The popular Domainr service comes as easy and clean as it gets. They call themselves a “domain name search engine” and solely focus on the domain search experience. Searching for a domain name is very intuitive and fast indeed. If you found a name you can choose from a list of registrars where you can register the respective domain.
Apart from the standard.COM, .NET & .ORG domains, Domainr’s strength is surely the ability to find domain hacks with exotic country code top-level domain extensions e.g. Burri.to (.TO - Tonga), lifestream.ms (.MS - Montserrat) or cli.gs (South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands).
Domainr makes the domain search process fun and is probably the easiest tool to find creative domain names in 2009.
Domaintyper is another simple search tool for checking domain name availability and generating domain hacks but offers some nifty extras on top. One of them is a Web 2.0 Domain Name Generator that generates available names such as sixtor.com, snapsink.com, skafire.com, 6graph.com, threeserv.com, or atomslot.com. These names can be registered through links to various registrars. The second highlight is the DomainTyper iPhone application which brings the search and recommendation feature to your iPhone so you can check domain names on the go.
Domain Pigeon’s approach is different from the search tools mentioned before. It automatically generates lists of available domains as well as Twitter names. The names are displayed in different colors, depending on how many people have shown interest in a certain term. The darker the color the more popular the name. You can also order the lists by length, popularity and show only domains or Twitter usernames. Examples of generated domain names are ablebo.com, meliori.com, minecafe.com, or shopshost.com.
Namethis cannot only be used for domains but also for names in general. Instead of spending hours and hours in brainstorming sessions you just have to describe a project or product and receive name suggestions by the Namethis community. The service costs a fee of $99 which is distributed to the members that suggested the top three naming ideas.
The Namethis community is a good resource to get ideas for your product or website.