How about...

best-cakes-in.theworld?

restaurant-at.theendoftheuniverse?

my-dad-is-better-than.yours?!

or, more applicably:

focusnewmedia.bristol?

These are just some of the potential urls that may come out of ICANN's latest announcement regarding top level domains.

Caving into stakeholder pressure, ICANN have agreed to open up the virtual real estate of the web by making it possible for people to select their own domain names.

Currently, internet users have a limited choice of 21 domain extensions, such as .com, .org, and .uk.  By this time next year people may be able to apply for whatever they like.

A major factor behind this change was the pressure and influence exerted by non-English users of the web. 

"One of the most exciting prospect before us is that the expanding system is also being planned to support extensions in the languages of the world," said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN's Chairman. "This is going to be very important for the future of the Internet in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia." The present system only supports 37 Roman characters.

Many pundits see this move as an act of appeasement to the Chinese, who have made many moves to implement a separate internet (going further, even than their Great Firewall).  Others see it as an inevitable solution to increasing web usage, much like the periodic extension of local telephone codes.

I'm personally hanging on to get first dibs at my own name extension - hands off all you other amy wilson's!

With 80% of all internet users browsing with IE, Netscape has finally given up the ghost.  Bizarre to think that a decade ago people were referring to the Internet and Netscape synonymously...

Sources: BBC, Netscape blog, IT News