Lost a business card and need the email address?

How often have you met people and promptly lost their business cards? It happens to me all the time. Or I want to find the e-mail address of someone I've never met. Here is a Google search secret that will help you easily locate e-mail addresses by trying to find Web pages where an e-mail address is listed:

• First you need to know where the person works and find their company's Web address.
• In Google, enter an asterisk, followed by the @ sign, and then the company's Web address. For example, *@bankofamerica.com will locate Web pages featuring an e-mail address of someone who works at Bank of America.
• Once you find the e-mail naming convention, you can back into the e-mail address of the person you want to meet. For example, if your Google search returns John_Doe@bankofamerica.com, and you want to track down Sally Smith, her e-mail address is probably "first name" underscore "last name," or Sally_Smith@bankofamerica.com.

GoDaddy suffering from .me deluge

Registrar GoDaddy began offering the .me domains from registration, but the process overwhelmed the company with issues.

Failed registrations and multiple registrations of the same .me domain name cast a pall over GoDaddy's .me debut. The new domain, being sold for $19.99 per year with a required two-year purchase (privacy option extra), should end up a profitable venture for the company.

However it will be a bit of a joyless slog getting there. Mashable cited the problems with .me registrations, and one account arriving by Twitter looks like it won't be fun to resolve.
Several posts on Twitter report multiple registrations for the domain aweso.me. At least eight people may possess receipts for the desired domain.

"It appears GoDaddy is buckling under the pressure and is about to have an ugly mess on its hands," Adam Ostrow wrote of the .me problems. Meanwhile, the GoDaddy complaints from frustrated would-be registrants continue to hit the net.

If You Want It, Bid On It - The Keyword Battle

Another court has decided use of trademarked terms in metatags and keyword advertising does not constitute trademark infringement, but the issue is far from settled and only gets more complicated as more courts hear arguments from both sides.

In this case, Designer Skin sued S&L Vitamins for reselling Designer Skin products online. S&L was not an approved retail channel, and was selling the self-tanning product at lower prices. Also, the company dropped the Designer Skin name into the metatags of its site to help with organic search rankings (a practice with debatable efficacy), and bid on Designer Skin keywords in order to drive traffic to the site.

Most often in keyword trademark infringement cases, the issue centers on whether competitors – in this instance, another maker of self-tanning lotion – have the right to use keywords in metatags or bid on trademarks. Courts have come down on both sides.

In this case, heard in Arizona, it is not a question of competition, but of sales channel control. At issue is a concept of "initial interest confusion," meaning when searchers see an ad or listing for Designer Skin, they could mistake S&L, a seller, as the maker of the product. The judge didn't think any consumer with a half a brain would make that mistake:

In contrast to the deceptive conduct that forms the basis of a finding of initial interest confusion, S & L Vitamins uses Designer Skin’s marks to truthfully inform internet searchers where they can find Designer Skin’s products. Rather than deceive customers into visiting their websites, this use truthfully informs customers of the contents of those sites. Indeed, in practical effect S & L Vitamins invites Designer Skin’s customers to purchase Designer Skin’s products. The fact that these customers will have the opportunity to purchase competing products when they arrive at S & L Vitamins’ sites is irrelevant. The customers searching for Designer Skin’s products find exactly what they are looking for when they arrive at these sites. S & L Vitamins is not deceiving consumers in any way.

The outcome of this case will be used as a precedent when deciding others and will bolster the argument that use of keywords in metatags and bidding on trademarked terms for search purposes is a legitimate practice. Fairly often, plaintiffs are more concerned about control of channels and control of competition than they are about trademark infringement.

Eric Goldman, author of Technology and Law Blog, goes into much deeper detail in his posting, and concurs that Designer Skin's suit was asking too much of the legal system. "[C]ourts are realizing that they are being asked to facilitate anti-competitive practices, and wisely they are balking," he writes.