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Found It On the Web...

Planet-named Web Sites (2000.10.23)

I don’t know what made me remember this, but I remember back when I was first getting into the Web (maybe around the time I got this domain), I was always curious about—how shall I say this—regular name domains. Like “red.com” or “earth.com” as opposed to “webinternetservices.com” and the like. I think it mostly began with my life-long interest in astronomy, and I was curious if the planet names were already taken as dot coms. And if so, what company had them.

Well like I said, I don’t know what made me remember this, but I did and I felt like this would be a great venue to research these things and then talk about them. So today I began with astronomy, with the planets of our Solar System (and the Sun). I decided to look up each name with “.com”, “.org”, and “.net” as they were the popular public top level domain names when I was first getting online. (Note that I’m looking up Earth’s moon as both “moon” and “Luna.”)

Update 2004.02.26: Some, or many, of these links may have changed or broke since I first created this page. However, I will keep them as they were as the topic of this page is about what the sites where at the time I found them.

• sun.com - Sun Microsystems. Pretty decent site, after all they are a large, well-known company. But no references or anything about the Sun, that great star in the center of our solar system.
• sun.org - “This site is under construction!” Oh well.
• sun.net - Apparently a backdoor to something at Sun Microsystems (I found this out by looking up the domain record).
• mercury.com - Mercury Technologies. “Leveraging Innovative Computing Technology for Business.” What? Apparently they’re a consulting/training company, as those are two of their menu buttons. No references to the planet Mercury, although their animated logo graphic has what could look like a planet (a partially lighted sphere), but not exactly Mercury.
• mercury.org - Mercury Research. “Insight Into Microsystems & Components Markets.” Don’t know what they do either. Nothing relating to the planet Mercury here, although their logo graphic does have silver in it. Maybe a reference to the element mercury (a.k.a.: quicksilver).
• mercury.net - “For Sale! This domain is for sale.” Looking at the other two “Mercury” domains it doesn’t seem like a “Mercury” domain is all that popular.
• venus.com - Venus.com - the Web portal for Girls & Goddesses. This is a portal for “Everything for women.” Their logo uses the astrological symbol for Venus (the circle with the plus at the bottom), but that’s the only Venus reference.
• venus.org - Venus.org - ralao’s Web server. By reading the “Who am I?” I can see that this is a personal site. The design looks that way too. No planet Venus references.
• venus.net - SEI Communications. “SEI Communications is your total communications solution.” And they have no reference to Venus. Even the domain name jumps over to seicommunications.com.
• earth.com - “earth.com is my personal domain.” And it looks like a very old one also. It does have a picture of the Earth, although most links are for Web technologies and the like.
• earth.org - [could not connect]
• earth.net - [could not connect]
• moon.com - Welcome to Moon Handbooks. Looks like the make travel books for different places around the world. They have a picture of the moon in the upper left corner (and what might be the moon in the bottom frame), but that’s all the reference there is. The site looks like it’s trying to have a nice clean design, but it doesn’t feel all consistent to me.
• moon.org - What to say.... When you first come to this site there is a picture of the moon and two links, “Moon Dot Org” and “Moon URL’s.” At first I thought this was nice of them. Since they’re not about the moon they have links to sites about the moon. But then I found out that that is not true. The “Moon URL’s” page is just a links of links (and logos) to domains that have “moon” in them (kind of like this list I’m doing). Then, when I tried the “Moon Dot Org” link to find out what this site was, all I got was an input box with the title of the page being “moon members.” That doesn’t tell me anything about this site.
• moon.net - “Under construction.” Funny though, the date “11/15/98” is under the under construction text. Looks like this site has been under construction for a long time.
• luna.com - Provato. “Luna Information Systems Is Now Provato” and then it takes you to provato.com. There goes any reference to Luna (another name for the Earth’s moon).
• luna.org - Welcome to Luna! Welcome to a page of text and two links. One link is to an article (“Five Earth Day Resolutions for Gamers!”), and the other is to “Julia Butterfly at the Luna Tree” (lunatree.org). This last is a Web site about that girl who lived up in a tree to prevent it from being cut down. This site does not reference the moon, but it references the Earth and how we need to preserve and care for it.
• luna.net - Luna.nl. Looks like a network site (ISP, Web hosting, etc), but it is primarily in another language. No references to Earth’s moon.
• mars.com - Mars, Incorporated. From first look this site looks like another network site (first menu graphic is “Links To Our Websites” with “WWW” typed over an illustration of the earth). But when you look closely to read the light text down the left-hand side, you see that this is actual the Mars company which owns M&M’s, Mars Bar, Milky Way, etc. Check it out though, Mars owns a lot of things (dog and cat food as well as candies).
• mars.org - Mars Advanced Research Systems. They do have a picture of the planet Mars and a starry background, but they don’t have any links into their site.
• mars.net - Host.net. mars.net is an alias domain for Host.net, an ISP and hosting company. It’s funny to me though because Host.net is owned by a friend of one of my bosses.
• jupiter.com - Jupiter Systems. “The leading worldwide supplier of network-based multiple-screen display stations....” Well they do have a picture of the planet Jupiter on their home page, and their logo even resembles Jupiter with it’s Great Red Spot. But for a “worldwide supplier” their site doesn’t look that great. Also, at the bottom they have graphical links, but they have a picture of Earth’s moon for an icon. A plus though is that one of these links is to NASA’s site about the Galileo probe mission to Jupiter.
• jupiter.org - [could not connect]
• jupiter.net - Welcome to Ansam Motors. A single page (with a horrendous yellow background) site with the address and directions to an automobile repair shop in the United Kingdom. No planet Jupiter reference.
• saturn.com - Welcome to Saturn. This is the corporate site for the Saturn automobile corporation. As you may well know, their logo (two white swooshes in a red box) is made to appear that you’re looking up at the planet Saturn and it’s rings. But that’s where all planetary references start and stop. The site does look pretty nice for a large car company, although the flash/splash intro is really unneccesary.
• saturn.org - Saturn.org. This is a personal Web site of a Jack Saturn in San Francisco, California. It looks like it is mainly a weblog (powered by Blogger), and it also has information about the author and other stuff. No references to the planet Saturn, but that’s OK since his last name is Saturn. A cool thing about this Web site is that the header/logo/main graphic is random with each loading.
• saturn.net - [could not connect]
• uranus.com - “Uranus.com is an online Internet community.” But they do reference the planet Uranus... to say that they are not about it (although they provide a link to info about the planet Uranus and more links). As for what type of an Internet community, this is the best I could find: “offering Web-hosting services, a matchmaker service, discussion boards on a variety of topics, and, among other things, jump-points to other resources on the Internet.”
• uranus.org - “Domain available!”
• uranus.net - “Coming Soon.” Seems like “Uranus” domains are less popular than “Mercury” domains.
• neptune.com - “Neptune.com is the leading provider of broadband enhanced content, communication, and creation applications.” Well whatever they do, their logo is a blue crescent of a planet with a white ring around it. Yes, Neptune does have rings, although that they’re more like little arcs and are thinner and less well defined then the rings of the other gas planets—we won’t hold that against their logo. Their site does have a clean, nice design, and does use blue colors like the planet Neptune.
• neptune.org - Fairsworldwide. I tried to look. To find an “About Us” page or something, but I just can’t find (in the time I’m willing to spend that is) any info about what this company does. But, they do have a trident (Neptune/Poseidon’s spear and the astrological symbol for the planet) in their logo, and they do use blue colors on their site.
• neptune.net - Neptune.Net Internet Services. They have a big’ol picture of Neptune on their home page. And, they’ve got a callout graphic saying they’re “Powered By Triton” (Triton is a moon of Neptune). For this Neptune, Triton is “The Revolutionary Internet Total Office Network,” or their servers. My how they love to throw words together to form an acronym.
• pluto.com - Qwest. Like venus.net, pluto.com jumps over to Qwest’s Web site (though not their home page). It’s an OK Web site for a large telecommunications company as them, the Web site isn’t screaming at your face. But, no reference at all to Pluto.
• pluto.org - Pluto Cam. “a.k.a. Dalek’s Home Slice.” There’s a graphic of a sphere on the home page, but this sphere is a blue-purple gradient with big—potholes I’ll call them—all over it. I don’t know what the Pluto Cam is as it never loaded.
• pluto.net - Miraikikaku Inc. I don’t know what this site is, but it does have a picture of Pluto and it’s moon Charon taken by the Hubble telescope.

Well that’s my list of the Solar System domain names. If anybody has any that are not in the “.com”, “.org”, or “.net” top level, e-mail me at joek@joek.com and I’ll add them to this list.

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