One of my hobbies is finding domain names. I generally don't register them, but I seem to get something out of it anyway (tip: chrismorris.co.uk is available! so is jusm.com - one of the few four letter dot coms that is)

Using 'whois' is incredibly slow, however, so I wrote a small script called 'wis' to make it a pretty quick affair. This should work on Linux and BSD too, but I can only vouch for it on Mac OS X. Download this file, rename it to 'wis', put it in your /usr/bin/ folder (or basically anywhere in your path, ideally), and then chmod +x it. To use from the terminal, just type wis domain.com. If the domain is taken, it tells you instantly, if not, it does a quick check and lets you know if it's available or not (sometimes it has to check because the domain may simply be locked or pending deletion).