But that .ASIA domain might not be as valuable as you'd think. Well, sure, first of all, it's going to take a while before anyone even thinks of typing .ASIA into their browser's location bar. Nothing beats .COM for that right now. But blogger Cabel Maxfield Sasser also noticed an interesting trend during a recent trip to Japan. Many companies aren't advertising their URLs anymore. Instead, they're providing keywords that you can type into a search box to find their company.
It makes sense. After all, most of the good, easy to remember domain names were sold years ago. Sure, you could post your incredibly long URL on an ad in the subway, but what are the odds that people will remember it when they get home? If you're pretty confident in your search engine optimization techniques (or if you've paid for placement), why not advertise a keyword or two? But if the trend does take off, it means that we might all start placing a lot less importance on domain names in the future.
[via LifeRocks 2.0 and Boing Boing]
Much of the world may still be dominated by Microsoft, with Apple running a distant but statistically significant second; That hasn't stopped Linux installs from growing at an outstripping pace in China. 
