Unlike with URLs, more than one item can have the same common name as long as the two items are in different categories. Centraal is a directory service provider. With a standard in place, enterprise customers will be able to set up their own services to locally register common names for documents that reside in their intranets. Common names are used to navigate the Web today in the form of Centraal's RealNames, Netword's NetWords, America Online's KeyWords, Netscape Navigator's Smart Browsing and CompuServe's Go Words. Electronic commerce sites, where the common name is a brand name and refers to a stock or part identification number.
Business directories, where the common name calls up contact information, products or stock quotes.
White pages, where the common name is a last name and it calls up a telephone number or e-mail address. Yellow pages, where the common name is the name of business or a description of the business and calls up a related Web site. Imagine a company like Boeing having a database of all the engineering documents for the F-22 fighter and being able to pull up documents by their regular names and not their URLs. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you.