You've got enough to worry about with your new Web 2.0 startup without having to come up with a clever name - never mind a matching domain name that's actually available.
Well, why not take advantage of Dot-o-mator, a crafty little web app that reaches deep into its dictionary and outputs a list of possible domains that would make Dr. Seuss proud.

Of course, coming up with a combination is only half the battle. You've got to somehow find one that hasn't been snatched up by some underhanded domain prospector. Dot-o-mator makes that easy, too, giving you one-click access to a multi-name availability check.

It's a great brainstorming tool, and can be a huge help in the struggle to brand your new web venture. We like it for the possibility of setting up private Gmail service on a domain like "skablab.com."

dnScoop is an online tool that bunches many popular domain lookup tools into one.

It's a location where users can check out the traffic of a particular domain, see the domains history, popularity, PageRank, count inbound links, and perhaps the coolest feature, get a site's dollar value report.

Start off by entering your chosen URL, and then choose a category from the 10 supplied. dnScoop will spit out the results pretty quickly after running through a number of checks and balances.

For instance, in a search on downloadsquad.com, we see that the domain has a Google PR value of 6 with 1,390,153 inbound links. Alexa traffic ranks are provided, as well as the number of indexed pages downloadsquad.com has in major search engines. Last but not least, the most interesting feature, the value report. dnScoop takes all of the above results and calculates them with a special formula to give them a dollar amount. In this case, downloadsquad.com is valued at $5,654,000. And of course you can show this amount off with your very own valuation button to add to your website.

It's a neat figure to show off to your friends, but I wouldn't base any real life transactions on dnScoop data.

Microsoft has an incredible offer on the table right now. Free domain names! Can it really be all that? Microsoft is offering free domains through its Office Live program for businesses. The free package consists of:

• Free domain name and web hosting
• Web site design tools
• 500MB of web storage
• 25 email accounts
• Web site reports
• Search engine advertising tool

So what about the domain name? Does Microsoft own it? I dug a little bit to find out that no, Microsoft indeed doesn't. Its you who is the registered owner. It is registered through Melbourne IT, who is owned by Microsoft, but the domain can be transferred after 60 days of signing up with Office Live, with no penalties.

After checking to see if your domain of choice is available, you do have to provide payment information for verification. Follow the steps, and you are hot on the path to some nice free web space, and domain name. Way to go Microsoft! Who doesn't like free domains?

There are additional offers in the mix as well. A Live Essentials offer for $19.95/month for 1GB of storage, and an Office Live Premium offer with 2GB of storage and 50 email accounts for $29.95/month.

[Tip from Deran Decker]

WordPress.com has finally unveiled a feature that a lot of people have been waiting for for a long time: domain registration and mapping. Until now, your WordPress.com blog could only have an address like example.wordpress.com, but today you can set up your own domain name like example.com and have your WordPress.com blog show up there, which previously was only possible using lame tricks like redirection or frames. This is a trick TypePad and others have been doing for a long time, and which the WordPress.com folks have been promising for almost as long, so I'm happy to see it finally happening. If you already own a domain name, domain mapping will cost you $10 per year, or you can register one on the setup page for a total of $15 per year, which isn't a bad deal. As an added bonus, if you already have readers that know your .wordpress.com address, they'll automatically be redirected to your new domain name. Cool.

AOL not only plans to offer 5GB free online storage space to web users in September, but also free personalized email domains (one per user). According to the press release on Time Warner's home page, AOL will be giving out free email domains, where you can setup up to 100 aliases to use with your domain. The service will be called the "AOL My eAddress" service, and users will be able to use .com or .net domains to customize their email addresses. This service will apparently tie in with AIM, AIM Pages, and other AOL services. Looks like AOL is trying to integrate all their services and give users one easy way to identify themselves outside of the AOL.com and AIM.com domains. AOL is leading the way with this. Other services out there have a "managed custom domain" area like Gmail and Windows Live. AOL is the first I know of to hand them out. Woot!

If you asked me to name all the Google domain names I know off the top of my head, I could probably give you 10 or so. According to this site, however, the real number of domain names owned by Google is at least 510. Google apparently owns at least one domain name starting with every letter of the alphabet, plus a few that start with numbers. Many of them are pretty obvious, but there are some curiosities, too, like atlantis9.org, which redirects to a Chinese university domain, and allevil.org, which redirects to Google's home page. Many of the domains, including those two, don't seem to actually be owned by Google, but point to IPs that belong to Google.

Ah, Ajax. How fond I am of thee. Instant Domain Search is what it sounds like: As you type in the entry field, it shows you in real time whether the .com, .net, and .org domain names are available. If the domain is available it presents you with a number of registrar options (I wish it showed prices next to each), and if it's not available it gives you options for back-ordering, Alexa query, and so on. Instant Domain Search also has a handy feature that lets you save searches (in a cookie) by pressing Ctrl+S. Of course, Instant Domain Search is getting referral bonuses for every domain registered through it, but I can't fault it for making some money. I think for brainstorming the name of your next web startup it could definitely come in handy.

The Washington Post is running an interesting article about typosquatting, i.e. running a web site with an address similar to a legitimate site (e.g. "bistbuy.com") solely for the purpose of filling it with ads, and how not only the squatters, but also Google, are making a killing on it. Unsurprisingly, many of the ads on typo domains are served by Google's AdSense, and Google is making millions from them. In its defense, Google says it will suspend the AdSense accounts for a domain if a copyright owner complains that it is "confusingly similar."

I do a lot of domain name lookups, some for actual business or research reasons, many just out of curiosity. For quite awhile I used Whois.sc because it was handy: you could type in whois.sc/example.com in any browser's address bar to go straight to the WHOIS record without any fuss (no EULAs, TOSes, CAPTCHAs, or logins), and it had some other nice features like looking up .com/net/org/us/etc. domain names at the same time and prominently displaying expiration dates. Yesterday, however, I did a domain lookup in the usual way and found something completely new: DomainTools.com. For a second I feared the worst—that Whois.sc had been bought out by some company that was going to rain on my parade—but as it turns out, Whois.sc just got rebranded and retooled, and, believe it or not, it's better than ever. The page layout is much improved, the thumbnail images are much bigger and, perhaps best of all, the whois.sc/example.com shortcut still works (and DomainTools assures us that it will stay in operation indefinitely. Unfortunately, some of Whois.sc/DomainTools' services, like reverse lookups and domain histories still require (free) membership, but it always makes me happy when a free service changes and it turns out to be for the better.

Some of the news that's fit to blog from around the world and throughout the day. Here's your daily bits of news...

• A new community tech preview of Vista should be coming out "in a few weeks" according to Josh's Windows Weblog.
• Speaking of Microsoft, you can download a trial version of BizTalk Server 2006 if you're into that sorta stuff.
• BetaNews reports MobiTV is partnering with Microsoft to bring its services to Windows Mobile and XP. Which means Windows DRM and codecs for everyone, hooray!
• BoingBoing links to an analysis of what .COM domains are left unregistered. I'd say there's one obsessive-compulsive with one less thing on his to do list, but this is great info.
• There's a great link on digg on 10 ways to optimize Firefox. Does it work? On my Mac, not really, on my PC, yeah, mostly.
• PaidContent notes C|net has started a college-oriented site called CollegeLive. Facebook is still crying in the corner, unable to comment.
• Sales and Marketing has a nifty piece on "The World According to Google." Worth a read, even if it's a little fluffy. Let's face it, but for the grace of Google goes online marketing...
• And Om Malik says what we all feared, MySpace is hotter than we wish to believe. He calls it "the new black." Heaven help us.

Again, if you have news, send it to our tips page.

Marcus Vorwaller has a blog called Best Tool for the Job, and his most recent post does the name proud: In How to Find a Great Domain Name, Marcus has assembled a list of a half-dozen sites that will help you find--wait for it--a great domain name for your new business, blog, or heinous shock site. My favorite is JustDropped, which lets you search domain names that have expired in the last week, last 30 days, or even the last few hours.