When you’re unsure which domain to register, the most common advice you’re likely to hear is to always register your name. But what do you do with your site once you’ve gotten it? This week’s #WebsiteWednesday will show you three unique ways #GenXYZ members and Hover customers are using their name on a .xyz.
DavidOBrien.xyz – Tucows customer
Tech entrepreneur and digital product developer, David, uses his site DavidOBrien.xyz to give an overview of his professional experience, with a look into his personal life via his blog. He is also the founder of humbolt.xyz, an independent music only website, which will fully launch in Summer of 2017. David’s FirstNameLastName.xyz domain is perfect as a virtual resume and as an online portal through which his audience can connect with him.
NickGutierrez.xyz – Tucows customer
Nick Gutierrez, or as his students know him, Mr. G, is a teacher at the Chicago Tech Academy, who uses his personal .xyz site as a resource for his students as a virtual learning center, and to stay in touch with him outside the classroom. Nick provides resources for his classes on his site, and also highlights some of his favorite projects submitted by past students. In the age of technology, Nick’s FirstNameLastName.xyz is a great way for him to stay in touch with his students using his .xyz domain.
Ando Shah secured an awesome four letter .xyz domain, his first name, as his domain. Ando.xyz is a highly coveted piece of online real estate for showcasing Ando’s past work experience and major creative projects he has worked on. Ando’s passion for 360° film is evident on his site, and he even showcases his work as co-director of the 360° short film JetLag, which was an official selection at Cannes Film Festival 2016 and won Best Live Action Film at Kaleidoscope VR Film Festival 2016.
“I build things across a variety of verticals, from Virtual Reality to Conservation… Ando.xyz has become the platform on which I tie all of it together. When I first sought out a domain for my name, .xyz really appealed to me, and after Alphabet (parent company of Google) launched on abc.xyz, it put .xyz on the map!.” – Ando Shah, creator of Ando.xyz
The only limit to the potential of your personal website is the creativity and passion of its creator. These three .xyz adopters show exactly how imaginative the #GenXYZ community is with their sites. Do you have YourName.xyz, YourIdea.xyz, or YourBusiness.xyz registered yet? If you don’t, now is a great time, as our friends at Hover are having a sale on .xyz domains for just $4.99. The sale ends this Friday, so hurry over now to save 58% on the world’s most popular new domain!
Saodian.xyz – Alibaba customer (China)
新年快乐! Or to our non-Chinese speaking readers, Happy Chinese New Year! It’s been a huge year for members of #GenXYZ in China. We opened our China office, hired our first full-time employee, had our CEO Daniel give a keynote at World Hosting Day in Beijing and finally: .xyz became one of the first nTLDs to receive MIIT accreditation. That means, our Chinese .xyz adopters can now host their websites and see them go live and reach a global audience. This week’s #WebsiteWednesday features one of those very first active Chinese .xyz websites, Saodian.xyz.
Saodian.xyz is a QR ordering system that uses QR technology to speed up the ordering process at restaurants. Instead of waiting for your server to come over to your table and take your order, guests in participating restaurants can simply scan a QR code on the table through WeChat or Alipay. The restaurant’s menu then pops up and they can order directly with the kitchen and pay.
Businesses can use Saodian.xyz to offer discounts to customers and benefit from needing less waiting staff, while providing faster and more convenient service to their guests. The biggest benefit for guests is that they won’t need to download any additional app, but can simply use the QR code scanner within China’s most downloaded apps WeChat and Alipay to be able to read menus, order, and pay with the help of Saodian.xyz.
In the case of Saodian.xyz, the convenience of a simple idea has potentially huge reach across multiple industries. Saodian.xyz is prevalent not only in the food and beverage industry for meal ordering, but has also seen huge success as a room service ordering system in hotels and is a popular system to order snacks and drinks while users take in one of China’s most popular nightlife activies, karaoke.
Saodian.xyz has taken a simple solution to bridge a gap in the Chinese food ordering market and built it into a successful platform. They didn’t stop there, however, and grew their service into a popular offering across multiple industries, just like the .xyz domain extension. Saodian.xyz is just one of many new .xyz sites going live in China, and we can’t wait to feature more of them in the coming weeks and months.
Starship.xyz – GoDaddy customer (Estonia & United Kingdom)
Starship.xyz was one of the first websites we wrote about in 2016 shortly after the company’s official launch. We promised that we would keep an eye on their progress, and now – as the last #WebsiteWednesday of the year – we’re recapping the news and success Starship has had in 2016.
Starship, created by the co-founders of Skype, is an autonomous robot delivery service that is changing the future of delivery to be more efficient and cost-effective. Their breakthrough technology has been featured all over the news, including stories in Wired, TechCrunch, Fortune, and Business Insider, to name a few.
If you live in San Francisco, Washington DC, Switzerland, London or one of the other 50+ cities Starship has visited, you may have already seen their robots zipping around. Their robotic fleet now consists of 65 robots – up from 10 when they launched – which have traveled over 15,000 combined miles in 16 countries, according to their site.
To reach these markets, Starship partnered with Mercedes-Benz to build custom robo-vans, or “motherships,” that can transport the robots from city to city. By combining traditional transit with Starship’s robots, 400 packages can be delivered every shift, compared to 180 by doing it the old way. This type of efficiency led to interest by Just Eat, who announced “the world’s first takeaway meal delivered by a robot” in London earlier this month. With a $60 million annual R&D budget, Just Eat told VentureBeat that they’re launching their pilot program all over London with Starship in 2017.
Thanks to the innovation by Starship.xyz, we may be opening presents next year that were delivered by a robot. But Starship wasn’t the only member of #GenXYZ that had a good year – check out the list below to see a complete list of every #WebsiteWednesday we covered in 2016.
Many of our registrar partners are finishing off the year strong by running last-minute .xyz sales for the holidays. This is your last chance to grab that domain that you’ve been wanting all year, so visit any of the registrars below to get your .xyz domains for as low as 50¢!
This month, we’ve been honored to be part of two exciting hackathons from coast-to-coast: from Boston Hacks at Boston University, to the very far west at the University of Southern California’s HackSC. With apps, software, and websites all around us in our daily lives, it’s no wonder why so many students are striving to become the next best developer!
For this week’s #WebsiteWednesday, we’re highlighting HackForPlay.xyz, a free game developed by a Japanese small business that teaches elementary and middle school kids how to code.
With their mission to make learning code fun for all ages, HackForPlay.xyz developed an “action RPG” game to do just that. While it might look like a run-of-the-mill role-playing game, you have to get creative and “hack” the code to defeat your enemies and pass through roadblocks.
Established in 2014, Hack For Play hosts training programs for students and has already received awards for their innovative workshops. In a country where people use mobile devices a lot more than computers, it isn’t uncommon to find elementary and middle school kids who haven’t even learned how to type yet.
But through Hack For Play, they learn to swiftly navigate the keyboard, conquer their RPG stages by manipulating the code, and before you know it (and even the students themselves), they’ve become junior programmers!
The game itself is free for anyone through their website. What’s awesome is how the creators also host workshops for these pre-teen kids, and on occasion, even sessions where the kids partner up with their parents to conquer the slimes, dragons, and monsters with code.
Do you have what it takes to clear the stages of HackForPlay.xyz? Test it out yourself and let us know how you fare – we’re all ears @XYZ.
On this fine #WebsiteWednesday, we’re showing off some great domains that our team thinks are awesome names.
Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Whether it’s your initials, first name, last name, or a combo of both, your name domain is a great way to kickstart your online presence. Take a note from David Andrews:
Your Business DomainThen, of course, is how to represent your business online. What’s the name of your venture? This Canadian based restaurant just opened its doors on Backhouse.xyz:
There are many other things you can think about when coming up with your great domain name – just make sure that you keep conciseness, memorability, and identifiability in the back of your mind and you’ll be good to go.
Get creative and have fun with it! And don’t forget to:
With .xyz, we’re all about supporting online communities where people can come together and share their ideas, regardless of age or location. This week’s #WebsiteWednesday exemplifies exactly this with their .xyz site.
Across the pond in the UK, a team of passionate mothers has dedicated MUMS.xyz as an online resource for parents to turn to each other for advice. Covering everything from the latest educational toys, to fashionable sportswear for the moms (even special discount codes), this parenting blog connects mothers across the UK and supports them with advice, tips, and tricks.
said Emma who represents MUMS.xyz. When asked how they chose their domain name, she shared:
Show your support for devoted mothers by voting for their cause at Virgin Media’s #PitchtoRich!
Winning #PitchtoRich will let MUMS.xyz reach out to even more mothers out there, and offer them the advice, help and support they need in the daily parenting life.
This week’s #WebsiteWednesday is extra special – you might have already even spotted this amazing artist and website yourself!
Last week, CNET’s Stephen Shankland tweeted his .xyz discovery in the wild:
First .xyz domain I found in the wild without looking for it: Artist Charles Levalet. Fantastic street art in Paris. http://t.co/mxz5bQVNP4
— Stephen Shankland (@stshank) April 8, 2015
Charles Leval, aka Levalet, is a 27-year old street artist from northeastern France. His recent work covers the streets of Paris with his hand drawn characters that interact with the urban architecture. Levalet shared his art with the online world through Levalet.org, which he now moved to Levalet.xyz. On his newly designed portfolio site, he is certainly capturing more fans throughout the world!
Does his art look familiar to you? That’s because Levalet was recently featured in huge outlets like Huffington Post, Visual News, the Laughing Squid, and even on the main Instagram account where he racked in 615,000 likes!
If you want to read more about Levalet, we recommend checking out this article on Smash from a few weeks back
On another exciting note, while we were researching through everything Levalet, we also experienced a .xyz meta moment of sorts. Another .xyz site called Alter Minds, which blogs about art, culture, history, and even about hyperrealistic paintings of greasy hamburgers (what?!) also featured Levalet’s artwork! That’s a .xyz reporting on another .xyz. How exciting is that?
Have you spotted any .xyz websites in the wild, #GenXYZ? Keep us posted through Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, and we’ll be sure to feature the best!
And the countdown to 2015 begins! What were your favorite moments of 2014, #GenXYZ? Ours was hands-down launching .xyz in June and building the Generation XYZ® community with all of your support.
For #WebsiteWednesday, we’re flipping things around with an exciting announcement (hint: YouTube) to celebrate another huge milestone: .xyz is the first new domain extension to hit 750,000 registrations!
The only reason why we can feature such amazing sites on the regular is because of you, #GenXYZ. Because bloggers, artists, musicians, photographers, developers, startups, small businesses, and nonprofits like you are pushing awesome .xyz sites live, #WebsiteWednesday exists.
Inspired by all the great .xyz sites, we are super amped to announce our very first video series: Ways to .xyz. Check-out this teaser video for what to look forward to!
“Ways to .xyz” will explore all the ways you can use .xyz to achieve your goals. Whether you’re looking to have your personal voice heard or itching to turn your idea into a business, .xyz can help you jump start that journey.
What ways do YOU use your .xyz? We’re always open to suggestions for our video series, so don’t hesitate to reach out through the usual Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Happy Wednesday, #GenXYZ! How’s the week been treating you?
With the holiday season right around the corner, we’ve been working hard for you, #GenXYZ, to keep growing .xyz as the go-to ending for domains all through 2014 and beyond. A lot has happened since our last post. Did you catch our #Movember Mo progress? Or CEO and Founder Daniel Negari’s latest blog post about small businesses?
Don’t forget to sign up for the .xyz newsletter to get the freshest news straight to your inbox.
And I think you know what’s coming up next: #WebsiteWednesday! We’ve covered a cornucopia of websites (that’s the Thanksgiving spirit speaking through us), and we aren’t showing any signs of slowing down. As the domain for every website, everywhere, we are always excited to see such a diverse range of websites going live!
This week, the spotlight is on music. .xyz domains are, of course, perfect for artist portfolios, but they’re also a great way to show off some tunes to your listeners.
House Of Lords is a Toronto-based music and design blog, bringing you carefully curated tracks and playlists. Are you a fan of house, hip-hop, or bass music? You won’t be disappointed with their selection, and what is more exciting than finding your new favorite song?! Check out their sleek site and follow their SoundCloud account for a midweek pick-me-up.
From the other side of the world is Unmapped. Unmapped is an innovative music collective based in Paris, and performs widely across France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and the U.S. Made up of eleven members, they’re the laboratory for the next generation of music. Focusing on technology and human interactivity, you surely will be listening to the music of the future when you check out Unmapped.xyz!
Did you discover any new favorite songs through these awesome .xyz websites, #GenXYZ? Share your favorites with us through Twitter and Facebook, and as always, let us know if you have any #WebsiteWednesday websites you’d like us to feature. Also, be sure to look forward to new .xyz videos coming out later this week!
If you could get your hands on a 3D printer, what would YOU make, #GenXYZ? With all the rage with 3D printing these days, some of us might overlook the important step before printing: designing. For this week’s #WebsiteWednesday, we had the opportunity to interview the CEO and self-proclaimed “80’s Movies Geek” of UMake.xyz, Evi Meyer.
UMake is an exciting startup based in Palo Alto, CA, launching the newest intuitive 3D design software – all through their awesome .xyz domain name. When deciding on a business name, they wanted something to reflect the flexibility and innovative quality of their product. And that’s exactly what they found with UMake.xyz.
For their online presence, Evi shared with us that “.xyz fit like a glove for [their] UMake brand. It has a double meaning: 1) XYZ can be anything ‘this X, that Y, and Z’ 2) XYZ are 3D space axes. This is exactly what we want our brand to reflect: You can make anything in 3D.”
Now let’s dive-in with a few questions:
UMake: All of these tools are great and have influenced the design software space for many years. The difference between UMake and these software offerings is that:
Mobile is where everyone is right now. We want to leverage the mobile platform and strengthen its position as the new standard for software experiences that cater to hobbyists and professionals.
U: It’s very exciting for us to release something that we have put a ton of effort into. We’re starting to get initial data on how people are using our app and we’re getting tons of great ideas and suggestions from people that tell us how UMake can change the way people look at 3D design – that’s amazing and an interesting experience for us.
U: All we can say is “Wow!” This is the most amazing experience we’ve all had in years. I think the freedom to do something you’re so passionate about, and build something, makes it an awesome experience. The uncertainty can sometimes be less pleasant, but that’s also what’s amazing about it – the process can surprise you and brings you to new heights.
Well, there you have it, #GenXYZ. UMake is changing the face of 3D design and the team is working hard so YOU can seamlessly bring your ideas to life. UMake is looking to add more talented people like you who want to test-drive new design experiences and help improve UMake. This is a great opportunity for designers to try something new. Sign up for the beta program on UMake.xyz now!
Fun fact: they also registered “YouMake.xyz”, just in case some of us might type it in that way. YouMake.xyz will automatically redirect you to their proper site, UMake.xyz. What a great strategy!
Are there any other .xyz websites that you’d like Team XYZ to have a fireside chat with? Let us know through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and tag #GenXYZ.
