If you want to see what I think is a really fun Christmas site, A Visit From St. Nicholas aka The Night before Christmas at VisitFromStNicholas.com is one such site.

It has a really large collection of antique versions of The Night Before Christmas. Now, why is that cool? I just find it amazing to see some books 150 years old that are one of a handful (or maybe the only copy) left anywhere in the world and to think about the amount of enjoyment that people have gotten over the years from this poem.

Thinking that others would feel the same way, we’re digitizing as many editions as we can in order to share the Christmas spirit with as many people as possible, so enjoy the scans!

For those looking for “low power” search, check out www.darkgle.com, low energy search. All black background saving energy? Well, it is a fun concept even if it is not really accurate.

Goal Financial purchased ScholarshipExperts.com. Both companies should benefit from the new relationship and students should definitely benefit from the unified approach.

(For a bit more: http://jacksonville.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2006/05/29/daily19.html)

It appears that BellSouth and SBC paid around $100 million for YellowPages.com.  Certainly a good price for the name and the site from both the buyer and seller’s perspective.  With some branding, some advertising, and additional information BS and SBC will have a big leg up in the yellow pages directory search.  The value of a good brand should not be underestimated, but is often underestimated when viewed solely from a domain perspective traffic perspective v.s. a potential/branding perspective.

With even average traffic of 100,000 yellow pages searches per day (which I think is very low for yellowpages.com), that implies around 36.5 million searches per year and between 109 and 150 million page views per year [Dec 2008 update: I think those figures are definitely low today].  At a $20/cpm [2009 update: I think that figure is low now] that would imply close to $3 million per year in revenue.  This a similar number of white pages search, which implies $5-6 million annual in revenue.  Personally, without any inside information, I believe they do 500,000 to 1,000,000 yellow pages and white pages searches per day, which implies $25-$30 million in annual revenues just from the yellowpages.com site.

An improvement in the SERPs, which will probably happen with large companies behind them could easily double or triple that figure.

The actual value and implied value there is tremendous, and with more branding their price will seem like a bargain.

(see http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/100344/bellsouth_sbc_buying_yellowpagescom/index.html )

Looks like BellSouth and SBC purchased YellowPages.com.  See:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-139563.html

I’ve been adding some old files from the Rising Sun BBS, that I found on backup disks a few years ago (amazing they were readable ~15-20 years later and that I had a drive that would read them!)

You can browse some of it here, and I’ll be adding more as time goes by, there are a lot of other files in the backups.  I’m also going to try to put some of them in context so people know what is going on:

http://www.phonebook.com/old-information/the-rising-sun-bbs/

There are a lot of cool things in there, dealing with online communities in the early 1980s through the early 1990s and then on the internet more than BBSs thereafter.

==========================================

Something Rick Lambert wrote back in the summer of 1984 which kind of sums up the fun we had.  Ran on an Apple ][+, and an Apple ][ clone from Franklin, a Laser clone briefly (I think) and an Apple //e at various points.

Rick died in 1989 (heart attack) and both Alan and I lost a good friend and all around good guy.  Alan and I still keep in touch by email since we are 1000s of miles apart (instead of 30 minutes), although not nearly as much as we used to when The Rising Sun was up.

T H E  R I S I N G  S U N

-----  -----------  -----

The Rising Sun was born after the three SYSOPs met at

a COF luncheon.  Dedicated to the free exchange of information between users

their motto has become:  The Sysop provides the medium, the users provide the

message.  This System provides a meeting place for modem users regardless of

the computer that they use.  The Sun has 325 members right now and is

continually growing as new people call.

Together, Chris Riley, Rick Lambert, and Alan Lobel make up the

Delegation.  Their BBS was the first local BBS to have such things as the

Welcome message, Boarderline, Breaktyping, Message Search, Stringing command,

Stats, and a Poll -- to name a few.  Todd Nochomson of the Billboard ratings

calls it "spectacular," "unique," and "The most active BBS in Broward County"

-- facts to which the number of messages and calls can attest.  Currently the

Rising Sun has 18 sub-boards, over 180 files, and one can access the BBS at

300 or 1200 baud.

As you can see when you call this Bulletin Board, new features and

files are added often to keep up with the users wishes.  It is the most

automated BBS locally.  The heart of the Automation is A.U.R.A. -- a program

that creates the statistics file, backs up files and deletes users who have

not called in sixty days.  This leaves the SYSOPs more time to spend on

keeping the board active, up-to-date, and as one user put it: "keeping it

the best board I've seen."

The Rising Sun Shines!

at [305]-473-6348

—————————

2011 Update, here is Rick in 1983 with my parent’s cat:

Rick Lambert, around 1983 with Luke the cat

Going back a few years here, but some of the sites we registered and developed/sold/kept.  As you can see we had a nice collection of names and still have a fair number.  (A few were registered for relatives.)  This is not the entire list, but it is a start, I’ll be updating it as time progresses.

law.com (didn’t register, it but was Director of Operations, 1993)

games.com (July 15, 1994) – Hasbro/Parker Brothers wanted this. AOL has it as of 2009.

casino.com (July 14, 1994) 

court.com (August 4, 1994)

gamble.com (July 14 1994)  

hotel.com (August 4, 1994) –  HotelSupplies.com Inc bought this

Halloween.com (August 30, 1994)

SantaClaus.com (August 1994)

EasterBunny.com (December 1995)

phonebook.com (July 14, 1994) – We began with web directories here, Miami.com, and at coral.net for clients and business in Florida and the Caribbean.  Lots of realtors and destinations.

palmbeach.com (May 24, 1994)

rights.com (August 30, 1994)

dive.com (July 30, 1994)

Havana.com (Sept 1, 1994)

Coral.net (Sept 8, 1994)

Sequitur.com (June 1994) – The opposite of non sequitur.  Ended up letting it go.  Silly me.  ;-)  (We considered Sequitur for the corporate name, but ended up with Coral Technologies after a few people in the State of Florida government didn’t get what it me and thought it might be obscene. Just ended up using it as the follow-up name for The Rising Sun BBS (Ft. Lauderdale 1982-1993) which was running TBBS and we switched to private software, then FirstClass.

diving.com (July 29, 1994)

talk.com (June 1994) – HotWired need

sale.com (June 1994) – J.Lee bought it.

racing.com (July 30, 1994) - 

national.com (April 1994)

cruise.com (May 1994)

cruising.com (July 30, 1994)

movie.com (June 1994) – Well, you can see who owns it now.

miami.com (April 12, 1994) – Miami Herald needed it.

Boca.com (June 21, 1994)

Pompano.com (June 1994)

FtLauderdale.com (May 1994)

ebank.com (1994) – a Bank

reservations.com (June 1994)

reservation.com (June 1994)

dolphins.com (August 10, 1994)

shark.com (July 30, 1994)

holiday.com (June 1994)

keylargo.com (June 1994)

honeymoon.com (July 30, 1994)

boating.com (July 29, 1994)

flying.com (July 30, 1994)

keywest.com (July 29, 1994)

flores.com (Aug 29, 1994)

oceans.com (Aug 30, 1994)

marina.com (June 1994)

bahamas.com (Sept 9, 1994)

medical.com (July 14, 1994)

read.com (June 1994)

mart.com (June 1994)

realtor.com (June 1994) – At the time I didn’t know it was a trademark, just thought it was generic like “realestate.”  Younger and more naive. They were friendly about it all though!

islands.com (July 30, 1994)

zodiac.com (July 1994)

SonsOfLiberty.com (April 30, 1998)

Daughters-Of-Liberty.com (July 18, 2001)

Liberty-Tree.com (July 7, 2001)

 

Some of the names we registered for clients/friends:

For Rick M. at St Martin Rentals: stmaarten.com, stmartin.com (April 1995)

Standup.com – For KE, who let it go.  ;-)

And a few other random ones:

onlinenews.com (Sept 5, 1994)

thekeys.com (Sept 5, 1994)

keylargo.com (Sept 5, 1994)

novel.com (June 1994)

novels.com (July 30, 1994)

marina.com (July 30, 1994)

gallion.com (July 29, 1994)

read.com (August 4, 1994)

videonews.com (July 1994)

hurricanes.com (June 4, 1994)

hurricane.com (June 4, 1994)

goldcoast.com (Sept 9, 1994)

oneearth.com (Sept 9, 1994)

iplaw.com (Sept 19, 1994)

netlottery.com (August 1994)

internetlotto.com (June 22, 1994)

jugar.com (spanish for play) (June 5, 1994)

loteria.com (June 6, 1994)

allmylove.com (Jan 5, 1995)

sendgreetings.com (Jan 5, 1995)

goldmarket.com (for a client, Dec 6, 1995)

goldwww.com (Dec 6, 1995

internetlottery.com (June 15, 1995)

All kinds of information about Fletcher’s Castoria and the Centaur Company is here.  Kind of neat to trace the progress of a company and product over the course of a century and a quarter.

http://www.centaur.com/