Sign on the dot.name

Katie O'Rourke will be online before she can walk

The internet is getting a little more personal.

The dot.name domain officially goes live on Tuesday and all the domains registered as dot.names before now should be accessible on the net.

The dot.name suffix is the fourth to be switched on of the seven new domains picked last year.

One of the first people to take up the new domain was baby Katie O'Rourke, whose parents have registered a dot.name for her.

Baby grow

London-based Global Name Registry, the registrar for dot.name, started taking applications for the new domain last year.

Many of the early applications were companies that wanted to protect their names from speculators and cybersquatters.

Some individuals have also taken the chance to register dot.names for themselves. If someone called John Smith applied for and got a dot.name they would have received a domain in the form: www.john.smith.name.

Net's new domains

.biz - businesses

.name - individuals

.museum - museums

.pro - professionals

.aero - aviation

.coop - cooperatives

.info - general information

One of the first were the parents of baby Katie O'Rourke who claimed one of the new web addresses for their child.

"We feel strongly that the internet is going to play a major part in Katie's life as she grows up and now she owns the one thing that makes her who she is," said Carrie O' Rourke, Katie's mum.

Katie O'Rourke was born in Worthing, Sussex, UK, this week.

Initially, demand for dot.name was relatively slow, with 60,000 customers buying domains or e-mail services from GNR.

The plethora of new domains now becoming available is thought to have eased pressure on the cramped dot.com domain.

GNR hopes that people turn to dot.name to give themselves a permanent and personal presence on the web.

Gradually, it hopes to turn dot.name into a generic way to reach people no matter what electronic means they use to communicate.

GNR plans to run successive landrush periods over the coming months. Those who apply now will find out if they have won the dot.name they want after a delay of a couple of weeks.

This waiting period will gradually be reduced until May when real-time registration should be possible.

Dot.name is the first so-called top-level generic domain administered outside the US.

Although domains for countries, such as .uk and .fr, are administered by registrars in the nations they represent, none of the other generic domains (such as .biz and .com) are run by non-US companies.