A little over a year ago at the TRAFFIC auction in New York City, Keith Levenson of Acme Media purchased Rio.com for $450,000.

This significant acquisition marked a changeover for Rio.com, as it went from a tech company website to a tourism website focused for people looking to visit the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The hard work is about to pay off, as the new Rio.com website went live this afternoon.

During the past year, Keith has made a few trips to Rio de Janeiro for research and to secure deals with local travel companies and hotels. People interested in visiting Rio can seamlessly book travel, tour packages, and Carnival vacations.

The next few years are going to be huge for the city of Rio de Janeiro, as the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics will be held in the city. By launching now, Keith will have a good amount of time to become established as the official tourism website of the city.

I thought about this for a few days, and want to share my top ten domain tools and websites that are beneficial to my business. While this does include a few news websites, I consider them tools because the information provided is used to bolster my business.

These are in alphabetical order.

• DNJournal.com (Weekly sales reports)
• DNSalePrice.com
• DomainBoardroom.com
• Domaining.com (News Feeds)
• DomainTools.com (Whois Lookups, Whois History, Reverse IP, Domain Monitor)
• Escrow.com
• Estibot
• FreshDrop.net
• GoDaddy (Bulk Domain Checker)
• Google (Adwords Keyword Tool)

What are your favorite tools/websites?