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  Whois Source 

It's hard to keep a secret on the internet. Whois Source will tell you when a domain name was registered, by who, when it will expire, where it is hosted, whether it has listings in Yahoo or DMOZ, an image of the site.... and historical Whois info for paid members

• Also try WhoisFly.com, BetterWhois, AllWhois or uWhois
• Network Solutions looks up multiple Whois databases, and adds a screenshot of the site
• EchoEcho - one form to get traffic data (from Alexa), server info (NetCraft) and cached snapshots (The Wayback Machine)

 Domainator 

Domainator checks for domain availability, trademarks, translations, definitions, synonyms, rhyming etc.

 AllTheWeb 

This isn't well known, but if enter a URL into the AllTheWeb search box, it will return results from its Domain Investigator:

• META description
• Home page for the site
• Pages that link to it, or contain the URL in their text
• Other pages within the site
• WHOIS info
• Wayback Machine archives of the page
• Open Directory categories it appears in
• Page size
• When it was last updated
• Language of the page

AlltheWeb  

 Check your opposition 

Whois.net will list every already registered domain name with your keyword in it.

• There's also this tool, GooTop, which searches for a keyword in the top-level URLs known by Google

 Dialog Super WHOIS 

Full results cost $3.65, but partial results provide loads of info. The easiest way to see all the domains someone owns.

 My Name Machine 

This little engine will show all the available combinations and abbreviations of your name. Quick and easy.

 Typo Generators 

Use these to find common mispellings of a word

These three are all similar, based on keys near each other, accidentally hit

• WebMaster Brain
• Casino Blasters
• WebMaster Scene

Ohashi
Similar but as a downloadable program. Works well and is free. Generates a file called "generated" that contains the results

KeywordsFinder
Software that is similar to the above links, but can do multiple words at once, free trial does 25% of what the full version ($49) does

SearchSpell
More intelligent than the others

 Dictionary.com 

Gives definitions from several different dictionaries on the results page. Thesaurus looks up Roget's Thesaurus.

• Select either dictionary or thesaurus
  

 Other Info 

I-Domain Digest, published every Tuesday and Thursday, is available in both HTML and text formats. Excellent discussions concerning anything to do with domain names

Domain Name Rights Coalition

DomainInfo - great for checking the availability within all the European or Asian country domains

NameProtect - Is someone else using your name on the web? NameProtect provide an free online trademark and domain name search.

US Patent and Trademark Office - has search facilities

Domain Guidebook - lots of articles on domain registration

Phrase Finder: An excellent tool that I used to use a lot: enter a keyword and get any phrase (ie something that is easy to remember due to the collective conscious/unconscious) - 12,000 phrases in the index. But now it is available by subscription only - a whopping $45 per year. Worth it if you are a domain registering superstar or tabloid journalist (15% of users used it more than 100 times each week), but a bit steep for most of us.

Internic FAQ - all your domain name questions answered, from the controlling body

RIPE WHOIS database - powerful tool for looking up the properties of an IP address

GeoBytes - find the physical location of a website or email

UXN Spam Combat - lots of reverse IP address tools

Verisign Referral LDAP - click on Organization to search for a name, and find out the doamins they own. Only works for domains registered via Verisign, but that's a substantial portion of existing domain names.

Historical WHOIS - goes back to 2002. Also available at Whois Source

Saegis - Look up domains by owner - this is a paid service of roughly $1 per record. Dialog has similar for $3.65 (more info )