It's interesting to look at the extensions for which they have received several competing applications. Those will probably be of high interest in the future. It also gives an idea of where the investors currently are...

Here are the gTLDs with some competing applications:

SMX Paris 2012 takes place today & tomorrow. I'll be presenting at 2 sessions:

• How to get out of Google Penalties - june 7th, 16:30
• Affiliation strategies - Search Marketing beyond the 1st click - june 8th 11:30

SMX Paris is one of the two only serious SEO conferences in France. I'm pretty excited to be there ;)

I believe everyone doing SEO should keep in mind that SEO alone is useless. Optimizing a site for search engines doesn't do much, unless you're doing an SEO contest, maybe... but I'd still argue that doing an SEO contest doesn't do anything useful either.

If you're doing SEO, ask yourself: what's the point? More specifically: what happens next? People find your site in web engines. Some click through. Now what?

Below are some additional topics you may want to think about. (No, I'm not talking about PPC!) And what's more: contrary to SEO, those topics still have a lot of margin for improvement in many verticals, even the juicy ones:

• Copy writing
• Landing page optimization
• Navigation optimization & site usability
• Branding
• Customer loyalty
• Customer experience
• Trust factors
• User engagement
• Community building (onsite)
• Facebook & co.
• Mailing list buildings
• Email deliverability
• Mobile browsing

Email deliverability, for example, can be quite an interesting topic for SEOs; there is definitely a parallel to be drawn between how many factors influence your position in search engines and how many factors influence whether or not your email is going to be delivered to the recipients' inboxes, spam boxes or not delivered at all... (You guys should do email deliverability contests to Hotmail for a change! :p )

But beyond that, the list above contains areas which are less technical but require more creativity instead. I believe these are the areas where you will find the most growth in 2012.

• The best place in town is called "Zum Goldenen Kalb" - Utzschneidertr.1 80469 München. The filet is just as juicy as the best you'd get in the US... and the spinach... don't even get me started on the spinach! (and it's MMWYE approved ;)
• The Hilton Am Tucherpark hotel restaurant is also pretty decent. The filet is less awesome than am Goldenen Kalb but the lentils... yes the lentils... are just the best I ever had! Seriously!

Note: if you wonder what's up with spinach, lentils and slow carbs in general, check out the 4 hour body book by Tim Ferris ;)

Other places of interest:

• Cafe Rischart am Marienplatz for all sorts of cakes ;)
• There's also that awesome Spatenhaus an der Oper (near the Opera) with the insane schnitzl... some of the best I ever had ;)

Here are the top 10 domain sales in 2010:

1. Sex.com - $13,000,000
2. Slots.com - $5,500,000
3. Dating.com - $1,750,000
4. Photo.com - $1,250,000
5. Flying.com - $1,100,000
6. Zip.com - $1,058,830
7. Poker.org - $1,000,000
8. Credit.fr - $851,875
9. Guns.com - $800,000
10. Ringtones.com - $750,000

I'm speaking at SMX Paris 2010. I'm actually giving a presentation in 3 different sessions:

• Architecturer un Site - june 15th, 12:00
• Un design web optimisé pour les moteurs de recherche - june 15th, 15:30
• Contenu dupliqué et tag "canonical" - june 16th 11:30

I am pretty excited for this is the first time SMX comes to Paris... I'm also eager to meet the French SEO scene and see what they have to say about the poor state of search in France...

I'll be speaking at A4U expo in Munich (May 18-19th, 2010).

I'll be on the super affiliate panel on Day 2 about "Tips to Increase Productivity & Profit". Pretty exciting!

I guess I'll leave the tech tips to the other panelists and focus on some hugely underrated secrets... including... marshmallows! (I kid you not!)

One quick and entertaining way to grok that study is to watch this short TED video:

You can find more info in this article from the New Yorker.

If you read through it you will learn that one secret to resit temptation, delay gratification and reach higher goals is to stop thinking about the gratification and focus on something else. Better yet, it seems actually possible to train your mind to do just that...

I guess one immediate reality check for you out there is: can you delay playing X-Box or watching Lost in favor of finishing this new project today? In other words D.I.F.N? I know I can... but that's only because I have no X-Box and I don't like Lost... It was a whole different story at the times I was hooked on Boston Legal... ;)