A key feature of the .nyc TLD will be a variety of portals prepared to help users locate city resources. Some are primarily of interest to visitors (hotels.nyc and tours.nyc) while others, such as schools.nyc, primarily aide residents. Together the portals enable New Yorkers and the world to locate New York City's resources.

Exploring the .nyc TLD

Locating information on the Internet is sometimes difficult with giants such as Google helping overcome this difficulty. One of Connecting.nyc Inc.'s key goals is to help Internet users connect with the city's digital resources.

In envisioning our data architecture, we see a 3-step approach to locating a .nyc resource: portals, intuition, and search. We focus here on these search mechanisms.

• The Portals
  

Directory or portal-type pages will be set aside by connecting.nyc with their content following our Portal Page Guidelines. In addition to alpha and map assistance, editorial and advertising will populate directory pages, with advertising revenue shared.

A decision on the number of portal pages and nature of page maintainers has not yet been made. A Portal Page Management discussion addresses the how, how many, and who of portal pages.

Portal Examples - Resident and visitor portals are discussed here.

• Intuitive Search

Today, using intuition, you can frequently locate a Fortune 500-type company by typing its name into the browser’s address space, e.g., www.ibm.com or www.coke.com. But 99% of the time you’d be better off doing a Google search. When .nyc opens, that will change as people experience that entering a local restaurant name with a .nyc suffix frequently delivers a direct hit. Or you might enter 75thstreet.nyc to find news about your local street, or queensfoundations.nyc to locate a listing of foundations in Queens, New York City. Enter “queens foundations” in Google today, and you get 1,670,000 hits, and 75thstreet.com goes to a brewery in Kansas City.

Existing intuitive .com’s might also benefit from .nyc listings of their local events, distributors, jobs, e.g., www.coke.nyc.

And if nothing was found via an intuitive search, i.e., if nobody owned the named page, .nyc would take you to directory.nyc to help refine your search. The directory system would also offer the opportunity to purchase available domain names.

• Search Engine

If intuition and the directory don't provide the desired result, a search engine is the final step. We will provide access to a engine with transparent search rules. Of course, traditional search engines like Yahoo and Google will search and report on .nyc domains.

Search Engine Transparency - At a civic level, it's vital that we know why a search presents one site higher than another. For example, think of search within the governance realm: We can not have ourselves dependent on a opaque, behind the scenes, search supplier to set our priorities in issue and candidate listings. Same for creating a level business environment. But you might imagine that the big engines will find it difficult to operate under today's shadow of suspicion, and choose to open up. With suitable transparency they might be trustworthy for civic use and connecting.nyc's role relegated to one of testing and assurance. See the Hits Algorithm for a start on thinking about engine design; and Google Custom offers a directory tool that warrants review.

• Registry Shortcuts

Other Portal Issues

• Trusted TLD
  

In contrast to generic TLDs like .com, .net, and .org, we will establish criteria to acquire a .nyc domain and provide ongoing oversight. To qualify for a .nyc TLD, one will require some form of presence in the city. While no decision has been made on the criteria, we might adopt a requirement similar to Singapore, where a local postal address is required to purchase a .sg TLD.

By oversight I refer to the processes we’ll undertake to assure the public that those operating under the .nyc umbrella will be real and honest, to a greater extent than under .com and the other generic TLDs. At the same time, we’ll provide a certain openness to enable business to launch rapidly, to facilitate proposing new ideas, and to enable the first amendment to live under .nyc. We will offer an advantage over the .open TLDs in this regard. Not FDIC secure, but more trusted than a .com.

Providing trust and accountability will start with selecting our board of directors, which will be composed of ex-officio seats for representatives of respected city institutions (city government, libraries, tourist bureau, chamber of commerce…), representatives of civic organizations, users, and the Internet community.

• Local “Trademark”

Another search benefit of .nyc will arise with increased availability of local TLDs, or what some call the local trademark issue. There are thousands of local businesses (bakeries, copy shops, delis, hair cutters etc.) who use generic business identifiers like Star, Blue, York, Cook, Magic, Link, Finest, Sun etc. Having a .nyc will enable more local identity for companies using the same name used in other cities. While Chicago's Fresh Bakery may own freshbakery.com and Toronto has freshbakery.biz, with the initiation of the .nyc TLD, New York can have a freshbakery.nyc.

Research on Finding Things

• In hotels.nyc, do we only list hotels within the .nyc TLD or all hotels in New York City?
• What was the expectation and experience of .museum and .org in developing their portals?
• See the star.directory concept.
  
• Semantic Web
  
• Semantic Web on Wikipedia - A wealth of information and links are available.
  

Resource Links

• The DMOZ Project - Lessons for Connecting.nyc?
  

• Read the index.sg page used in Singapore.
  
• Read Clay Shirky on directories.
  
• Search the Wikia Project.
• On the Search Wikia directory plan.
  

Related .nyc Pages

• The Portals (this page)
• Portal Examples
  

• Portal Page Content Guidelines
• Portal Page Management

Key .nyc Pages

• The .nyc Wiki Home Page
• Operating Environment
  
• Development Environment

• Connecting.nyc Inc. Home Page