Web search terms...

[Gareth Branwyn]

>b) many people apparently haven't discovered that you can put what comes
between the
>"www." and the ".com", or even a completely formed URL, into the
Location/Address
>field in the browser and hit Return to go to that site. As a result, we see
searches
>for things such as "www.hotmail.com" and "yahoo" and
"http://www.nytimes.com/". Weird.
>[Although I must admit that some of this might be searches done from
kiosk-mode
>browsers that are supposed to display only designated pages, usually
institutional or
>in-house sites for a library or trade show booth or what have you. Kiosk
mode usually
>does not display the location bar; the best way to escape from a kiosk-mode
browser is
>to find that one link-to-a-link-to-a-link that takes you to a search
engine. From
>there, you can load dern near anything.}

There appears to be many people who don't know this feature exists. Even
fellow "deep geeks" are sometimes unaware of it. I'm shocked when I look
over someone's shoulder and see them typing "www" and ".com," or horrors,
"http://." So many wasted keystrokes. It is also amazing how few people seem
to realize that many sites use their company name as their URL. Friends will
ask: "What's the address of the Washington Post?" I ask: "Have you tried
typing 'washingtonpost'?" "Oh, I didn't think of that."

Gareth Branwyn
Jargon Watch
Wired