Domain Pigeon was recently mentioned in a Smashing Magazine article titled 10 Tools For Finding, Registering And Managing Domain Names:

Domain Pigeon’s approach is different to the search tools mentioned before. It automatically generates lists of available domains as well as Twitter names. The names are displayed in different colors, depending on how many people have showed interest in a certain term. The darker the color the more popular the name. You can also order the lists by length, popularity and show only domains or Twitter usernames. Examples of generated domain names are ablebo.com, meliori.com, minecafe.com or shopshost.com.

Domain Pigeon is an ideal source of inspiration for domains and short available Twitter names.

Cool cool.

Domain Pigeon has been down for the last few days.

Recent visitors to the site saw this uninviting error message:

The error, “unitialized constant ApplicationController”, was remedied by SSHing into Dreamhost and running the following command:

rake rails:update:application_controller

… which renames application.rb to application_controller.rb

I think Dreamhost updated something on their end which caused the error.

Regardless, its back up — more domains to come shortly.

A new domain name tool just launched called Wordoid.

The thing I like the most about it is how it lets you enter in a word and then it generates available domain names around that word. Domain Pigeon, on the other hand, only lets you search names that already exist on the site.

There were a few interesting mentions of Domain Pigeon in the Hacker News thread on Wordoid’s launch:

Yeah, I was a fan of http://domainpigeon.com/ for a while, but that got a bit too restricted for me (as it became more commercial), not to mention a bit unwieldy to browse through. Bookmarked!

…

Wow, it’s like domain pigeon only way better. Awesome.

…

It’s nice. It reminds me of domain pigeon, but the words it creates seem a lot more natural.

The first point is valid (visitors can’t explore a lot of the names until they sign up). The problem, in my experience, is that its very hard to make money from a site like this purely as an affiliate. Jorge, from hotnamelist.com, can attest to that fact too.

I’ve had a new feature on the todo list since the site launched that would let you do exactly that, but I’ve let a few technical hurdles stop me from implementing it.

Maybe this is the kick I need to get around to doing it.

I’ve spent about a year working on Domain Pigeon and I’ve learned a lot in that time and I’m proud of what the site has become, but its time to start thinking about what’s next.

I’ve been tossing around a few ideas for what to work on and I think I’ve finally settled on a project. I’m very excited about it and I think it will be life changing for a lot of people.

I plan to use the following technologies to make it:

• Python/Django
• Flash/Actionscript
• jQuery
• Google Maps API

I could probably do it with Ruby on Rails and Prototype, but a lesson learned from a decade of Visual Basic work has taught me that it’s wise to learn something new for every project you undertake. In this case, I don’t have any experience with any of those things, so it’s going to take some time.

At some point in the next few months I’m also going to use the profits from Domain Pigeon to form an LLC to cover this project and any others I might start in the next few years.

I will continue to work on Domain Pigeon as time permits, but with only a few hours a day to work, this new project will be my priority. Domain Pigeon will continue to be updated daily with new domain and Twitter names and there are a few more major features I want to implement, but the days of small layout changes are at an end.

Lots to learn, lots to do.