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RealNames Closing Shop

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the huge-surprise dept.

The_THOMAS writes: "The company RealNames, which tried to make a buck off of the domain name gold rush by adding their own layer on top of the ICANN system, is going out of business (Full story here). To review, the RealNames system is a browser plugin which redirects a user who types 'cookies' in the IE address bar to Nabisco.com. The reason for the closure appears to be the decision by M$ to NOT renew their agreement with RealNames which expires in June."

12 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. I didn't even know this was possible... by bc90021 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've been using computers for twenty years, and Windows since 3.0, but I didn't even know it was possible to just type keywords into the IE address bar... I wonder how many people out there did?

    Granted, I use Netscape a lot more now, but still...

    --
    libertarianswag.com
    1. Re:I didn't even know this was possible... by cscx · · Score: 2, Informative

      In IE,

      Go to Search -> Customize -> Autosearch settings, and you can choose there what you want the behavior of the Address Bar to be.

  2. Re:I just use Google by Economist · · Score: 3, Informative

    And if you use Internet Explorer (yeah, let the flames come), you could download the Google Bar, so you should not even go to google itself.

    For the curious: entering cookies in google and hitting i'm lucky directs to http://www.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.ht ml

  3. Good by darnellmc · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm glad they are gone. Many names could not be purchased and their fee structure sucked - IMHO.

    And to top it off they could not protect their customer database and compromised every one of their customer's credit cards.

    I never actually used their service, but made inquiries in the past, for names that I found they would let no one purchase. Some common terms could not be purchased. Even inquiries required giving them a credit card number. And eventhough I never signed up, there was no way to remove my card from their database afterward. I did not know they kept it stored and when they were hacked I had to get a new card number FAST.

    I hope no such service is ever made again!

  4. Re:I just use Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    And if you use moz you could use googlebar.

  5. Re:I just use Google by Brummund · · Score: 2, Informative

    I use the search feature in opera like this:

    Press F2 to get the slim "enter url"-dialog, and then type 'g slashdot' to search Google for slashdot, or 'r xfree86 rgbpath anti-alias debian' to search on groups.google.com.

    The keymappings and which URL they'll send your input to can be configured in ~/.opera/search.ini . If it's missing, copy it from /usr/share/opera.

    This saves both screen space and time :-)

  6. Re:I'm happy the way it is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    A year or so ago I tried to register a community web site with RealNames. They made the process way too complex, so I said the heck with it.

    Appears I wasn't the only one.

    --TE

  7. Re:.com means nothing by birder · · Score: 2, Informative

    It wasn't too long ago that slashdot.com went somewhere completely differnet to slashdot.org.

  8. RealNames founder sez M$ will roll out their own by The+Mutant · · Score: 3, Informative

    On his private web page, RealNames founder Keith Teare sez M$ will probably integrate the functionality directly into IE.

    Why am I not surprised at this?

    --

    A message from our sponsor

  9. Re:I just use Google by frisket · · Score: 2, Informative

    But before Google there was DogPile, and one of their sections (fairly high up) was RealNames...and it returned the stupidest collection of garbage in response to almost anything you typed that it was a total waste of time (and one of the reasons I eventually gave up on DogPile; the other one being About.com).

  10. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  11. Re:Phone numbers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Yeah those spammy looking numbers were great fun except IE 6 doesn't support it anymore.

    http://slashdot.org
    http://64.28.67.150 translates into for those with IE 5
    http://0x40.0x1C.0x43.0x96
    http://0100.034.010 3.0226
    http://21475912074134
    http://1075594134