Show HN: Ishim – find available one-word domain names
ish.im
ish.im
This Domain Tool can help you:
- Find one-word names (support English, Spanish, Dutch, and French)
- Bulk check those names with the flexible option with extensions
Available for MacOS, Windows and Linux
Why a desktop app? I used some name suggestion web app and someday, they just went offline or disappear.
Hope you find it useful. Feedback and question are welcome
The author has answered and stated multiple time here that the reason he made this a local app is because if the website that the tool is hosted on is down or gone, then you are dead out of water.
That’s why he made a local tool.
And no, the tool does not still rely on some application/webserver. He has stated that it only requires reaching out to the Whois servers.
note I used “he” but probably should have used “they” as I have no idea on the gender identification of the author. What is the proper way to just use “the author” in place of he/she/they?
Regarding availability what exactly about making a web app restricts you from offering a downloadable copy?
Regardless it looks like a web version is now on the roadmap according to the site.
I was just attempting to summarize the author’s reasoning for making a nonweb/local application. And in all honesty the author can and should do what the author wants and what they feel is best.
There just seemed to be unwarranted and frankly odd “outrage” about it in a lot of comments.
Furthermore, now that it’s being framed as a paid product for this discussion, in my view, I believe they will be more successful in sales of a paid “piece of software” vs a webapp/SaaS/monthly model.
Likely this was part of their reasoning of going down this path if I had to guess.
No need to place or assume blame on the other commentors for not telling you about what was in the page.
> Furthermore, now that it’s being framed as a paid product for this discussion, in my view, I believe they will be more successful in sales of a paid “piece of software” vs a webapp/SaaS/monthly model.
This seems like another thing you are forcing onto "what a webapp must be". Nowhere in making a webapp is it required to use a subscription model.
Another way to think about it is since it's not using desktop integration specific functionality it's already an offline copy of the webapp right now as is with Electron. The app is just effectively browser restricted to that Electron version. Removing that restriction does not relate to changing the offline static site delivery model nor a change in the payment model.
> Likely this was part of their reasoning of going down this path if I had to guess.
No need to keep guessing. As you said the author has already responded to the comments. As I said the page already promises an upcoming web version. There is no need for theoreticals.
That said, I will be working on the web version.
For the people who don't looking for domain names at least once/twice a week, you won't need this app. I try to build it for people who like to look for available domains
(indigodaddy) Thanks and you're on point. Just to clarify, there are some features that can't run as JS on the client-side. ElectronJS allows using NodeJS code as well.
"he" is good.
I applied (and received access on my second attempt) about a decade ago for .com access. Among other things, I ran a check for any words in my spellcheck dictionary that were not already taken as .com domains. There is a reason for all the silly spellings in domain names today; I don't recall the first words that were available, but they were not short nor desirable for a domain name. There were also no 3 alphanumeric ascii character domain names left, at the time.
I applied through Verisign. But, they are currently directing folks to apply via ICAN directly.
https://www.verisign.com/en_US/channel-resources/domain-regi...
Can you tell me if the info has registration dates? I have a use case where I'd love to do some bulk analysis related to domain squatting, but I've never been able to find a decent way I can make bulk queries against all the services I'd want to check.
The purpose of my request was for a personal research project to satisfy curiosity. My initial motivation was that there were things that seemed to be true about the distribution of available .com domains, and I wanted to see what the reality was. And, using NS queries would not scale.
I looked for the shortest English dictionary words available, percentage of various length domain names still available (alpha only and alphanumeric; with single numeral, two numeral digits, etc.), for non-words I looked at the distance from the closest English dictionary word, collected the patterns of common permutations of dictionary words into domain names, I monitored change rate, etc.
I've never "used" the information learned except to be able to speak with a little more authority in a single conversation where the subject matter came up. But, it was interesting to me :)
This is part of the reason why domain search is often slow even on popular sites like GoDaddy or Namecheap. They want to give you very accurate results, which takes longer.
Source: I'm fighting this accuracy problem all the time for the search at https://domain.garden
I went looking for a personal domain probably about 7 years back and wanted something short... it was disheartening to see the percentage of short domains that were just being squatted, and blatantly so. One guy even made his living off of brokering 1 letter domains. Eventually I found my first+last initials on a 2 letter tld that somehow hadn't been completely bought up (1 letter domains were long gone though) and have used that ever since with email reminders and calendar reminders everywhere so I never forget to renew!
Not trying to hate on you, genuinely curious why you chose this route. Sometimes using the tools you are most comfortable with at the time is the path to the highest short term productivity.
If you mean why a desktop app: I've been using some web-based tools. Somehow, they don't last (ie. namemesh, or domainsfortherestofus that @pwdisswordfish8 mention went offline for sometimes).
Then I thought having a desktop app would be great. For long term, you don't have to worry the site is down.
Cmon man, let’s try to be realistic.
If GH pages goes down, you wait for it to come back. The point is that GH pages won’t disappear because of passage of time (ie you forget to pay hosting bill or something). It doesn’t guarantee 100% uptime but it doesn’t have to. The desktop download doesn’t guarantee 100% availability either.
If the tool is that critical to your workflow, you save it offline or host it on a redundant location (there are many free static site hosting services available: cloudflare worker sites, digitalocean apps, S3 — take your pick, maybe one has the uptime guarantees you desire, GH was just an example. Or host it in multiple)
I'll add a proper link to linux
Can it be learned, or are these people just born with a flair for picking styles that work well universally?
If you mean about the app: I use BlueprintJS, blueprintjs.com (similar to Bootstrap, pretty simple to use)
In a similar vein, but more focused around finding similar sounding names or creating a mashup of two words is Mashword (https://mashword.com). We're working on improving performance and reducing noise in the result set, but if you are patient, then even in its current incarnation, it produces some novel results.
I used it a few times, like it a lot. No wonder, I tried to find it but couldn't. Thought I remember the name wrong
Also when there are a lot of domains to check you could check them in parallel, otherwise it gets quite slow to wait for the results (but that might be an inherent limitation of the Whois servers).
In general, each LTD can have around 300-1000 queries per day (the numbers is not officially listed, just from discussion on some forums)
Great advice to check them in parallel. Thanks!
Maybe they just wanted to play around with Electron, they don't owe you anything.
OP's project is literally the reverse of taking a traditional desktop software, e.g. a graphic editor, and making it into a web app. Here, it's something that naturally belongs to a web site, but instead packed up into an installable desktop app.
I'd be really curious to see the rationale behind this.
I've been using some web-based tools. Somehow, they don't last (ie. namemesh, or domainsfortherestofus that @pwdisswordfish8 mention went offline for sometimes).
Then I thought having a desktop app would be great. For the long term, I don't have to worry the site is down.
You concern as stated does not apply.
It's much easier to install spyware via an actual desktop app than via a web app.
I know I am echoing half of the other comments here, but this does really need to be a webapp.
They're great tools, but all went offline for sometime now.
And that's why I build a desktop app
There is no official limit number of requests, but discussion from some forums, each TLD has a limit of 300-1000 queries each day.
In any case, you hit the limit, it will open up again. Unlike online services, they haven't been back since
What interests you about the app compared to searching directly at Namecheap etc?
The main feature is to generate one-word or short domain names with different recipes, and help you find the available ones. Domain providers don't have the name generator feature.
The left and right of the three buttons are chopped off. And it just lets me scroll right into a white oblivion.
When using the desktop app, there are 3 situations the app communicate with online servers:
1. For WHOIS queries, the app communicates directly to the WHOIS servers, no middleman
2. For payment using Paypal's smart button. They might collect some data for fraud detection.
3. When checking for updates or form submissions. The app will send the only necessary information to our server. For updates, we need "platform" (i.e win32, darwin, etc.) and "version" (the current Domain Tool version, i.e "0.0.21"). For contact form submissions, we need "email", "message", and the "type" of form submission
Note that when submit a contact form, the server don't collect your IP. But as the nature of request, the server can read your IP.
P/s: This remind me to add the privacy section
When activate your application, we need "email", "paidDate" (optional)
Sorry to sound negative, it's just... the electron fad is getting really old.
Then I thought having a desktop app would be great. For long term, you don't have to worry the site is down.
What I meant was, you don't have to worry if the tool you're using suddenly disappears.
I tried React Native (only support JS on the client-side, need to build native modules to run some core functions for languages), Flutter (a few missing utilities, not so familiar).
I have answer why a desktop app in other comments so I won't repeat. Electron is the best fit in this situation.
The whole concept of "discounting criticism" based on... what, exactly? is preposterous.
but I'm not downloading an application just for a simple use case that a website could take care of.
(Otherwise I'd have a bunch of unnecessary apps I use rarely or not at all after the first one or few times. This is what happened with phone apps-- the phone app market got saturated and people rapidly stopped caring about phone apps).
Instead, I'd add your "Look up <some value proposition> domain name" website's link to a document I have on resources for marketing-- a document that includes links to business name generators.
But an app? Nah. That's overkill: Your app does not need access to my computer. I'll find an alternative (hosted online) and use it instead.
Was there any other motivations to go electron, maybe to learn idk
The great domainsfortherestofus.com used to exist, but seems to have gone offline in the last couple of months.
I used namemesh.com sometimes, it's gone offline for some time as well
Ooooh, very nice. A welcome addition to my anti-personnel vocabularly. Let me put it right next to the tittle and somewhat more pedestrian compartmentalization.
People who refer to domain "extensions" share something in common with people who misapply the term "backslash". Nerdy enough to have heard of (file name) "extensions" and "backslashes", not nerdy enough to care whether the term is actually appropriate for what they're trying to refer to in the present. TLDs are not "extensions".
The occasional domain registrar that refers to them this way in marketing copy make me wince the hardest. They don't have the excuse of co-opting technically incorrect but extremely popular misnomers. It's more like, if anything, they're most likely to be the cause of people using the wrong term, if ever it were to become a trend.