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[Rant] Site & domain namesANN.lu
Posted on 08-Feb-2000 10:56 GMT by Christian Kemp16 comments
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Just a small rant from me about the domain and site names some people are chosing for their amiga-related homepages. I just noticed that amiganation.com is calling itself AmigaNation News. Now it may just be a bizarre coincidence, but I feel like its creator could have been a bit more creative when registering that domain name and naming his website.

First of all, there has been a site called AmigaNation for years now. And even if that site is in German and has a Swiss domain, that doesn't mean that somebody should rush out and register exactly the same name in a different domain.

Secondly, it sure feels strange that AmigaNation News sounds awfully similar to Amiga Network News, and naturally shares the same initials (which are in bigger type, so it looks even more obvious). Just a coincidence? You decide.

But this wasn't the first time something like this happened. Amiga Central registered a domain even though Paul Morabito's "Amiga Central" had been online for months, if not years before, and had been quite popular. Now I seem to remember that this was a misunderstanding, but still...

If somebody (don't remember who it was) can threaten to sue Colin Thompson for using the very generic name "Daily Fishwrap" for his former Amiga news site, I wonder how people can even think about using exactly the same name for a site that fits exactly the same niche in a very narrow market...

Anyway, enough ranting and/or complaining from me. What do you think? Do you agree with me, or do you think I am way off here?

List of all comments to this article
Sorted by date, most recent at bottom
Comment 1Mario Saitti07-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 2Bob C.07-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 3John Block07-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 4Christian Kemp07-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 5Adam Szymczak07-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 6Steinar07-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 7the man in the shadows07-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 8Colin Thompson07-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 9Elliott Olson07-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 10Jay07-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 11John Block07-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 12Plain English08-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 13anonymous coward ;-)08-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 14James Russell08-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Comment 15Christian Kemp09-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
Site & domain names : Comment 16 of 16ANN.lu
Posted by James Russell on 09-Feb-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 15 (Christian Kemp):
"why do you use a larger type for the "A" and the two "N"s in your logo?”
Because I think Amiganation looks stupid without the capital N.
“You didn't get any hostility from me. I was posting a rant, my personal opinion, that's all.”
Firstly, the term "rant" infers a hostile attitude, or at least attitude, to start. Second, you might have come to me first rather than me having to find out your opinion from one of your postees who e-mailed me with a rather unpleasant post. I do like your site, but again, you should have ranted to me FIRST, so that I could have set you straight and not had to read through a bunch of postings bashing my site, on yours.
“It's "c'est la vie", by the way.”
That’s fine, I was in the middle of a rant. What can I say?
“I don't consider you as a competition and my rant was not at all intended in that way."
Maybe I percieved as such because of the below statement?
“I wonder how people can even think about using exactly the same name for a site that fits exactly the same niche in a very narrow market...”
What I didn't like, and what made me write this rant, was that it seemed to me like you were inspired by not only one, but two sites when you named your site, and all I criticized was a lack of creativity.”
Such was not the case in either fashion. Again, I had never seen either site you refer to at that point. I saw the .com domain was still available and snagged it, because a .com is the biggest of any domain. Only later did I discover the .de or whatever the other is.
AmigaNation is not that hard to come up with on your own, especially when looking for an alternative to AmigaWorld, if you think about it. I think there’s actually about 4 or 5 of them now, not just two. Luckily, as I said, I tacked on the “NEWS” to differentiate.
“But as soon as two names share the same abbreviation, or the same domain name, I believe that things are slightly different...”
When gaining the rights to a .com domain, why should that person be obligated to go through all nearly 200 possible thisthisthis.de, thisthisthis.uk, thisthisthis.ca to make sure someone else doesn’t have it on an obscure country domain? Mostly people are concerned with the big three, .org, .com, .net, and this was the case with me. And again, I don’t use an acronym at all. Actually at one point I did, on my site I would have a little graphic that said AN (red A, black N) at the end of every story. Two words, two letters. AN
“domain names that were already in use for other sites; and that in a market as small as the Amiga, it would have been very trivial to check whether any site already used a site title like that.”
Again, there are nearly 200 different country domains in this world, and I was very inexperienced in Web creation/etc. in any case. This was nearly a year ago now and I have learned a great deal -- including that there are more than just three domains per name.
“With all that written, I think it is interesting to point out that you were the one to talk about "hostility" and take a defensive attitude. After all, I had just made an observation. I did not ask you to change anything. I just voiced my own opinion on my own site, but it seems you read more into the few lines than I had intended to say.”
Again, ranting has hostile connotations to start. And you called me uncreative. Anyhow, it certainly didn’t help reading the above postings bashing my site and the things I say on it, though granted that wasn’t you, I know, and you did SORT OF leave open that it could have been a “bizarre coincidence.”
The fact is that I believe my site is one of the few that actually has large, original articles (such as the illustrated patent articles) that set it apart from others, and do try and have journalistic quality (NOT THAT YOUR SITE DOES’NT). I’m still unclear what was wrong with my Transmeta brief quoted above, but again that wasn’t your post, just a reply to it. Recently I've taken my site further still to try and resurrect a Netscape port to Amiga.
“So if I offended you in any way, or if you feel I wrongly accused you, please accept my apologies. I never intended it that way.”
Apology accepted. Peace, out.
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