WhoIs Web Professional is a very handy utility for checking internet domain availability. Most of us who are involved in internet-related business need to register a lot of domains for various purposes (I have around 30 myself, and I know people who have registered literally hundreds of internet domains!)

When you are looking for a name for a start-up business, it's a really good idea to to search for available domain names. It's also really convenient to be able to keep lists of your search queries, and WhoIs Web lets you do just that, with the ability to export and import your search results.

"Where did the name WhoIs originate?" you might wonder. As is explained in Rietta Solutions documentation, "WhoIs" is a term that originated with the Unix operating system. "WhoIs" was (and still is) a Unix command to search for the identity of the people on the remote server.

When the public discovered the internet, the number of domain names skyrocketed. This led to a need for organizations to manage them, and ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers) published a database that mapped domain names to their owners. It was dubbed the WhoIs database.

Whois Web Professional actually consists of two applications - IP Finder and Whois Web. The application is pretty intuitive, not adding ".com" if you've already typed it. That's something that drives me crazy on some of the domain look-up websites. I can't stop typing ".com" and then I get an error message, and have to hit the back button, and start over. So I was grateful when WhoIs Web didn't beep at me or anything when I did that. It just kept right on going, giving me the information I needed.

You can easily check to find out the registration information, or verify your own information. I found out that one of my most important domains had an outdated mailing address (from 2 years ago). Oops. You can launch sites too, which is very handy while you are doing your research.

But maybe the coolest thing WhoIs Web Professional does is to integrate into Internet Explorer. Sometimes you might be surfing the net, and think, "I wonder who owns this domain?" Now you don't have to drop everything and remember how to get to a look-up site. Just click on the Internet Explorer toolbar icon, and the domain registration information pops up in a little window right away.

Sometimes you need to know your IP address. I needed to know my IP address desperately one time when we were was adding a computer to our network, and it wasn't going so well. If we had owned WhoIs Web Professional at the time, it would have been much easier on my nerves.

Anyway, you can look up your IP address, or use IP Lookup to find out the owner of an IP address, with WhoIs Web Professional. Why would you need to know that? Well, for one thing, if you are doing any kind of secure processing, the IP information might tell you that the person placing the order is not actually where he says he is! Having this IP information can reduce the risk of fraud.

So, yes, whether you are a budding internet entrepreneur, a seasoned veteran or a complete newbie, WhoIs Web Professional can be quite a nice addition to your utility collection, and even give you an edge over your competition. Rietta Solutions says they've had not one support issue pop up in 6000 downloads and counting, so it's safe to say you'll find the program worry-free and easy to use.

For more information about WhoIs Web Professional, click here.

The Great Mind Review Team
Great Mind Inc