Nothin to do with DNS games, of course... but who'll give me odds on being able to punch in names instead of numbers for a voice connection, say by this time next year (or go for a double: ...on a Dvorak telephone)? kerry =========== FIRM MAKES HOME PAGES FREE FOR ALL WITH PHONES Issue: Internet Idealab, the company that launched the hot Internet businesses eToys, CitySearch and Free-PC, is offering anyone in the U.S. and Canada a free home page tied to their phone number through a new venture called HomePage.com. Other sites offer long and complicated home page addresses, says Bill Gross, the founder of Idealab, who believe HomePage.com is a sure winner because it allows people to immediately get a page simply by calling a number. If your phone number is (888) 888-888, for example, you would go to: www.888-888-8888.home-page.com and, using an automatic call-back feature, the page would confirm you were the owner of the page. You'd then be able to build a page using the tools provided and change the name of the page if you'd like [??]. Idealab has built more than a billion home-page placeholders and it, like the portals Yahoo and Lycos, finds this to be a lucrative market. Consumers should note that home-page companies could demand a cut of the sales generated from the sites and that portals use the number of home-page owners on their sites to attract advertisers. [SOURCE: USA Today (1B), AUTHOR: Janet Kornblum] (www.usatoday.com)
