I saw KickApps 1.0 and it wasn’t something even worth mentioning or discussing.  A colleague of mine insisted that I had to check out KickApps’ latest version, 3.0, which, “KickApps 3.0 makes it easier than ever for web publishers and developers of all levels and experience to deploy Social Networking, UGC, Programmable Video Players and Widgets.”

Sounds like standard marketing BS right?  Can there really be a solution to the novice or amateur web developer’s needs?  According to their website, “[t]he new release dramatically extends your ability to manage media, members and reporting, all essential to growing a successful community. Additionally, it contains more site customization and syndication as well as features that are designed to create a more engaging experience for your community’s members.”

I decided to head over to their website and stumbled upon this video, which is worth checking out if you have not seen it…

Last week, exoticcars.tv sold for $2,375 according to SEDO’s home page.  Following the most notable dot tv sales reported earlier this month, this is yet another strong sale for the extension especially considering that its a two-word domain name with a decent overture score of almost 20,000 for just the terms “exotic car.”

Late last month, Brightspot.tv shut the lights of to its website off to “develop the next iteration of the service,” which rewarded consumers for watching advertisements. For more info, see this article, which was courtesy of SKG of NamePros. 

More news after the jump…

One of my companies produces video for the web to promote its network of sites and attract new visitors who would not ordinarily discover us through our ads or word of mouth. 

I recall when the company gave video production a go for the first time almost 3 years ago...few even knew about YouTube.  The company only had one high-quality camera (because that is all its budget could afford).  Everyone was forced to learn how to get video from digital video tapes captured to a hard drive on a computer, how to edit the video, how to add titles and advertisements in the video, how to export the video, how to compress the video, how to convert the video to flash, how to setup and maintain a video server, how to upload the video to the server and publish it to the web by adding a database entry.  Sounds like a lot of work right? 

Well, anybody can do it in their sleep after a few attempts, but I digress…

When I left a career that virtually guaranteed my future on June 2nd, 2006, my friends, colleagues, and family thought I was crazy to jump ship, giving up my current income, to pursue something risky, unproven, and requiring lots of labor and capital.  My partner and I had started the company a full 9 months before I left that career to put all my effort and hard work into a company that was expected to generate income for my pockets not some guy I worked for.  The wrinkle was that the company was not currently profitable, required more capital infusions from us, and LACKED A WRITTEN BUSINESS PLAN…

When my interest in domain names took root, nobody explained to me that the learning curve I would face as a developer would be straight up. 

I was sucked into domain investing by the attractive and seductive nature of the .tv extension.  In my mind, the .tv extension is one of the strongest extensions for branding purposes (see any one of my many posts on this site) and there were countless generics available at discounted premium prices.  I felt like I struck gold when I could ping the database of available .tv names and a significant number of strong, single-word domains displayed “AVAILABLE: REGISTER NOW.”

After registering these names, I found that domain parking was not a business that would generate the kind of returns I sought from my domain investments.  Of course, I could cover the costs of my non-premium .tv names by parking those names with any of the parking companies that offer good payouts, but developing those domains would make those returns look insignificant.  This is where my experience as a developer began and development posed a new set of challenges when I started hosting and managing my own sites and servers…

Rational domain investors and web developers can agree that .com is and will remain king for the foreseeable future since it was the first domain extension to both gain widespread adoption and receive millions of ad dollars in promotional advertising in the form of print and broadcast ads. 

We also know that whatever site that can be built on a .tv domain name can be built on ANY domain name in ANY domain extension.  So why all the hype surrounding dot tv?

Today, Go Daddy announced the availability of a tool called Quick Blogcast, which combines two of its existing products Quick Blog and Quick Podcast.  According to GoDaddy, Quick Blogcast can be used to create multimedia sites at .tv domains and other websites. 

Rather than bundling value-added services with the sale of domain names, like eNom does with its Channelme.tv service and .tv domain names, it seems like Go Daddy’s strategy may involve offering lower prices on domains and offering services like Quick Blogcast separately for those that want to take advantage of them.

Press release after the jump!

You will have to click to READ ON to read this entry because I wanted to preface the entry with this message:

If you think you own a domain name particularly suited to a niche market, then please contact me AFTER you have read the blog entry on the next page.  I have a unique opportunity I would like to share with you if your domain name meets that criteria and you are interested in developing that name.

Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.

Source: Wired.com

Isn’t .tv well suited for this purpose if we are talking about Internet video?