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Thursday, November 23, 2000 By David Radin
This week, ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) announced seven new top-level domains (TLD) to help alleviate the overcrowding in domain space. Shortly, instead of relying on registering your favorite .com address while it is still available, your business will be able to register .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, or .pro. So everybody goes home happy.
In concept. Probably not in practice. In reality the addition of these seven new TLDs will probably increase the cost of protecting your trademark. Instead of just registering in three TLDs (.com, .org, and .net) for full protection, you'll need to register in 10. At $35 per registration, your annual cost will go from $105 to $350. And the worst part is that these new names are likely to be weak sisters.
Dot.com will still be the valuable real estate, just as it is now. The only way I see this changing is if the Internet itself undergoes a major transformation -- in which the Web becomes old technology and e-mail is directed to you by your given name, Social Security number or some other unique identifier.
Nor will this alleviate cyber-squatting, where some third party registers the name without the trademark holder's permission. Look at Barry Williams, a.k.a. Greg Brady from the Brady Bunch. While he is roaming the country performing as Capt. von Trapp in "The Sound of Music," he is keeping in touch with his fans via his Web site, www.BarryWilliams.com.
If Williams' name weren't so famous, he would have been able to register his personal domain like the rest of us for $35. But since he is famous, some eager cyber-squatter beat him to the punch and registered BarryWilliams.com. Barry had to pay thousands of dollars to obtain the domain for his own, rightful use. But it could be worse. The domain associated with his Brady Bunch counterpart is now an X-rated Web site -- obviously capitalizing on the reputation of the Brady Bunch to create Web traffic. Let's face it. These two domains were in demand because they are in the .com TLD. Those seven new domains will likely not create the same demand that .com does.
By the way, Barry Williams will be talking with me on the local radio show this Saturday about his run-in with cyber squatters.
Have a question for David Radin? Contact him at his Web site
Q: Microsoft Word constantly changes my text to links. Whenever I inadvertently click on them, they start up the Web page mentioned in the link. How do I stop this from happening?
A: Microsoft Word 2000 automatically assumes that whenever you type in a phrase starting with www and ending with .com, .org, .net or .edu, that you have typed a World Wide Web address, and that you want it to be a clickable link -- as if you are creating a Web page. Most people don't want these to be clickable, because currently, most people still produce paper documents. You can remove the link with a few clicks. First make sure that the document is saved -- because you cannot remove the link from an unsaved document. Then right-click on the link. From the resulting menu, select [Hyperlink]. Then choose [Remove Hyperlink]. Save the document again.
If you like the automatic hyperlinks, you can be creative with it. You may associate a "Screen Tip" with the link, so whenever you hover your mouse over the link, it'll pop up a sentence or phrase just like those that pop up when you hover over a button on the toolbar. You also can have MS-Word find the correct URL -- which would be like a spell checker for URLs, or change the place to which it links. You can even create a link on any text in your document.
To edit the automatically created link, instead of choosing [Remove Hyperlink] in the process outlined above, click on [Edit Hyperlink].
To create a link where none currently exists, highlight the text that you want to turn into a link. Right-click on the highlighted text. Then select [Hyperlink...] from the pop-up menu.
David Radin is host of the nationally syndicated radio sho "Internet Insider," a local version of which is aired on KDKA AM 1020 at noon Saturdays. You may ask him a computer or Internet question by following the instructions at www.post-gazette.com/interact, where you also can find an archive of his previous Q&A columns.
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