Its hard enough thinking up a clever, original and catchy company name. Its made infinitely more difficult by then having to see whether the domain name is available.

The process of coming up with my company name (which is, of course, still under wraps for now!) was an arduous and frustrating experience. I came up with so many gems that shone with brilliance and wit, only to be devastated to find that the domain name was not available. And it would have been fine if I saw some other little company had snapped it up and was doing imaginative and useful things with the domain, but my blood erupted with anger to find that 90% of the domains I wanted were parked and available for sale. When I dared to enquire what they wanted for the honour of using a domain that was lying dormant, they responded with US$10,000! Now, I am sure that would be open to negotiation, but considering my budget for the entire design, development and publicity of my whole site is close to that amount, its close to criminal to request that something that should cost US$10 should cost several orders of magnitude more. I’m all for entrepreneurship and supply/demand, but this trend which seems to be ballooning out of control is affecting the people that need the most assistance, those little people with big dreams who want to have a crack at making something fun and special online. And these sharks are holding domains up for ransom, turning a commodity into a rare jewel.

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I was a bit cheeky last night. I gatecrashed ad:tech.

I was meeting up with a few friends of mine who have SEO/SEM businesses, and they invited me to come along to a bar in the Hilton. I didn’t think anything of it, clearly they liked to drink in glamorous places. But as I approached and I called them for clarification on where to find them, they explained that it was actually a function for members of a big conference, and that I had to try to sneak in. Now, I tend to be very proper when it comes to following rules: I never have shop-lifted, I hate lying, and I pay all my taxes. So my insides suddenly went into a state of panic at the prospect of having to sneak into an event. I just don’t do those sorts of things, asking politely and sweetly is much more my style, and I find generally as successful a tactic as subterfuge.

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In designing my soon-to-be-released web application, I pondered for a while over what colour background to use. A trivial concern you may think, but I am aware of the potential it has to affect the way your site is perceived.

My obvious initial assumption was that I would go for a white background. When aiming for simplicity and elegance, the white-backgrounded site seems to be ubiquitous. See Google, MyBlogLog, Riffs, YouTube, Amazon, etc.

Alternatively, there are sites using coloured backgrounds effectively: The Best Stuff in the World, Lingr, Joopz etc.

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Not that I have a choice at the moment, but not a day goes by when I ponder on whether I can do this – whether I can start an internet business – while working in a full time job. Obviously I need money to live, and I have the unfortunate curse of requiring quite a bit to live (damn that shoe addiction!), so some form of healthy income is a necessity. This means I have a few options up my sleeve:

1. try to spend less and negotiate a day off my day job per week, thereby living on a 4-days per week salary
2. continue working full-time, and try and give up my social life, so I can work on the business in the evenings and on weekends
3. get a loan and work ful/part-time on business
4. get an equity partner and work full/part-time on business

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