Welcome to 40daysand40nights.co.uk, a domain name that was registered on 22nd August 2000 when there were 40 days and 40 nights before the deadline, on 2nd October, for new TLD submissions to ICANN. Now, with less than 20 days to go, the implications are becoming clearer. Is it possible that single character gTLDs could capture the public imagination in the same way that .com, .net and .org classifications have done? Indeed, do people even consider a gTLD to be a classification of any significance? Probably not!

It is difficult to see how the introduction of any new gTLDs will make it easier to navigate the many documents that populate the World Wide Web. From a practical point of view, fewer characters to type should be an attractive proposition and if they were to be introduced no doubt some of the 26 characters in the alphabet would take on new meaning. Instead of .shop or .store, .s might come to be associated with 'service'. Perhaps .i would indicate 'information'. To retain these 'classifications' carefully defined rules would need to be adhered to and this in itself would probably detract from their widespread acceptance.

Adding the ten numbers to each letter would lead to the formation of an additional 260 two character TLDs. Again, some, like .a1, might take on special significance over time but the underlying attraction of this proposal is the instant creation of 286 new gTLDs.

Only one week to go now. We have to hope that the result will be effective and unobtrusive Government of the domain naming system. 25th September 2000.

22nd September: European Candidate Forum here.

2nd October: North American Candidate Forum here.

Visit ICANN Watch for an objective view of the issues.

ICANN Election statistics 10th October

ICANN Election Results 10th October

Question & Answer Forums here

ICANN Candidate Information Page here.

Participate in the debate at uk.net

The New TLD Program from ICANN.

Participate in the debate at NA-Forum

Participate in the debate at forum.delphi.com

Now let the Domain Names speak!