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).

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Gone With The Wind: Flying.com Sells For $1.1 Million

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.

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Come Up With Your Own Target Stock Price For Apple Or Google With…

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.

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Bose SoundDock 10 gets reviewed, probably not worth the pricetag

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.

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Zillow Starts Charging For Leads. Will Lenders Retaliate?

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.

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Google’s Eric Schmidt On Magical Potential Of Mobile + Cloud

Apple wasted little time approving Wolfram Alpha’s new iPhone app, which we hinted at last week. Just a few days after they submitted it to the store, Apple sailed it right through the approval process with such speed that it even surprised the Wolfram Alpha team, which had hoped to get some feedback from testers before the approval. I was one of those people, so rather than send them feedback, I’ll write it here.

There are two key points about Wolfram Alpha’s iPhone app: 1) It is pretty cool, and very nicely done. 2) They’re insane for trying to sell it for $50.

I’m going to mainly focus on second point here, because if you’ve used Wolfram Alpha, you don’t really need much explanation about this app, which is a slick interface for the service. And while I get Wolfram Alpha’s logic behind selling the app for $50, I think it’s faulty logic. Here’s what they’re telling us:

A note on price — it is listed at $49.99, which is basically less than 1/2 the price of a graphing calculator with inferior functionality in comparison, which is how the company came to that number. Or, as we’ve been saying, the price of 12 lattes from Starbucks…

Both of those points are true, but the App Store has created a different economic reality than say, walking into an Office Max and buying a graphing calculator. It’s no secret that most apps that sell well tend to be cheaper — as in, free or $0.99. Apple has recently tried to de-emphasize this by adding a “Top Grossing” section to the App Store. That’s fine, but with the exception of the $90 Navigon GPS turn-by-turn app, all of the top grossing apps are under $10. And most are under $3.

The reality is that you can probably count the number of iPhone apps over $10 that sell really well on your hands. Of those, the number over $20, you can probably count on one hand. And of those, if you remove the GPS turn-by-turn apps and maybe a few apps meant for doctors, you’re probably down to a couple fingers.

And I’m sorry, but Wolfram Alpha does not yet have the clout of Navigon, nor is it in the hot turn-by-turn GPS space that would warrant such a high price. “We do plan to offer regular discounts and sales,” the team tells us. But if they really want this app to sell, they’re going to have to knock off like 90% of its price. Actually, to be honest, even at $10, I’m not sure how many people would buy this app.

And that’s too bad for the team. As I said, the app is a solid one, but this is the reality of the App Store. Games that sell on systems like the Nintendo DS for $30, are $3 on the iPhone. Hell, there are even some games that sell on the bigger consoles for $60 that are less than $10 on the iPhone. They’re not quite as good graphics-wise, but I would argue that they’re every bit as fun. And don’t think for a second that studios like EA wouldn’t sell them for $30 if they could, but they realize that they can’t.

Wolfram Alpha may have to figure that reality out the hard way. It’s fine that it can replace your $100 graphing calculator, but it’s also limited because it requires WiFi or a 3G connection to do so. And the iPhone already comes with a calculator, which can turn into a more advanced one, and both of those are free. And there are dozens of graphing calculator apps in the App Store that sell for a whopping $0.99.

Okay, you might say, but Wolfram Alpha does offer a lot of interesting data far beyond graphing calculators. That’s also true, like giving you a detailed read out of how many calories are in a Big Mac, fries, and a Coke. But if you’re using this on your iPhone or iPod touch, you already have access to Google, and more to the point, the mobile web version of Wolfram Alpha, which is free.

Clearly, the service had some insight into how controversial the price will be. They go on to note:

The core WolframAlpha site will always be free. This is one of several “premium” experiences that the company will offer in addition. The app is targeted at the most serious users, and is priced as such. Likewise, we feel that the app’s egonomics and speed make it well worth the investment.

I can only assume they mean “ergonomics” there, but we’ll forgive them for that Freudian slip.

The app absolutely does offer a nice experience, one that yes, is better than the free website. But $50 better? No. $10 better? Maybe. $5 better? We’re getting closer. Again, right or wrong, this is just the reality of the App Store economy.

As we’ve noted previously, the iPhone app is the first example of Wolfram Alpha’s new APIs that they hope will extend their most valuable asset: Their data. But if you’re trying to get more people to use access your data, charging $50 is not a great play. A better one may be to get people hooked on your data, then charge down the road when they realize how valuable it is — if they ever do, which is still far from certain with Wolfram Alpha.

It’s also interesting to note that despite talk of a deal with Bing, the defautl web search in the Wolfram Alpha app is Google. Both Bing and Yahoo are options, but you have to change it in the settings.

You can find the Wolfram Alpha app here in the App Store.

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Wolfram Alpha Miscalculates What Its iPhone App Should Cost

TC50 DemoPit company AskYourTargetMarket is hoping to simplify market research for businesses and solutions by offering a comprehensive platform where businesses can both create and deploy surveys. Since the site is in closed beta, AskYourTargetMarket has offered 500 invites for TechCrunch readers. Each invite comes with a free survey package for up to 50 respondents; enter the beta code “TC50-2009″ here.

The site lets you define your target market demographic, then write a survey to distribute to focus groups. Because you are able to target a particular group, you don’t have to waste space on your survey with demographic questions. Once your survey is finalized, AskYourTargetMarket will launch it to your desired demographic within their consumer panel for as little as $29.95 for 50 respondents. The site, which says it has thousands of U.S. consumers on their survey panel, draws its respondents from its sister site, InstantCashSweepstakes.com, which offers users a cash prize incentive for filling out surveys. AskYourTargetMarket is also developing its own “worker site” where members will get paid per question and will be ranked by a detailed algorithm which will determine their pay scale per question.

Once your survey has been deployed, results can be delivered in a few minutes up to 72 hours. Upon receiving the results, the site will offer you tools to create a easily shareable report with analysis and distribution of the results, through charts and graphs.

While the company hasn’t tweaked its pricing yet, its founders tell us that they hope to provide survey options with up to 400 respondents under $100. This price point is definitely appealing considering how expensive it can be to conduct market research. SurveyMonkey (which is growing fast) and Survs.com offer in-depth survey options but don’t offer AskYourTargetMarket’s consumer panel.

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TC50 DemoPit Startup AskYourTargetMarket Simplifies Market Research

Hey, remember last year when Lenovo’s UltraNav keyboard made a (re)appearance on Flickr because the company was soliciting feedback on how to make it better? Well check it — there’s a new version in town, and it incorporates all those user suggestions. Lenovo says people mostly wanted the exact same feel as their ThinkPad laptop keyboards in the desktop unit (no surprise there), but almost no one wanted wireless, a number pad or a trackpad — so the new model pictured above is more or less a faithful wired replica of the T400s board, right down to those liquid drainage holes. What’s more, cutting the numeric keypad and trackpad allowed the company to reduce the price by $40, so this little slice of hotness is not just $60. Not bad, but we’ll be honest — we’d still throw down for a wireless version of the old UltraNav in a heartbeart.

[Thanks, Tian]

Read – Lenovo DesignMatters blog post on the keyboard design process
Read – ThinkPad Keyboard at the Lenovo online store

Filed under: Peripherals

New ThinkPad keyboard features crowdsourced design, lower price originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Sep 2009 08:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New ThinkPad keyboard features crowdsourced design, lower price