It looks like i'm not the only one selling the Spongebob Squarepants hat I got with the NYC Marathon goodie bag. Someone just put one up on ebay... dammit, competition.

Funny things people do with website names...

So I was looking up website names for a site idea I had. I looked up tutortv.com and it is taken (nothing is on the site yet, it's just "parked" and unused), so I did a "whois" lookup for who actually owns the domain. It is a woman who runs an upscale tutor company in ... you guessed it... NYC, called "Stanford Coaching Inc." I found an article including a reference to her $2 mil company here where she discusses how she flies her tutors all over the world for super rich families to tutor their kids while yachting around the globe, etc etc. Anyway, I couldn't find shit online about her tutoring company -- apparently she buys domain names for everything but her own company. (Her company changed names to www.inspirica.com and apparently is doing quite well!)

I googled her email address and found this site http://scaletheheights.com/

"Dear Domain Seeker, I'm a small business owner who renamed my business. I learned that the best potential trademarks seem to be made-up names. After I chose my new name I decided to register many of the other great names I came up with (listed below) If you are interested in inquiring about any of these names, please feel free to contact me."

Apparently she really DOES register every domain address! haha. what's interesting here is that you would think the tutoring business would be far more lucrative than than squatting domains and hoping someone picks a silly name and pays you for it. But then again, you can do both and the overhead is small. But just look at some of these names! They're just funny.

So Electric Six came out with a new album. I went to download it on Allofmp3.com but I have no money in my account there, so I have to credit some in. Turns out, VISA (the only credit card I own) has stopped paying shady overseas companies like this one (a Russian version of iTunes -- way cheaper and a much larger library of music). So I'm screwed. If I have no way of crediting my account with them, then I can't buy this awesome Electric Six album (and dozens of other albums for about $1.50 apiece).

That's when I decided to get a Mastercard, just so I can fund allofmp3. Go Mastercard.

I forgot to mention... last week I did a shoot for a company called NeoStem. I lit and filmed the CEO giving a "intro to our website" message. Check it out at www.neostem.com. Robin (the CEO) is quite funny and very nice. Her company basically provides 'bio-insurance' -- they take adult stem cells from you and freeze them for later use if something goes wrong. Pretty neat idea and apparently it's a proven technique that rivals embryonic stem cells.

Today marks the first time I've sold something on eBay. It is my old trackball mouse, and it actually sold for $51 plus shipping. I am pretty impressed, but I think I probably could have simply listed it on Craig's list for $60 and had someone pick it up. I'm not so sure that eBay is the best way to sell stuff when Craig's list is a free alternative that tons of people use

For instance, my mom wants me to clean out all of the computer parts from my room at home. I think I'm going to list them all on Craig's list and say "make me an offer." I will probably get a whole lot of decent prices for my junk.