Apple Begins Using 'iTun.es' As Link Shortener

[Somtaaw]

I see. But that doesnt mean they have to have every .somthing. A gaming company named bungie has a website and it is bungie.net, it dosnt have bungie.com or anything. So they could have itun.com

They actually do have bungie.com, just FYI

 

[Westside guy]

Why do we still need to show "http://"? Can't it go away like the need for "www"?

Displaying something is a different thing than requiring it. Firefox will automatically pre-pend "www." and post-pend ".com" if you just type a dot-less text string into the URL bar - that doesn't mean those parts of the address are unnecessary; just that the software tries to intelligently guess what you intended when you haven't provided enough info.

As someone did point out, though, "www" is an arbitrary convention that isn't necessarily what you must use - but conventions do exist to be helpful. You do need some specific host to be identified as a domain's web server, of course, even if you've got your DNS tables set so visitors only need to type your broader domain name to get to that specific host's port 80/443.

 

[whatever]

There's no need to show it, Chrome doesn't in the address bar nor is it obligatory to show it on the text displayed for the link. But for the actual link reference, it needs to be there, otherwise, how does the browser know to use http and not https, ftp, ftps, sftp, telnet, mailto or other protocols to threat the link info ?



There was a need for www ? When was this ? www was never needed. It's just that convention everyone used out of habit. It's just a DNS entry that points to an IP address, it had no special function and still doesn't.



You mean like back in the days when forums were read using an NNTP reader ? Back when chat was done using IRC software ? Back when remotely logging into a server was done over Telnet ?

You mean we're going back to the good old days of the Internet, back when the Web browser was used to browse the web and not to try to be a swiss army knife ?

Goodie.

Unfortunately, you're reading it wrong. Those apps all still use the "URLs" and all the domain name infrastructure. It's just hidden away. Also, all those apps are just very specialized web browsers in a sense, they just don't use hypertext but XML. If things continue to devolve the way they have, soon the entire Internet will exclusively use the HTTP protocol for everything. Heck, in the same vein as XML, we could just rename HTTP for XTP (eXtensible Transfer Protocol) and do away with any pretension of multi-protocol over a network of networks.

You're missing my point. What I'm saying is that the web has become a tangled mess. And the URL structure just isn't good for the general public and DNS itself is a mess (and DNS names aren't in the control of the content providers). But as the concept of Apps get bigger, endusers will use them instead.

Instead of telling people to go to www.cnn.com, CNN can direct people to their App. Also those App providers do not have to use DNS names, they can embed actual IP addresses.

 

[vincenz]

Its pretty clever.

I assume Microsoft will respond with a domain from the Hitachi islands and bring out http://zunis.hit/ prefix

There's a place called Hitachi Islands? You learn something new everyday

 

[gorjan]

What I'm saying is that the web has become a tangled mess. And the URL structure just isn't good for the general public and DNS itself is a mess (and DNS names aren't in the control of the content providers).

Well that's kind of what you got when the Internet went from nervana to consumerism. It's all about trademarks now, compared to the order and system the was originally the point.

 

[caccamolle]

I was hoping that Apple would not join in the twitcrapology ... but again, it does reflect upon Apple's transformation in recent years, very effectively indeed.

 

[caccamolle]

Displaying something is a different thing than requiring it. Firefox will automatically pre-pend "www." and post-pend ".com" if you just type a dot-less text string into the URL bar - that doesn't mean those parts of the address are unnecessary;

so does Safari, just for the record

Of course Explorer does not, at least, last time I checked which may be a while back

 

[Full of Win]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

I was hoping that Apple would not join in the twitcrapology ... but again, it does reflect upon Apple's transformation in recent years, very effectively indeed.

Welcome to the Apple Consumer Eletronics Era.

 

[ntrigue]

why didn't they choose www.pi.ng???

or...or... itn.s

This could go on for a bit as you'd imagine.

 

[arnop]

Finally !

 

[doctor-don]

I think the point he was going for was that ITUN is a spanish company and .es is typically used for spanish sites.

Exactly! .es is the URL country code code for Spain. E-mail I receive from an address ending in .es gets dumped in the spam folder automatically.

URL shorteners have typically been used by spammers to circumvent most spam filters. Without the real URL, who can you trust?

 

[Hal Itosis]

Welcome to the Apple Consumer Eletronics Era.

Cry me a river.

or...or... itn.s

This could go on for a bit as you'd imagine.

Oh really? To which ccTLD (country code top-level domain) does .s refer?

 

[caccamolle]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)



Welcome to the Apple Consumer Eletronics Era.

you got it. I am certainly a bit nostalgic of the old times!

 

[caccamolle]

Cry me a river.

exactly what I am talking about...iManiacs

It took them the iPod and several years to realize computers existed ! They are still working on what they are for !

 

[KnightWRX]

You're missing my point. What I'm saying is that the web has become a tangled mess.

It has ? No, the Web has become everything. Chat, Forums, File transfers, Remote Administration, etc.. The web is becoming the Internet. It's not tangled if you design your solution properly.

And the URL structure just isn't good for the general public

URLs don't have a structure. You can decide to build your entire site with 500 character long URLs, or you can do simple things like myweb.com/news, myweb.com/forum, myweb.com/products, etc..

URLs are flexible, their structure is up to the site designer. So it's not the URLs per say that aren't good for the general public, it's just some designer's implementation of URLs.

and DNS itself is a mess (and DNS names aren't in the control of the content providers).

Use a better registry (hint, not GoDaddy.com). In Canada, CIRA actually afford you a lot of control over your domain once you've registered it. Some for most generic TLDs, just choose your registry wisely.

DNS is fine as it is. It's going to be even better with DNSSEC implemented.

But as the concept of Apps get bigger, endusers will use them instead.

Apps that are just self-contained websites with a flashy icon are still using your Web infrastructure. Why reinvent the wheel when you can just push XML files over HTTP ? Most iOS apps are just very specialized web browsers, pulling down information you could just host on your normal website.

Instead of telling people to go to www.cnn.com, CNN can direct people to their App. Also those App providers do not have to use DNS names, they can embed actual IP addresses.

You have never designed any kind of Internet connected infrastructure and it shows. Embedding actual IP addresses is a nightmare for many reasons. Domain names are portable, you can modify them to point to anything you like. Switching data centers ? Just switch the DNS entry. Adding hosts to a round-robin ? Just switch the DNS entry. Moving to a new server in the same netblock ? Just switch the DNS entry.

IP addresses change much more often than domains do (if ever). CNN.com will always be there. One day it can be self-hosted on CNN's IT infrastructure, the next it can be load-balanced by Akamai and it can also be moved to an external data center. It's going to be transparent to the user with a domain name. With an IP address, you're going to have to push out an "App" update to every user.