Monday, December 04, 2006
Dot Org v. Dot Net: An UnObituary
For a few weeks now I've been lamenting the seeming death/disappearance of one of my favorite blogs on the Invisible Blogroll: Crescat Sententia.
If you were to go to their original website right now, you would discover not the normal witty assortment of legal, literary, and culinary analysis but rather an advertisement for acne prevention products. Every week or so, the site seems to change its commercial focus, but the original blog seemed to have disappeared without a trace. Blaming the disappearance on the rough winter weather in Chicago, I checked back there every so often, but to no avail. Crescat was gone.
I had planned last night to update the Invisible Blogroll to indicate Crescat's closure when I decided to do a more thorough google search. And lo and behold, what did I find?
A new URL, of course! It turns out that I had not heard the good news.
crescatsententia.org is dead
Long live crescatsententia.NET!
The Invisible Blogroll has already been changed to reflect the discrepancy, which appears to have resulted from the unscrupulous behavior of a search engine optimizer. I would say more nasty things about such unfair commercial practices, but I fear they might buy me out...although depending on the price, I suppose such things could be arranged. (A couple million seems about right to me.) Anyhow, the moral of the story is twofold. First, no matter how it looks, nothing really dies on the Internet. Second, there are a wide slew of domain suffixes out there: net, gov, org, and so forth. Make sure you pick the right one for your purpose. And if you don't believe me, try "accidentally" typing the White House website (www.whitehouse.gov) with the wrong ending. (Note: Whitehouse.com appears to have changed from its focus on, shall we say, adult entertainment so you can visit there safely and without going blind. Looks like Big Brother got tired of being equated with the Internet's most fertile industry.)
For a few weeks now I've been lamenting the seeming death/disappearance of one of my favorite blogs on the Invisible Blogroll: Crescat Sententia.
If you were to go to their original website right now, you would discover not the normal witty assortment of legal, literary, and culinary analysis but rather an advertisement for acne prevention products. Every week or so, the site seems to change its commercial focus, but the original blog seemed to have disappeared without a trace. Blaming the disappearance on the rough winter weather in Chicago, I checked back there every so often, but to no avail. Crescat was gone.
I had planned last night to update the Invisible Blogroll to indicate Crescat's closure when I decided to do a more thorough google search. And lo and behold, what did I find?
A new URL, of course! It turns out that I had not heard the good news.
crescatsententia.org is dead
Long live crescatsententia.NET!
The Invisible Blogroll has already been changed to reflect the discrepancy, which appears to have resulted from the unscrupulous behavior of a search engine optimizer. I would say more nasty things about such unfair commercial practices, but I fear they might buy me out...although depending on the price, I suppose such things could be arranged. (A couple million seems about right to me.) Anyhow, the moral of the story is twofold. First, no matter how it looks, nothing really dies on the Internet. Second, there are a wide slew of domain suffixes out there: net, gov, org, and so forth. Make sure you pick the right one for your purpose. And if you don't believe me, try "accidentally" typing the White House website (www.whitehouse.gov) with the wrong ending. (Note: Whitehouse.com appears to have changed from its focus on, shall we say, adult entertainment so you can visit there safely and without going blind. Looks like Big Brother got tired of being equated with the Internet's most fertile industry.)
