Media coverage of illness outbreak is just really…bad.

Over the past week it seems that every major news outlet has covered the illness outbreak after this month’s DOMAINfest conference.

Take one part Playboy, one part illness outbreak, mix it up, and you’ve got everything the media needs for a story. It’s even good enough for Jay Leno.

But man, has that coverage been bad. Flat out wrong at times.

When you see how wrong some of these stories are it makes you wonder if the rest of what you read from these outlets is correct.

At one point Ron Jackson stopped returning reporters’ calls because he got so frustrated about being misquoted or taken out of context. TMZ even ripped off one of his photos without permission or attribution.

To be clear, here’s what we don’t know:

-Where people got sick
-How they contracted the illness
-What the widespread illness is

On the last point, we know what some of the individual diagnoses are, but we don’t know if everyone is getting the same thing.

Last night someone sent me a video clip of what epitomizes bad media.

In this video, Fox News’ Shepard Smith tries to get to the bottom of the Playboy illness outbreak in a three minute segment. In order to figure out what happened, he called on a an expert.

A medical doctor? Nah. A former Playboy Playmate, Izabella St. James

Well, I guess she did write a book about what goes on at the Playboy Mansion. But I’m sure she’s not on the news in an effort to promote that.

Smith “gently” leads St. James to make his story work.

The breaking news: people have sex at the Playboy Mansion.

And here I thought Hugh Heffner was the 84-year-old Virgin.

Smith asks St. James if she ever saw the water get changed in the grotto. She doesn’t recall ever seeing it.

Really? You mean they don’t make the playmates do maintenance rounds?

(At least Smith points out that you can keep a pool clean with chlorine. Which is how most people do it.)

The Playmate is multi-talented. She’s also an expert on food preparedness. She thinks the Mansion might not be prepared to serve food to so many guests. Like sushi. Oh, and the pond and animals there could be a source of illness.

I’m glad Smith helped us get to the bottom of this.

DomainTools gets a facelift and new membership levels.

DomainTools launched a new interface today. It makes finding and using its vast array of tools much easier.

But the best part is that account credits are gone.

In the words of DomainTools:

“We’ve taken the most confusing pricing model ever conceived, and we’ve given it the axe.”

Amen.

The old system was based on “units” for various products. And the number of units required to order the same product depended on how you used it. For example, tracking one company’s registrations costs a lot more units than another company’s.

Now the system has been simplified to three membership levels. It’s a lot easier to understand and won’t require mid-year “top ups” of units.

Existing members are grandfathered into their current plan, but some might find it worthwhile to upgrade to one of the new plans based on their planned usage.

Marchex sells of more domain names.

Marchex reported GAAP earnings of two cents per share after the bell today on $28 million revenue in the fourth quarter of 2010.

It also announced that it sold $2.1 million of “non-strategic” domain names in the quarter. Marchex frequently reports seven figures worth of domain name sales in its earnings announcements.

The company is famous for buying Yun Ye’s domain name portfolio for $164 million. A number of domain names in its portfolio aren’t strategic to the company’s focus on local advertising and the company sells them on occasion — but for a price.

One person who contacted Marchex about a domain purchase told me the company won’t consider offers under $30,000 for a domain.

Full Marchex earnings information is available here.

Two large domain name brokers have strong week.

Sedo and Afternic have both turned in sales reports this week combining for well over $1 million in reportable sales.

Sedo’s top reportable sale was Award.com for $56,005 and Afternic’s top reportable sale was Funo.com for $20,000.

Here are other top sales for the week from Afternic:

passings.com $15,000
floridaautoinsurance.com $15,000
nextstar.com $15,000
Fabo.com $15,000
prescreen.com $13,000
OnlinePcSupport.com $10,500
privaterx.com $10,000
brandschutz.com $7,000
nationalins.com $6,600
myplatform.com $6,160
i-mall.com $6,000 (sold through Sedo)
u50.com $5,300
arabianoil.com $5,000
brindilles.com $5,000
episource.com $5,000
LIA.org $5,000

Here are other top sales from Sedo for the week:

zum.com 28000 USD
123deal.com 25000 USD
lpn.com 20000 USD
factura.com 14000 USD
welive.com 11000 USD
one24.com 11000 EUR
tagger.com 10600 USD
myfile.com 10100 USD
bigbargains.com 10000 USD
ultracool.com 9995 USD
wwauction.com 9500 USD
seattlebagel.com 9000 USD
indago.com 8990 USD
mopedo.com 8000 USD
personalinjurysolicitor.com 8000 USD
b10.com 7500 USD
howtoprint.com 6500 USD
xmb.com 6100 USD
thedressingroom.com 6000 USD
i-mall.com 6000 USD
ispied.com 5000 USD
snatcher.com 5000 USD
edesia.com 5000 USD
reiseziele.de 20000 EUR
trainingcourse.co.uk 8000 USD
iw.ae 7700 GBP
maillotdebain.fr 6000 EUR
123deal.de 5000 EUR
hsw.de 4500 EUR
gofirst.de 4000 EUR
roadaccidents.co.uk 3800 GBP
musik.org 11000 EUR
premium.net 10000 USD
juegosdevestir.org 10000 EUR
moebel.eu 9900 EUR
tokyo.info 8800 USD
irish.org 6750 USD
mongolia.org 4999 USD

Patent describes system where new top level domain operators can bid for preferred placement registrar sites.

Want to get your new top level domain name positioned well on GoDaddy?

Prepare to pay.

That’s the idea behind a pay-for-placement approach for TLD placement on registrar web sites that Go Daddy has devised.

Oh, and it has a patent on it.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. patent 7,890,602 (pdf) to Go Daddy today for “Tools enabling preferred domain positioning on a registration website”.

Think of it similar to Google Adwords. A registry wants .tld to show up high in search results on Go Daddy. So it bids for the placement on a cost-per-click, cost-per-impression, or other scheme.

Go Daddy would then take the bid amount and factor in the quality of the TLD to determine its actual placement, similar to how Google Adwords considers the quality of the ad or landing page for both total revenue and customer experience purposes.

Some of the factors that Go Daddy says it might use to consider the quality score include the TLD’s market share, renewal rates, customer service, pricing, whois type, user restrictions and uptime, among others.

The patent also describes similar embodiments that aren’t as granular, such as paying a flat monthly fee for placement.