Planning to unleash a new website but short of a cool label for it? Unless
you have an imminent launch date in mind, it might just be worth holding on.
Next month there could be a new crop of Internet domain name
suffixes鈥攌nown in geekspeak as top level domains (TLDs)鈥攖o choose
from.
Last week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, posted
on its website (www.icann.org) the ideas that have been submitted by all and
sundry to add to those dull old .com and .net addresses. ICANN is the non-profit
outfit that assumed control of Internet name management from the US government.
A largely virtual organisation, linked internationally by the Net itself, ICANN
will choose one or a number of the new suffixes in November. More could well
follow if the move runs smoothly.
Popular among the new suggestions is an attempt to finally make clear which
sites are suitable for children, with a .kids suffix. Few will argue with
that鈥攁nd it will make life far easier for 鈥淣et nanny鈥� software to screen
sites on behalf of parents.
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Most energetic among ICANN鈥檚 TLD applicants has been the company
Name.Space鈥攚ith 120 possible proposed new suffixes. Name.Space already
lets people have a Web address of their choice using existing website
redirection technology (www.namespace.org). This is hard for search engines to
handle, so Name.Space would rather have new suffixes. Its ideas span the gamut
of website issues, ranging from .church, and .gallery
to .war and .sex鈥搀颈补
real attention grabbers like .insurance and .soup. Others think WAP鈥檚 cut-down
mobile Internet will win out with .wap.
Oddly, Name.Space and another hopeful, WorldNames (www.worldnames.net),
think some cities should get their own IDs. They think New York City should get
.nyc as its own domain. So much for the idea that location doesn鈥檛 matter a jot
on the Internet.
