Reprinted from Dolan's Virginia Business Observer, Monday, January 15, 2001:

Domain names donated

Williamsburg entrepreneur Gilinda Rogers last week donated a pair of Internet domain names to the College of William and Mary, transferring registration of williamandmary.com and williamandmarycollege.com to W&M, a news release from the school said.

"The Internet is an exciting place," Rogers said. "But it is important for companies and institutions to protect themselves and their future marketing opportunities by using, or at least guarding, variations of their names or brands beyond the most obvious.

The market value of the donated sites has been estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars by independent evaluation, the news release said. Speculated holding value for at least one of the domain names has been estimated at up to $120,000.

Rogers has made an online career out of registering interesting domains and developing Web sites. Her projects include a series of "best of" sites including thebestofUSA.com, homoinUSA.com, bestofNYC.com, bestofAtlanta.com and bestofWilliamsburg.com. Her corporate endeavors include USurf.com Internet development and advertising and Colonial Kids, an E-commerce site being developed by her daughter.

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