Domain registration is really only the half of it. Having just gone through a product naming, I was stunned how many available or squatted domain names are trad

Domain registration is really only the half of it. Having just gone through a product naming, I was stunned how many available or squatted domain names are trademarked. I would really encourage you to search for any existing trademarks before you contact the owner of the domain you like. It's not going to help you to get X.com only to find out later that X is trade-marked to a company in your space (or even a company in a different space but serving the same target customer as you) via a previously registered XGroup.com or GoX.com or whatever. As a rule, ideas float to the top at the same time so the likelihood of a competitor using some variation of ProjectName.com for a similar service is higher than you think... In addition, I would vote emphatically against creative spelling. At a previous start-up, we got a short pronounceable dot com that was a fusion of two words but it caused us nothing but grief and (probably) lost word of mouth.