The Long Trail

Joe Simpson wrote a book in 1988. It was called Touching the Void and it was about a mountaintop tragedy in the Peruvian Andes. It sold well in the beginning, but it was nothing special. Soon it was forgotten until another book with a similar plot line was madea decade later. It was called Into Thin Air and it sold great right from the start. After the new book was released, the older book's sales starting booming and eventually outsold the new book two to one. 

The reason the boom in sales kicked in when it did was because of amazon.com. The website noticed buying patterns of many people and eventually offered them a recommendation of the book Touching the Void if they were interested in the book Into thin Air. Many people took the website's advice and bought the recommended book and the sales were greatly increased. 

When the new book came out, people using amazon.com were able to find it easily.They were also able to find the older book published a decade earlier. The older book most likely would have not been found or purchased by all the people out there if it were not for amazon.com. Without the technology there would not have been recommendations to buy it, nor would there have been a place to buy it from. 

With the way the world is today, millions of people are avid users of the internet. Many people use it and need it for work. Many more people use it for educational purposes. Then there are those who use it for play. Whatever their purpose, the point is that billions of people in the world use the internet. Most of them use it on a regular basis. 

With all the people using the internet it has made it very easy to do things that would have required much more effort and supplies than before the internet. E-mail is an amazing way for people to stay connected with each other. Rather than using time, money for postage, and paper, people can just type a message and click to send it anywhere in the world. This makes life so much easier for those of us who use the internet a lot. 

This also makes it a lot easier to do many other things. One of which is but products. Many people use the internet to buy books, software, magazines, music, and movies. These are some very common things offered from many different large internet corporations. There are also sites like ebay.com that allow people to buy almost any random object from other people anywhere in the world. Ebay allows the users to be connected not matter where they live. 

One reason why so many things are posted and offered on the internet, other than connecting people from all over, is it is cheaper than shelf space. On sites like Amazon, the items offered are sitting in warehouses until the time when they need to be shipped out because they have been purchased. This means it isnt really costing any money for the item to sit and not be purchased. With stores and theaters the company must sell a certain amount within a certain time period, otherwise they lose profit. This makes it harder on the stores and also makes for less options when you go to the store to buy an item. 

The internet makes it easier to buy almost anything you could want out there. In a time where fuel is priced extremely high it is also nice to be able to purchase something in the comfort of your own home. The internet purchasing crowd is ever growing. More and more people are turning to this smart method of purchasing that has more selection, is sometimes cheaper, and is overall easier on the buyer. 

Internet Namespaces

In the age of the internet many people have their own personal websites. Many companies have their own websites too. Seeing how there are roughly six billion people in the world it is guaranteed that there are some people with the same name. Also, with companies from countries all over the world there are bound to be some conflicts over who gets the first pick for website names.
It seems most of the time that the higher power gets first pick. In a situation where an average person has a website named after a celebrity the celebrity usually wins. Years ago, Canadian Jeff Burgar created a website called www.jrrtolkien.com. He may have done this because of the possible payoff he could get when the real Mr. Tolkien wanted to start a website under his name. Burgar’s website was taken from him from the World Intellectual Property Organization. This was because the name J.R.R. Tolkien’s name was a business in itself. There have also been situations with companies and individuals fighting over names, companies and cities fighting over names, and companies fighting with other companies. In most cases the big company wins.
With so many namespaces coexisting, limitations have been put on them. Such as, you can have a website called ford, as long as you were not making cars. To me it sounds like they will allow you to have the name you wish, or similar names, as long as you stay away from the big business that shares the name.
Name spaces are clashing like crazy. With so many websites out there now, and many with similar names, people have to be very creative when naming their business sites. Especially pharmaceutical sites, in which so many names are very similar to other, they are easily mixed up. Sometimes the desperation for a name results in the best outcome. Look at two of the biggest sites in the world; Yahoo!, and Google. These names were most likely thought of to be simple, unique, and most of all catchy.
Jeff Burgar is often accused of being a cybersquatter. He claims he is not and he just uses the websites in the context of freedom of press. He says he should be able to make carmenelectra.com if he wants, and have it be a tribute to her. I don’t know where I stand on this topic. I think he should maybe have a name similar to hers, but maybe add something on the end to make it a little different. In the other hand, he is smart for taking some of the prime internet real-estate. If I did this it would be with the hopes of getting a large payoff by those who really need the name. For instance, Carmen Electra could make a large payoff, in one way or another, to get her website.
Names are what we use to talk about individual people. If we say a full name such as Brad Pitt, people assume we are talking about the big actor who is married to Angelina Jolie. Well, you’ve probably heard the saying about when you assume, so ill spare you, but when I said that name I was talking about someone different. Years ago I saw a television show about people with celebrity names. There was a man named Brad Pitt. He was nothing like the celebrity, but he often had trouble with this name. Let’s just say for instance he makes a website for himself about whatever he wants. It could be pictures of his dog, or his own standup comedy he posts online for people to watch. It seems wrong that the big-shot actor can just come and take the name away from this man and leave him with no compensation.
I think when it comes to names of websites, it should be a first-come, first-serve system, as it used to be in the beginning of the internet boom. If an average person registers a site with a name of a big corporation or a celebrity, too bad for that corporation or celebrity. If they really are a big corporation or celebrity then they can do the fair thing and buy the site from the average person. Just because they are bigger and richer doesn’t mean they are exempt from rules and laws. If someone beat them to the punch, then hooray for that someone, and good luck to them on getting a payoff.