Monday, May 08, 2006

Ill Formed URLs

Internet! There seemed to be a webpage for everything. And every webpage needs a URL. The most thoughtless, and easy-to-remember way of forming the URL is to concatenate all the words together. My apartment building, Ritz New York, has its own webpage: www.ritzny.com, and one AIDS coalition's website: www.walkforaids.org.

But this concatenation can misfire. The URL string can be parsed into completely different word combinations than originally intended. Just like the founders of the Super 8 Motel chain neglected to look up the meaning of suppurate, many advertisement men forgot to look out for the alternative and often compromising meaning of their web URL. This blog celebrates such negligence.

Go red for women, the new campaign of the American Heart Association, has its dedicated webpage. The URL is simply www.goredforwomen.org. Unfortunately, it also reads

www.gored for women.org

which, amusingly, may evoke similar visual images as the original slogan.

The O'Neill building in New York's Flatiron District, once a fashion emporium, is being converted into a new luxury condominium. It too, has its own URL for sales promotion: www.theoneillbuilding.com. Well, the potential buyers might want to think twice about purchasing a unit in

www.the one ill building.com