"C&A is a leading European fashion retailer." Like the millions of other companies that use the "&" sign in their names, it has a problem with its domain name (since ampersand can't be used in the server, folder or file names). They hate this location field. It kills their corporate style, damages their reputation and confuses users. What to do? Enjoy restrictions. Play with them.

Heath Bunting: "Cultural location becomes increasingly more important with geographic dislocation."

Wunderkind@etoy.com: "number 16 of the largest US online commerce corporations, eToys.com, is suing etoy.com (without the "s"), the "digital hijack" artists from the net. eToys Inc.(with the "s") asserts that they are unhappy that US kids could get confused and exposed to those bad guys from europe. family values are at stake; Xmas shopping harmony and american capital against net art."

Michael Daines (an excerpt from hamlet): "The limitations of working with browser location bars presented themselves very quickly... For example, there can be no question marks. Even though they're in anchor name territory, they look like a "get" request. Putting them in confuses browsers and servers. Also, "performing" Shakespere in this way makes stage directions difficult, not technically, but in making them seem visually plausible. I chose the "aside" directions to be shown by a character's visual moving, well, aside."

Everybody knows that .org, .com and .edu are not exactly the same. And that .gr, .ru, .de, .it are regional domains. But look at these urls. What perspective of a new sense seems to appear. Kavkaz.ru is simply a touristic guide about nice mountains, hotels and siteseeings in the area. Kavkaz.org is a tough resource about the Chechenian war. The information it contains and the vocabulary it uses are exact opposed to the Russian perception or even that of the rest of the world: goverment troops (not Chechenian) are called terrorists and bandits. Kavkaz.com is an official site of the Daghestan goverment. Note it is .com, not .gov! kavkaz.net doesn't exist.

Let's now look at the beginning of the url line; the area in between "://" and the first "." Ordinarily you will see "www". Most people think that it can only be "www". But it can be whatever. Any word, expression, sentence. It can be an open field for jokes and new meanings. And for making money as well. "www.haider.com" is a service which offers -to a person with this family name- to have the haider.com address with his or her first name instead of "www".

terrence kosick (kosick@sprint.ca): "typing navigation in the url is very sensible for an oral culture we are creating. In a way the mouse is very primitive in sence of communication. it is like pointing at objects (metaphores) instead of articulating through the (very old) advancement of phonetical communication."

We are looking for a new guide for the Location=Yes exhibition. This picture will replace the image of agatha on the right side of the Location=Yes Page. To apply for the position you should translate the following url into plain English. Include some information about yourself. http://ftpsearch.lycos.com/cgi-bin/ search?form=advanced&query=test&type= Case+insensitive+multiple+substrings+search&hits= 15&matches=&hitsprmatch=&limdom=&limpath=&limsize1= &limsize2=&limtime1=&limtime2=&f1=Count&f2=Mode&f3= Size&f4=Date&f5=Host&f6=Path&header=none&sort= none&trlen=20&doit=Save+Configuration The best (precise and simple) description will be published here. selection committee: konstantin morshnev - programmer (moko.design.ru) james allan - teleportacia copy editor olia lialina - teleportacia owner no deadline write to inform@teleportacia.org

And the winner is Hellekin O. Wolf: "Hey Lycos, I want the first 15 FTP URLs for any search I'll do in the future. Be lousy with the query string : case and the number of occurences don't matter. I want the results to appear as a raw list with no bells and whistles. Use default parameters for all the rest and save this configuration for later use. Go Get It(TM)!"

"This is spelled N-E-T-S-C-A-P-E but it's pronounced MOZILLA". Those who don't read source code proabably know that statement made early by the developpers of Netscape. In effect, mozilla.org hosts the open source initiative of Netscape, with the most-wanted next release of Mozilla 6.0 we've been waiting for. Now, the URL can show a movement in time, as shown in our example, where former employees of Netscape made a website at their "ex-"company's URL. In the series my.company.com and my.ex-company.org we also have boo.com and postboo.com The first one is an online sportswear startup which failed because management was spending more than $1,000,000 in "public relations" (sic) everyday. The second is the site of Boo.com's former designers team.

frederic madre: "F, a concentrated transposition of the french Minitel look and feel for the web, makes a subtle yet central use of the location bar making it a mix between command line and visualisation of response time or communication transfer. The Minitel's limited and distinctive set of function keys: Envoi (return), Suite (next), Guide (help) and Sommaire (summary) plus the numeric shortcuts used to navigate inside a particular service become part of the location as one tries to make its way thru the ascii jungle that offers everything from a hotel room to a remote control sex partner, until the ultimate disappearance of all windows: F stands for 'Fin de connexion', the end of all digital beings."

Go to the next part and find more examples and comments