This is the first article in my series on low bandwidth development.
One of the key things that I'm always keeping in mind when I've web makin' is how in the heck to make a website load faster. It's often the case that a lot of sites built in Europe or the US often ignore this component. While broadband in these areas is to the point of nearly being ubiquitous (even my mom out in the countryside can get it now), it's still a good idea to not go nuts and have a big fat pile of files and bytes for someone to pull down in order to see the site. This detracts from the user experience, even on fast connections because everything takes time to load, even if fast. A site that is less snappy is a site that is less user friendly and one that the user will bore of. Google get this with their sparse, yet highly functional interface. Yahoo! gets it decently well with their more full-featured, yet still rather lightweight interface. Facebook could obviously care less, which is why I'm assuming friends in African don't use it all that much. Or maybe they just don't like me anymore...
The other day I read in Aid Worker Daily (a new favorite of mine) about The Loband option. Loband is a nifty site that strips out all the images and the "what-what" to give you a very sparse, yet fully-informative website. All the content is there, just without most everything else. Sure, it's kind of ugly, but if you're on VSAT in Sub-Saharan Africa, it's a lot better than waiting a couple of minutes for each page load.
But all of this is from the group at Aptivate who I've just now become a big fan of. They're common sense web and IT folks, which are a group of folks I love as I tend to work in the same way. Being spoiled by resources makes for bad work. Having boundaries like slow machines and internet makes for much better work as you have to think and solve things within your boundaries. That being said, anyone who doesn't know of their web design guidelines should probably shut off their Photoshop and stop building sites. Some of it is extreme for conditions where your internet connection is just slightly faster than a slug, but even when you are sitting atop "fat pipes", these guidelines should be heeded. Yeah, I know that they might seem like common sense, but they are oh so often ignored in favor of using whatever slippy doo dah hoo hoo that's the latest thing in Web #.0 which the marketing folks might be crazy about at a particular moment.
For nearly my entire life, the NASA Space Shuttle has been taking to the heavens, pulling we mere mortals from the face of this planet to the reaches of a space that we've just begun to scratch at. Of course, shedding off our gravitational coil is not without its risks and we have lost a couple of the shuttles over the years. One might think that strapping yourself on to a massive liquid hydrogen-fueled rocket is a pretty risky proposition, but those diligent eggheads have gone to amazing lengths to make sure that as many possibilities are taken care of in the event of a MIDS (Moment of Incredible Deep Shit) overtaking the shuttle launch.
I happened to be browsing through the Wikipedia page for N'Djili Airport in Congo DRC when this one sentence stuck out at me, "It is an alternative landing site for NASA's Space Shuttle." Huh? I mean, sure, they've got a runway and it pretty much works, but this is a rather sordid airport. In fact, after passing through it, I felt compelled to write a survival guide, despite the fact I was seeing it at a vastly improved state than just a few years ago. But still, in the event of a MIDS with the shuttle, they would land it there? This required more research.
As it turns out, there are a number of locations in Sub-Saharan Africa that are on the list of potential emergency landing spots in addition to N'Djili including: Banjul, The Gambia, AFB Hoedspruit, South Africa, and Roberts International Airport, Liberia. It should be noted that out of these, only Banjul is designated as a true emergency landing site. The other three are just there for when things go seriously, seriously bad and they essentially have no option short of breaking apart. Why is Banjul so optimal given that it's in a country only 40km wide and 250km long? Well, this is explained:
Since September 1987 [following the Challenger crash], Banjul International Airport (BIA) has been among four selected locations in the world designated as augmented emergency landing sites and recovery locations for the United States Space Shuttle. B1A is adjacent to the capital, 13 degrees north of the Equator, on a flat plane, seven miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean. NASA space shuttles, launched eastward in a ballistic trajectory over the Atlantic, fly directly over Banjul, thus making it an ideal location for emergency landings. In addition, The Gambia's dry season from November to May provides favourable weather conditions, with generally good visibility for emergency landings.
A best case scenario in an emergency means landing in Banjul. For a slightly worse case and the reason that one of the other three sites would be a Transoceanic Abort Landing. This is a landing attempted in the first 30 minutes after lift off. I still don't even know how they would pull that off given the wicked velocity they're traveling to escape gravity.
In you might be wondering how on earth they would secure a space shuttle if it were to land at one of these sites, well NASA has again though of that as least in the case of Banjul:
During the week preceding a shuttle launch, a team of NASA mission-support specialists and medical personnel from the United States Department of Defence arrives in Banjul to activate the TAL site. They work closely with BIA's twenty specially trained security officers, and with the Gambian Fire and Rescue Service, which remains fully operational during this period.
Of course, if the shuttle makes it back down, then again, they have a very nifty way to get it back to Florida which is this puppy. While a shuttle tacked on to the back of a 747 isn't the most attractive or graceful of things, I do have to admire the simplistic approach they took to getting it home in that hey, these two things fly, stick 'em together and fly 'em. And if you're thinking that your last plane ticket was pricey, try spending $1.7 million to just truck that thing back across the US. I can't even imagine what it would cost from another country.
It's true, I have become quite fixated on Ben Affleck's adventures in the DRC. For a long time, I've been giving him the benefit of the doubt. He seemed pretty genuine about just going there and learning what he could; hoping a way to help would fall in to place. I've been over this before, here, here, and here. All seemed reasonable well and good as these celebrity things go.
It was at the corner of Altruism Way and Hubris Boulevard where the Ben made a wrong turn and the time has come for me to pass judgment on Affleck's African travels. He drifted from newbie, interested in the affairs to the dreaded ABSS (African Baby Saving Syndrome). Everything about the guy has gone awry with a recent article that he wrote in Time [Mutha-Uckin'] Magazine. What the...? Time doesn't really need this and to be honest, if Affleck were just trying to "do good" he wouldn't feel the need to write an article on what so many professional journalists have already covered.
For those used to hyperbole when it comes to Sub-Saharan Africa, the title alone says it all, "A Glimmer of Hope in Africa" Christ, did he really go there? Oh yes he did. And of course, you can't just stop there because you really need to have some stats to go along with this:
The most vulnerable suffer the worst. One in five children in Congo will die before reaching the age of 5 — and will do so out of sight of the world, in places that camera crews cannot reach, deep in a vast landscape and concealed under a canopy of bucolic jungle.
Great. That does little to really help out the four that make it and yes, I have Paul Theroux's reoccurring commentary in Dark Star Safari in my head right now of, "...and these were the lucky ones..." But, it seems that Affleck might just pull the article out of a nosedive when he says:
It is common in the West to read about African lives in grim statistical terms, so we've become inured to these huge numbers of deaths. Making matters worse, the conflict in Congo is often seen as a hopelessly byzantine African tribal war, encouraging the damning notion that nothing will ever change.
Well okay, that seems good. It seems that Affleck does get it. He baited you with a grim stat to then flip it around and go, "Aha! I gotcha! I'm about hope in this here article thang." But no, he goes on to sum up the recent history of conflict in the Kivus and tosses in bits such as:
The FDLR subjugates people either by rape (often performed in groups — and on people of either gender) or with the AK-47, a weapon so ubiquitous that it has picked up a tragic moniker: the Congolese credit card.
Man... what gives? That's just sucky news and yeah, it's everyday life for a lot of people there. I know since I saw how people live around Bukavu in my scant initial trip and it's freakin' rough. But really, if you toss in the savage crap, people just think of them as savages and are able to dismiss all of this as an primitive African problem, which is a load of crap and doesn't do anyone any good. Oh yeah... he apparently also met with now-captured rebel general Laurent Nkunda. You know, I was still going to even try and be nice to Ben until I saw that. That's just glamor crap. There is absolutely, positively no reason on the face of the earth, moon, Mars, or some undiscovered other planet made of jamón, that Ben Affleck, winner of an Academy Award for screenwriting should ever, ever, ever have met with Laurent Nkunda. What was to come of that?
Ben: "Laurent, I know how the burdens of notoriety really weigh down on you over time. I mean, I dated Gwenneth Paltrow for an entire year. So, you know, maybe you guys should disarm and go home."
Laurent: "Ben, you seem like a really nice guy coming to Congo all these times and well... yeah, okay. Boys, get your bags, we're checkin' out! Rebel times are over!"
Yeah, that didn't happen obviously. Nothing happened other than Ben being able to say he met a dangerous rebel general and possibly his pet goat. In the end, Ben is just trying to point out that the solution so far seems to be coming out of Africa. Despite everything that foreign governments have tried to do, they never succeeded in ending the fighting, but out of the countries who are involved in this, they found a solution; for now.
That's the problem. Ben's article should have focused so much more on that that and so much less on the grim elements. Because there's a good chance that there will be more rebel groups in the future while there are all the minerals in the region and everyone inside and outside Congo needs to know that there are those who can stop them. I mean dammit, some part of me still wants to encourage Ben probably out of a sense of brotherhood between two tall guys with big foreheads, but if you're going to focus on the positive, focus on the freakin' positive. Stop tempering it will all the bad. There are and will be plenty of folks doing that, probably with a lot smaller foreheads. Oh and stop feeling like you have to meet with rebel generals too. The rebel goats are still okay though.
No matter if you're poking around the internet in a haphazard fashion like me, or are out on a mission to use something specific, it seems that wherever you look, African language names are the newest and hottest names on the internet.
I've mentioned it before as it appears that well, people just need to branch out. Most internet names are taken and those that aren't, just kind of suck. So, what is a rather untouched section of domain names? Why those derived from African language words. These things happen when the people speaking the languages only make up 1% of the internet users on the planet yet have about 1,000 in use on their continent.
So, just for the sake of amusement, I'd like to mention a few of these. I might bring it up again in the future as well, since I doubt that this phenomena is going to go away any time soon. I'm all ears for more suggestions.
They're an online community for musicians to compose songs together through the internet by each person working on a track for a song. It's a cool concept and similar to one that I was working with a team to build back in 1998, which ultimately failed. It's good to see that others grabbed that baton, ran with it, and are doing quite well in the race.
Why "Inadaba"?
Indaba is a Zulu word that invokes the spirit of collaboration and community. It refers to a gathering or a forum for sharing ideas, and it embodies concepts that are central to the mission of Indaba Music.
Now, this one is quite reasonable. It's a group of Kenyans that created the initial system and they speak Swahili there. The fact that the system is all about witnessing events and reporting them via SMS makes a great deal of sense in the choice of the name, as well as the fact that it's catchy.
Why "Ushahidi"?
...Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, where we are building a platform that crowdsources crisis information. Allowing anyone to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form.
It's the only non-website one in this group and I chose this browser over safari.com as the later is just kind of hokey and the former shows that a large, American company is quite happy to co-opt a Swahili word for their product. To be honest, I'm not even that keen on this web browser, especially their "Resizable text areas." that I find I usually need to disabled lest they make my web pages all screwy. I will gladly get in to my other gripes about this browser if anyone were to ask...
Why "Safari"?
I could find no definition or catchphrase on the Apple website. Safari literally means, "trip" in Swahili. It gets overused in the English language to mean anything that you would wear or use on a trip to Africa, so saying you're taking a "travel safari" sounds pretty goofy in reality. As to why Apple chose this name, I'm guessing it had to do with how it's used in English and this browser allowing one to "travel the web".
A pre-configured Linux configuration for the masses, this is a pretty darned cool project. For those not wishing to use Windows or the Apple OS, Ubuntu really is the legitimate alternative with a Zulu name. Of course, this is not to be confused with the restaurant that opened with the same name for some reason who are probably sitting around wondering why they never get anyone visiting their site who searches for 'ubuntu'. As a future hint, don't battle geeks who make the web work when you're trying to come up with catchy names. (All your name are belong to us)
Why "Ubuntu"?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.
On this White African Twit, Erik linked to one 'mavi' design which he was amused by. I'm guessing that the designer, Alex Chmura (who is Polish) doesn't know that 'mavi' means 'waste' in Swahili. So it can get a little out of hand if you're not careful with the 'hot' African words.
I went to a session by NetSquared last night which talked about fund raising for non-profits through "social media". For those who most likely aren't familiar, NetSquared is an organization that (among other things) puts together a meeting each month that deals with social change through the web. Sometimes the talks are insightful, sometimes they're a bit dull, but the topics tend to usually always be new. Such is not the case with social media media and non-profits separately. Both have been around for years but just in the last two years or so, they've been merging together with relatively good success.
The talks were pretty dry overall, but a couple of points stuck out for me, the biggest one being the fact that when you're a non-profit, you rely on donations and grants for funding, which is an onerous task. Toss on to that the fact that your biggest donors are likely to be above the age of 50 with the biggest givers past the age of 70. Now, this is tough because when it comes to using the web and email to get donations, this group isn't the most web-savvy. Of course on the other hand, the group that is the most savvy (those under 50 and specifically under 40) are going to give the least amount of donations. So, if you're an aid or development non-profit/NGO working in Africa, you're probably going to have to first focus on this over 50 group by reaching out to them digitally (as this has been proven to be the best tool to receive donations) and then secondly explaining what Africa is.
It's the 50-70 year-old group that I posit is the most difficult group when it comes to Africa. The big issue is that this group is made up of all the aging hippies. Those people who were out to change the world and believe in free-thinking are now one of the most potent forces from a non-profit vantage and if you're going to be doing any kind of work in Africa, you will absolute run in to these people and end up having to basically "explain Africa" to them. There are so many aspects to this, I just have to start at the beginning.
I grew up with hippie, back-to-the-lander, artists for parents. They were and have been loving, wonderful people, but my whole life, I've been surrounded by people who were much like them, still living the 1960's dream long in to the end of the 20th century. I watched the course of the hippies through the 80's and 90's to the point where they're all starting to retire today. It's been in the last two years as my interest in Africa has grown that I've found myself trying to have conversations about various regions of the continent often to find myself reaching the point of wanting to scream or shutting down and agreeing with whatever they said just to be finished with an otherwise dead conversation.
Whenever talking to people who lived through the 60's and early 70's, it is essential to keep in mind that they have a tremendous sense of empowerment. Their parents were a generation that was conformist, while they broke free of this. I'll definitely admit that they initially accomplished a lot, but at the cost of imbuing a permanent short-sightedness.
Ultimately, the popular movements born of the 60's pulled people in to a new version of conformity and a number of things they accomplished were ultimately self-defeating. I point to People's Park in Berkeley as a prime example of this wherein they protested to get a university owned lot that was for student housing turned in to city park despite the fact that this housing was very much needed and there were already a vast wealth of city parks at the time. Somebody actually died in the violent confrontations that ensued and the park was eventually created only to become a massive drug and crime haven today.
While the 60's were a time of social upheaval in the US, they were also a time of massive change for the African continent. During this time, the European powers were extricating themselves from the African colonies and new countries were forming in the world. Many hippies I've talked to will often identify with what the Africans were going through in overthrowing "the man" to establish a better society for them and their children. Except that they were nothing the same. Americans were working towards tweaking their societies and trying to get something better in a country that was already quite well off. Africans on the other hand were forming new societies and governments, overthrowing massively corrupt (in the case of DRC) regimes that exploited them. There is nothing the same in this except that these were both movements of the people. But given this identification with the African struggle, hippies will often be of the opinion that they know everything about Africa yet can't answer the question, "What is the meaning of Boulevard 30 du Juin in Kinshasa?"
How can someone who is say, in their 30's have a discourse with someone in their late 50's or 60's about Africa? It's not easy, but I've found a number of common arguments or opinions that keep popping up in all of this and have realized *some* workarounds.
"They're just savages there."
This is for all purposes, racism. It shows that the person is someone who reads/watches popular media as this is the common perception if you only take that as gospel about Africa.
This is hard to approach as when someone is the age that I'm talking about, they might already be set in their ways as a hardcore racist; racism is more strongly worded in the US. Typically though, if they make this statement, it's more due to ignorance. You can ask questions in a very normal, non-confrontational tone such as, "Oh really? Why do you say that?" or "No kidding. Who was saying that?" If they make statements along the lines of the fact that Africans are of lesser intelligence or they need to be shown the "light" (whatever the hell this light is), then yes, they're racist and you're probably not going to make it anywhere with them. If they say that they saw it on a report on CNN or god forbid, FOX News, then you stand a chance. You can try bringing up things a little bit deeper such as the fact that Eastern Congo in an incredibly rich area for minerals that produce modern electronics and it's in the interest of foreigners (such as Americans and Europeans) to keep the conflict going there in order to scare off others and be able to rape the earth at lower prices. If they ask how to stop this, tell them to tell others, so that people know it's not "savagery" but neo-colonial great and exploitation. They might or might not be intrigued to learn more. Maybe they just don't care, in which case flash them a photo of a starving child (jk, please don't).
"My heart is with the Tibetans"
Hippies love all things Asian. For some reason they grabbed ahold of Asian spirituality (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc. yet not Islam) and didn't let go. Unless you brought it up first, I have no idea how you'd get in to a conversation with someone like this about Africa, but if you do, it's pretty hopeless. They will undoubtedly have a "Free Tibet" bumper sticker on their Subaru wagon next to one that say, "Dog is my co-pilot". A small splinter group of these types of hippies have attached themselves to the whole Save Darfur thing, but this campaign is quite sketchy to get in to. If when talking them, they get all riled up about the Darfurian crisis and how arresting the current President of Sudan is a good thing (he's not a good guy, but we can't do this) as opposed to continuing the precedent set by the well-run Ghanian elections, then you might want to just encourage them to stick with Tibet.
As you can see, they are susceptible to propaganda campaigns, so you can try to help clear up things like telling them that yes, there was post-electoral violence in Nairobi, but it was quite focused in certain areas. Judging Kenya as being hopeless because of that is just judging the US as hopeless based upon what the news showed about People's Park in the 60's. Tell all your friends.
"You just weren't there, so you don't know how it was."
This, along with "I used to know everything about X years ago, but have since forgotten it" are two of my most hated misuses of time. Hippies will often invoke these "arguments" when they feel threatened and secretly admit that you do indeed know more about something than they do. They do this because of three reasons: they are older than you so they really think they know more, their generation has an aforementioned overdeveloped sense of empowerment, and there is no way you can argue against this because yes, you weren't there.
I have often found myself getting quiet and giving up when I get this response. You can try some things to not have the discussion shut down though, such as capitulating to their undeniable wisdom and saying, "Yes, you're right. I was getting a good deal of my information about DRC from Leopold's Ghost and In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz. I don't know if you've read them, but you might like them since you lived through this." Short of that, there is little else I've found that I can do.
In no way do I mean to say that all hippies fall in to the above categories. For instance, I have no idea whether or not Paul Theroux was a hippie, but he is 67 and if he started telling me about Africa, I would sit with rapt attention and listen to every word the man had to say. There are other people as well, like my father who would have been initially combative with me on the subject of Africa, yet he would then go, read any books I suggested, find more, and then come back at me to tell me new information.
It's just that in dealing with so many people from the "Age of Aquarius" generation, I find that it's often an uphill battle in regards for them to understand more about Africa. As was point out in Larry Devlin's memoirs about DRC, Africa wasn't even on American radar until the very end 1960's. Culturally, it really wasn't mainstream until the 1980's. Just keep in mind that despite MTV coming two decades after the hippie's formative years, keep anything you say short and to the point in a nice, chewy soundbite. Try to paint Africa as a place where people do indeed lead normal lives, that aren't full of rape and horror (you're not helping Eve Ensler and Lisa Jackson) and you'll be helping a group to better understand a continent which has mostly been in their peripheral vision.
By no means do I call myself a professional photographer. I have sold very little of the photos that I have taken. Part of this is due to the fact that flickr has done an absolutely lovely job in cheapening photography as an art because everyone now believes that they are a photographer. Living in either San Francisco or Barcelona most of the year, I see this all the time. People walk around with a honkin' Digital SLR slung over one shoulder that has the lens on it that came with it, which is probably a piece of junk. These people get back home from their trips, look at their photos and are not terribly impressed. They then look at mine (see them if you like) and immediately ask me (if I know them of course), "Wow, you must have a really expensive camera!" Well, to some degree, yes. I have a Canon 30D body with about 30,000 photos on it and, five lenses I can attach to it. It all cost a bit to put together over time, but long before I started down the road to destitution in owning a "proper" camera, I had a number of point and shoot cameras. And in truth, the only thing I get out of having the DSLR is more color depth and greater options.
I bring this up as often people use trips to Kenya or Tanzania where they go on a Bush Safari as an excuse to go nuts with the camera purchasing, buying the best DSLR with massive 400mm telephoto lenses. Oh and let's not even talk about what a climb up Kilimanjaro needs in the way of new camera gear... Sure, all of that can definitely help out with taking good photos, but only if you know how to use it.
Last year, a friend of mine was mulling a new camera purchase and really, really wanted to get a low end DSLR like the Rebel XTi. Unlike most people, she actually asked me what I thought about that before she bought it and I told her that as a first camera, it's ridiculous. Get a really good point and shoot with a decent set of manual controls. This aspect is much more important than having the big camera hanging off your shoulder because you can be totally automatic, but then fiddle a bit to learn more about the art of photography. To prove this point, a recent article came out from a guy who went to Japan and shot most of the trip with a Canon PowerShot G9 instead of his Leica M8. The difference between the two is literally thousands of dollars and in the end, he found that the much cheaper Canon did nearly the same job as the much more expensive M8:
But seriously, who takes their M8 to Japan and ends up leaving it in the bag (or the hotel room) most of the time? The answer, it turns out, is me.With only eleven days in which to savour a first-taste of Japan, I chose to travel as light as possible. In my old universe, this meant the Leica M8 with a 28/35/50 Tri-Elmar. At the last minute, Michael suggested that I also take the new Canon G9 and put it through its paces as a travel camera. No harm, I thought, as it’ll be nice to have a point-and-shoot for ‘happy snaps’ along the way.
As the story unfolded, however, this solid, dependable little blob of consumer electronics became my constant companion, and the Leica a lonely bag-warmer. This is the tale of how my paradigm on ‘serious’ travel cameras changed.
And sometimes, the big giant DSLR is actually much more of a hindrance than anything else. It's nearly useless for me to take portraits with as people (and dogs) feel like they have a cannon pointed at them and don't act naturally. Also, when traveling to places like the Democractic Republic of Congo, a big camera is bad news as you can read there. Of course, a camera in general is a big problem as a stupid friend of mine once took a picture while driving of a guy in the street who he thought had died. This ultimately led him to being detained by the police for 12 hours because he had slowed down to take the picture and people thought he had hit the guy. It's in these situations where, the smaller your camera, the better, and good point and shoots are a godsend.
Whatever the case, I can't emphasize enough that the type of equipment you have is so incredibly secondary to the type of ability you wield in taking your photos. People who know what they're doing can get away with using a Box camera if that's all they have available. It's something to think about the next time Canon, Nikon, or Sony release their next DSLR bodies and your think that you absolutely need to have it to be taking good shots.
I've been in this web thing for a long time. I watched as people sucked up domain names like no one's business in the late 1990's. Thousands and thousands (or even millions and millions) of dollars were spent to buy these names and as was usually the case, squat on them. Then, along came Web 2.0 and names like flickr.com instead of flicker.com were cool. Then, even cooler was the announcement that you could have your own "top level domain", so I could just have http://hudin instead of http://www.hudin.com, although we'll see where that goes. It appears that in the meantime, people are still all about eating up whatever new names that they can. I wrote an article about the Montenegro .me release last year and how domain squatters have pretty much made that name go bye-bye. If you thought you were going to start the next dating service at www.love.me, ha ha, think again.
But, the reason I bring all of this up is that while not writing on this blog and not working on coding the bolts and gears driving Maneno, I'm looking at the fact that Maneno is being created to serve the blogging needs of some 45 separate countries. It's a moderately lofty goal and if I were Google, then in order to preserve a brand identity, that would mean registering, a .ao for Angola, a .bf for Burkina Faso, a .bi for Burundi, a .bj for Benin (condolences to Benin on that one), a .cd for Congo DRC, and... oh lord, it's freakin' endless. You can read all the names here if you've got spare time to kill.
There is really no reasonable way to do this though. For one, a great number of these are already taken. For two, Maneno ain't Google. Google is working to create a presence in each of these countries that they then market directly to. Google CoKe is all about working for Kenya. While we're steadily working to get more bloggers in each of the countries that Maneno is being created for, we really don't want to tie it in to one specific country only. Investment folks in the US would probably ask why we're "just" tying it to the African continent, but that has been explained many a time before.
I guess this is all thoughts on the question as to why .org and why not .somethingelse and the answer is that it just works. Somewhere down the line when it can just be http://maneno, then we can talk again. But, I'm seeing that eventually, people are getting unstuck from the whole, "This needs to be ournewsite.com or it just ain't gonna happen. The business model is ruined!" Even though they bought the .com version, you can see with their getting popular as del.icio.us that people can accept other domains and the .com has lost a little bit of its shine, although just a little as people work to create brands and not just a "duh" name like shop.com. Now off to register www.hud.in if someone in India hasn't already taken it. What? They did? Ah, man...
