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About a month ago, I posted an "Ask HN" to see if there was any interest in having daily available .com domain name lists. The names would all be appropriate for startups, blogs and websites, nothing else. While the response wasn't overwhelming, it was quite positive and a few individuals got me motivated to go through with this. I decided to go with the free newsletter format so I could keep some form of exclusivity for the subscribers, giving them a better chance at getting a name they before somebody else gets to it.
You can find the old discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1671129
Fast forward to today, the service and website are ready, so I am launching it and am ready to accept subscribers. You'll find that the newsletter is very lightweight and contains no ads or irrelevant content. I may sometimes slip in a quick word about projects I am working on but that's it! If you ask me, it makes it a little more human. I run this for fun as I like writing algorithms to find gems in huge lists of data. The mailing list is managed on MailChimp so no funky business; I will respect everyone's privacy.
So I encourage everyone to subscribe! It's free and is a very passive and non-intrusive way to stumble upon great domains for your projects and businesses.
Feel free to also give me some feedback on the website, especially on the copy since English is not my first language. That's it for now! Enjoy!
http://domainwhirl.com
Thanks, Nicholas
P.S. If the DNS has not yet propagated, you can temporarily use http://domainwhirl.heroku.com until it does.
So, a month or two ago, I got fed up of this and decided to use my programming skills to tackle this problem. Using drop lists, algorithms and quite a few metrics, I finally managed to produce something that gives interesting and available .com domain names as results!
The daily quantity of both suitable and available domain names varies, but I generally get 20-40 without a problem.
To give you an idea, here is the list I generated yesterday:
arcticpack.com basetable.com bashtracker.com bulletstocks.com campusrally.com carbongenie.com chilltree.com codesmell.com crowdcome.com earthunit.com extrasmiles.com fiberoasis.com filmshout.com foxyflyer.com gatorhire.com geekimpact.com goodprog.com mailshaker.com metafollow.com ownerfind.com phonemama.com calltap.com racerapp.com rubycoach.com snappyapp.com sourcefully.com stripspots.com targeteyes.com topicbased.com writerslate.com
Not the best I've seen (there are good and bad days!) but it sure beats looking at the 86000 domains expiring everyday, or even worse, trying your hand at coming up with something that isn't already taken. All of them where available yesterday and could still be right now... As a bonus, the names generally also give startup ideas! ;)
I'm imagining I was not alone having [domain] naming issues and am simply wondering if this is useful and/or interesting to anybody else. I can easily do it everyday if I get a good response. The important thing for me is to keep it in the startup/hacker community. I don't want the domainers/squatters on these too. I would also like ideas on how to potentially monetize this a bit if you have any. I was thinking of making a daily newsletter with the names and maybe sell 1-5 at a very reasonable price like 30-50$ or not selling names but charging a small yearly fee to get on the newsletter.
Anyhow, I'm waiting for your comments and ideas. Bonus points if you register a name from the list!