Well everyone, as some of you may know I have begun my job hunt after a smooth re-location to London, Ontario. There is a variety of industry present that should allow me to pursue my career in marketing, professional writing and data-analysis. In honour of this big life step I would like to take the opportunity to feature two of my older posts regarding my likes and dislikes of the hiring process and interview transparency.

Hiring Process – Likes & Dislikes I am sure that everyone has experienced poorly-executed interviews and other frustrations when it comes to applying to jobs. This article points out some of these frustrations (job fairs, late contact, no business card, etc.) as well as some of the great experiences I have had during the employment process (casual conversation, accommodation, etc.).

Interview Transparency Even after the application process is complete and an interview is granted, sometimes there are major disconnects between the applicant and the hiring firm. This article shows a few of thesis disconnects personally experienced as well as a few general issues that may arise.

Short update here, folks! The domain, Possible.com, that recently sold at Cax/PremiumDomains for $351,000 is now a developed site. I can’t quite say the sale was official as there has been ZERO major media coverage of this sale – perhaps that buyer wanted to keep it quiet, but it was sold in a public auction. My previous post on the sale got a bit of attention, but mostly from people thinking the sale was the result of a deadbeat buyer – doesn’t look that way now.

Anyways, the domain is now a developed psychic portal with the tagline “The World’s Leading Psychic Network”. Congrats to the new owner on the domain and developed site!

Any long-time readers of Rural Technocrat know that I was a HUGE Bido fanboy. I feel that I made a pretty good chunk of change through them and always loved the customer service they offered. When Bido shut down, I was absolutely shocked, but guess what…now they are back! While I haven’t blogged on the return of Bido yet, and don’t plan to (it’s old news now), I want to talk about Bido’s new scheduling arrangement.

Basically, Bido has decided to group gTLDs and ccTLDs by geo-location so that auctions are ending at ideal times in those time zones. This is a great idea in theory, but really, I imagine that there aren’t many people from Cocos Islands looking to by .CC domains at Bido. Now, if the idea was to move these less desirable extensions to obscure times in order to focus on North American/European ccTLDs and gTLDs, then I think it’s a VERY solid idea, but not without flaws.

First, the current auctions and live auction pages are full of .EU, .IN, .CC and other ccTLDs (disclaimer: I have submitted a couple of .CC domains myself). Many of these are decent quality with some  of them receiving bids at or above the Bido Price – so some ARE selling. The issue that I see is that better quality gTLDs are getting hidden amongst these more obscure extensions – this leads to my second and more relevant caveat.

Right now it appears that gTLDs make up maybe half of the upcoming auctions at Bido. With the current schedule layout, I was able to have a .CC auction setup for 3 days from now, whereas if I wanted to setup a gTLD auction I would have to wait until November 21st!! In the past I always viewed Bido as a quick way to sell domains. Auction setup was always very quick and generally you could find an available slot within 2 days. Waiting almost 2 weeks for your auction to start really doesn’t work for me. Perhaps I am just an impatient domainer looking for immediate results, but one friend of mine shares the same sentiment.

Before you think that I am bashing Bido’s new format, I’m really not. Jarred has been very open about taking the time to find a balance between domain quality and sales. This will take time and I think this scheduling experiment will help make Bido better in the future. A scheduling tweak that keeps ccTLDs to every 5 minutes in their time periods, but allows gTLDs to be auctioned every 2 minutes, instead of every 6, could be one of many solutions to the two issues I have presented. I am sure something is currently in the works and I am quite certain that Bido will continue to become better and better.

If you want to read some top-quality posts on Bido’s return check out the articles posted at the following sites:
FloName – Bido.com: Will they make it this time?
DotSauce – Bido Domain Auctions Are Back, But Will They Succeed?
ChefPatrick – Bido is Back!
MorgonLinton – Bido is Back!

Well, it looks like after Michael Berkens posted an article about the auction of Nightlife.net at BargainDomains/Cax the seller has cancelled the auction! Michael’s article pointed out that the domain, which met it’s $2,000 reserve in the last 24 hours, may sell for just 10% of what it sold for in 2008 ($20,000).

Francois was quick to comment that the seller has been banned and once again reiterated his zero tolerance policy when it comes to deadbeat buyers and sellers – good for you Francois!

Will this cancelled sale by a deadbeat seller affect any future sale of the domain?

Just this week I launched two minisites dedicated to educating users about how produce common symbols with their keyboard. So far, I have launched Copyright Symbol and Trademark Symbol. I look forward to bring similar sites to market and seeing how these sites move up SERPS and gain relevancy.