04 March 2006

shakalakalaka

so the crisis of the week is that the DVD burner we bought for Sam's parents is broken. this is our lifeline to US television, and more specifically Gopher hockey. and so, while the burner is being repaired (est. time: two weeks) we thought we might try to get a replacement for them to try out. so off to bestbuy.com. but instead of typing that, we type: bestbuy.om

which leads me to my post today.

why do we not start a set of domain names that end with .om? here's the concept. you mis-type the big box retailer you are trying to find: target.om. what comes up but an appropriate mandala (say, a concentric circle one with lots of red) and an appropriate mantra, with audio to boot. perhaps something like Robert's throat-singing recordings? a link at the bottom says: to leave the spirit-anchoring world of the om and continue on to the desire-centered world of the com, click here.

or, stay awhile and recenter yourself.




Genna Gurvich, Mandala of the Red Circle, 2001

1 comment:

Dan said...

Great idea. The .om top-level domain actually does exist -- it's the country code for Oman. However, they don't let you register a domain without a second-teir domain (.co.om, .com.om, .gov.om etc.). This is probably smart on their part, lest they be inundated with opportunistic registrants who want to intercept those Best Buy customers who make that common typo. Same goes for Columbia (.co) and Cameroon (.cm). Because even in your altruistic version, the "click here" would *have* to generate per-click ad revenue for the owner of target.om -- you know, to help with "site maintenance fees". ;) The OM might be spirit-anchoring, but the anchor tag ain't free.