What’s In a Name

The commonsense approach that is normally taken in naming most things should also be taken when it comes to domain names.

In having a look around the web I’m not so sure that some domain owners look at their piece of internet real-estate from all angles.

What looks like an acceptable business name can take on a new dimension when all the words are strung together in a domain name.  You may intend for others to pronounce your domain one way, but have you looked at some of the other possible pronunciations.

Here’s a couple of examples  …..

Psychotherapist Kate Burns must get some strange looks with her domain kateburnstherapist.com (thankfully this now forwards through to kateburnstherapy.com).  The original domain could be read as “Kate burns the rapist” or “Kate Burns, the rapist”.  I wonder how many other therapists have “therapist” in their domain name without seeing how others might read it.  I wonder what the people at Therapist Finder where thinking when they chose the domain therapistfinder.com

There is a site called Experts Exchange (which I’m a member of) where techies share knowledge and answer each others’ questions. Intially the owners of Experts Exchange picked out what seemed like the obvious domain name of ExpertsExchange.com and operated with that for a while. That was until they found out that some people were reading the the domain name differently, mispronuncing it as ExpertSexChange.com. They have since added a hyphen and changed the site name to Experts-Exchange.com.

But The guys as Experts Exchange weren’t the only ones confusing themselves as providers of sex change therapy.  What about the guys at dollarsexchange.com (in fact they are a currency exchange).

Before you start questioning where my mind is, I also offer up to you a short trip to Spain choosespain.com (I’m not sure if pain is what I look for on a European trip) or the engineering firm Dickson who used to used the domain dicksonweb.com before changing it to dicksondata.com

And Australian businesses are not imune – what about the guys at Web One (now owned by iinet) webone.com.au

Enough for the frivolities for one day.  The message here is to take care and look at your domain name from all angles, spellings and pronunications.

Even YOU can have video for your business

I don’t know whether this post shoulde fall under the “Friday Fun” category or the “wow my business can now have professional quality videos without it costing a fortune” category.

Thanks to a heads up I got from Peter over at Saasu I’ve been at my desk messing around with the computer, even when I’m on holidays (some of you would not find that surprising).

And this is the reason …

Animoto is an application that takes images that you have on your computer, adds a soundtrack (either yours or theirs) and renders it together in a funky video format. You don’t need moving images – this will create the movement from static images for you – and you don’t need to be a geek – it is easy to understand. And as most small business owners love, it is a free application (for videos of up to 60 30 seconds).

In my opinion this leaves YouTube for dead when it comes to small business possibilities.

Have a look at a quick Working Solo intro that I put together in about 40 minutes of messing around.

My brain is very quickly ticking over all the ways that some of my clients could use this application.

If you get something together then drop back and let me know and I will come by and have a look.

New Year – New Changes

First and foremost let me wish you a very happy 2008! May this year contain all the things that you are wishing/planning for.

The second, and main purpose of this post is to ask you a question (yes you sitting there quietly reading away thing that no one is watching).

Even though I’m on my mid-summer/new year holidays and there is plenty of others things to be doing (like watching cricket and hanging out with my man) I’m also in planning mode for Working Solo. There are already plans afoot for 2008 that are very exicting but one of the things that I’m going to complete before I get back to officially working (on Jan 14) is a new look and feel for this site.

So I’m asking for your feedback …

If you could change ONE thing about the Working Solo website, what would it be?

Any and all suggestions will be considered.