Don’t fall into the trap of resting on previous success.

For a few years after I graduated from college, I would always joke with my wife about how I got a 4.0 in college and she didn’t. I would proudly wear the badge of my GPA, thinking it mattered.

It mattered for the first job I got out of college, but after that no one cared. My wife was sure to remind me of that. “No one cares anymore that you got a 4.0 in college,” she would say. And she was right.

In all businesses — including domain names — people really don’t care that you had a success 5 years ago or introduced a cool product two years ago. They want to know what you’ve done lately. Being the first to do something doesn’t matter all that much if you then sit back and don’t innovate.

If I have a sub-par week of stories on Domain Name Wire, I don’t offer myself excuses such as “Well, I was on the front page of Digg a couple weeks ago” or “It doesn’t matter. Remember the time I blew the lid off Standard Tactics?”

Regardless of what type of business you’re in — an auction house, a domain registrar, whatever — you can’t rest on your reputation. You have to continually innovate.

High temperature to be in the 60s during conference.

The good folks at Associated Cities must have called in a favor for this week’s GeoDomain Expo in San Diego. After a sweltering high of 98 °F yesterday, the high temperature will cool to the 60s for the duration of the conference that kicks off Thursday night.

Thank goodness. I leave Texas to visit a cool place, not another hot one.

But the auction at the event is showing no signs of cooling off. 14 domains already have bids, including Minneapolis.net and Piedras.com at $3,000 each. DomainConsultant added a handful of more domains today, including Ticket.com and Armonk.com.

The conference kicks off Wednesday night with a welcome luau. San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders will address the audience Friday morning.

It’s not too late to sign up for GeoDomain Expo. Tickets are currently $695 and will go up to $995 for on-site registration.

LiveStream.com tops Sedo’s weekly sales list.

Sedo has brokered the sale of LiveStream.com for $100,000. The seller was Control Room Technologies of Lansing, Michigan. The buyer is using whois privacy protection to protect his identity.

Sedo also sold SEO.info for 17,000 EUR.

Here are other top domain name sales at Sedo over the past week:

.com
levelup.com 50,000 USD
jeddah.com 45,000 EUR
fasto.com 15,000 USD
billetesbaratos.com 12,500 GBP
pferdefutter.com 10,000 EUR Horse feed in German
bondfunds.com 10,000 USD
unimedia.com 9,100 EUR
ener.com 8,888 USD
prostar.com 8,000 USD
panamacasinos.com 7,500 USD
e-14.com 7,500 USD
elementfourteen.com 7,500 USD
exgfs.com 6,200 EUR

ccTLDs
telefony.pl 13,500 EUR
deguisement.fr 10,000 EUR
reflex.fr 10,000 EUR
dasgelbe.de 8,925 EUR Yellow in German
mybrands.de 7,000 EUR
sextoysdirect.co.uk 5,800 GBP
123.cc 5,000 USD
clicker.tv 5,000 USD
sema.ca 5,000 USD
shopathome.co.uk 5,000 GBP
mobiledating.co.uk 5,000 USD

Other
noticias.net 22,000 GBP Notices in Spanish
montecarlo.net 15,500 USD
seo.info 17,000 EUR
exchange.org 13,000 USD
skincareproducts.net 9,000 USD
csl.org 7,500 USD

Sedo’s current Great Domains auction ends Thursday. Top domains so far that have met their reserves are b4.com at $20,999, NIB.com at $10,600, and 5k.com at $9,999. Sedo also has an auction for Teeth.org running. The domain has met its reserve at $10,000.

Shift to web makes headlines even more important.

The most important part of a news story has always been the headline. Whether in a newspaper, magazine, or online, editors have to pique the reader’s interest. But headlines are more important on the web than in print media.

Print publications have the added benefit of drawing readers in with pictures, subheads, and even the lead paragraph. On the web, seeing this additional information often requires a click.

Consider today’s headlines on CNN.com:

- Med student to be arraigned in Craigslist slaying
- Ticker: Cheney calls Obama move ‘disturbing’
- Woman tried to evict husband, disappeared
- Police probe alleged bid to sell ‘Slumdog’ actor
- Nazi victim: Pursuing war criminals not worth it
- Former astronaut: Man not alone in universe
- Groom dies in wreck on his way to church
- Teen made $50,000 smuggling drugs
- Following sports stars … on Twitter

The headline writer has about 6 to 8 words to get the reader interested enough to click. The writer needs to get people interested but not mislead them.

I’m not excellent at headline writing. I’m overly cautious to not write misleading headlines (OK, with a few exceptions). If a user clicks a headline claiming the article is the most important they’ll ever read, and it’s not, they’ll stop reading the publication.

Fortunately, the typical web writer is becoming more skilled at the practice. Even if all you do is write a Google Adwords ad or use Twitter, you are learning the importance of getting your message across succinctly. It’s almost like everything you do requires a headline. One of the most crucial skills in the web world is being succinct. Those that can nail their 30 second elevator pitch or get a point across in a text message can succeed. Others will not.

Man, I feel sorry for lawyers.

EFF and other organizations ask Kentucky Supreme Court to uphold lower court decision.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky filed a friend of the court brief with the Kentucky Supreme Court to uphold a lower court’s decision blocking the seizure of gambling domain names.

According to an EFF press release:

“No state can order a domain name registrar over which it does not have jurisdiction to do anything. The commonwealth simply hasn’t satisfied its burden here,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. “Without these important protections, no website would be safe from arbitrary decisions by foreign courts to silence online content that they don’t like.”

“Under Kentucky’s legal theory, any government in the world would be able to seize any website domain name if the site has content that the government does not like,” said John Morris, general counsel for CDT. “Such a theory, if upheld, would be devastating to free expression around the world.”

Indeed, we could see a Muslim country try to seize MakersMark.com and JimBeam.com. How would Kentucky feel about that?

The press release also mentions that EFF is joined by other organizations, including the domain industry’s Internet Commerce Association.