Ask HN: What are your unused domain names? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are your unused domain names?

43 pointsmacca321119 comments

As mentioned in the "What I'd tell myself about startups..." post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9333330), everyone has a set of unused domain names. What are yours, and what did you plan to do with them?

Here are mine.

  translateteam.com - javascript based copy/translation editor
  forhipsters.com - news site for trendy things
  bootstrapcms.com - drag n drop cms based on bootstrap
  10printhello.com - for my programming blog
  globaldrugwar.com - Stringer Bell simulator
  apinest.com - programmable http proxy a la cloudflare
  questiondash.com / surveydash.com - a surveymokeylike
  dropify.net - a dropbox PAAS

Interested if you have any better ideas for any of them!

View on HN

http://facestositon.com/ - This was a small-business idea to mock the UK porn laws. It was supposed to be floor pillows with caricatures of various politicians.

http://30mars.ca - This was an old gift from 2 years ago to a special someone who's birthday's on march 30th.

http://sfew.co - Was supposed to be a shortlink address for Selective Few. Still not using it.

http://branlettedenoel.com/ - This was a xmas card for a card contest. It's conveniently called "The great xmas jerk off"

These are the better ones I have. Mostly acquired for different startup ideas I'm riffing on.

- read.io

- tit.io

- fix.io

- foodcopter.com (for when drones deliver your dinner of course)

- burgercopter.com (same reason)

- pizzacopter.com (same reason)

I've developed a simple tool for parking unused domains. Just set your nameservers and the whole inquiry process is automated. Would love feedback! http://parktap.com/

that's some real IO game you've got buddy! Haha

What are your plans with tit.io lol?

That was an opportunistic buy. I was using one of those short domain tools and came across it. No current plans.

What short domain tool do you recommend?

Breastfeeding advice?

Yes.

That's output only ;)

I want to park some names using parktap.com but I can't sign up.

Feedback on Parktap - you say on the homepage "There is no signup required." but then there's a signup button in the top right.

I'm a little confused as to which it is :)

http://www.thingsclick.com - blog/advice guide on how to run a software house plus ebooks on the subject and tools

http://www.truesta.com - Possibly a replacement for spreadsheets with built in workflow and auditing. Good for companies that are over reliant on spreadsheets and need to share that data and most importantly keep it accurate.

http://www.expirify.com - domain/ssl cert expiry reminder service

http://www.inhumanely.com - no idea

http://www.signalizing.com - a communication platform

http://www.overawes.com - no idea

http://www.statesideproperty.com - it was supposed to be a Right Move for the US but never got around to it

http://www.swishapps.com - no idea

Mostly rubbish but I quite like things click. I need to stop buying shitty domain names :-/

Edit: Added more info about some of the domains.

Expirify sounds like it could be a useful little app.

Thanks! I'll do some more research and see if it's something will pay for...

Yeah I'm not sure if a pay model would really work with this kind of thing.

I agree. If it's not possible to monetise it in wouldn't build it unfortunately.

Expirify... I wonder how you'd fair by crawling, finding SSL certs that are going to expire in X days/months, looking up their email in the WHOIS and emailing them a reminder to renew and include a URL to the same company they originally purchased it from but include an affiliate link when possible. I guess the issues are that a) It's kind of spammy and b) The people purchasing SSL cert's might also by the type of people who don't follow random links in emails.

Hey thanks for the feedback.

There are already a great many companies out there who monitor expiry dates of domains and SSLs; their “slant” is that they send you renewal emails based on renewing the service with them at their inflated fee. Or even reasonable fee, but the idea being that they are capturing business. Whilst they might defend that it is clear who they are and you should know who you bought your domains/SSL through, the fact is that by sending someone an official looking email there are plenty of “oh shit don’t want to lose that, best renew…”

I'd be nervous about getting a name as a bit of a scammy company. I also think that I'd rather people opted in to a service that they derive value from. We could of course still sell domain name renewal and SSL certs most likely by partnering with a domain registrar.

All food for thought...

Expirify seems like a great service. Judging by the responses here, "if you build it, they will come."

I'll probably do some more customer/market research and maybe follow up with HN about the idea when I have some more validation. Thanks :)

If you decide to do anything with expirify.com please tell use / me!

I'm glad I'm not the only one with a domain name hoarding problem. After being burnt in the early days by missing a nice domain name to someone who registered it an hour before, I resolved to always register a domain name as soon as an idea came to me, even if the possibility of me using it was very remote. In the past few years, I've been trying to shed them, although it pains me to see domain squatters snag them as soon as they are available and put up tacky sites.

A few domains that were never used, that are on my to-shed list:

- indoorcloud.com - tools for self-hosting cloud services on your own hardware at home, back before everyone else was doing that.

- captainfriday.com - if you like high adventure, come with me.

- artevar.com, artavar.com, artivar.com - third-party web widget for guiding users in the construction of a cartoon avatar.

- denvertechscene.com, denvertechscene.org, beavertonwiki.org, beavertonwiki.com, pdxwiki.org - local interest sites.

- ulati.com, wunni.com, zylli.com, xylli.com, ymile,com, ypoly.com, xorri.com, xorra.com, xonno.com, ycolo.com - short, abstract names that might be useful for arbitrary sites.

Domains I may stubbornly keep for a while longer:

- cipherpal.com, cypherpal.com - Resources/news/discussion for cryptography and privacy tools. (A play on cypherpunk.)

- webreadnews.com - explore ideas for next-generation online forum/messaging/discussion.

- polipal.com, politicrack.com, politacrack.com - Casual MMORPG game; compete against other players guiding your politician's rise to power from dog catcher to president.

http://thismeetingcost.us

http://gohomecnnyouaredrunk.com — This one actually does point somewhere but I never got around to doing much. Just screenshots of the news networks being stupid.

http://kennedycolectivo.com

http://pointabulator.com — This was supposed to be a tool to figuring out all the possible uses of your airline/hotel points. At its most extreme this is essentially like trying to solve a sudoku puzzle where the numbers can move out from under you.

Hey, if you want some content for thismeetingcost.us, I whipped up a little something: http://jsbin.com/rubale/

Ha! That's great, I think I'll put that up. If you'd like credit, my email is in my profile, happy to include a link to your site/twitter/whatever.

mylog.com/.net/.org - registered in July 1998. I'd designed (but didn't get around to building) a "personal log" that you could always bring up instantly with a hotkey, type something in right away, and it would never lose it. You wouldn't have to think about filenames, saving your data, or anything. It would just keep your notes in chronological order and let you search for stuff or give it more organization later. The motto was "Always ready. Never forgets."

evernote.com - registered in January 2000. Nope, not mine. But it was funny to see so many of the same ideas (no, they didn't steal them from me), including the elephant "never forgets" logo!

I have some free domain coupon codes for gandi.net that I received from their 15th birthday promo:

G15EU-1819-DAC8-7409 - .EU for free

G15PW-0F7F-45F9-74B7 - .PW for free

G15XYZ-120D-87E5-D38F - .XYZ for free

used G15ME-8030-B75A-3B3C - .ME for free

used G15ME-BE66-5762-E71E - .ME for free

used G15PW-0F7F-45F9-74B7

Used the .eu one, thank you!

Here others: A .XYZ for free Promo code: G15XYZ-9FF5-A56A-7B02

A .COM at 50% off Promo code: G15COMH-2AD6-9C17-26DB

A .ME for €1 Promo code: G15ME1-025C-B52A-5BBA

Here are a few from the top of my head:

iruntunes.com - Circa 2002. The idea was music which was tailored to your cadence. I hate(d) running off beat.

introshirts.com -- (2003?) Shirts for introverted people with phrases that were designed to be identified only by OTHER introverted people with similar interests. So... yeah. T-shirts.

wgatv.com -- (2007) when the first writer's strike happened, I thought that writers should band together and use the internet to make and distribute their own internet TV. Even wrote a "manifesto" YOUTH!

http://foobar.xyz - Pretty damn generic, not sure

http://notme.xyz -

http://mailto.xyz - Some sort of email service

http://linkit.xyz - Short / analytics links

http://houseinthe.country - Comparison / aggregation of rental / for sale properties

http://visitthe.country - Similar to above

http://ebro.co - Could be a linkbait humor site in the vain of bromygod.

http://gall.co - Not sure, but easy to say and spell and doesnt sound too bad.

I do think that .xyz is going to be one of the few new TLD's that will gain any traction. All of the others are too long and too specific.

I have far more domains out of play than otherwise. A few I like:

Coin.St - Coin Street: Buy cryptocurrency nearby

xcrow.co - An escrow service that never was

Transformation.al - My wife thought it was a cool name

AcceptRent.com - An rent payment service

ThePeoplesMedicine.com - Medical cannabis doctor referral service

Here we go:

- webdoses.com (it was for daily doses of Web Tech related stuff)

- kreator.guru (This was for an alumni network web application that I created while ago)

- thestartup.guru (wanted to collect info about Startups / startup goodies and put it up here)

- fomo.technology (Bringing folks who are really busy upto date about Web Frameworks and other Tech).

- knowfund.com (my ex-x-startup, still owns the domain)

- ratemy.vc (I created a tool for helping startup fund raising nightmare with tagging VCs / rating them)

Most of mine I bought with no idea what I'd use them for.

  bonelesspanda.com -- was reading Pattern Recognition
  envoycorps.com -- was reading Altered Carbon
  mathgrenades.com -- Pattern Recognition again
  nosuchagent.com
  notsoevil.com
  rainingidiots.com -- stupid user stories
  thefirstevil.com -- was watching Buffy
  unconditionalthings.com -- listening to Alanis

http://dafeed.com - news?

http://geoference.com - geo-based something

http://currently.fr

http://weekmate.com - health compagnon

These are just a few - The first one suggests I have too many domain names :(

Similar to everyone else, I am a developer hoping to build something useful on them - there's just not enough time in the day.

http://admityouhaveaproblem.com

http://authenticatable.com

http://binarybots.com

http://craftyhipsters.com

http://failhuman.com

http://getanintern.com

http://indiehipsters.com

http://kissvote.com

http://kywrd.com http://kywrds.com

http://meetsme.com

http://madstory.com

http://gear.ly

http://neighborhood.ly

http://picksomeone.com

http://populationregulation.com

I like how you have at least a mailchip subscription form on the domains you aren't using. Do you get much activity on them?

thanks. yes, there are several signups on each property per month. nothing major of course, but it's something.

Would you be willing to sell these?

I have in the past. Although, the properties I have I'm kind of pleased with.

Ok, Thanks anyways :)

2048x2.com

Back when it was the cool thing to do, I was going to create a multiplayer (2^n player) 2048 using websockets.

It's interesting what a short window there is for some of these ideas.

If a project won't stand on it own it's own legs without a meme, it's probably not worth doing.

This is embarrassing, I've got so many started/abandoned projects. I suppose if anyone were interested in one of these projects I'd be glad to chat about either working together or selling the domain, depending on the project.

warning: this post contains sarcasm

- http://subwaytim.es - subway tracking service

- http://thankyouforriding.com - game for coders to optimize operation of a subway system. Thought of this during Boston's terrible public transit struggles this winter

- http://gitforgovernment.org - wanted to encourage city/state govts to put their legislation on GitHub and accept pull requests. THAT would have gone well

- http://enginomicon.com - planned to put my course notes from my mechanical engineering degree online; make a Wikipedia for all types of engineering

- http://everyref.com - created before I discovered devdocs.io and wanted to make a quick ref for coders. Right now you can search HTTP statuses, but the project is pretty much dead; I'm not sure if I even still have the code for it

- http://stupidprogrammertricks.com - place to put little projects and small demos. So far the only demo is a properly-installed nginx server :-P

- http://uwherever.com - wanted to create a place where people applying to college could organize their efforts, see when deadlines fell across colleges, publish their acceptance/rejection for other students to see, etc. As you can see I spent a lot of time picking a name for this

- http://spinner.graphics - planned to spend a quick weekend making a few AJAX loading animations and presenting it with ads, because who doesn't have at least one site that they're only doing for the money?

- http://beer-n-code.com - planned to make a public directory of bars with wifi suitable for meetups. So far only has a mesmerizing ASCII beer mug on it

dude.. that beer mug is awesome! beerMe();

I was in a coverband and each of our wives were annoyed at how much time we practiced. We joked about naming the band "Men Facing Divorce." I went ahead and scooped these up and never did anything with them:

menfacingdivorce.com

menseekingdivorce.com

womenfacingdivorce.com

womenseekingdivorce.com

I got this one because it is awesome:

http://armp.it

I bought this when I thought I'd become an mobile developer:

http://androidindie.com

Heh, I forgot I owned this one (my startup analyzes USPTO data):

http://isthepatentsystembroken.com/

I was likely drunk when I bought this one:

http://yakbuttertea.com

- [domain] - [what it supposed to be]:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- descr.me - overview of ones opinions about anything one chose,

- uuk.nu - shortener for polish fantasy fans (GNU Terry Pratchett),

- prat.tl - yet another chat based on women chatting system,

- datza.click - tool for creating occurances counters,

- wai.uno - tool for creating "Y U NO..." memes (y.uno was unavailable... o(╥﹏╥)o) on the fly.

Maybe one day... I'll finally make use of them.

EDIT: BTW - I own domain "uko.ms" which I use for my personal link shortener and e-mail sm.oku@uko.ms. This is my favourite domain I own ୧། ☉ ౪ ☉ །୨

I've got plenty of these left over from my hoarding days:

  ajaxapart.com - alistpart for javascript
  alpinefog.com
  bidsoup.com
  boostwire.com
  buildzen.com
  checkalope.com
  cloudboards.com
  express.build
  freshlinux.com
  giftitude.com
  gitnest.com
  gridyard.com
  hugepixel.com
  mindski.com
  mumblemonitor.com
  nearlyneighbors.com
  pifork.com
  pixelpeer.com
  roamsense.com
  threadsfortwo.com / threads42.com - T-shirts for couples

If anyone is interested, I can post them up on the namecheap marketplace.

- Novelo.com/getnovelo.com - my last Startup, social commerce (the name means yarn ball)

- Zinematic.com - diy magazines for iPad (never launched)

- Mapservices.org - base domain of myguestmap, a service I ran for 10 years. This one is actually PR 4

- Myguestmap.org - see above

- Deckvr.com - something related to VR or holodecks

- Yellowfishlabs.com - startup name (I have a logo for this one too)

- PaprikaLabs.com - startup name, never used

- Investidorvirtual.com - used in the past for a stock market simulator (means "virtual investor" in Portuguese)

Recently expired:

- iwanttobuygoogle.com - asked for donations to buy google shares :p

- Donateware.net - flattr before flattr (2004)

- Braintea.se - a puzzles site

I've let them expire since, but my faves were/are:

    * ScrewZombies.com
    * SmellyDogFarts.com
    * Craaack.com

... I should probably stop buying domains while I'm drunk...

Something to consider with all these unused domains would be http://domains4good.org

I use this with some of mine

That stood out from the article for me too. There's a few good startup ideas in that thought.

Mine:

GodsGood.Com

GoMovieTrailers.Com

HowToPlayAGuitar.Org

MakeMoneyOn-Line.Com

MinecraftForum.Org

PostPressRelease.Com

RentOffer.Com - Was building a site where people could make their own offers on what they were willing to pay to rent the place. Applicants would then be reviewed in order of highest bidders. Ran into problems with rent regulations and abandoned.

SEOis.Com

SEOmeta.Com

DNsells.Com

TopTenReview.Com

You can find my contact info on my profile if interested in any.

worst investment i made was "riendfeed.com", because back then I believed what I read in TechCrunch.

Reindeer food as-a-service

Misspelled reindeer FaaS, you mean.

Sounds like a niche vertical

These are unsued:

- bootstraphub.com - free bootstrap themes

- qrcode.io - probably front page for qrunched.com

- webrop.com - drag and drop web builder

- qareeb.pk - location based services

- 9gag-clonescript.com - front page for mememakerscript.com

- mahadazad.com - for blogging

- pincript.com - frontend for pinscriptpro.com

Made many scripts but never focused:

- killmyboredom.com

- mememakerscript.com

- pinscriptpro.com

- qrunched.com

http://www.happyfatboydog.com/

just thought it was a funny combination of words. no intended idea here except maybe a trolly site for my close friends.

I have:

    openbsd.systems
    twatlonger.com
    unhash.pw

Each one was meant for a project I no longer have time for. (The openbsd one was meant to mirror goatse.cx and/or the defaced OpenBSD flyer.)

http://stratjacking.com

http://precisiongood.com

Not sure what I will do with either, if anything.

Track page views with an analytics library, obviously.

readbo.com

newsfeed reader I tried to launch twice, the first time it ran for a year, and then I shut it down a month before google reader was announced to shut down. if I kept it running it might have worked, it was just expensive for me. the second time i worked on it, it was cool but didn't have enough good features compared to newsblur or feedly, didn't even bother launching again.

1kbitcoin.com

random bitcoin idea, I've never bothered launching it.

murica.xyz - I dunno, but I thought it was funny dinosaurpark.xyz - board game where you try to cooperatively design a park where no expenses were spared

Where's all the holier than thou posts calling you all squatters? Or is there is a difference because maybe, one day you might decide to use it??

Lets see...

- beatin.gs

- feloni.es

- comrad.es

- aftershav.es

I'll probably never find real uses for these, but they're amusing to own

Love comrad.es . Nice catch.

Thanks :) I was pretty excited about that one as well.

Paid 5k for fooker.com, never used it. Such is life.

Strategic (write me if interested in cooperation), e.g.:

donate.money

dnatesting.ch

voting.systems

notary.services

rights.watch

contract.solutions

accesscontrol.systems

onlinepayment.solutions

canvas.pictures

tshirt.company

restaurant.management

naming.company

custom.email

rome.holiday

rome.photos

tuscan.villas

night.gallery

artists.gallery

roachspotting.com

Financial, e.g.:

wire.money

slow.computer

ecommerce.website

records.management

inventory.systems

cheapest.domains

small.computer

hipaa.training

etc.: http://startup.associates/investments/

fundamentals.io - An API/website for company financial data

fundament.co - Was going to use for the above until I found out fundament means "butt".

fio.link - The url shortener for fundamentals.io

hearlist.co - Email-first startup for finding new music

giglist.co - Email-first startup for job hunters

harbor.works - Multi-channel ecommerce SaaS

kapsl.com - Website builder for musicians (still one of my favorites)

quesh.co - Local Messaging Q&A App

Just wondering, has anyone made significant/good money by selling the domain names for real? I tried but no luck.

I'm not quite a hoarder of domains, but I definitely have a few:

- beltway.wtf

- startups.wtf

- recy.(link|co|in|info|io) as I had grand plans to do a link curation app

- saltmaster.net

- hostedsalt.com

I have quite a few unused or underused ones like:

erronthesideofawesome.com

fileexit.com

nightlifenyc.com

noveldesign.com

uniqueventures.com

voteright.us

I have a few more that a dark due to a product launching later this year as well.

These were intended to cover my line of work to newcomers in the industry: devopsme.com sysadminme.com

adaptance.com — some sort of platform for something

articlefeedback.com — wanted to build a system for getting feedback about your writing, sort of crowdsourced editing

cureta.com — no idea

logicist.com — logic, or something

townless.com — for nomads, or some such

Used to have way more, but I've been culling them down the past few years.

I have webdeveloper.io with a an idea to start some service offering yourname.webdeveloper.io.

hotdeals.io - coupon and deals ios apps. designer.co.com - for designers goodwpthemes.com - for WordPress themes website minimalist.website - showcase of nice minimalistic sites clouding.xyz - cloud based business sites

transitla.com - I had intended to build a better bus route finder, but I left LA 5 years ago (and I assume Google Maps covers it now)

chatsnippet.com - I wanted to create a bash.org style way of saving funny conversations among friends

Just a few of mine: cointracker.io ecm.consulting dms.consulting rimpire.co

flab.by - planned to do some weightloss/affiliate marketing on it.

BigSmallCo.Com BigSmall.Co BigSmallCo.net BigSmall.Co.Uk

Anyone interest Big or Small ?

piracyiseasier.com - was going to be a side by side comparison of the effort needed to watch Game of Thrones legally vs illegally on various devices.

- ty.lc - tnybit.com - bilt.io - adc.io - shipstat.us

pickupfor.me planned instacart like service in India

GameDevelopers.com

trafacs.com - wanted to build a Transaction Facilitation System (TraFacS)

zendatalabs.com - want to do something in analytics domain

edited to add a line break

cerberusoft.com It was when I wanted to quit my dead end job. I hope to use it one day to go freelance or have a project.

modulejs.com

I was trying to build webpack before webpack was webpack. Then webpack became webpack and I still have the domain.

sooo many over the years Off the top of my head: * manburger.com * ninjafactory.com * applecartproject.com

I have: lingcloud.com shihuofei.com

watchead.com toeaware.com minimalreality.com mainetain.org dollarsignquestionmark.com ($?.com)

bigvalleyjam.com - musician/entertainment social network for California central valley.

mailcastr.com - email app

getque.com - something like pocket but with a focus on organizing/sharing

moon.ie after my surname (Mooney) datagrapher.com for data visualisation tools

seenbefore.com - no idea, was my last startup idea

sawbefore.com - variant above

seenitbefore.com - variant above

> no idea

> was my last startup idea

Those two are totally contradictory.

I scooped up a bunch of generic .co in hopes of using them someday.

bacon.co

blur.co

dimsum.co

bookworm.co

breakfast.co

comics.co

valhalla.co

foxy.co

honeybee.co

kingsize.co

manatee.co

mens.co

womens.co

wet.co

spy.co

pinstripe.co

refuel.co

queer.co

stamina.co

spinach.co

superfly.co

superstar.co

sultan.co

I have tons of others but I'm going to let let a bunch go. The renewal rates are too high.

Edited for readability.

I like spy.co. If you were planning to let that one lapse or had an interest in letting it go.

Here are some of mine:

- awesauce.com

- hitth.at

- hitthatup.com

- ipologize.com

- kufuffin.com

- prettystandard.com

- selfminded.com

- sourceofpride.com

codewithme.com - for peer programming or mentoring.

go0gl3.com -- parody, hacker info, or some service

highwayautopilot.com - let an app drive your car.

hacker.tattoo and hacker.ink mistakeswerema.de

I've got

- ridiculous.website

- ideafora.website

socialwheel.com -- show user connectedness

Fashioner.com

quotes.pub - Collection of Quotes

Here are mine. All are .in domains.

- yourdeals.in

- costly.in

- difficult.in

- disclose.in

- judicial.in

- minimize.in

- hirethe.guru

- file.tn

I have:

- build.center

- misreads.com

Ping if interested.

bro-do-you-even.science

cloudreply.com

datantra.com

banjax.farm

acemyass.com

acoustophile.com

acousticme.com

acouz.com

finestla.com

finestny.com

jignote.com

notesplit.com

pinjot.com

savejot.com

keepshelf.com

knowba.net

hipnote.com

I have a lot of domains that I'm not using. Here are some of the ones that I'd be willing to part with:

    autodevops.com
    dbmgr.com
    dora247.com
    dora365.com
    doradesk.com
    doradev.com
    doradocs.com
    doradrive.com
    favepop.com
    favpop.com
    foobarblog.com
    geldesk.com
    gelpop.com
    gelpops.com
    gelstack.com
    gelstats.com
    geltk.com
    geltk.org
    geltoolkit.com
    gelview.com
    gelviews.com
    kickround.com
    krdoo.com
    leanitpro.com
    llamamail.com
    madraps.com
    powdocs.com
    yagiga.com
    ygiga.com

(Email me at wbstow at Google's email service if interested!)

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