According to an article appearing in Reuters today, it looks like Democratic lawmakers may be pushing for an end to the ban on Internet gambling to quell anger from the European Union. If this happens, owners of gambling domain names may be more free to monetize them and have higher payouts.

From the article:

“A senior Democratic lawmaker will push legislation this year to repeal a U.S. ban on Internet gambling that has hurt trade ties with the European Union, a congressional aide said.

“The bill introduction should happen in the next month,” a spokesman for House of Representatives Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said.”

Taking care of my taxes with my accountant in New Hampshire today, but I am sure I will post something later on tonight. Driving for 4 hours usually gives me time to think about things, and I am always thinking about business.

BTW, it looks like 1/3 of the Aftermarket.com Domainer Mardi Gras domains already have bids. Most of them are the no/low reserve domain names, but it’s a good start.

I am looking forward to reading updates about Domainer Mardi Gras tomorrow.  New Orleans is one of my favorite cities in the US, and it’s the place where I had my bachelor party, one of the best long weekends I’ve ever had.

When I was hanging out in Bido’s live chat room yesterday, someone mentioned the idea about Twitter  buying Tweeter.com, the domain name of the bankrupt electronics chain, Tweeter. I haven’t heard about an auction for the domain name, but I would imagine it will eventually be sold, and most likely via auction. There are a number of Tweeter-type references related to Twitter, including “tweets,” or the posts made by users, and “tweeters,” nickname of Twitter users.  There is also a “tweet deck” and other Tweet-related Twitter references that continue to be created.

That said, I find it unlikely that the still unprofitable company would buy Tweeter.com, although they did just receive an additional capital injection of $35 million. In my opinion, Tweeter.com will likely sell for somewhere in the mid six figure range, based on the valuable electronics shoppers who type it in or find it via back link. I don’t think that there are many people navigating to Tweeter.com in error thinking it’s Twitter.  A company like Flickr has more of a need for Flicker.com than Twitter has for Tweeter .

It’s a valuable domain name for someone, but in my opinion, I don’t think Twitter will allocate the funds for it.