Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Change of Ownership

A group of frustrated students prompted a teacher to write:

I have struggled mightily to find a Publisher for Wingsupply.com.  Nothing I can find is accepted as the correct answer by the website.  My students are very frustrated as well.  Please advise how to find this information and also where to go for an answer key.

This makes a better--but harder--search than the original (found here under Who Owns It?: http://21cif.com/rkitp/challenge/evaluation/publisher.swf)
Here's my response:
I'm glad you wrote. Better than being frustrated! There's a lesson for students in this: when you can't find the information you want, try a different source--in this case you went to the author. Well done.

You probably found the right information. I just did the search and the store seems to have changed hands.  It used to be owned by a family. Now it's owned by a larger business. Here are the results from a domain name registry search using GoDaddy:  https://who.godaddy.com/  (this provides more detail than a Whois.net search)

Domain Name: WINGSUPPLY.COM
Registry Domain ID: 3379187_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Update Date: 2014-12-05 18:15:04
Creation Date: 1998-02-27 00:00:00
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2018-02-26 00:00:00
Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC
Registrar IANA ID: 146
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@godaddy.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.480-624-2505
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited
Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Domain Status: clientRenewProhibited
Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Registry Registrant ID:
Registrant Name: John De Marco
Registrant Organization: Brandshopper, LP
Registrant Street: PO Box 20211
Registrant City: Lehigh Valley
Registrant State/Province: Pennsylvania
Registrant Postal Code: 18002
Registrant Country: United States
Registrant Phone: +1.6108375940
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: johnjdemarco@gmail.com

Aha, A new owner--I'll have to update the answer key!
If you go back a couple of years and look at the same site using archive.org, your students will see a different address for the store: 
https://web.archive.org/web/20120112100913/http://www.wingsupply.com/  Students could use archive.org to determine when the store changed ownership (it changed sometime this year).  It's also possible to find information about the change of ownership by querying 
wingsupply change ownership
Aren't you glad you asked?

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