London-based entrepreneur, developer and hacker Ben Reyes recently wrote a warning to not let your domain expire with Google Apps, in which he accidentally takes control of a complete stranger’s email. The exact loophole seems mostly closed now, but it’s still a good demonstration of the importance of not letting domains expire if you’ve been using them as a means to confirm your identity.

Wait, What’s Google Apps?

It’s easy to confuse Google Apps among its many offerings. Let’s clarify. Apps is all of Google’s services on your domain. You can use Gmail, Google Docs and much more, using your own website’s name. So instead of your email address being @gmail.com it will be @yourdomain.com.

We at MakeUseOf use Google Apps for our email accounts, so it’s a service we’re familiar with. Be sure to read the MakeUseOf Guide to Google Apps to find out more about how you can make use of Google Apps.

Let a domain with Google Apps expire though, and you’ve lost access to any and all accounts you have at that domain. Email, calendar, docs – all gone.

The Consequences

When a normal Gmail account (any email address @gmail.com or googlemail.com) expires, it is retired. That is to say, no one (not even you) can ever use that account name again. From a security standpoint this is ideal. That’s not the case however, with domain accounts. Due to the way the Internet works, if you let your domain expire, someone else could buy it, and if that domain is in their hands they have the right to use Google Apps on that domain.

If they decide to use that right they could end up with access to your email accounts, your Google documents and more. Or, at least, they could have before Ben wrote the above-linked piece. It seems that Google’s policies have somewhat changed regarding what happens to existing accounts and their user data. With or without such access however, it’s still possible to do what isn’t possible with a normal Gmail account: use an email address which you were using before.

If you’ve been using that email address for, say, Dropbox, the new owner of the domain needs only click the “Forgot Your Password?” button to get into your account and access your Dropbox files.

You get the idea. Someone with access to an old domain of yours could get access to more and more layers of your identity, given enough time. The same principle could be used to access almost any online account.

Keep Your Domain

The easiest solution to this problem is don’t let your domain expire. It typically only costs $10 a year to renew a domain, meaning $100 could keep you secure for ten years. Even if you don’t plan on using a particular domain for much longer the risk of letting it expire once you’ve used it for various services might outweigh the cost of renewing.

Don’t Keep Your Domain

Do you, even after reading this, have no interest at all in renewing a domain you don’t really use anymore? You can still protect yourself.

• Delete all Google Apps user accounts on your domain, exporting your data first if you want to keep it. This will prevent future owners of the domain from accessing your email, documents and other Google Apps under any circumstances.
• Make sure no services containing personal information, be they PayPal, Dropbox or even Facebook, remain tied to an email address on a domain ready to expire. Change your email address in a given service’s settings or delete the account altogether. Don’t leave a door open for any would-be identity thief.

Conclusion

Of course, this applies just as much to any domain on which you have email accounts as it does to Google Apps. Losing access to a domain you’ve been using for email is a problem unless you prepare for it, so don’t be caught unaware – either keep the domain in your hands or delete any user accounts tied to it.

Imagine logging into your own custom email address, at your domain, using an amazing cloud-based interface. Doesn’t that sound great? Wait, there’s more! You don’t just have email any more. You have a calendar that automatically saves itself and can be accessed anywhere. You have an office suite that you can use anywhere to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations that automatically save themselves and can be accessed anywhere, too.

“That sounds great,” I hear you say, “but it must be really expensive!”

Not at all. It’s free.

Interested? Download “Go Google: Free Email and More On Your Domain.”

DOWNLOAD Go Google: Free Email and More on Your Domain
Having trouble downloading? Right-click the link, then click “Save As…”

or Read now on Scribd

This free PDF manual will show you how to:

• Sign up for Google’s free service.
• Correctly verify your domain.
• Set up MX and C Records.
• Get the most out of Google’s free apps.
• Using Gmail, GCal and Google Docs on your domain.

Download “Go Google: Free Email and More On Your Domain.”

DOWNLOAD Go Google: Free Email and More on Your Domain
Having trouble downloading? Right-click the link, then click “Save As…”

or Read now on Scribd

Please take a moment and share this guide with friends on Facebook and Twitter using the social network sharing buttons below.

However you can’t please everyone and we have already shared some tips on improving Google search results including this post on the modified Google search versions that may improve your searching experience. Also, we have already listed some cool tools to highlight your favorite domains in search results. Today’s post is something related but absolutely different.

You might notice some familiar domains that pop up in the top 10 search results again and again. Chances are, you miss some variety and want to get rid of some sites you tend to see often. Here are a few browser-based tools for you to filter out any domains from search results.

1. Google Hit Hider By Domain

Search engines supported: Google

Works in: Firefox 4 (via Greasemonkey).

Google Hit Hider by Domain lets you block domains from Google search results via the “Block” button:

The button lets you:

• Block sites and domains (you can still see them within the results in gray);
• “Perma-ban” (block domains completely without any trace);
• See the list of your blocked domains:

If you choose the first option (just block the domain), the result will still be there but without any clutter:

The script help section, blocked domain list and the options are accessible via a tiny badge to the right:

2. Search Noise Reduction

Search engines supported: Google and Bing

Works in: The script is advertised to work only in Opera but it does also work in Firefox 4 (via Greasemonkey).

Search Noise Reduction is a little userscript that adds a tiny scissors icon next to each search result.

Clicking the icon lets you specify how much from the domain you want to block: a subdirectory, a subdomain or all the domain results:

Note: The script will only work for your first search or for all your searches if you always use your browser search box. If you continue searching using the Google search box, the Google search results URL will look like this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=YOUR+FIRST+SEARCH#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=YOUR+SECOND+SEARCH&fp=c8774eba70bd538

- which for some reason disables the script. So if you want the script to always work, you will have to initiate a new search session each time by searching from your browser search box (or from Google Toolbar).

You can access your block list as well as save it locally by using the tiny icon at the top-right:

3. Personal Blocklist (by Google)

Search engines supported: Google

Works in: Google Chrome

Personal Blocklist (see our review of the extension here: Personal Blocklist: Block Unwanted Search Results In Google [Chrome]) is the official Google extension for Google Chrome. According to the description, Google analyzes your blocking patterns to make conclusions about its search engine results page usefulness:

When you choose to block or unblock a pattern, the extension will also transmit to Google the URL of the web page on which the blocked or unblocked search results are displayed. You agree that Google may freely use this information to improve our products and services.

Some Features To Play With

• Hide the browser button by right-clicking on it and selecting “Hide button”.
• Import and export a list of patterns.
• Block host of currently active tab.

Any other fun addons to block domains from Google search results to remove noise? Please let us know your thoughts!

Actually, this isn’t quite the case. There are lots of excellent letter and word combinations that would make for excellent domain names, but coming up with those names can be a real challenge.

Here at MUO, we’ve covered a number of excellent tools to search all domain names that can help with the process, such as Ted’s article listing 6 domain name generators and Saikat’s great article on 10 unusual domain name search tools you can use to come up with ideas. However, not many of these tools cover the two aspects of domain name research in one package – first, coming up with a name and second, finding matching unregistered domains.

Brainstorm Domain Names With Domain Seeker

Domain Seeker is a free software package offered by Springboard, a web services company. I love Domain Seeker because it will take you through the process from brainstorming domain name ideas right through to search all domain names and identifying your final available domain name.

When you first install and run Domain Seeker, you’ll discover a main screen that is segmented into five columns. These columns are high, mid and low profile domains, registered domains and saved domains.

The profile level of a domain is determined by the number of characters in the title. Titles with four or fewer characters are high (very valuable), between five and seven are mid profile, and eight or more are high profile. This is because the fewer characters in the domain name, the better visitors will remember the domain name.

High profile domains are very sought after by webmasters. The software focuses on the .com and .net top level domains (TLD), but if you go into Options -> Settings, you can add additional extensions by enabling them in the Extension table.

For .com and .net domains, DomainSeeker pings internic to determine whether domain names are registered. The software throttles back the ping rate so that you don’t get blocked by the server for excessive queries. If you do get pop-up errors from the server, you can increase the throttle to something higher than 25 milliseconds until the errors go away.

On the main page of DomainSeeker, a dropdown list next to “Search Type” provides the available search types. The ones we’re going to focus on are Browsing, Generating, and the Full Word List.

When you choose the “Browse” option, a new window opens where you can literally browse using several search engines, including some domain search engines like JustDropped or DeletedDomains. As you browse for the keywords that you’re interested in getting a domain for, the software automatically starts generating list of related registered and unregistered domain names.

Back on the main page, if you select the “Generate names” search option, a new search window opens that will help you brainstorm domain names based on the keyword that you’re interested in. This is my favorite tool within this software package, because of the volume of possible domains that the app generates. For example, I typed in “Droid” for examples of domains that I might use for a website about the Droid mobile phone, and the Domain Name Creator generated over 10,000 possibilities!

This is brainstorming at its finest. Domain Seeker then starts analyzing your list of potential domain names and sorts them on the main page under Registered, Low Profile, Mid Profile or High Profile. While landing a high profile domain name is quite rare, there are plenty of valuable mid profile domains to go around.

When you spot any available domain names that you like, just click and drag them into the “Saved Domains” column. Now, if you are starting from scratch and you don’t even know what website you want to create, but instead you’re looking for website ideas, you can choose “Full Word List” from the search type options. This feature will actually run through the entire list of words in the English language and search all available domain names, and then sort them by profile.

This is a very wide-ranging query that will take a very long time to complete, so if you have a more specific idea of the sort of genre that you’re interested in, a better option may be to use the “Custom List” search type. This is a very cool feature that runs through words in a text file and uses those words to conduct searches for available domains.

Existing lists that get installed with the DomainSeeker software include lists like movies, myths, common phrases and even all words in the dictionary. If you don’t see a list that you want, create a text file of your own filled with all of the keywords you can think of, and then save it in the “Wordlists” folder in the DomainSeeker application directory.

The software sifts through the text file, pings the WHOIS server for whether the domain is registered or not, and then sorts any unregistered domains within the appropriate profile column. DomainSeeker is, by far, one of the best desktop applications I’ve seen for brainstorming new website names and checking whether those domains are available.

Have you ever tried DomainSeeker? Do you like the domains that it comes up with? Do you have any domain name search tools that you like better? Share your insight in the comments section below.

Image Credit: Anna Maria Lopez

It’s easy to forget that each domain extension is intended to be used for a specific purpose when everyone is using .com for whatever they please. But you might be surprised to find out that a lot of domain extensions have registration restrictions and are still used for their intended purposes.

Or maybe you want to find out which unique domain extensions are unrestricted and can be used along with your killer domain name to make your website stand out. Let’s take a look at the history of domain extensions, which ones are restricted and which ones aren’t, and what specific use each is intended for.

History of Domain Extensions

In 1984, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established the first six domain extensions: .com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .org, and .net.  Shortly after, the first two-character country code domain extensions (like .uk and .us) were established. In 1988, .int was also introduced.

It wasn’t until after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was created in 1998 that any new domain extensions (besides country code extensions) came into use. ICANN has an agreement with the United States Department of Commerce and now operates IANA.

After an application period, seven new domain extensions were introduced in 2000: .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro. Throughout 2005 and 2007, .cat, .jobs, .mobi, .tel, .travel, and .asia were also established.

New domain extensions are sure to come. Just last month, the first “internationalized” domain extensions were established. These internationalized domain extensions are the first to not use Latin characters (three of them use Arabic characters and one uses Cyrillic).

Read on to find out the different categories that domain extensions are grouped under and the specific uses for all of the domain extensions mentioned above.

Types of Domain Extensions

There are two main types of domain extensions: country code and generic (which is further subdivided into sponsored and unsponsored).

Country code extensions are two-character domain extensions for countries, sovereign states, and territories. Many country code extensions have second-level subdomains, like the .co in .co.uk.

Generic domain extensions include all of the other domain extensions, like .com, .edu, and .biz. Sponsored extensions, like .aero, .coop, and .museum, are managed by an organization that is in charge of the policies regarding their registration. Unsponsored extensions are simply managed by ICANN.

All domain extensions are also either restricted or unrestricted. To register a domain name with a restricted domain extension, you have to meet certain requirements. For example, only accredited educational institutions are eligible to register a domain with a .edu extension. Many country code domain extensions are also restricted and can only be registered by citizens or residents of the country that the extension refers to.

Unrestricted domain extensions, like .com, .org, and .net, can be registered by anyone. Some country code domain extensions are unrestricted, which has resulted in the registration of “domain hacks” that create a word using the domain extension. Del.icio.us, for example, uses the United States country code .us to form the word “delicious.”

A List of Specific Uses

Here is an alphabetical list of all generic domain extensions and their specific uses.

.aero ““ Used in the aviation industry.

.asia ““ Used in Asia.

.biz ““ Used by businesses.

.cat ““ Used for Catalan-language websites.

.com ““ Intended for use by commercial entities, but it is unrestricted.

.coop ““ Used by cooperatives.

.edu ““ Used by post-secondary educational institutions.

.gov ““ Used by United States government entities.

.info ““ Intended for use by “informative” websites, but it is unrestricted.

.int ““ Used by international, treaty-based organizations.

.jobs ““ Used by websites dealing with employment.

.mil ““ Used by the United States military.

.mobi ““ Used by websites optimized for access on mobile devices.

.museum ““ Used by museums.

.name ““ Used by individuals.

.net ““ Intended for network infrastructure use, but it is unrestricted.

.org ““ Intended for use by organizations, but it is unrestricted.

.pro ““ Used by licensed professionals, including those in the legal, accounting, and medical professions.

.tel ““ Used to store and publish contact information.

.travel ““ Used by entities in the travel industry.

Conclusion

New domain extensions are constantly being proposed and debated. Many want more geography-based domain extensions like .asia. To that end, domain extensions like .london, .nyc, and .quebec have been proposed.

There has also been widespread support for the domain extension .kids, which would be used by websites designed for children. Contrarily, the .xxx domain extension has just recently been approved after years of debate, and it’s intended to be used by adult entertainment websites in the near future. What domain extensions do you want to see in the future?

Image credit: binsurf

The problem is that finding a name with a free domain is hard enough, even without having to run a check on every social network and website you hope to also register your brand on. That’s what makes UD.com so nice: it can not only find out if your desired website name is free on several different top level domains but also on a variety of different social networking sites.

Couldn’t Be Simpler

Getting started with the UD.com domain name checker couldn’t possibly be simpler. Just head over to the site and enter the website name you’re looking for into the search bar.

For example, I’m seriously considering starting a site called WhyJustinPotIsSoAwesome. Finding out what sub-domains and websites this name is free on could be useful, so I enter the term into UD.com and see the following:

Okay, using this domain name checker, it looks as if that particular domain is wide open. Surprising; I suppose I don’t have many rabid fans listing reasons I’m awesome on the Internet. Note that I can’t have this name on Twitter or Linked In; the name is too long for those sites.

Searching for a more common term, let’s see the results for MakeUseOf.

As you can see our domain is taken on .com, .net, .org and .info. It’s free on .biz, precious few people use that particular top level domain.

It’s also pointed out that MakeUseOf is taken for Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Naturally we’re on Twitter and Facebook, but our MySpace page is looking as abandoned as MySpace itself.

You get the idea: the site will give you a quick overview of what’s free and what’s not. Why?

Perfect for Brainstorming

So you can think of a name, of course. Where this search engine really shines is that crucial stage in every website’s life: brainstorming the name. You can’t really begin a website until you have a name, and you want to make sure the name you come up with is a good one. But having a good name isn’t enough: you also need to make sure no one else is using that name.

That’s UD.com’s perfect use. Sit down with your team, discuss names you’d like to potentially use and run them through a search. You’ll have a really good idea which names are usable and which names are not by just glancing at the result of a UD.com search.

Of course, once you work out your domain you’re going to need to write quality content if you want readership. Check out Ryan’s article on starting a blog that gets instant traffic to find out how that’s done.

List of Top Level Domains and Services Listed

Domains:

• .com
• .net
• .org
• .info
• .biz
• .mobi
• .tel
• .name
• .tv
• .me
• .us
• .co.uk
• .de
• .fr
• .es
• .in
• .cn
• .jp
• .eu
• .asia

Websites/Social Networks:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• MySpace
• LinkedIn
• eBay
• Blogger
• WordPress
• delicious
• Flickr
• last.fm

Conclusion

This search engine does one thing and does it well, and nothing else is required of it. I intend to use it a lot in the year to come as I pursue my blogging dreams; I hope you find a use for it to.

Do you guys know of a similar or better domain name checker? I love learning from you, so please so share. Also feel free to share any hilarious domains you discover are somehow taken in your searches, because I also love to laugh.

A couple of other MakeUseOf articles you might want to check are 6 Domain Generators To Find That Killer Domain Name and 10 Unusual Domain Name Search Tools to Find Hot Domains.

Picture Credit: UD.com. They sell a full world map with every country’s domain here.

Configuring the shares and then permissions for each, the Windows way, might not be the quickest and easiest way as you shall see. You can do it a lot better and easier with Easy Share.

As is the case with most Codeplex downloads, a license agreement pops up just before you download the application. Go through it and you will be able to download Easy Share, if you choose to accept the agreement. The download is relatively small (under 1MB). Once downloaded, install the application and you should be good to go. The only difficulty that can crop up might be due to the unavailability of the .NET framework on your computer, which is required to install and run Easy Share.

Once installed, go ahead and fire it up. You are greeted with a minimalistic UI, which looks like the one below:

The application presents two sections “Share details” and “Permissions“. The former lets you configure the folder and sharing details on the network, whereas the latter can be used to configure who has access to the shared folder on the network. Let’s just share a sample folder and see how easy the entire process is.

• Click on the browse button next to Local Path and browse to the location of the folder you want to share.
• Give it a share name and share description that will help others identify the contents of the folder.

That is all the folder configuration you need to do. Next up is configuring who you want to share the folder with and what permissions they can have.

Contact management and easy permissions is what really makes Easy Share worth the install and bypassing the Windows Sharing and Security configuration. You can easily add contacts with whom you want to share files and folders with simply by using their usernames.

• Click on the manage link to add users to your list.
• Click on the Add button and specify an alias that will help you remember the contact.
• Next you need to provide the domain name followed by the username of the contact on the domain. You can hit the “Check” link to see if the user exists on that domain.

Once you have added the users you want to share with, you will see them listed in the main window. You can then check or uncheck the users you want to share the files with. If you scroll to the right you will also be able to edit the permissions that each of these users have for that folder.

That is all you need to do. The next time you would be able to use the already added contacts, making your job that much easier. You can of course, remove or edit details for the contacts as and when required.

Easy Share is a nice little utility that makes sharing files and folders on the domain a whole lot easier and faster. Once you have your contacts configured, you can easily share folders in a snap with just a few clicks. If your computer is a member of a domain then Easy Share is a useful little application to have.

How do you share your files and folders on the network? Any special tools with similar functionalities that you use for this purpose?

Active Directory is centralized network management at it’s best. There are lots of reasons to set up a network domain and they include security, ease of administration and the ability to automate a lot of features that are cumbersome to roll out manually. Think about being able to manage all your user and computer accounts from one console. You can set “rules” for specific groups of users and say who can and cannot do what on YOUR network!

We will walk you through how to set up a Windows 2003 Active Directory Domain. To start you will need a Windows 2003 Server and the installation media that came with it. We will need to install the Windows DNS Server, configure the machine to have a static IP address and let it point to itself as your server’s DNS server. Grab everything you need and let’s get started.

When you start up your Windows 2003 Server you will see this screen:

To begin we will need to click the green arrow pointing to the right that says add or remove a role. This will start the wizard. Make sure you have all your network cables connected and your server online.

I would set your IP address to be static at this point if you have not already. To do so obtain a static IP address from your network administrator or choose one yourself if you are on your own network. To do this right click on network neighborhood and choose properties.

Next highlight Internet Protocol TCP/IP and hit the properties button to configure your IP address.

You will want to have the use the following IP address button checked as well as the use the following DNS server addresses button. Fill in the appropriate information and let’s move on. Click OK. That will take us back to our add a server role wizard. It will detect your settings as seen below:

Once it completes you will see the following screen:

If this is your first time setting up a domain run with the first option. This will install DNS and DHCP for you automatically. DNS stands for Domain Name Service and allows for your computers to talk to each other as well as connect to the Internet. DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and this allows computers to automatically have their IP addresses configured for them from your server. These services are very important for your network.

After you hit next we will see the screen that allows us to name our domain:

Choose your name carefully as it is almost impossible to change it later. You can use the extension .local instead of .com or .net to separate your domain from an Internet address. In this case we have AskTheAdmin.com which is a internet address and and active directory domain. If you are just testing you can use whatever you want to. The next screen asks you for your netbios names. You can leave these as the default. This is how older machines will see your computer and domain name.

Now we will get into how you want to handle name resolution. When you set up your clients to use your new internal DNS server you have an option of what to do with requests for Internet names like www.makeuseof.com. If you choose to forward queries to another server you can use your ISP’s DNS server to allow websites to be resolved. If you choose no your DNS server will not return web addresses and you might be unable to browse the Internet.

Click next and continue on. You will be asked to insert your Windows 2003 Server media and then you will see this screen telling you that you are complete.

You can now restart your server and begin setting up your users using the new shortcut on your start menu called Active Directory Users and computers like so:

That will take you to this console:

You can set up group policy or “rules” for each of your OU’s (organizational units) and that is a fancy name for the folders on the left. You can right click on any folder and choose properties ““> group policy ““> open to configure it. We will get further into what you can do with your domain and group policy in future posts.

Let me know if you run into problems or need help with other aspects of Active Directory and group policy.

Why is choosing a good domain name important?

Choosing a good domain name starts with memory and ends with search engine optimization; somewhere in between lies branding. Take your most favored sites ““ I bet most of them have easy-to-remember names. Most of them also can be easily typed into the address bar with less chances of a typo. Good domain names are also unique and descriptive. Great domain names, of course, become brands of their own.

So, how do you choose domain names?

When picking domain names, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critically important. It is a detailed topic; let’s just say that a fitting domain name is the first green light for visitor traffic.

Let’s start by brainstorming on paper. But if your brain is not shifting gears, there are a host of domain name search websites that can help to crank it up. I am not suggesting that you rely on them, but domain name generators take your keywords and can come up with unique word combinations that you wouldn’t have thought about. A lot of them also allow you to lookup the names with the Domain Registrars to see if they are available.

A single domain name search website can give you lots of word combinations to play around with. Let me give you a few more to keep you occupied till you get the right domain name.

1. NXdom

   

   NXdom has indexed millions of DNS records of expired and unused domain names. You can search by prefix and suffix, and sort the results by length, readability, and popularity. The advanced options help you refine the results by giving you five more criteria to filter the results.

   Read more about it in our archives.

2. Nameboy

   

   Nameboy is a popular domain name search tool that bases its results on a primary word and a secondary word. Nameboy says that its intelligent engine creates name variations from the sound and meaning of the keyword. The feature that I like is that it immediately color codes the results depending on the availability status of the domain name.

3. Namestation

   

   Namestation comes with a slick interface. With just a few clicks you can enter your suggested keywords and combine them with prefixes and suffixes. Set a minimum and maximum word length and get your domain name results. The application also lets you combine keywords with hundreds of categorized wordlists for a search engine friendly domain name.

4. 123finder.com

   

   123finder gives you four variations of for domain name discovery. The applications are pretty self explanatory ““ Simple Domain Search, Advanced Domain Search, Instant Domain Search, and Keywords from URL. The Keywords from URL tool extracts registered and available domain names from a given URL.

5. Domize

   

   Domize has a Power Search feature which can search a large combination of terms by entering a comma-separated list of words, letters or numbers. As special functions, it can also list out synonyms or derivatives of a supplied word based on a misspelling. Other functions include listing out words that rhyme with the one you enter. In short, the Power Search feature set gives you many options to play around with a word and whatever can be derived from it.

6. Domain Exposer

   

   Fill in a keyword and mix it with other word lists to get a combo domain name. You can decide on starting string of characters and also on an ending one. Also, you can set the position of your keyword relative to the chosen group of common words.

7. Wordoid

   

   Wordoid has a unique way of generating name ideas. Firstly, it can make up words that sound natural, almost natural or hardly natural. Secondly, it can do that in five languages – English, Spanish, French, German and Italian. You can also optionally put your own word somewhere in the Wordoid and limit the unique name to a set number of characters.

8. PCNames

   

   PCNames is a site which is being updated again after a period of dormancy. It has an AJAX based search engine that displays search results as you type. But what are worth keeping an eye on are the domain tools that you can access from the Tools link at the bottom. As soon as the site gets updated, the tools can be quite handy.

9. Domain Pigeon

   

   Domain Pigeon is a name index which lists available domain and Twitter names which you can register if they are available. You can apply some sorting options like dates and popularity. Domain Pigeon lists only .com names.

   Read more about it in our archives.

10. DomainTools

    

    Though this site will help you less with a cool name, Domain Tools is a collection of useful tools and domain related search engines that will help you find information behind certain domain names. They have a Whois search that reveals records about the party who registered the domain, a Suggestions search to help you find similar domain names, and a Domain Search which shows you what TLDs of a domain name are available.

    Read more about it in our archives.

These ten picks are certainly not that’s all out there. They are just the proverbial tip of the domain name searching iceberg. A few more that we have covered before:

• Miosota.net
• Upname.com
• Dot-o-mator
• Domainr
• BustaName
• SuggestName

And do check out the one that came before this – 6 Domain Generators To Find That Killer Domain Name

Did these websites help you get around through the domain naming brainstorming sessions? Let us know if you got your cool “˜n hot domain name you wouldn’t have thought up with the pen and paper way.

Image credit: Thomas Hawk