves, and I think we’ll be content with the results today. Here are just some of the names that will make this a good auction. [Note: these are from the official catalog downloaded from Moniker. Some of the domains and reserves may have changed.]

VYK.com – no reserve and proceeds will be donated to ICA. With what’s going on in Kentucky this week with the governor ordering a seizure of domain names, we’ll see this domain get bid up.

HolyGrail.com – this could be the Holy Grail of auctions, especially since there’s no reserve

ClinicalPsychology.com – another high quality no reserve domain

SleepWalking.com – reserve under $10k, this domain will sell

Methodology.com – low reserve

Bilingual.com – low reserve, should sell

Technology.net – should sell, especially if reserve is near the low end of $5k-$10k range

BaseballPlayer.com – At $5k-$10k, I like this one

LT.com – reserve is under $100k, so this one should be a no brainer

SummerCamp.com – very good domain with reasonable reserve in $10k-$25k range

Trumpet.com, Sax.com, and Clarinet.com – with no reserve, these domains will be very exciting to watch.

Fired.com – I don’t know if it will sell, but I’d like to see it sell for a lot after the owner dealt with a bogus UDRP.

LifeInsurancePolicies.com – another low reserve domain with proceeds donated to the ICA.

Cleaning.com – no reserve, so this one will be a fun one to watch

JapaneseGardens.com – I personally think this is a good deal at under $10k, but we’ll see what the market says.

Cuban.net – I think I know someone who will be bidding on this one (and it’s not me)

Obviously there are many more good domains. The auction sales total will be highly dependent on selling some of the six figure domains.

If you wish to bid, log-in to download the software register early at snapnames.com/liveAuctions.jsp.