Groups Hope to Claim Net Domain Names
Oct. 6, 2000 -- Dot-com, that’s familiar. Dot-kids also makes sense. But what the heck is dot-jina?
Applications for new top-level domains (TLDs) have been pouring into the international organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which will weigh them and decide which suffixes get to join .com, .net, and .org as the starting-point for all Internet addresses.
Forty-seven organizations applied for more than 100 domains before the Oct. 2 deadline. ICANN will be soliciting public comment next week, but they aren’t saying when they’ll decide which domains are the winners.
Right now there are seven “generic” TLDs: .com (originally for commercial use, it’s become the most generic of all), .net (for network providers), .org (for nonprofits), .int (international organizations), .mil (the U.S. military), .edu (educational institutions), and .gov (for government.) Each country also has its own top-level domain and subdivisions — schools in Great Britain are .ac.uk, for academics in the United Kingdom.
Most of the new applications for TLDs make immediate sense: .biz for businesses, .kids for kids’ sites, .xxx for sex. Some, though, are pretty odd. But they better not be frivolous; each application costs a non-refundable $50,000.
Connect the Dots
Here are some of the less obvious ones.
.jina, .xing, .san: Nameplanet.com in London also applied for the more comprehensible “.name” for personal names. These three are just “.name” in Swahili, Chinese and Japanese respectively. Why Swahili? (Not many Kenyans have Web access.) African-Americans might want a domain with African roots, Nameplanet’s Kate Williams said.
.one, .1: Group One Registry in Washington state wants these for setting up numeric domains, like telephone numbers, to merge cell phones and the Web. If your phone number is 212-555-1234, for instance, they’d give you 12125551234.1. “We really feel like .one symbolizes one person for one device,” Group One’s Jennifer Goldston said.
.mas, .max, .mid, .mis: Cellular megacompany Nokia wants these, but it’ll settle for .mobile; they also want a domain for people’s mobile phones and wireless devices. The company says it’s working with several other firms to form a non-profit consortium to maintain this domain. Why the odd names? Mobile Addressing Service, Mobile Access (or “Axxess”), Mobile ID, Mobile Information Society.
.i: ICANN told applicants not to go for one-character domains, but the Sarnoff Corporation of Princeton, N.J. is trying anyway. This is another personal domain scheme; everyone would have a domain in the form firstname.lastname.i, or firstname.lastname.number.i, as a central contact point.
.nyc: Every country has a TLD. New York City has an ego the size of many countries. So now a company called WorldNames wants to give the Big Apple its own Internet space. “Under the .NYC domain, New Yorkers will have their rightful place on the Internet,” WorldNames president J. William Semich said.
.dubai: At least this one has a better excuse. Dubai right now fits under the United Arab Emirates, .ae. But the trade mecca is a semi-independent state, as is each of the Emirates. So it wants its own domain.
.sansansan, .three33: Hunh, hunh, hunh? An Australian company called TotalNIC wants these — and it’s not saying why. The only hint is that “sansansan” is “three-three-three” in Chinese, a lucky number. TotalNIC’s Vince Hamm said the company has some sort of secret plan that they’ll reveal next week.