I was recently asked why I didn’t own www.olivierblanchard.com. My answer was a frustrated mix of grunts, shrugs and frowns. Why? Because the cold hard ugly truth is that another Olivier Blanchard beat me to it.
And just so you know, that sucks- at least for me.
Just so you know, there are four very distinct Olivier Blanchards in my universe:
1. Me.
2. The MIT professor, author, and international Economics superstar (whom I hope to accidentally meet in an airport terminal someday). If you google me, you get him instead. He is basically the James Bond of Economics.
3. My paternal grandfather – who was Cavalry Officer in both WWI and WW2 and after whom I was named.
4. This guy. The guy who nabbed the best url in the world if you happen to share the same name as yours truly. The guy who robbed me of my dream to claim ownership of olivierblanchard.com, at least for now.
For the record, I don’t hate olivier Blanchard #4. I really don’t. I bet he’s a super nice guy. I’d probably end up really liking the guy if we ever shared a few beers and started talking about design or visual arts. (He’s a photographer, which I guess carries its own layer of irony.) I just really wish I had beaten him to it because now I’m a little bit screwed. I am considering other options to expand my very own little corner of the web universe, but none as good and simple as olivierblanchard.com.
Foo.
Try having a name like Chris Wilson.
Without even hitting Google, there was at least one other guy named Chris Wilson in my High School alone. Here are a the Chris Wilsons that I’ve come across to date via alerts:
1. Chris Wilson – The former drummer for the band Good Charlotte. He left the band in 2005 for health reasons.
2. Chris Wilson – The Australian blues harmonica player.
3. Chris Wilson – The MMA and UFC fighter. He seems to be a decent figher with a record of 12W-5L-1D.
4. Chris Wilson – A group program manager for Internet Explorer Platform and Security at Microsoft.
5. Chris Wilson – Owner of a porn site with an unprintable word in the name, and now controversial photographer in Iraq and Afghanistan.
6. Chris Wilson – Defensive End for the Washington Redskins.
7. Christopher B. Wilson, M.D. – A professor of Immunology and Pediatrics at the University of Washington.
8. Christopher M. Wilson – A fallen hero in the Iraq war.
9. Chris Wilson – Member of the Northwestern University men’s golf team
10. Christopher Wilson – Photographer that recently published a book of his photographs. I’m actually quite a fan of his work.
Well there’s my top 10. There are sure to be more Chris Wilson’s out there. I know there’s a few more at my gym and that use the same auto shop that I do, because every time they try to look me up in the computer they end up having to go down to the address fields to determine which CW I am.
No, olivierblanchard.me for you?
On a side note, gautsch.com is a slap in the face to all Gautsch’s in the web design business.
Chris, I feel for you.
Bear, the .me thing might work!
The gautsch.com could be worse:
1. Comic Sans was not used in the creation of the site.
2. ‘Kontakt’ has a pretty sweet Teutonic quality to it.
Grab http://www.olivierblanchard.me, I finally got http://www.scottwhite.me.
All this talk about .me and I broke down and snatched up chriswilson.me.
+1 for Chris Wilson the brand strategist and blogger! Take that 1000′s of other Chris Wilsons out there.
I’m a Chris Wilson too. Maybe we should all get together and really confuse some people. I actually new another Chris Wilson in town here but he died of a Heroin overdose.
After reading this…I immediately purchased katefarrar.com ! Haha…thanks for your insights…they are much appreciated!