The dot com string, however, will continue to retain its value for a long long time to come, thanks to its becoming generic with the Net. Entrepreneurs who have booked their URLs under the dot com Network Solutions regime will have to ensure that they retain ownership of their dot com domain names and renew their annual or two year contracts with Network Solutions or any other registrar on their own. They should retain all rights over the domain names - right from technical, to billing, to administrative to zonal. Many domain brokers or registrants make the person making the payment (read: themselves) as the owner of all of these rights - which means they are the contact point with Network Solutions - while the person who has paid for the URL stays as the registered owner.

What this means is that though ABCD Ltd is the owner of the domain name abcd.com, the person who did the domain booking, says XYZ Mehta, retains administration, technical and zonal rights. When ABCD Ltd wants to shift abcd.com to another server and another IP address, it cannot as is the point of contact is XYZ Mehta. Should XYZ Mehta have devious intentions he can arm-twist ABCD Ltd to pay him some money before agreeing to its request. XYZ Mehta can also play tricks with the sites IP address, bringing it crashing down by giving wrong instructions to Network Solutions to point the domain to a wrong IP address.

All that ABCD.com can do is cough up the money. Or initiate dialogue with Network Solutions proving ownership, which can be a time-consuming process and could cause some heartburn. Or go into litigation, which is a waste of time, money and energy. One would rather focus on business issues rather than get wearied over irritants such as these. Remember even large companies such as hotmail.com (if one remembers correctly) forgot to pay their renewal charges.

So dot comers, please ensure that you have all the rights over your domain names and cough up your $35 or $70 payments to the registrar to ensure you continue owning them.

Tech industry the biggest brand value builder
Technology and the Internet are still the king, despite the naysayers of the www world. At least that's what Interbrand's survey of the most valuable brand names seems to indicate. Among the technology and Internet brands which made it to the exclusive Top 75 list are: Microsoft Windows (at the prestigious No 2 position), IBM (No 3), Intel (No 4), Nokia (No 5), Hewlett Packard (no 13), Cisco Systems (no 14), Compaq (No 21), Xerox (27) Dell (No 28), Ericsson (no 32), Apple (no 36), Yahoo! (No 38), SAP (No 39), AOL (No 47), amazon.com (No 48), and Motorola (No 49).

Heading the pecking order is of course the venerable Coca-Cola which has slipped a bit this year in terms of its brand valuation. The number two Microsoft is just a couple of billions behind Coke in its valuation and it would be no surprise if it overtakes it during the next Brand valuation survey, breakup or not.

Interbrand says that the tech industry was the biggest brand value builder in the past 12 months, with the majority of the tech companies in the top 75 experiencing double-digit brand value growth while Internet brands showed the highest growth over the past year with Yahoo! (no 38) experiencing a 258 per cent growth in brand value followed by Amazon.com (no 48) with a 233 per cent increase over last year. That Amazon.com, Yahoo.com, AOL, Cisco, SAP have a place in top pecking order clearly reflects how important an role brands such as these are beginning to play in our lives. Who knows next year, a few more New media/technology brands may creep in, despite the slump in the dot com market.

The author is the CEO of www.Indiantelevision.com, India's cable, satellite television industry portal, E-mail: television@vsnl.com