August 21, 2001

9:48 PM

Ben Brown once had this thing called Teeth Magazine. I don't know how long it lasted. But visiting ye olde Glassdog, I saw a random adzert for it. Intrigued, I clicked on it. And it's a bit different now. Anyone else have funny lapsed-domain stories?
posted by solistrato (16 comments total)

Not that I don't love love love publicity, but this was already discovered, discussed, and mocked a few months ago.
posted by benbrown at 10:03 PM on August 21, 2001

My favorite lapsed domain has got to be the one for former web design consultancy Vivid Studios. What would my mother think??
posted by robbie01 at 10:50 PM on August 21, 2001

Your mother would think "damn, that's a lot of pop-ups!" right after she left the site.
posted by Hackworth at 10:57 PM on August 21, 2001

Weird. Dana's website, http://www.coygirl.com/ was picked up by the same jerks.
posted by perplexed at 1:25 AM on August 22, 2001

Mark Thomas's "Menwith Hill Tours" is now pr0n; and there's another site that I can't quite recall which is now the home of a lame-looking band. All is change...

I just locked up only.org for a few more years, so that's one less thing to worry about. But is there a decent way to keep track of all the domains I own, scattered across registrars and whatnot?
posted by holgate at 1:36 AM on August 22, 2001

A long time ago I had a funny website called cool404.com, showing up each day nice 404 pages. But I lost the domain for stupidity (something like "how the hell am I wasting my time?"). Now it's an awful redirection... but it can still be considered a piece of live art, if you will.
posted by fabrizio at 2:57 AM on August 22, 2001

Jason Kottke's 0sil8 has had a counterpart promoting gambling, weight loss etc. for some years now.
posted by willem at 3:42 AM on August 22, 2001

Used to work with a government-funded smoking cessation team called Commit to a Healthier Brant. Great group of people - hired a bunch of us high school kids on to do web stuff, held free seminars, did a significant amount of work on the Cyberisle project, and were just generally a good presence in the community, helping those who wanted to smoke less.

Of course, government funding ran out, and someone snapped up commit.org real quick-like. It's a shame I didn't have the nerve back then to grab it for myself, repackage the content and keep the site alive...
posted by danwalker at 5:07 AM on August 22, 2001

My geocities account is up for sale. . .
posted by crasspastor at 5:30 AM on August 22, 2001

How's about a major national law firm that advertises itself as being full of hip Internet law experts letting its domain expire? This is one instance when I thank God Network Solutions is so slow at releasing expired domains. This happened DESPITE my warning them several months in advance that the date was imminent and that the administrative contact listed was no longer with the firm so they probably weren't getting important e-mails. I double checked it a few days after the expiration, then sent an e-mail to the IT department trying to light a fire. Two days later, the domain is listed as renewed through 2015. But do I get any thanks or credit??? Noooooooo. (Links omitted to protect the innocent).
posted by IPLawyer at 6:38 AM on August 22, 2001

My favorite part about Teeth was one of the very last articles: "An open letter to all you webloggers." Apparently, we're idiots.

(But what the hell, it's fun!)
posted by tweebiscuit at 6:58 AM on August 22, 2001

Well, fuck me in the goat ass, I should have done a search. My bad.
posted by solistrato at 7:46 AM on August 22, 2001

oh, bittersweets. (warning: that link is not at all work safe.)
posted by maura at 9:20 AM on August 22, 2001

Maura, did you run bittersweets? I miss it! It got me through many a lonely Belle & Sebastian evening...
posted by tweebiscuit at 10:07 AM on August 22, 2001

I used to own polymorphous.com, but never did anything with it, so forgot to renew, recently. It got swiped by, apparently, Armenian domain resellers who aren't even doing anything with it. However, the whois info directs me to a site where I could buy it back for a minimum 550 U.S. dollars. Not.

Dana has a new domain at maybeiam.com. Nothing there yet but with any luck the first piece to go up will be a really scathing rant against domain parasites.

Vivid Studios' domain didn't get swiped---they sold it to the Vivid porn guys. To much outrage and embarrassment on the part of various people inside the once and former Vivid Studios family. Still trying to understand how "strictly a business decision that will provide the best financial return" matches up with "donating 100% of the proceeds from the sale of the domain name to several non-profit organizations", but whatever.
posted by Sapphireblue at 11:32 AM on August 22, 2001

Wow, I once went to cool404.com, but only the once. I think I read something on it somewhere and went and had a look. It was a nice little site, but let's just say it didn't hold my interest for long.

As for the new Teethmag.com, why would be I interested in web development stuff on a site that is so poorly designed? (hint: horizontal scrolling is a no no)
posted by Option1 at 10:24 PM on August 22, 2001