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Besides, without DNS, how are you going to even get to Google? http://64.233.161.99? Or maybe you prefer http://64.233.161.104/ or http://64.233.161.147?

There was a company called Real Names that tried to be an alternative to DNS; for a while it was included with IE. You could type "Ford" into your browser's address bar and it would deliver you to Ford Motor Company. Unfortuantely, the idea didn't fly at the time (although the company is still around: http://www.realnames.com/), but the infrastructure was there and could be built again.

Unfortunately for all the DJB-acolytes, this means that djbdns, as well as being proprietary and insecure, will not have a place on the internet from Jan 1st 2005, the day SPF+ will be activated globally.

According to Keith Teare, founder and CEO of RealNames Corporation, "Has anybody considered what this means for Microsoft's partners and the future of technology? [...] If this decision [the MS split-up] were to discourage them from embracing early stage technologies it could seriously slow down the adoption of these technologies".

Oh the irony...

Better technology? Or more profitability?

Of course, many moons ago, Google themselves delivered RealNames results, as did Altavista and others.

But then the paid-for-placement leanings of Overture nee Goto became more tempting, and ultimately triumphed. Why make only cents per click, when you can make much more from fools willing to pay more?

To say Microsoft killed Realnames is a simplification. MS may have been Realnames's biggest customer, but they were at death's door regardless.

rOD.

Wasn't this the point of the Real Names system? From their about page:

Keywords replace complicated URLs with simple names and brands, and work in the consumer's native language, making the Internet easier to use.

Wasn't this the point of the Real Names system? From their about page:

Keywords replace complicated URLs with simple names and brands, and work in the consumer's native language, making the Internet easier to use.

With MS IE 6 smart tags, you won't have to go to the next page. The link will be on the same page pointing to MS products

It may be fair use for the end user to see related pages, as determined by his or her preference, but who really wants to hear what Microsoft thinks is related...

Seriously, I can see reasonable uses for this service, bacause when it comes down to it it's the same as the NBCi Quickclick service, which is really just a combination and expansion of the Alexa and Realnames services.

In all fairness Microsoft does claim that there will be an API that will allow third parties to establish their own work/link associations, which may be good and may be bad. I can see cases where that might be valuable, where a user would be able to download a 'SmartLinks' channel file from the Wall Street Journal which would be updated regularly mich like an RSS channel, and contain links to WSJ articles on the subjects associated with highlighted words, or perhaps the user might want to install the Roger Ebert SmartLinks channel which would link any movie title to Roger's review of that movie. This service has legitimate potential, so long as users have enough control over it to prevent Microsoft from assaulting their senses with useless Microsoft links. I can see where this sort of service might be considered the next evolutionary step beyond Rich Site Summary channels and similar XML meta-content. Realistically, this service could work thew same way, where the channels have similar XML definitions, and are periodically retrieved from the source server, in order to keep up-to-date.

The important thing is the user MUST be allowed to choose which providers to accept link-lists from. There must not be a required set, where if you turn on the service you get Microsofts set of links plus whatever other link sets you want. The user must have the option to add or remove any smartlinks channel, and enable or disable any channel on a site-by-site basis. With these policies in place, the service could be made to be quite baluable and usefult to users

--CTH

Besides, if you have a company, or product that is say, the "netshredder". Nowadays, people look for you automatically at netshredder.com. Where do they go now? netshredder.ustm? .gtm? .com? .product? I personally think that we need a *better* way of handling domains that is "product" friendly

The people at RealNames thought of this too and created RealNames Internet Keywords.

This reminds me of Realnames who tried to map "real names" to DNS names. They still exist but does anyone use it? In fact companies seem to prefer changing there real names to match their domains! Here in the UK a frozen food superstore changed it's name to iceland.co.uk.

In order for this to somehow work, we would all have to be issued a "Internet Yellow Pages" book that mapped every website to its numerical equivalent, updates to this book would be so frequent, we'd probably run out of trees in a few years. What a pain it would be to have to grab the 50 pound "Internet Pages" that I'd have to keep next to my computer just to get to a specific sites numerical equivalent. Even if a complete "Internet Pages" directory was kept online, it would still be a pain to have to look up the numbers everytime I wanted to go to some site I didn't know the number for.

Certainly, the current DNS isn't perfect, but it is functional and preferable in my mind to this alternative. What I think does make pretty good sense, is the type of system that RealNames has implemented. Similar in concept to the AOL keyword (bear with me here), this actually works fairly well. For instance, in a recent version of Internet Explorer, type Madonna in the URL field. This will bring you directy to www.madonnamusic.com (nicely designed site BTW). If this type of system were to be implemented in an "open" fashion, it may actually work quite well.

It's pimp-o-rific The Linux Pimp

The real reason we don't have infinite TLD's though is that we'd just be moving the problem up a level. Instead of fighting over "foo.com", Foo Inc. and Joe's Foo Emporium will fighto over ownership of the "dot foo" namespace. And now, they'll have to compete with the Foo Foundation (formerly foo.org) and Foo University (formerly foo.edu).

No, the real solution here is twofold. We need

• A Usenet style hierarchy By polluting the top level namespace with ".biz" et. al., we're actually moving away from this goal.
• A Product/Concept/Keyword matching system. Search engines and things like Real Names(tm) are helpful, but the former aren't precise enough, and for the latter, I'd prefer an open system.

This refers to "Internet Keywords" (tm) from Real Names. I don't know a soul who uses them, though, except possibly Mado nna .

This refers to "Internet Keywords" (tm) from Real Names. I don't know a soul who uses them, though, except possibly Mado nna .

That already exists. Check out RealNames. So far it hasn't gained much popularity, but google supports it.

Of course, it isn't TOO LATE for this to happen, but there better be a central keyword registry or Netscape and Microsoft will fight with registries of their own. Fun fun fun.

You mean like Netscape's Internet Keywords and RealNames'/Microsoft's Internet Keywords? (M$ owns 20% of RN.) And, of course, AOL's keywords.

-j

This works with internet explorer and several search engines.