Where are my black framed glasses?

SnapNames just started its “Summer Kick-Off Auction“, run in conjunction with Afternic.

Although most of the domains in the auction are owned by Afternic or an affiliate company, some of the domains appear to be owned by the company’s larger clients.

Compared to recent auction lists, this one looks to be a winner. My personal favorite: Hipsters.com for under $10,000. That’s a great domain.

Ambitious.com $10k-$25k
Authorization.com $10k-$25k
Delicacies.com $5k – $10k
FilmCareers.com $1,01-$2,500
Haggler.com $10k – $25k
Hikers.com $10k – $25k
Hipsters.com $5k – $10k

Over at Sedo, the company just started its .me auction. It features 188 .me domains, all with reserves under $500. So far the top bid is $1,100 for Air.me.

Local deals company registers three domain names for retailer payment systems.

Groupon registered the domain names GrouponPayments.com, GrouponPOS.com, and GrouponTerminal.com on May 22.

Now we know why.

VentureBeat reports that the company is testing a payments solution to competed with Square and PayPal. Apparently the company is offering an iPod Touch with the card reader to merchants free of charge, and the service is priced very competitively compared to competitors.

The author of the VentureBeat article says an email from Groupon hints at a forthcoming point of sale system for iPod and iPad. Given the domain names the company registered, this appears to be on the product roadmap.

Here’s the whois record for GrouponPOS.com. The other domains have similar records.

Kanye West buys domain name for new short film.

Kanye West has made some interesting naming decisions in the past. So let’s give him credit for buying CruelSummer.com for $3,000. Cruel Summer is the name of his new short film.

Here are some other end user domain buys from the past week. All sales took place at Afternic unless otherwise noted.

Forbes writer Rich Karlgaard, who has written about the “Power of Pairs”, paid $1,595 for PowerPairs.com.

I wrote about this one yesterday: Warner Bros bought Injustice.com for $7,500 for a new online game.

Columbus, Ohio insurance company Smart Financial bought FreeMortgageRates.com for $2,100.

Heifer Project International, the non-profit that lets you give charity gifts of animals such as a sheep and llama, bought BeyondHunger.com for $1,995.

Bank marketing company Financial Marketing Solutions picked up BankSimply.com for $2,500 at Sedo.

The owner of VideoResults.tv upgraded to VideoResults.com for $1,300. Smart idea at that price.

DekBrands, which markets a “floating foundation” deck system, bought AllAboutDecks.com for a hefty $15,995. Congrats to fellow domainer Gregg Ostrick on the sale.

Printer cartridge recycling company Advantage Cartridge bought RecyclingAdvantage.com for $2,500.

Marketing firm GO media LLC, which owns Go-Media.com, paid $835 for Go-Social.com at Sedo.

Social Sector Ventures, LLC, a fundraising company, bought SocialSector.com for $1,288.

Corpac Steel Products bought Corpac.net for $1,388. Its web site is CorpacSteel.com.

Applications2U shortened its URL from Applications2u.com to a2u.net for $1,500.

iCrossing UK, a Hearst company, bought DirectDigitalBroadband.com and FreeBroadbandNow.org at Sedo for $1,250 each.

Dating site One2One.com paid $2,000 for AmericasMostEligible.com

Washington State Parks paid $4,388 for the clever marketing domain AdventureAwaits.com.

Louisville heating and cooling company Allgeier Air bought LouisvilleHeating.com for $796 at Sedo. This company gets it; it already owns LouisvilleAir.com.

It’s a year away, but dates are finalized.

For a while there were too many domainer-targeted domain conferences. Then the pendulum swung the other way.

TRAFFIC is adding an additional show in 2013, and today it announced the final dates. The show will begin Wednesday, May 29th in the evening. It will conclude with breakfast on Saturday, June 1 2013.

The event was originally planned to start earlier in the week, but organizers received concerns about its proximity to Memorial Day.

TRAFFIC Las Vegas will take place at the Bellagio.

Show organizers Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu also announced that they “expect to be there for both 2013 and 2014″ as well.

USOC claims person continues to infringe on its trademarks.

The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) has filed a lawsuit (pdf) against Alan Bachand, an individual with whom the organization has a history when it comes to domain names.

Back in 2009 the USOC objected to Bachand’s use of the domain name OlympicsBestHotels.com to pitch hotels for the Vancouver Olympics. It ended up filing a UDRP against Bachand and won control of the domain.

Now the USOC is objecting to his use of the Olympics trademarks on a number of other sites, including SuperHotelRooms.com, 14sb.com, and LuxurySuperBowlHotels.com.

USOC says it reached out to Bachand about the infringing use, but he hasn’t made all of the changes it requested.

Its suit claims that Bachand is violating the Olympic and Amateur Sports Act and the Lanham Act.

In the UDRP all Bachand lost was his domain name. With a lawsuit, he could face financial penalties if he loses.