We’ve seen (and reported on) a couple of premium .com domain names that were sold for 7 or even 8 figure sums in recent times (off the top of my head: Insure.com for $16 million , Toys.com for $5.1 million , Candy.com for $3 million , Ad.com for $1.4 million , and so on). This morning, a company called UsedAirplances, Inc. purchased the domain name Flying.com and intends to set up a dedicated site displaying all of its the used airplanes and aircraft from the company’s flagship website UsedAirplanes.com as of June 2010. Says Mark J Horne, President & CEO of UsedAirplanes: “Owning a domain name of this caliper (SIC) will allow us to expand our talents deeper in the aviation business and build upon the success of UsedAirplanes.com. The word “flying” is known and understood by virtually every person and the word is used in every area within the aviation industry. In addition, Google, Yahoo and Bing process approximately 20 million search queries for the word “flying” every month.” That doesn’t, of course, necessarily mean that people who search for this particular keyword are going to wind up on Flying.com, and even if they do there’s only a small chance that they’d be interested in purchasing a Cessna or two. In that regard, it seems like a bit of an expensive purchase to make – for comparison, the domain name Fly.com was sold to Travelzoo for about $1.8 million last year and now directs to a website where people can compare hundreds of travel sites in one search. Regardless of its (imo) steep price, UsedAirplanes says it is currently looking to acquire more digital media companies and websites. And in case you’re interested in its history: Flying.com has been online since 1994 and has provided information and links to and within the aviation industry up until September 2009, when it was bought for an undisclosed amount (although the price on the day of the sale was set to $845,000, apparently). The identity of the seller is unknown. The first (beta) version of the new Flying.com will be launched on June 1, 2010, and according to the placeholder website that’s live today it will be “the first community and social media based portal for flying”. UsedAirplanes says it will provide a new and additional sales channel for the brokers that currently list their inventory on their main website. And for all you iPad owners out there: the company promises that the new website will be developed with Apple’s new tablet in mind from the ground up (pun intended).

Have you ever wanted to be a Wall Street analyst or come up with your own discounted cash flow model for a publicly traded company? Me neither, but I like the idea of tweaking a few variables in a company’s business model and seeing how that might change a its stock price. A new site launching today called Trefis lets you do just that. Started by three engineers and math whizzes from MIT and Cornell (Manish Jhunjhunwala, Adam Donovan, and Cem Ozkaynak) who did time at McKinsey and UBS bank, Trefis breaks down a stock price by the contribution of a company’s major products and businesses. For instance, 51.3 percent of Apple’s stock price is attributed to the iPhone, 25.5 percent to the Macintosh, and only 7.7 percent to iTunes and iPhone apps. Don’t agree? You can change the underlying assumptions by simply dragging lines on charts forecasting the future price of the iPhone, its market share going out to 2016, and so forth.  Every time you change an assumption, the price target changes accordingly. Underlying each stock price breakdown is a traditional discounted cash flow model created by Trefis.  At launch, the site has models for Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, HP, Netflix, Intel, the NEw York Times, and others.  You change the models ll you like by playing around with the underlying assumptions, then save and share your model.  The way the site is set up, you don’t need to create amodel for every variable which might affect a stock.  If you have a strong opinion about the iPhone’s future market share and nothing else, you can just create a model about that component, along with comments explaining your reasoning. There is a social element to Trefis in that you can follow other people, an dthey can follow you.  Over time, the founders of Trefis hope to be able to create a marketplace between investors and experts in particular fields, who might charge subscription fees for access to their models. Trefis raised $550,000 in an angel round in November, 2008, during the depths of the financial crisis.  The roudn was led by Timothy Weller, CFO of Enernoc and former CFO of Akamai, Bob Johnson of the MIT corporation, and Semyon Dukach, former president of the MIT Blackjack team. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Bose unleashed its giant iPod dock, the SoundDock 10, back in August — all 18 pounds of it. Well, iLounge has gotten their hands on one of these $600 beasts, and they’ve given it a nice once over. The SoundDock 10 has a nice solid build, and they grade the overall sound quality as decent… which probably isn’t comforting to hear, considering the price, but they do say that it certainly outperforms its cheaper peers. They note the inclusion of extra ports — an unusual and welcomed addition to a Bose unit — though they also note the continued absence of video support in the dock. If you’re in the market for a serious dock for your player, hit up the read link for the full review. Filed under: Home Entertainment Bose SoundDock 10 gets reviewed, probably not worth the pricetag originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read  |  Permalink  |  Email this  |  Comments

Zillow, a popular real-estate listings site, recently tweaked the pricing model in its marketplace for mortgages, angering many of the lenders who pay Zillow for customer leads. A few weeks ago, the site announced that it will be introducing a new pricing model for these leads to lenders. Zillow’s mortgage marketplace, which launched in 2008, lets borrowers submit loan requests for mortgages and then review quotes provided by lenders. Basically, lenders will be able to submit any number of loan quotes for free, but will be required to pay Zillow a “market-priced fee” when any borrowers contact them regarding their quotes. When a contact is made, the lender will be charged a market-priced fee. Zillow insists that “the market” will determine the price for each contact and it will not be setting the price itself, but rather it seems to be based on how much each lender is willing to pay for a lead. The company did warn lenders that Zillow contacts are more valuable than Google clicks for mortgage keywords, which typically range from $7-$25. Each Zillow lead is can be anywhere from $1 to $100, with lenders able to set a maximum price to pay per contact. Lenders will also be required to pre-fund their Zillow accounts with a minimum of $250 so Zillow can automatically deduct the price of the lead from the lender’s account. On the site’s forums, it’s apparent that lenders are not happy with the new system. First, lenders are angered because they are now not allowed to list contact phone numbers or link to any of their contact systems, because Zillow needs a way to monitor whether the lender does in fact get a lead. Zillow will post a 1-800 phone number for each lender, which is actually forwarded to the lender’s actual phone number. Zillow records any calls made from a borrower to a lender to make sure leads are accurate (which works in the lender’s favor but is a little sketchy, as some lenders point out). The first phase of the new system rolled out a few days ago and already lenders are complaining of disconnected calls. And of course lenders are frustrated by the fact that Zillow is even implementing a fee in the first place, when the site has long been known as a free and open marketplace for both lenders and buyers. Apparently realtors on the site, who often get leads from advice forums, aren’t being charged for their customer contacts (yet). The change in policy is interesting considering the fact that a few months ago, Zillow’s CEO and co-founder Richard Barton told CNET that Zillow is growing, despite the credit crunch and implosion of the real-estate industry, because the site “doesn’t try to over-monetize.” But in its message to lenders, Zillow said the free marketplace that was launched in April 2008 was an “experiment” to determine if the site could connect borrowers with lenders. The project worked and Zillow is currently seeing borrowers filing an average of 50,000 loan requests per month, with thousands of lenders helping to fund and close these loans. Nothing stays free forever. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

I was sorting through my notes and video footage of the Google press event around the launch of Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 and saw this gem. It’s a minute or so of footage of Google CEO Eric Schmidt talking about the potential of today’s mobile platforms when combined with the cloud. The mobile platforms, Android and the others, are so powerful now that you can build client apps that do magical things that are connected with the cloud. This is I think the most visually obvious example of that…don’t limit your imagination to this set of problems. Anything where you can produce this phenomenal customer benefit when you have a mobile device broadly defined connected to the cloud….Obviously we like the price of free because the consumers like that as well and we can figure out ways to use advertising to pay for it. His words echo Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Schmidt says that today’s mobile platforms are so powerful that when combined with a robust cloud service they can do “magical things.” And he encourages people not to limit their imaginations when thinking of new applications to serve people. Inspiring stuff for people out there thinking up the future. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0