“Cybersquatting” has been something fairly common in the industry for a while. I’m sure even some of you that are reading this may buy and hold domains based on the fact that price and value goes up every year. Something however that has a lot of businesses and organizations on the defense is the fact that thousands of domains are registered every year with copyright names within or as a part of the domain registered.

The views on this issue are somewhat split. While some ‘squatters’ have registered domains to put defamatory content about a company, others have registered various domains and jacking up prices to ridiculous amounts in hopes of a company with that name wanting to buy it.

Let me give you one example of what I am talking about. Locally here in the Houston area where our corporate office is located, there is a car dealership that is very well known named Munday Chevrolet. You would think they own mundaychevrolet.com right? Wrong. They own munday-chevrolet.com, a second rate domain name for your company if you ask me.

If you go to mundaychevrolet.com you will find very brief text from the website owner saying why he would never buy a car from Munday Chevrolet. Previously the site was used for pornography. Thats got to be bad for business especially when you have to tell potential customers to add a dash in the middle of your name.

Lets take an even bigger name into consideration that caused a legal battle for years, nissan.com as opposed to nissanusa.com. The only problem here is that this is a bit complicated. What happens when your last name is truly Nissan? This guy is not trying to ‘cybersquat’ at all. He has a legitimate computer business he is running on this site. It’s unfortunate that Nissan motor company had a lawsuit filed against this guy. So where does the gray line run into black and white, making things clear as to what domain you should and shouldn’t be able to own without legal ramifications? (Read more about the Nissan case HERE.) …

A lot of people from the get go thought the iphone was a piece of junk, while others thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Everyone has their opinions about iphone vs Nokia just like Mac vs. PC. So moving on then…

Since Mr. Steve Jobs had announced that there would be an SDK (software development kit) for the iphone, a lot of people have really been excited. Now that over 100,000 people have downloaded the developers kit whats next?

How many people will really switch over from having an unlocked iphone that can run tons of free applications to go legit with Apple and pay a fee for every application? The reason I even ask that is because the current developers kit doesn’t allow for 3rd party music applications. Isn’t music what people would likely use their iphone most for? Or would it be games?

It seems that Apple has decided to do things this way so sales on itunes are not hurt, but there will be an effect with upcoming players like Amazon music as well as Emusic which have compatible DRM free music for the iphone. Will Apple lose some ground with their Itunes music downloads?

One thing is for sure, and that is that Apple will continue governing and restricting their own products and applications like they have been for a while. I think the mentality of Apple which seems to be the ‘we control the product even after you buy it’ for all consumers is getting a bit old. The thing is, that the larger apple gets, and the more popularity that grows for Apple products, the hacking, cracking and unlocking will only continue to grow with it. …