Red
Herring founder Tony Perkins' new project, the AlwaysOn Network,
launched with a conspicuously awkward domain name: alwayson-network.com.
Web usability rule number one: hyphenated domains suck. So what was already
occupying the simpler alwaysonnetwork.com?
A hideous Goth-Flash-diarrhea website from self-described "Bay
Area Hyper-Rock band NAKED APE" (screenshot at left). Our of "sheer frustration,"
18-year-old BoingBoing reader
Numair says he's created a website at aonw.com,
which forwards visitors to Perkins' new venture — with some observations on
the value of a wisely-chosen url:
"Tony (the guy who started
Red Herring and Upside, both now defunct) obviously didn't put much thought
into the domain name he used for his project, as it is one of the longest
and most annoying URLs I have to type each day. Plus you can't explain it
very
easily to other people when talking to them, as it comes out something like 'always
on dash network' … then you have to explain that
the dash isn't a word, it's a dash … NOBODY uses a dash in their domain
names.
(Even T-Mobile bought tmobile.com).After searching WHOIS for all of about, oh, TWO minutes, I discovered a
much-easier-to-remember-and-use domain name, AONW.com, was available. I registered
it and created the site
you see here. So now you and I and all others fed up with AlwaysOn Network's
absurd URL can simply type 'aonw.com' to get to the website.The message on the front page of this website is a take on the title of
Tony's book from 1999 – The Internet Bubble: Inside the Overvalued World
of High-Tech Stocks–And What You Need to Know to Avoid the Coming Shakeout (apparently
he has been skilled at pathetically-long names for some time now). There
was one lesson Tony obviously missed out on while doing research for that
book,
so I wrote it in big letters to help him remember for next time. I should
note that I like AlwaysOn a lot, and that I have no real grudge against Tony…
I just want a shorter domain name to type, dammit."
Link to the AlwaysOn
Network site, Link to
"The Orifice of Naked Ape," link to
Numair's AONW.com site, Discuss
