Michael Turner wrote:
> Is there anyone doing something similar based on just, say, phone
> number lookups?
Bango suggests choosing numbers like that, but I think you can ask
for any number within a certain range. They probably charge more
for ones that they think correspond to phone numbers, e.g.
1800xxxxxxx for the US companies that let you order things by phone.
> I.e., why not go with a number that already "locates" the person/
> business/institution via a site-associated "resource", more or less
> "universally"?
National numbers aren't universal; a single organisation may have a
lot of different public phone numbers; numbers aren't very memorable
(do you try to remember the IP addresses of servers instead of their
names?).
The only reason I can think of for using numbers for sites is to
make it easier for people to enter a site address written on dead
trees. But an address like mobile.example.com is much shorter than
an email or text-message, so it's hardly a great challenge to enter
it! To use the number you'd have to know about and bookmark the
number-to-site form. And if there were multiple competing
numbering systems, you could get very confused! Thankfully there
is a single authoritative DNS to resolve host names.
Ben.
--
I do not speak for Roundpoint; any opinions I express are my own.
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Received on Wed Mar 7 14:39:39 2001