the.new.boom

ICANN, the organisation responsible for administering top level domain names and coming up with new top level domains (your .coms, .uks, .orgs etc) has pushed the web towards the next step in its evolution.

Since the dawn of the web, domain names have been restricted in that they always had to 'resolve' with a particular suffix. They always had to 'look' the same as everyone else's suffix, .com. Other top level domains (or TLDs for short, the name given to this last part of a domain name) became available; .gov, .edu, .mil and so on but you were still restricted to a selection of arcane abbreviations with which to finish off your domain.

This has just changed. ICANN has just announced that from May next year, you should be able to register pretty much anything you want.

How about www.pizzas.newcastle or www.pubs.scotland for starters? Besides this almost novelty value, expect a whole new web business model as registrars gear themselves up for reselling these domains to the likes of you and I.

I have to say it would be quite cool to have ozosbits.blog or biking.lakedistrict. Or even blog.ozosbits and lakedistrict.biking, for that matter.

Such an impact will these new domains have, I think that we are heading for a much needed rush, a boom in the web the like of which we haven't seen since the 90s when it first literally took the world by storm.

Of course, these new names won't come cheap. Having your very own version of a .com or .uk will cost you in the region of $100,000. So, by the time they are implemented that should be no more than the price of a tank of petrol...