Friday, July 6th, 2007
Bust a Name: Helping you find a darn domain
Category: Showcase
Ryan Stout’s company recently launched Bust a Name which has the functionality of things like Instant Domain Search , but it also has a “word combiner” where you enter words and the site tries all different combinations of them and lets you know what domains are available based on those combinations. It also lets you try different suffixes and prefixes on the domains. (i, e, my).
With the current market anything that can help you find a name is a good thing. It feels like everything is taken.
3.9 rating from 17 votes
I like it. It doesn’t generate as many combinations as I would like, but beyond that it’s very usable.
That’s really neat! I love the low latency, it’s one thing to offer suggestions but to report on availability of so many names in such a short timeframe is pretty cool.
On a side note, is anyone else getting really tired of seeing the FamFamFam Silk icon set cropping up all over the place?
I’ve used them myself in the past (example), and they’re still nice looking in their own right, but when you know the set well as a user yourself, you really do notice them everywhere.
Sorry to be the negative guy, but haven’t most major domain registrars offered a service like this for years? If you type in a name that is in use, they offer alternatives based on the words that you used.
@Ben: While it’s the only high quality free icon set out there, that probably won’t change anytime soon.
Great idea, but as was said befor eit ddn’t offer very many alternatives/combos.
As a Ajax app it’s rather good. I agree with the above, you need more prefix’s,suffix’s I’d suggest also maybe having a thesaurus option.
instantdomainsearch.com has something similar ..
to answer hello kitty, I haven’t seen an effective app on any register’s site that is this functional and fast
Here’s some features we have planned down the road:
1) The ability to create your own prefixes/suffixes
2) Saving your searches
3) Automatically adding in similar words
4) Combine 3 words
Also, we are working on a “random word generator” that generates words that, um aren’t really words, but sound like they might be. (Think fandango.com or wufuoo.com)
Also, anyone have any ideas for ways to create better suggestions? Or any other things that could be included?
Thanks,
Ryan
Ryan,
What about a sort of splicer, which cuts up your word into subdomains and tests the last part as the domain name itself. Eg: del.icio.us, script.aculo.us.
Obviously this only works with the TLD being part of the word, but you could check the last two letters and see if there’s a TLD that’s identical, match the entered name minus the last two letters + TLD as those letters, and then a combination of spliced words where the first part of your domain becomes a sub.
I’ll second the splicer idea. It’d be cool if it was to make thesaurus suggestions on base words so that they would end in TLD. eg: if I was to enter yummy, it’d suggest del.icio.us (which is obviously taken, but it was the only example I could think of).
Excellent work. I was considering doing something similar, but am really impressed with your execution. Very fast and responsive.
Couple ideas:
- allow connecting words with groups - ie group 1=”one two three”, 2=”four fix six”, with connecting word “and” would return oneandfour, twoandfour, etc
- allow rules - ie, to create your own suffix in addition to built in ones
- and for geeks, how about a field for regular expressions?
Sweet! Now all the interns at cybersquatterz.net will have something to do this summer. ;)
Looks good. One CSS suggestion: { cursor: move; } for the draggable names.
I appreciate the AJAX interface, but is this tool really that useful? I find the domain suggestion tool at DomainTools.com to be much more pratical.
http://domain-suggestions.domaintools.com/
Of course, it requires a page-load for each submission, but it has the ability to make suggestions which actually make sense. Anyone could easily create an AJAX version using their API (which costs money).
Nice UI, but yet another domainsbot.com clone.
How do we get on the list of companies people can buy domains from? :)
Karl,
Send an e-mail to help@bustaname.com and I’ll tell you about it.
Thanks,
Ryan