You’re cutting it close to get a valid passport.

Heading to TRAFFIC in Vancouver in a couple weeks? If you’re a U.S. citizen, don’t forget to bring a valid passport.

You can get into Canada with other forms of I.D., such as an expired passport along with a valid drivers license. But if you want to fly back to the U.S., you’ll need a valid passport.

I thought my passport expired later this year, but it turns out it has already expired. Two weeks notice isn’t enough for The U.S. Department of State regular and expedited filing periods. That leaves you with two options: drive or fly to the nearest passport processing center (there are fewer than 20 in the country) or pay an expediter to do that for you. An expediter basically makes your appointment at the regional passport center for you and delivers your paperwork on your behalf. But it will set you back an extra $200-$400, depending on how much of a rush you’re in.

Plaintiffs allege company withheld payments from 2008 acquisition.

Internet Brands, Inc., which owns Autos.com and Loan.com, has been sued (pdf) by two people who sold the web site ModelMayhem.com to it in 2008. Although Internet Brands has not yet responded to the suit, it’s a reminder of the challenges of selling domain names or web sites with “earnout” or residual terms on future revenue or traffic.

Donald and Tyler Waitt sold their popular Model Mayhem web site to Internet Brands in 2008. As part of the agreement, Internet Brands was to pay them a deferred amount based on 2009 traffic to the ModelMayhem.com web site. If the average monthly page views for 2009 were at least 350 million, the pair would be paid $800,000. The deferred payment scaled down from there so long as the site average 225 million page views per month. The page views were to be based on stats from Google Analytics, according to the suit.

Near the end of 2009 the plaintiffs allege that “Defendant unreasonably and without proper cause unilaterally changed the method of calculating page views”. Apparently Internet Brands is disputing some of the traffic being counted by Google Analytics.

What actually happened? We won’t know until we hear both sides of the story, and the case perhaps works its way through the courts. But it’s an example of an earnout provision clearly gone awry — and something to think about before entering into such an agreement.

MonaLisa.com domain name sells for $200,000.

The Mona Lisa has been sold!

OK, so it’s actually MonaLisa.com.

According to Sedo’s market activity report, it has sold the domain name MonaLisa.com for $200,000:

The domain name is currently pending transfer and is in Sedo’s brokerage account. The seller is California-based NetCorp.

This is a big sale for Sedo, given the dearth of six-figure sales coming out of the brokerage recently. Of course, it is getting rights to sell the Sex.com domain name. Something tells me that one will attract some press.

VeriSign interviews founders and CEOs of top domain name registrars.

Some domain name registrars have boisterous CEOs with their own blogs and video blogs. Others are a bit quieter. As part of its “25 Years of .Com” celebration, VeriSign has captured the stories behind 10 of the top domain name registrars, and it’s a good opportunity to hear from the quieter CEOs in the industry.

VeriSigns “Meet the domain pioneers” features the CEOs or founders of ten domain name registrars. Among the video interviews are Elliot Noss, President and CEO of Tucows, Bhavin Turakhia, Founder & CEO of Directi, and Jeff Kupietzky, CEO & President of Oversee.net.

Next week VeriSign is holding a gala event in San Francisco where it will honor the “.com 25″: “remarkable innovators, entrepreneurs and companies whose inspiring contributions were fundamental in shaping the Internet and, thereby, forever changing the way we think and act as individuals and as a society.”

Settlement paves way for Sex.com domain name sale.

The managers of Escom, LLC, which owns the Sex.com domain name, have agreed to enter into an agreement with Sedo to sell the domain name. Terms of the brokerage agreement are confidential.

The agreement to retain Sedo to sell the domain name comes after a settlement between a number of the creditors to Escom. Originally, creditor DOM Partners pushed the Sex.com domain name into foreclosure and scheduled an auction to sell the domain name. The day before the auction was to take place, three entities controlled by Mike Mann made an involuntary bankruptcy filing against Escom to halt the auction.

The parties battled back in forth in bankruptcy court, but have reached a settlement. As part of the settlement, the parties agreed that “a sale of the Debtor’s assets, including its Internet domain name www.Sex.com (the “Domain Name”), as expeditiously as possible…is in the best interests of the Debtor, the estate, and its creditors.”

DOM Partners had originally opposed retaining Sedo to sell the domain name because it felt that its fees were too high. Sedo had been in talks with some of Escom’s investors previously to sell the domain, and Sedo filed a statement in the case suggesting that it would be the better company to sell the domain name than DOM’s original auctioneer.

The parties have asked the court to approve its settlement agreement.