Interesting to me is that they wrote a script to query whois.net when drafting the names up -- I may be misremembering, but I think whois.net sells queries to squatters, meaning if you come up with something really good, and don't purchase it immediately, it's possible that it'll be gone before you actually go to purchase.

Whois.sc uses this as a differentiator for their service, and claim that they don't, so I would suggest at least looking for policy on the whois broker that you're using before writing a script to query them.

According to Wikipedia, it's called Domain Name Front-Running:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running

Network Solutions have been accused of doing it loads of times, and I think it's not that an uncommon practise for the larger guys.

i use namecheap, and will often query a name as well.

i have found that over the course of weeks, i have not lost out on a good name.

I recently used pickeydomains.com to find a new product name. Best $50 I spent. I got a ton of name suggestions and there was a dozen really good ones for me to choose from before I decided on the one I liked the best (http://githaven.com). Not only do i highly recommended this service, but I know I will use them again in the future. I felt a lot better about this name than in the past where I had to choose from the dozen names that I was able to come up with (most of which were only ok, not great).

I'm not sure that a good name has to be "Illustrative of our service". This can be good or bad, depending on the case.

I personally favor names that can let you change course in the future. That said, the new name "OfficeDrop" is general enough if you already have a line of business.

This is basically the approach we used when we named http://HeavyInk.com - right down to the script to check for available .com names!

... except we did it pre-launch, so we didn't have customers to query.

All in all, I think that it's a good approach.

The post doesn't mention this enough, and maybe it's fairly obvious to most, but make sure you choose something that doesn't end up causing you legal harm of some sort.

I have a friend right now who's dealing with a company that found a name that was "easy to say" and "highly spellable" that ended up basically ripping off his product name. It'll be interesting to see what happens with that, but I thought it was worth mentioning since some people get so caught up on domains that they forget there's more to it than that.

I always think of 37signals when it comes to naming something, too: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch13_Name_Hook.php

Several threads about this cool service already, but it's worth a mention:

http://www.nxdom.com