Dot Vegas’ registration goals seem lofty.

The Las Vegas city council is considering signing off on a private company going after the .vegas top level domain name when ICANN eventually opens up the namespace. The council just delayed a vote until February so the major can weigh in.

Dot Vegas Inc., which wants to get the city council’s blessing for the domain name, has promised a share of the profits. It will pay 50 cents per domain or 10% of the gross profits. But here’s the kicker: the article quotes Dot Vegas’ CEO estimating that 300,000-500,000 domains will be registered in the first year.

Now, I haven’t seen the business plans for other city top level domain names, but I have to guess this estimate is on the high side. Las Vegas has some things going for it, such as the potential for gambling sites hosted on .vegas (the city council will just love that), but my guess would be more like 10,000 domains registered in the first year.

The only data we have to work from are recent global top level domain releases. Numbers for .asia, .tel, and .mobi (which had huge marketing budgets) make Dot Vegas’ numbers look unrealistic.

Let’s help the city council out. How many domains do you think will be registered in the first year?

I thought it would never happen.

I hate to admit it, but I have succumbed to a common illness called Conference Overload, or CO.

I was in denial until this morning, when I logged on to print my boarding pass for the trip to TRAFFIC in Las Vegas tomorrow. The airline web site didn’t recognize my reservation. I called the airline to see what was going on. Then I noticed that I had booked travel for last week, not this week.

That’s what happens when you book flights for three separate domain conferences at the same time.

The side effects of CO are severe, even though those afflicted try to play them off. For example, instead of a non-stop flight to Las Vegas and back for about $200 round trip, I’m now stuck with a layover each way for $500 round trip. This will leave me only a scant 48 hours in Vegas.

On the bright side, do you really need more than 48 hours in Vegas?

Censorship organization asks parents to visit Go Daddy’s web site. Brilliant.

Go Daddy made a name for itself with Super Bowl commercials. But it wasn’t just advertising in the big game that brought attention. The real value was in pre-Super Bowl coverage. At first it was “Hey look, here’s a ‘dot com’ company that is advertising in the Super Bowl after the tech bust”. Then it was all about the racy nature of its commercials.

Last year the religious right chimed in, with some church leaders asking customers to boycott Go Daddy. Of course, this just fuels the fire and gives Go Daddy more attention.

Today a group called Morality in Media issued a press release about Go Daddy’s upcoming Super Bowl commercials. Maybe the guys at Morality in Media are idiots, but their press release actually has a call to action for people to visit Go Daddy’s web site:

“For an advanced look at what GoDaddy.com may have in store for football fans of all ages during this year’s Super Bowl game, parents in particular should check out the sexually oriented content that appears on that company’s website under the subhead, ‘Super Bowl 2010 – Sneak Preview.”

When I read that line, I pictured Go Daddy staffers high-fiving in the office. I even went to Morality in Media’s web site to make sure it wasn’t some media stunt by Go Daddy. But it appears to be a real organization.

So well played, Go Daddy. I may not agree with all the moves the company makes, but it is a publicity machine.

And by the way, Morality in Media’s press release is more graphic in nature than any of Go Daddy’s commercials.

Domain name registrar sued over alleged security breach.

[Update: The court has now published an unredacted version of the lawsuit, detailing how Baidu alleges Register.com gave the keys to its domain to a hacker.]

Baidu, Inc. announced that it has sued domain name registrar Register.com over a hacking incident by Iranian Cyber Army earlier this month. Baidu claims that Register.com was negligent, allowing the hackers to change the DNS for the domain name.

I have searched U.S. Federal Court records to find the lawsuit, but have not located it. It will be interesting to see the details behind the lawsuit, as presumably it will detail what exactly the hackers did to take down the site, including any edits to the nameservers for Baidu.com.

Once again, it’s time for a registrar to offer bullet-proof registrations, including a service that requires in-person verification to make any changes to a domain’s contact information or nameservers. I’m not sure if such a service will profitable, as I know at least one domain entrepreneur tried this in the past. Will companies pay substantially more to ensure their domain names aren’t hacked? They should, but that doesn’t mean they will.

Hyphenated .de domain leads pack.

Sedo has brokered the sale of German country code domain name Free-SMS.de for 115,000 EUR, or about $165,000 at today’s exchange rates. The domain name was purchased by SuperComm Data Marketing GmbH, according to whois records.

The next highest sale for the week was ConnectionExpress.com, which sold for $30,000. In third place is an interesting one, Toys.co.za. .Za is the country code top level domain name for South Africa. You rarely see publicly announced sales of .za domain names. NameBio.com shows one previous sale, Porn.co.za for $45,000, sold by RickLatona.com last year.

Here are Sedo’s other notable sales from the past week.

.COM
glitch.com 19,000 USD
coocoo.com 16,000 USD
ltn.com 12,501 USD
iplan.com 11,900 USD
tuto.com 11,000 EUR
vana.com 10,099 USD
axtension.com 10,000 EUR
40k.com 10,000 USD
daviderossi.com 9,350 USD
careclub.com 8,890 USD
usagardener.com 8,250 USD
podium.com 7,900 GBP
integralgroup.com 7,500 USD
huntingtontravel.com 6,001 USD
beatlab.com 5,800 USD
tennisnet.com 5,000 EUR
savineo.com 5,000 USD
hotelnetwork.com 5,000 USD
oncos.com 5,000 USD
connectgroup.com 5,000 USD
xotar.com 5,000 USD
altinus.com 5,000 USD

ccTLDs
jordanien.de 17,850 EUR
tts.eu 12,500 EUR
321.de 10,500 EUR
musik-total.de 9,520 EUR
booking.am 8,000 USD
boilerscrappage.co.uk 8,000 GBP
photobox.dk 7,000 EUR
blackcard.mx 6,000 EUR
reunion.de 5,500 EUR
tablet.de 5,355 EUR
implant.eu 5,010 EUR
giftcards.eu 5,000 EUR