Co. buys back Bush library domain name for $35K (AP)

DALLAS - George W. Bush's presidential library domain name has been retrieved after a Web developing company accidentally let it expire — and it apparently came at a high price.

Raleigh, N.C.-based Illuminati Karate paid less than $10 for the http://www.GeorgeWBushLibrary.com domain name and sold it back earlier this year for $35,000 to the library's contracted Web developers, Yuma Solutions, said George Huger, lead Web developer for Illuminati Karate.

Mark Mills, owner of Yuma Solutions, did not immediately return calls seeking comment Thursday.

The Tallahassee, Fla.-based company has a history with the Bush family, hosting Web sites for Bush's 2000 campaign and for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's 1998 and 2002 campaigns.

Records indicate that in March 2007, the George W. Bush Library Foundation, using Yuma Solutions as its contractor, bought the domain name from a private citizen for $3,000. But the registration was set to expire within a few months.

Huger said he grabbed the library name, seeing its potential, while searching through a public list of names that were about to expire, The Dallas Morning News reported in Thursday.

Months later, Huger had received some offers on it, but he declined to provide details.

After the Morning News reported that the library had lost the domain, Mills contacted Illuminati Karate and asked to buy it back, Huger said.

At the time, a library foundation spokesman said officials were unaware that the name had been lost.

Yuma finally reached a deal to buy the Web address back for $35,000, which the company, not the library foundation, apparently paid, Huger said. The site changed hands in April and won't expire until 2013.

Mark Langdale, president of the George W. Bush Library Foundation, said he didn't know about the Web site being lost and recovered. But, he said, he would know if the library had been stuck with a surprise $35,000 expenditure.

The George W. Bush Presidential Center — which will include a library, museum and public policy institute — is being built at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

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Twitter in Gmail will further distract me from using it for email

MG Siegler

I love that Gmail is adding a massive amount of functionality to its service via its Labs area (which allows you to test new features). In the past several weeks, we’ve gained the ability to send SMS chat messages from Gmail, to send video messages and to create to-do lists. I can also access Google Calendar and Google Docs data from small widgets in my Gmail sidebar. And today, a widget has appeared that may let me to close yet another tab in my browser window: TwitterGadget.

While TwitterGadget isn’t made by Google (or Twitter for that matter), its creators are taking advantage of Gmail’s ability to add third-party widgets (similar to what Remember the Milk has done). What you get is a small widget sitting on the left-hand side of Gmail that allows you to not only send tweets (Twitter messages), but look at all of yours. Yes, this gadget includes your friends’ streams, a replies tab, a direct message tab, a favorites tab and an “all” tab.

You can also easily add select symbols to your tweets from a drop-down menu in TwitterGadget. Maybe you’ve seen these before on Twitter but didn’t know how to make them — a heart, a star, a moon, scissors, etc — with TwitterGadget they’re just a click away. Another nice feature is that you can set the rate at which it refreshes your tweet stream.

The user interface of TwitterGadget could use a little work — okay, it’s ugly — but it’s very functional, and it’s also very responsive. I’ll take that over beauty any day (well almost any day).

Now I just need a way to combine Google Reader with Gmail to make it the ultimate time-suck web site.

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Washington Post CEO joins Facebook board

Posted by Caroline McCarthy

Facebook's upper ranks are getting some old-media flavor: Don Graham, chairman and CEO of The Washington Post Co., will join the social network's board of directors in January.

Graham, the son of legendary Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham, has been at the newspaper company since 1971. He is--wait for it--a graduate of Harvard University, which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and several other company executives also attended (like COO Sheryl Sandberg, General Counsel Ted Ullyot, and communications czar Elliot Schrage, who obtained his law degree there).

Don Graham

"Don Graham understands how to build and manage an organization for the long term," Zuckerberg said in a release. "He has made The Washington Post Co. one of the most valued and respected education and media companies while making society more open and understanding. What I most admire about Don is his commitment to build around this purpose--and not just a business. His decision to join our board means that Facebook will benefit from this insight and experience."

Facebook's board consisted solely of Zuckerberg and two early investors--Jim Breyer of Accel Partners and Peter Thiel of the Founders Fund--until veteran entrepreneur Marc Andreessen joined in June, following rumors that Zuckerberg wanted him on the board.

Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline.

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