Picking a half-decent domain name for this site was a pain. Almost everything I could think of was taken. In fact, I came up with the following rules of thumb for .com domains:

1. If the domain is less than four letters long, it’s taken.
2. If the domain is an english word in common use, it’s taken.
3. If the domain is two common english words pasted together, it’s probably taken.
4. If it sounds good, its probably taken. (ok, maybe this is a bit cynical.)

It seems I was close to right in my rules of thumb, except that the situation is even worse than I thought. Odds are you can’t get a firstnamelastname domain name either.

Now, the above is probably common knowledge for folks who deal with DNS and domain registration on a regular basis. What really shocked me was the sheer number of domains that were registered solely to collect ad revenue until they are sold. I’m not entirely sure how the economics of this works since I haven’t kept up with how domains are registered after domain registration became commercial, but I’d be curious to know what kind of return these domain “squatters” are generating on their electronic real-estate.