Live Current Media ends a sad saga.

Live Current Media (OTC: LIVC.ob) has sold its Cricket.com domain name and assigned its Indian Premier League contract for a total consideration of approximately $1.75 million. About $1M of that will be paid in cash over four quarters, and the remainder is the assumption of liabilities and payment of severance to a key Live Current employee that will be hired by the purchaser, GCV Mauritius.

Last year Live Current Media claimed to reject a previous $6M offer for the Cricket.com domain name. But a lot has changed since then. For one, Live Current entered into a 10 year, $50M agreement with DLF Indian Premier League. Not only did the company not have the money to pay for the agreement, but he company knew nothing about the sport. It showed in its execution. The company bet itself on cricket and lost the bet.

Assuming this deal relieves Live Current of any future obligations under its cricket agreements, this will help the company get somewhat of a fresh start.

Live Current also announced the sale of 2 domain names for $1.6M. One of these domains was previously sold for $1.25M but the buyer backed out. Live Current retained $355,000 that had already been received under the $1.25M agreement. The most recent known sale of a Live Current domain name was Brazil.com at $500,000.

In other news, Live Current restructured its payments for its purchase of Auctomatic, a company that has absolutely nothing to do with Live Current’s business. The Auctomatic acquisition is another example of the company’s poor execution.

XP.com nearly cracks six figures at GreatDomains auction.

Bidding for this month’s GreatDomains auction at Sedo concluded today. Although none of the domains have changed hands yet, it looks like XP.com will be the top sale at $99,000. The domain was originally registered back in 1995.

BestPrices.com came in second at $81,000. BestPrices.com is an active web site with significant traffic. Sued.com came back this month with a lower reserve price that resulted in a much higher sale at $25,003.

None of these results are official yet, but here are other top bids:

bfc.com $18,400
khz.net $452
ahh.net 826 EUR
vgx.comnet $510
982.net 1,052 GBP
xhn.net $440
collectable.net $436
jiny.com $1,280
ambience.net $510
consumercontent.com $80
declined.net $121
desires.net $724
floorwax.net $70
bellyrings.com $8,899
dxb.com $22,500
nxm.com $4,100
zwm.com $3,600
2t.net $6,600
0a.net $2,450
object.net $1,160
sieve.net $559
selfproduced.com $100
usercontent.com $110
userpublished.com $70
musicbase.com $5,600
sneakpeek.com $3,500
travelguide.net $10,100
irishriverdance.com $70
lining.net $859
15.net $9,999

A handy guide to choosing a domain conference.

Well, I guess the domain name conference wars are on again. We already knew about two conferences in the first two months of the year — DOMAINfest and Domainer MardiGras. But then, despite having only two conferences in the U.S. this year, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. found it necessary to hold a conference in Las Vegas just before DOMAINfest. And so it begins.

Since most people don’t want to attend every conference, I’ve put together this handy guide to help you choose a conference. There’s not a “best conference” for everyone; it really depends on what you’re looking for. It you don’t care about programming, ignore that rating. If you don’t care about striking deals at the conference, ignore that rating. Just find the conference that is best for what you’re looking for. These are my opinions on each conference, although I cross checked them with a couple other experts in our field to make sure I wasn’t way off on any of them. And of course, if you disagree, feel free to comment.

Explanation of ratings:

Size – based on audience. Takes into consideration most recent conference and historical trends.

Cost – conference pass cost, excluding hotel.

Programming – quality of programming, including diverse speakers, “fresh” topics, programming scheduled well in advance.

Professionalism – sessions start on time, professional/prepared moderators.

Cohesiveness – level of attendee, ability to easily network and find people you’re looking for (adversely affected by size).

Deal Making – level of deal making at conference.

Conference Venue & Food – overall quality of venue and food

Here they are, in alphabetical order.

Domainer Mardi Gras
What’s new in 2010: No longer under Modern Domainer umbrella

Known for: Fun

Size: Small

Cost: Low

Programming: Medium

Professionalism: Medium

Cohesiveness: High

Deal Making: Medium

Venue: Medium

DOMAINfest

What’s new in 2010: moves to the beach, possible second conference in the fall.

Known for: High quality production, huge parties, big crowd. Organized by Oversee.net.

Size: Large

Cost: Moderate

Programming: High

Professionalism: High

Cohesiveness: Medium

Deal Making: High

Venue: High

Domain Roundtable
What’s new in 2010: Nothing announced; annual conference takes place later in year

Known for: Drawing more than just domainers, policy angle

Size: Small

Cost: Moderate

Programming: High

Professionalism: Medium

Cohesiveness: High

Deal Making: High

Venue: High

GeoDomain Expo
What’s new in 2010: Moves to New Orleans, hopefully less internal drama

Known for: Bringing together the “local web” audience and geo domain owners

Size: Small

Cost: Low

Programming: Moderate

Professionalism: High

Cohesiveness: High

Deal Making: Moderate

Venue: Moderate-High

T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
What’s new in 2010: Partnership with Rick Latona, 6 conferences (2 in U.S.)

Known for: First real domain conference, big live domain auctions

Size: Medium

Cost: High

Programming: Low (but improving)

Professionalism: Low

Cohesiveness: High

Deal Making: High

Venue: High

Company pays to end lawsuit brought by VirtualPoint, Inc.

Document exchange company Certipost has paid an undisclosed amount to settle a lawsuit brought by VirtualPoint, Inc. over the domain name Certipost.com.

VirtualPoint’s owner David Lahoti registered the domain name back in 2000. A couple years later Certipost started. In 2008 Certipost filed a UDRP to get the domain name through WIPO and won in a strange decision. The WIPO panelist decided that, since Lahoti transferred the domain in 2008 into a different business entity he owned, the registration date of the domain should be 2008 instead of 2000..

A transfer of a domain to a different entity is usually considered a new registration under UDRP, but not if it is essentially the same owner. The panelist wrote in his decision that he understood this to be the case, but decided to rule differently because of other reasons that made him believe the domain was used in bad faith. In other words, the panelist tried to use a technicality to change the date the domain was registered so he could issue an opinion in favor of Certipost.

Falling on the wrong end of a bad decision, VirtualPoint sued Certipost in California District Court. The two parties just settled the case. Certipost will retain the Certipost.com domain name and pay a cash settlement to VirtualPoint, Inc.

Epik off to quick start.

It’s been a couple months since Rob Monster launched Epik, a semantic web domain monetization service. How’s it going? Quite well, reports Monster.

He says the company will turn the corner on profitability next month, so the company will be able to choose whether or not to raise outside money.

Epik 2.1 was just released and includes many improvements. A key improvement is a new parser that makes it easier to map domains to available Epik topics. Previously, submitted domains had to exactly match an available topic. Now, similar keywords are considered. More categories, such as geo topics, can also be mapped.

Epik also has many more content feeds and offers the ability to sell advertising directly on a web site. It also added a basic link building tool to help domain owners find link partners.

As Monster sees it, Epik allows domain owners to “prime the pump” to get their domains developed and indexed in search engines “instead of paying a couple hundred bucks for a basic mini site”.

Next month Epik will launch Epik Pro and Epik Enterprise. These will give domainers who have their own ad feeds and development resources a platform to leverage their strengths. They’ll be able to add their own advertising feeds, edit domains through the DevHub site editor, and maintain 100% of the revenue. (Some smaller domainers who’ve found success with their domains on Epik may also want to upgrade an individual domain to earn more money.)

The early success of Epik is dependent on the DevHub platform; and Epik Pro will rely on DevHub even more. Epik and DevHub are two different companies, although Monster is the largest investor in DevHub. Could the two companies become one in the future?

“Don’t rule it out,” says Monster.