A tour of the gen's (gen.com's, that is)
Simon Phipps put up a link to 10gen.com and said something enigmatic about the founding team. Normally I would ignore such a thing because it's probably another of these boring startups full of leading edge buzzwords .. geez I'm such a curmudgeon today. Hmm, I was right, it's about cloud computing. Sheesh. Anyway my interest is because I own 7gen.com and it struck my curiousity who owns the other Ngen.com sites ...
1gen.com - it's a registered domain but no web site answers to my browser. The registration is pretty curious.
2gen.com - it's registered and a placeholder website comes up. Interestingly it's hosted on pair.com, interesting because that's where I host 7gen.com.
3gen.com - Not exactly good company I'm keeping.. they're providing database etc services to the 'Direct Mail Industry' (a.k.a. the snail mail equivalent to spammers except the fine people at 3gen.com would likely bristle at this association)
4gen.com - well, I can't say it any better than they: 4Gen helps companies transform complexity and confusion in IT business management into collaboration and clarity. With our suite of proven services, we allow you to integrate the IT disciplines that are essential for achieving your business goals—and that results in greater predictability, better value and improved IT performance.
5gen.com - It's registered and there's a placeholder site written in German.
6gen.com - 6Gen Services offers computer services in Staten Island.
7gen.com - Again, this is one of my sites and a domain I've owned since 1996 (?1995?), well before I even dreamed of working for Sun. There are perhaps 3,000 pages of postings on subjects ranging from politics, calls for the impeachment of the current U.S. administration, the yearning for technological sanity, electric vehicles, alternative energy and more.
8gen.com - There's something there, a flash animation with catchy music, and some text in a language I don't recognize (?Danish?) ..
9gen.com - Another placeholder site this time with a simple file listing.
10gen.com - See above - cloud computing - ho hum.
11gen.com - Does a redirect to 11gen.de and that site is full of German but it's clearly for "11Gen Design".
I'm going to stop there because 12gen.com is a search spam site.
It's not a real stunning neighborhood my site is occupying, none of my neighbor domains are all that hot. It does make me wonder what drives someone to choose an '#gen.com' domain name and perhaps my reasoning for 7gen.com might be illustrative.
At the time I registered 7gen.com I was hanging out with a Reiki teacher who also had a strong connection with native american spiritual traditions and routinely talked about "7 generations". At the same time I was a happy user of products made by the Seventh Generation company. The whole idea of 'In our every deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations' appeals to me in multiple ways, which is why I'm a happy user of their products. However they did not invent that slogan, it's part of the bylaws of the Iriquois Confederacy.
In any case, back to why 7gen.com ... simple, 'gen' is short for Generation or in this case to keep the paradigm of "seven generations" front and center. I suppose the owners of the other #gen.com domains have some generational reasoning behind their name choice. Maybe. Who knows.
