Web service offers to make URLs more memorable

Rohit Khare (khare@www10.w3.org)
Wed, 15 Jan 1997 10:54:18 -0500


http://this.is/whatever

What a clever low-tech, high-tech solution! Certainly is a competitor from
left-field to all those razzle-dazzle URN, redirection, URC, and embedded
query schemes.

Score one point for the internationalization of the Web :-)

Rohit

PS. The punchline is that "this" is registered in Iceland...

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Web service offers to make URLs more memorable

By Lynda Radosevich
InfoWorld Electric

Posted at 12:55 PM PT, Jan 14, 1997

A Web entrepreneur is offering a service that lets companies assign a
simple Web address to point to their Web page.

The service, called This.is, allows companies to append whatever word
they choose to a URL
beginning with http://this.is. A sample URL, this.is/bill, points users
to the White House, for
instance.

The service is intended to appeal to companies that have long or complex
URLs, or to those
with company names that have already been registered by others.

The entrepreneur, Joe Bergeron, registered his service in Iceland, hence
the domain ".is."
Bergeron's Iceland-based domain server runs on a Linux system and Apache
web server.

For $350 for the first year and $175 in subsequent years, companies can
rent a Web address on
This.is that points to their own, less-appealing URLs.

Bergeron's company, Outpost Research, is in Bristol, Conn., and can be
reached at
http://this.is/joe.