Capital gets trendy address: .London on its way London could soon get its very own top-level internet address, .london. Official city promoter London & Partners is set to announce later today that it is looking for companies to help submit a bid for .london to global domain name overseer ICANN. Several companies, including .uk manager Nominet, are expected to respond to a …
I'm pretty sure I have been on a/the watch list and been removed from it out of boredom.
After all, I went to Uni before the wall fell, I've been PV'd for a job I had, certain other family members have been PV'd for their careers too.
Oh and I bought the materials to make thermite through eBay for the sheer hell of it after staggering in from the pub one night just to see if there would be a knock.... nah.
I will not give up my free speech just because someone may overreact to my (obviously tongue in cheek (or shitstirring depending on view point)) postings.
Flame icon for the thermite
Boy this thread will have Echelon in a tizzy!
I got surveyed on this by YouGov with some nicely positioned questions apparently designed to elect a positive response. Only us in the domain business and old recalcitrants who dished ICANN's dot anybody.with.wads.of.cash realise the true horrible and costly implications.
You know there is trouble when you are on the same side as the Direct Marketing Association.
Please, please go away ....
This is getting daft. If it's only going to be available to businesses whose sole operational location is London - i.e. not country- or world-wide brands, then fair enough - but I doubt that will happen. In which case, how much will businesses be forced to stump up this time to stop someone registering brand.london? Or are we now expected to register brand.london, brand.manchester, brand.paris, brand.littlehamptononthewye...?
It's all in the article:
"London & Partners is responsible for promoting tourism in the city. It was set up by Mayor Boris Johnson in a cost-cutting reshuffle of London's PR departments in April."
The point, then, is to spend the budget Boris has given them and the point of Boris's budget is to be seen to be doing something.
So, we can have transport companies with non .gov.uk addresses?
transport.london, tube.london, rather that www.tfl.gov.uk/tube etc? Awesome!
Outer London will have problems. wimbledontennis.london? IIRC, Wimbledon is technically Surrey, not London.
heathrow.london or heathrow.middx?
These gTLDs are going to be a typing nightmare.
Though, I'd like to see a .cmo and .coom gTLD
.... and as with most things Nominet-related, Lesley Cowley does *not* speak for me.
I can see a case for london.uk but definitely not .london or any TLD which ICANN wants to create on a whim; someone needs to educate Lesley as to what an SLD is and should ask the members for which she claims to work for whether it is worthwhile creating london.uk or using Nominet company resources for a purpose for which they are not meant for.
Nominet is set up to run the .uk registry - nothing else - if they want to spin off a legal entity like they did for managing the 4.4.e164.arpa (ENUM) domain, they are welcome to do so but she should not be committing funds/resources to something which is actively going to *dilute* the .uk brand/TLD which she has been actively trying to promote for the last decade.
Much like Nominet, your understanding of Not For Profit, differs from mine.
"not-for-profit basis, returning excess funds.."
Surely if the company is trying not to make a profit, there should not be any excess funds. Nominet gives away millions, pays well, and still calls itself "not for profit". Meanwhile the pricing for .uk domains hasn't changed in years.
How many .london URLs would end being traded as is.gd or bit.ly shortened URLs?
About as useful as typing HTTP://WWW.blah.com into your browser - the www being totally redundant as yer already on t'web.
What about ten.downing.street.london - wouldn't that be a memorable domain name?
Boris is involved? Explains a lot, buffoon!
> Next January, ICANN will start to allow any well-funded organisation to apply to run a so-called generic top-level domain (gTLD) .. 2013 Londoners could be able to register domain names such as bobstaxis.london or museums.london to promote their websites ..
I don't see the point, unless `.london' is verified as being officially associated with the government, in this case the mayor of London's office, same with .FORD or .SONY. And what about people with the same names as a company such as Peter.Jones
This is just a money making machine for ICANN - plain and simple.
All the marketers and SEO dickwads will be jumping on the bandwagon, convincing companies they *must* have their own top level domain to compete.
It's all total BS.
Most people just guess or search to get around on the web these days - a lot of that is to do with the way Google search works and as the dominant player, that's what most people use.
I want to find companyx ?
I just type companyx into the address bar and google finds it for me.
People are also used to just putting in a company name and slapping a .com, .net or their country domain on the end of it - 9 times out of 10, it works.
Once you start adding a slew of custom top level domains, your heading for trouble.
Firstly, there's company firewalls which tend to block out any domain suffix that aren't on the 'allowed' list, then there's the mess this will cause to the DNS system itself.
But hey, ICANN don't care, they've got $$$ signs for eyes.
Its as bad as the bloody stupid '.museum' TLD. More stringent rules on .com usage would have fixed the issue nicely... the whole thing is absolutely riddled with domainers many of whom make so much from advertising that the domains will remain forever useless. What you need, when you need it indeed.
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