The free ride, aka the five-day Add Grace Period (AGP) for buying and returning a domain for a refund, came to an end at the latest ICANN meeting.

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Once the markets close, Yahoo will report on its Q4 and full year earnings. Jerry Yang’s chat will probably include news of whatever layoffs may be scheduled.

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At first I thought the Facebook ads I saw on my profile were some kind of play on the credits for ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’, but then I figured out what was happening.

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Big discrepancy between Apple’s and AT&T’s numbers

Though Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced at Macworld that Apple had sold 4 million iPhones in 2007, AT&T received under 2 million customers. The new question is: Where are all those extra iPhones?

According to Tom Krazit, some of them are in Europe, and others, possibly, were unlocked and taken to a different carrier. But that doesn’t still doesn’t add up to 2 million.

The leading theory, according to financial analyst Toni Sacconaghi, is that those iPhones are still on the store shelves, wagging their tails and waiting for a new family to take them home.

There could be a number of reasons the iPhone’s not selling as well as predicted, all of which critics might have seen coming: too expensive (even after the first price cut), too slow, too expensive on a monthly basis, too locked in to one carrier – unless you’ve got the savvy to unlock one.

But also, the competition didn’t waste much time releasing reasonable substitutes with touch screens and similar capabilities. In some instances, the capabilities were better because they were more compatible with Microsoft document software, badly needed in business.

In short, the coolness factor of the iPhone wasn’t enough to convince people to turn away from their carriers, or their practicalities.

So it doesn’t take much clairvoyance to predict again that if Apple wants to meet that 10 million sold in 2008 target, they’re going to have be pretty aggressive. That could mean cheaper iPhones, faster iPhones, more practical iPhones, and less restricted iPhones.

That is, unless they’re going to abandon iPhone dreams in the hopes the Macbook Air bails them out – which it won’t. It has the same very cool, ultra-hip problems the iPhone has: too expensive, not enough functionality, and too slow. It’s only a matter of months before PC notebooks come out advertising thinness and touch-screens with more practical functionality and at a much cheaper cost.

With an optical drive, too.

Structuring an adCenter account properly makes its more likely a searcher’s queries will return ads targeted to the keyword.

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Weird behavior on Google’s translation service page made the gossips at Gawker think they found a scoop. They didn’t. Here’s why.

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EA will open its cartoony shooter Battlefield Heroes in a few months as a free to play game, with some monetization options tossed into the mix.

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Yahoo Search kicked off its first index update of 2008.

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Marketers aren’t exactly sure what they are meant to do with interactive marketing, but they do plan to spend money on it.

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A soft real estate market affects all parts of the economy. It presents an opportunity for blogs to shine with the information they can present to detail seekers.

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