Coles-Myer hadn't registered www.colesmyer.com as part of their brand protection strategy. So some enterprising person decided to register the .com and proceeded to redirect all the web traffic to www.woolworths.com.au for fun.

Priceless...

No sympathy for Visy on this one...

Tell anyone who has had anything to do with printing boxes and see if they act surprised. The cartel in cardboard boxes is a rort that everyone in the design industry has been aware of for years.

From my perspective, this cartel has been damaging the image of Australian fruit growers overseas fo years.

Consider this. I went to Italy in the last few years as part of a trade mission to investigate packaging and branding. It was devastating on a number of fronts.

Firstly, I was taken by one of the largest packing houses to a cool room to show me Australian Produce. There they were...boxes crumpled in the corner. The packaging had not withstood the sea journey and was leaking the contents onto the floor. This was typical of the packaging and the state it arrived.

They want to do business with us...its just that we don't make the grade.

Secondly, an Italian distributor showed me these beautifully made full colour boxes and specially designed lids. When I asked him how much it has cost him to have it printed he said, just one dollar per box. There was not one gram of recycled paper. It was strong and perfectly printed and designed.

The reason why the Australian product loses its edge on the international front is from this cartel in packaging.

For one dollar the Australian growers can only expect a weak box with high recycle content and poorly printed in spot colours. (Designers even have to allow a 5mm poor printing margin for error)

Compared to any other first world country Australia's packaging is inferior and looks shabby on arrival because of it.

Our growers could not afford, nor should they have be paying the price this cartel was asking. As a result, thisd cartel isw packaging products affected our export industry and Australia's image abroad.

No sympathy from me guys....I am on the side of the growers…I hope you learned your lesson, so we can start the process of rebuilding our export image overseas.

An interesting situation arose with an associate/client re the purchase of a domain name. It should not have surprised me, but it did.

It was my recommendation for Joe Matthew from Seoecom.com to take on the mantle of SEOJoe and suggested that he buy the domain www.seojoe.com.

He is one of the top writers and professionals in this space as well as having the one of the few name that can rhyme with SEO.(JOE)

Scientist have done some interesting work with rhymes. People attach more credibility to phrases said in rhyme over non rhymes especially in positioning. So "SEOJoe, is the way to go" for example would come over as more true than "SEO is the right choice".

Iteration which SEOJoe falls into as well, is an easy memory device to remember a name. Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse...Walt certainly knew what he was doing.

So, from a professional recommendation, right on the money.

However, here is the issue I totally overlooked. There was one bad report that had been linked to the name, previously.

So now Joe, who is such an impeccable person, has been put in the position where he has to manage this slur from another business which has now been transferred to his new online identity.

The person that he is, he offers the company that posted the report about the old entity compensation of what they had lost in his services. He didnt need to do that...to me this speaks volumes about who I know Joe is. And no doubt he will manage the issue because of his immense character (and internet capabilities).

But here is the rub.

The worth of any domain name can only be realised to its full value, if it is a virgin domain. If it has been used before...then it is a case of buyer beware and reputation value needs to be cfactored into the consideration.

It's like buying a used company, How do you know if there are any outstanding claims against the company. That is why most people don't go there.

On the web, you need to make sure that there are no outstanding claims against the reputation of the domain name.

To me, it just added a whole other layer to buying domain names, that I had considered.