Numbers for Names, Part 2

Yesterday we talked about fictional characters with numbers for names. Today the subject is websites whose names are numbers. Think of some proud parents naming a new anything - a town, for example:

Or a song:

Well, imagine the excitement on 15 March 1985 (25 years ago), when the first .com Internet domain name was registered by Symbolics, Incorporated, a computer firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The logo above is the original company's design. They changed to the logo below when a new parent company (XF.com) bought this domain address last year.

 By now, (2010) there are now about 84 million domain names. Most of the good words are used up! And so are the easy numbers. Now you need to search, get creative assistance, etc. to find a domain name. There are some rules and some blocked off addresses, so not everything you think of will work.

Try searching the lowest numbers, and see what you find. www.00.com is the lowest numerical value I found that went to a working website. Their motto? The first address for outsourced IT.

Nice pun. I like it!

Here are a few more sites with numbers (some of these translate or divert you to another site):

• 007.com goes to a site for the latest James Bond movie.
• 101.com goes to the Disney site for 101 Dalmations.
• 401k.com takes you to the Fidelity Investments websites, where you see 401(k) retirement plans.
• 1031.com goes to a site that explains how to do 1031 property exchanges (1031 is a tax regulation).
• 1040.com takes you to a website from Drake, the tax software publishers.

This is kind of a depressing theme, seeing as we have just finished paying our 2009 US taxes...

NOTE - Most website addresses we type in are words, or a combination of letters and numbers, but the "real" address for every site is one that only computers can recognize and remember:  10.1.100.100 or 2005:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334

Let's end with this - some Internet addresses are static (permanent) and some are dynamic (assigned when needed). Just like real people's addresses and names.

Have you or anyone you know changed their name or address to suit new conditions or relationships?