You're absolutely right -- this is going to turn into a nightmare for most small or mid-sized businesses. I speak from experience, as I had to do the registrations for a moderately sized media company that had just acquired an internationally-known brand when the .xxx TLD opened up. We had to grab it so somebody else didn't, and it was neither cheap or easy (and yes, the joke is obvious, so I'll ignore it). There are times when you wish things wouldn't change, but nothing ever stays the same. Even rock is worn away by wind and water over time. Imagine how something with no real substance will respond to the sands of time.
mhhfive - I don't know if dotcoms will continue to be tops. Everything is temporary.
If ICANN can pull this off, I certainly can see value to restoring meaning to TLDs. 20 years ago, if a domain ended in .com or .org, it meant something. Still does with .mil and .gov, and mostly with .edu.
That's the vision that ICANN has: That you'll one day see a domain ending in, say, .nyc, and know that it's for some organization or entity or person in New York City.
It's a good vision. The question is whether ICANN can execute it.
Agreed. ICANN seems to be able to print money with the ability to sell TLDs at will. These new domains are probably the most valuable "virtual goods" that exist, and it seems crazy that they're limited in such arbitrary ways. (Who came up with their $185K price tag?)
Dotcoms will probably continue to be the most popular domains, but maybe we'll have easier to remember URLs in the near future?
That's another thing that's been coming up; some other countries are upset that the U.S. essentially controls ICANN and there's a movement to change that. That should be interesting.
Everybody wants a .com domain, and nations license out their national domains for revenue.
Which brings up another point... what nation's laws will control the new domains? Recently, for example, Kim Dotcom announced that he was rebuilding MegaUpload under the me.ga domain; Gabon Telecom (presumably responding to the wishes of its owners and the Gabon government) revoked the domain. For good or bad, how would such policing work when there are thousands, rather than just dozens, of top-level domains available?
First of all, congrats on your first blog, Sharon!
Secondly, IMHO, these new top-level domains strike me as little more than a blatant, reprehensible way for ICANN to extort millions of dollars by striking fear of competitors, pornographers, and other would-be brand damagers into the hearts of organizations and brands.
Maybe I'm a cynic, but cynics are sometimes right.
slfisher - I'm not saying get rid of domains. I'm saying get rid of TLDs.
Second, we need domains for the same reason we need indices and area codes and exchanges and country codes and so on -- to help determine who "belongs" to who and to make them easier to remember by having some sort of structure.
Which the current system does not do. Everybody wants a .com domain, and nations license out their national domains for revenue. For example, I don't know if any of the services using the .ly TLD are actully based in Libya. Bit.ly sure isn't.
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Social media has been with us for a decade -- but employer policies and the law are anything but firm about the most appropriate usage of this powerful tool.
Businesses often struggle to decide which domain to use. When it comes to purchasing a domain name, you have plenty of extensions to choose from, ranging from .com and .net, to .me, and even .mobi. But which one should you pick?
I've been writing about how the next evolution of the Internet might just be an advertising revolution, and how corporate IT can stay involved as the enablers and providers of the technologies that make this possible.
In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
