It was inevitable, given the sheer ubiquitousness, that .sex is under consideration for use by ICANN for domains.
“You can almost guarantee the most highly sought-after one will, unfortunately, probably be dot-sex,” said Bryan Glick of Computing Magazine.
“All the meaningful words and meaningful names in the English language have been bought up already,” Glick said.
True. While some companies have been clever in branding their organizations with a quirky name so they can have a unique domain, it’s become a little difficult to identify a company with it’s product or service because of its deliberately misspelled or derivative name (Google being the glaring exception, obviously).
As the article states, it will create a new gold rush for prime Internet real estate for anyone with the time and money to scoop up as many words as possible… quickly.
I suspect that most of the best words will be gone in the blink of an eye and be worth a fortune. Still, with even a little imagination, there’s a lot o’ words in the dictionary.
To get some perspective on how much has changed in a relatively short period of time, check out the following video. Among the statistics mentioned are:
In 2006, there were 1.3 million college grads in the US, 3.1 million in India and 3.3 million in China; 100% of the Indian graduates speak English and, it is predicted, that in 10 years, China will be the largest English-speaking country in the world.
The US Dept. of Labor estimates that today’s learners will have 10-14 different jobs… by their 38th birthday.
1 out of 8 couples married in the US in 2005 met online.
As technology becomes increasingly interwoven into every aspect of daily life, means of connecting with anyone, anywhere grows at an exponential rate; one stat says that 230,000 people sign up for MySpace everyday.
Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia is placing his bets on an online office productivity suite that aims to compete with similar offerings from Microsoft and Google.
Instant Collaboration Software Technologies (InstaColl), a Bangalore company co-founded by Bhatia, unveiled Live Documents on Wednesday, an online service that allows users to access and edit documents using a Web browser, and collaborate and share documents with others.
Based on the review, this service looks promising. While, as of this writing, it’s not available yet (but will be offered for free for individuals and fee-based for corporate users when launched), it is poised to offer Google more competition, as well as challenge Microsoft’s off-the-shelf Office Suite (although the article says that “Even power-users of Microsoft Office can use our service”). Read the rest of this entry »
Since the first versions of the Mac OS, Apple has set the standard for the GUI appearance and functionality (most of which were “borrowed” by that other company), and each successive update raises the bar. And now that iPhone has finally been released in the US, Mac fans will be eagerly awaiting the release of Leopard.
I started using a Mac just as System 7 was introduced; at that time, it had many enhancements from the previous system, including virtual memory support, the introduction of aliases and, thankfully, the “Empty Trash” command, which was a change from having the trash empty itself upon shutdown. Subsequent OS updates included an interface and GUI appearance changes, implementation of multi-user support and improved search with Sherlock. Some features introduced with OS 9 were adapted for OS X, like Software Update, Keychain and file encryption.
OS X was a radical change in the user interface, and I think it took a while for people (incluing me) to warm up to it. First, it required that you essentially re-learn how to use your computer: there were all new files (or at least newly visible files) that were in all-new places, a different menu structure and many other interface changes. Then, the developers had to update all their software to be compatible with the new system, which meant you had to make a new investment in, essentially, new software. Read the rest of this entry »
One of my favorite movies, ever, is ‘Blade Runner‘. I’d seen it in theaters when it opened (yes, it was a long time ago) and was surprised that it wasn’t more popular; it seemed to have a brief run, with little attention, and it sort of faded away.
It was (and still is, in fact) visually stunning, prophetic in many senses and it asks complex questions about the meaning and value of human life, what it is to really be human.
Today, though, I’m not going to offer a review or synopsis of the film. Instead, I thought it was worth mentioning that a little piece of the technology in the film may here, now. Read the rest of this entry »
According to D5, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have not appeared together in a joint interview since 1984. And despite the prevailing view that the two companies have always been at odds with each other, the interview revealed that the two computer titans had praise for each other’s companies:
Steve Jobs: “Bill built the first software company in the industry and I think he built the first software company before anybody really in our industry knew what a software company was, except for these guys. And that was huge. That was really huge. And the business model that they ended up pursuing turned out to be the one that worked really well, you know, for the industry. I think the biggest thing was, Bill was really focused on software before almost anybody else had a clue that it was really the software.”
Bill Gates: “What Steve’s done is quite phenomenal, and if you look back to 1977, that Apple II computer, the idea that it would be a mass-market machine, you know, the bet that was made there by Apple uniquely–there were other people with products, but the idea that this could be an incredible empowering phenomenon, Apple pursued that dream.” Read the rest of this entry »
In what is now the largest acquisition in the company’s history, Microsoft is following in the footsteps of rival juggernaut, Google, by purchasing aQuantive Inc., a leader in Internet ad services.
Google already offers a growing number of online services and applications; it would seem that their goal is to provide quick and easy access to virtually all information that can be found on any computer, anywhere, while allowing users to utilize tools online that once had to be bought in a box at the computer store. Read the rest of this entry »
I started using a Mac just as System 7 was introduced; at that time, it had many enhancements from the previous system, including virtual memory support, the introduction of aliases and, thankfully, the “Empty Trash” command, which was a change from having the trash empty itself upon shutdown. Subsequent OS updates included an interface and GUI appearance changes, implementation of multi-user support and improved search with Sherlock. Some features introduced with OS 9 were adapted for OS X, like Software Update, Keychain and file encryption.
