In the ever increasing furry over Apple’s upcoming tablet device, many are looking to market indicators for a hint of what’s to come. Now there are two markets that indicate “iPad” as the upcoming tablet name: betting websites and domain name registrations.

Betting website Paddy Power has changed the odds in the Apple tablet naming competition. Yesterday “iPad” had a strong lead over “iSlate” with odds 1/3 and 2/1 respectively. Last night, however, “iSlate” odds improved dramatically from 2/1 to 5/4. While the 1/3 odds for “iPad” remained the same, these changes indicate that the recent “iPad” trademarks may not be as convincing as they were earlier in the week when the news first hit.

Meanwhile, dark horse “iBook” has finally joined the race today jumping in at 4th place with 12/1 odds, just behind “iTablet” which has stayed steady at 10/1 odds since Saturday.

While betters may be growing more indecisive, domain investors and speculators are pointing to “iPad” as the tablet name. In analytics I ran earlier this morning on the number of .COM domains registered over the past 48 hours, the keyword “iPad” increased by 93 domains, “iSlate” increased by 76, “iTablet” scored 14, and “iBook” grabbed fourth place with just 12 domain registrations.

In the last month many trademark filings and a whois record have come to light that point to possible names of Apple’s forthcoming tablet computer. The two names with the most trademarks are “iSlate” and “iPad” with “iTablet” being predicted by at least one Apple blog. While the news, blog, and IP worlds still haven’t decided on a name, the betting world has reached consensus.

European betting website Paddy Power has been running odds on potential Apple tablet names and initially indicated “iSlate” would be the most likely name. Last week they were paying 4/5–less than even money–for “iSlate” and 7/5 odds for “iPad.” The flurry of international trademark activity last week has made big changes to the odds. On Saturday the odds for “iSlate” and “iPad” reversed, giving “iPad” the lead of 1/5 odds before settling down at 1/3 earlier today with “iSlate” running as high as 9/4 before dropping slightly to 2/1.

With odds for the Colts winning the Superbowl at around 1/2, the 1/3 odds for “iPad” make it sound like a sure bet.

Apple has e-mailed selected media for an invitation-only event on January 27th. The invitation indicates that the event will begin at 10:00 AM and will be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco.

Through leaks, rumors, and wild speculation many expect Apple to announce their tablet, possibly called “iSlate.” The blogging and technology press has been jumping since December 24th when MacRumors announced that Apple owned the “iSlate” trademark and domain name.

UPDATE: Fox News has confirmed that the event will focus on the “tablet device, iPhone 4, and a new round of iLife 2010 software.”

The Friday following Thanksgiving is called Black Friday because it is estimated to be the first day of the year that retailers become profitable or get out of the red, and in to the black. While searching for a good Black Friday website on Google I found a lot of different Black Friday websites that showed advertisements and gave daily updates. I wondered how many websites there were, so I did some domain name digging and found the following statistics:
Continue reading…

With the current Swine Flu outbreak getting more and more press the domain speculators have come out in force. In just the last week there has been a 6155% increase in dotcom, dotnet, and dotorg domains containing the string “swineflu”.
Continue reading…