My name is Gregory Haddock and
I am an Assistant Professor of Geography at Northwest Missouri State University.
I believe this innovative domain registry proposed for .geo would be a vast improvement
over present methods for searching for geographic content on the Internet.
For education purposes such as regional studies, site analysis, and general exploration,
students must use search engines with spatial keywords that constantly yield links
that range from useful to gibberish. The dot-geo approach will be most beneficial
when a student is trying to find out important information about a geographic location
using original data from that region.
I would love to have my students be able
to look up information geographically for their own research assignments. If
I give an assignment that requires the student to use regional web-sites, there is
no way to immediately narrow down their choices. A cultural site from Central
America can still be hosted from a machine in Herndon, Virginia, but retain its accurate
.geo address.
For the web-tourist, this method will enable users to find sites
based on traditional search methods AND its geographic location. For example,
to find Bed and Breakfast web-sites, you have to hope that the business has registered
their name in search engines with proper key-words, or at least be listed on the
community's business bureau. While this makes it easy to find a B&B in Winterset,
Iowa, it is still mostly a useless method for finding one in a 10-block radius in
Manhatten Island. (Yes, there are B&B's in NYC.)
SRI is correct, most of
the data on the web has a spatial component.
--gh