Date: Fri 21-Aug-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

iinfo-Names

Full Text:

INTERNET INFO FOR REAL PEOPLE: The Name Game

By Bob Brand

Location! Location! Location! Catch phrase of all real estate brokers. When

moving to cyberspace, we find an old bottle with new whine.

If a websurfer enters URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) with domain names like

www.icecream.com, www.homes.com, www.bicycle.com, or www.furniture.com they

have a general idea where they will land. If ".com", ".org", ".edu", ".gov" or

".mil" (top level domains) are part of the URL, the implied address is

"www.somename.com.us" meaning the United States. Any number of new businesses

(and individuals as well) approach the Internet only to find that many of the

good names have either been taken or are parked (not in use yet).

Now there is a bit more elbow room for newcomers. A handful of small countries

is selling domain names under the following: Ascension Island (.ac), St.

Helena (.sh), British Indian Ocean Territory (.io), Turkmenistan (.tm), Island

of Niue (.nu), and Tongo (.to). Typically, these domain names sell for $60 to

$100. This presents the opportunity for a website address like:

www.takeit.to/thebank. (Normally, the name might be www.takeit.to/thebank.htm

but the .htm extension is not required). There is no shortage of catchy or

clever domains on the net. More are coming.

Vanity Tags

We are stuck with the metaphor of the Internet SuperHighway (ISH). Terms like

traffic jams, (bandwidth constriction), storms (very high message congestion),

potholes (404 File Not Found messages), roadkill, (sites flattened by

competition), and speed bumps (slow loading websites) abound. The vanity

license plates found on cars and ATVs will translate into personalized home

page addresses over time on the web. Currently, Network Solutions Inc (NSI)

controls the .com, .net and .org names under a monopoly imposed by the federal

government. For $70 you can own an address for two years. Continued ownership

runs $35 per year. The monopoly will end by October 1, 1998. It is expected

that new generic suffixes like ".info", ".shop" and others will be added to

the mix shortly. This could open websites with a name like:

www.2tired.to.shop. This could evolve from fad to trend and become the next

tamaguchi for over-educated geeks with tricked-out DEC alphas boxes. It

doesn't stop there.

More Names

Celebrities and pseudo-celebrities are getting into the act. The aging rock

star David Bowie plans to launch an ISP (Internet Service Provider) with the

site name davidbowie.com. (At this writing there is a countdown on this

website prior to the unveiling.) The cost will be $19.95/month. The press

release indicates there will be news, chat rooms, Bowie music and of course

e-mail. For those people who jump on this right away, they will be able to get

a cache address of your_name@davidbowie.com. Availability of local pops

(points of presence) for toll-free access has not been listed.

Another rock group KISS (Gene Simmons and the other members of the zebra-faced

band) may, also, plan ISP launch soon. We might be seeing website names like:

www.kiss/my/(fill in the blank). This can get out of hand quickly. Frankly, it

is surprising that shock-jock Howard Stern has not launched an ISP as yet.

Coming off the landslide victory of Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf launched by

Stern, his cyber-presence underlies a large and loyal following.

Alta Vista

When surfers entered the URL: http://www.altavista.com in order to find the

popular search engine, they landed instead on a site owned by Jack Marshall.

The AltaVista search technology was owned by DEC but recently changed hands

when Compaq Computer bought the company. The address of the search engine is:

http://www.altavista.digital.com. The San Francisco Chronicle reported

Marshall was paid $3.35 million for the domain name by Compaq. This appears to

be largest amount of money paid for a domain name to date. So far, however,

when the URL is entered, the Marshall site still appears.

URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) of interest:

http://www.rs.internic.net http://www.davidbowie.com/

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/07/28

/BU387.DTL

http://www.altavista.com http://www.altavista.digital.com

(This is the 118th of a series of elementary articles designed for surfing the

Internet. Next, A Homepage at Xoom is the subject on tap. Stay tuned. Until

next week, happy travels through cyberspace. Previous issues of Internet Info

for Real People (including links to sites mentioned in this article) can be

found: http://www.thebee.com. Please e-mail comments and suggestions to:

rbrand@JUNO.com or editor@thebee.com.)