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The registration authorities have recently approved a new class of domain names intended for sites which provide information, with the suffix '.info'. This is a very exciting development. We all know that sinking feeling which comes from entering a search term such as 'evening primrose' into a search program and getting 80,000 hits, with the initial pages dominated by commercial companies who may not be providing the information you want. And even these companies suffer, as it is a continual battle for them to get their voices heard in the maelstrom. It would be so much better if the listing could be picked over first by a knowledgable human being, so that you could have a much better chance of getting what you want. This is the basis for the myriad of directories which have sprung up, but they also have their problems. Some are general, and try to cover the whole spectrum of human activity, but this makes them huge and unwieldy, and the link you want might be in any number of diferent categories. Alternatively, there are many specialist directories, but these can often be just as hard to find as the specialist websites themselves. The .info names change all that!
People will soon start to realise that they can just go directly to 'www.[searchterm].info' direct, rather than bothering with search engines. The chances are that, whoever registered that name will have an interest (personal or commercial) in that subject, and will have laid out some information, and some links for the visitor to follow. Of course, some .info sites will have been registered by a company active in that field and may just link to the corporate site, and some may be outrageously biassed, but many will not be. There is also an incentive for genuinely useful sites to be established, as they are potentially self-financing. Visitors to a site such as 'www.eveningprimrose.info' may just be looking for information, but equally they may be looking for suppliers or services, and hence are a valuable source of business prospects, both for business-to-business and business-to-consumer trade. It could therefore be very worthwhile for commercial companies to have links from these .info sites, which could prove to be both cheaper and more cost-effective than the global directories.
As a step towards this goal, I have registered a number of names, as shown in the table above, which relate to my own particular interests. Each of these will eventually point to set of pages on my web site which will give some basic information on the topic concerned (for people who need quick answers) and then three sets of links:
All sections will be subdivided into subject areas and these will be linked from an initial table of contents to make navigation quick and easy. In this way, each of the .info sites should grow into a one-stop-shop for finding information, expertise, and commercial suppliers