Please note that this website is still under construction and some links are not working yet. Please contact us at info@wales.info if you have any specific queries you cannot get answers to currently from the site.
NB All commercial enterprises, social enterprises, and persons applying to pre-register or reserve a Wales.info domain name will be free listed.
- Domains
- Domain Names and Types
- Partnership Proposals
- Domain Name Pre-Registrations
- Directory
- Main Headings and Sub Headings
- Business Clusters
- Spatial Data
- The Cluster Engine
- Inspire Directive
- Policy Background
- Development Forum
- Mobile Services
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Terms and Conditions
Domains
Top-level internet domains are valuable real estate on the worldwide web.
.info
.info is a generic top-level domain created for informative websites. It has been the most successful of the seven new generic top-level domains released in 2000 to take the pressure off the overcrowded .com domain.
It is a neutral name that means information in about 37 languages around the world. It’s the first and only top-level domain explicitly created for unrestricted use. Anyone can use .info for any purpose, similar to .com, .net or .org. The launch of .info involved a 'Sunrise Period' for trademark owners followed by a 'landrush' open to all.
.uk
.uk is a generic top-level domain for the United Kingdom as a whole. .co.uk was created for commercial use and .org.uk for non-commercial use. Neither is neutral and none gives identity to Wales.
.wales
Appending .wales to .info has given Wales its own neutral, top-level national domain for promoting Wales and all things Welsh home and worldwide. It will have a pre-registration Sunrise Period for trademark and tradename owners and others with a genuine claim to a particular name.wales.info domain name. This includes commercial businesses, organisations of a charitable status, unitary authorities and settlement placenames. theminersinstitute.wales.info, conwy.wales.info and cardiff.wales.info are prime examples.
Important note: Registration and reservation of Wales.info domain names such as thegrandhotel.wales.info also secures the hyphenated the-grand-hotel.wales.info domain.
Domain Names and Types
Generic
A number of generic Wales.info domain names names have been reserved for partnerships and partnership proposals registered during the Sunrise Period.
Examples of domains aready taken are: countryside.wales.info, cymru.wales.info, food.wales.info, genealogy.wales.info, castles.wales.info, birdwatching.wales.info and tourism.wales.info.
Many like woodlands.wales.info, mountains.wales.info and fishing.wales.info etc are still on the reserve list.
Check the Main Headings and A–Z Listings for names still available. New ideas for names are welcome and will receive a full response.
Partnership means that Wales.info will place its full resource and know-how behind all new domain names created by attaching names to Wales.info/ This includes the provision of spatial websites and email addresses for each new domain created.
Note:Funding is available for innovative Wales.info partnership actions that help deliver the objectives of the Inspire Directive and the Public Sector Information Directive.
Commercial
Organisations with legitimate claims to trademarks and trade names can apply to pre-registration a name. Organisation with a genuine interest in partnering Wales.info on developing generic, industry or profession sector domains like plumbers.wales.info, dentists.wales.info, accountants.wales.info etc can register a partnership proposal.
Organisations that wish to reserve prefix names that resemble their trademark or trade name are advised to do this by applying to reserve a name.
For example Caterpillar Tractors in Wales, as well as wishing to pre-register caterpillartractors.wales.info may also wish to reserve caterpillar.wales.info or cat.wales.info rather than lose these to an insect or feline enthusiast.
Social
Organisations with legitimate claims to business names and titles can also apply to reserve a name. Prime examples are theprincestrust.info, wcva.wales.info and themusicfoundation.wales.info/.
Personal – Individuals and Property Names
Personal and property name prefixes can consist of names like david.jones.wales.info with a personal david.jones@wales.info email address, or property names like sunshinecottage.wales.info, thegrandhotel.wales.info etc, again with personal email addresses to identify property names with Wales as a home or destination. Name reservations are being dealt with now.
Partnership Proposals
Partnership proposals for Wales.info generic domains and generic trade domains are welcome, with funding available in some instances to support developments.
Directory
The Wales.info directory of products, services, personal and property names is free and without obligation to anyone making an application to reserve a Wales.info prefix name. All applicants will be free listed in the Directory pages under their appropriate category and classification.
Applicants’ chosen prefixes will be reserved until a decision is made by the applicant to purchase the prefix name outright at the price shown in the Register, or if another registrant wishing to purchase it comes forward and can prove title.
Main Headings and Sub Headings
Business Clusters
There’s nothing new about business clusters. Hatton Garden is one of the best known worldwide where jewellers and diamond merchants clustered together in a street off Holborn in London that would have otherwise remained anonymous. They did so to be able to work together for the common good and to collaborate to compete with other jewellery and diamond centres across the world. Amsterdam was one such competitor, already on the world map owing to its status as a city.
Many other businesses benefit from clustering: retailers clustered together in out-of-town shopping parks, hospitality providers clustered round main railway stations, shoemakers in Northampton, and craftsmen that form guilds to further their common interest.
Birds of a feather flock together to survive, pursue their collective interest, and collaborate to compete with other groups. The value of the whole is always greater than the sum of the individual parts.
The worldwide web has revolutionised these developments and opened up thousands of new opportunities for business clusters to form. Unlike most of the examples given above, business forming online clusters do not have to be in the same physical place as each other to benefit. Proximity is no longer an issue and those taking part can be anywhere on the map yet can be seen altogether at the same time.
This particular aspect of development has earned Wales.info the support of the Federation for Small Businesses in Wales on behalf of its members.
Spatial Data
The increased use of spatial data in web applications has been facilitated by new platforms such as Google Maps® and Google Earth®. Wales.info takes the fullest possible advantage of these new online mapping platforms to show the location all Wales.info domain name holders and is a member of the Google Maps® and Google Earth® development community.
Wales.info lobbied successfully for the Google Earth® datasets for Wales to be brought up to the same standards as those for England. As a result the new datasets were uploaded to Google Earth® on 1st April 2008.
Ongoing discussions between Wales.info and the Ordnance Survey are likely to lead to OS datasets being applied by Wales.info to Google Earth® and Google Maps® as a licensed OS Development Partner. Once again the Welsh language will play an equal part in these new developments.
Wales.info is also playing a key role on behalf of the private and voluntary sectors in Wales in the review of the ‘Geographical Information Strategy Action for Wales’. Wales.info‘s specific aim is to make basic geographical information (BGI) available free to all SME’s and microbusinesses in Wales so they can share the benefits.
Content
Content is king but like all monarchies it needs to be properly organised to be of any use. Content is the commodity Wales.info deals with daily in pursuit of economic outcomes for Wales. All content is multi-sourced, processed and re-distributed through the Wales.info Cluster Engine (v1).
The Cluster Engine
The Wales.info Cluster Engine (v2) will be built within an open-source web environment with key elements gifted back to the open source web community for the benefit of others. Both the English and Welsh language will be built bottom-up into the Wales.info Cluster Engine with support in principle from the Welsh Language Board.
Policy Background
INSPIRE Directive
The INSPIRE Directive aims to establish an EC infrastructure for spatial information – increasingly referred to as an ‘Infostructure’ – and will come into force on 15th May 2009.
The Directive recognises that the general situation on spatial information in Europe is one of fragmentation of datasets and sources, gaps in availability, lack of harmonisation between datasets at different geographical scales and duplication of information collection, which makes it difficult to identify, access and use data that is available.
Fortunately, awareness is growing of the need for good quality geo-referenced information, not only to support environmental policy, which is Inspire’s main focus, but also to support social policy and economic growth. It applies to profit-making and non-profit-making activities alike across all sectors.
INSPIRE is also complementary to proposals on the re-use and commercial exploitation of Public Sector Information, releasing rich content to support new economic development initiatives such as Wales.info.
INSPIRE targets policy-makers, planners and managers at all levels including citizens and their organisations. It includes the visualisation of information layers and overlay of information from different sources to create entirely new products and services like Wales.info/.
Public Sector Information (PSI) Regulations
The aim of these Regualtions, which came into force on 1st July 2006, is to encourage the re-use of public sector information by removing obstacles that stand in the way of re-use and commercial exploitation to:
• stimulate the development of innovative new information products and services across Europe;
• boost the information industry, and
• assist economic growth and job creation.
Public sector information is an important primary material for new digital-content products and services like Wales.info. The directive covers methodologies for transferring the information into the commercial sector where new business models can be created to put digital content to profitable use.
Freedom of Information Act
The Freedom of Information Act, which came into force on 1st January 2005, has a direct correlation to PSI Regulations in that it gives anyone the right to ask any public body to provide all the information they have on a given subject. Generally, as long as the information is not legally exempt from disclosure it has to be yielded up within 20 working days.
In the context of commercial exploitation under PSI Regulations, however, the establishment of cost-efficient means of conveying the information for the most effective re-use, together with any associated costs, will be a primary consideration but not one to hold up the supply of information requested for any length of time.
Freedom of Information Act
The concept of a digital national framework (DNF) was published eight years ago "to support greater connectivity across all kinds of business information managed by separate organisations, where that information has 'location' as a common dominator" (Ordnance Survey White Paper 2004).
Ordnance Survey's white paper continues by saying: "The problem of today's organisational 'data silo' is well recognised across the world. The lack of connectivity between data records held by different bodies is a major barrier to the development of applications that require information from two or more organisations, especially across Government. This in turn prevents the realisation of the full potential of that information in supporting new government initiatives, new applications, innovative analysis and emerging mobile services of all kinds, especially where location has an essential role to play".
It echoes vice versa the content of the INSPIRE Directive, the PSI Regulations and Freedom of Information Act and thus forms the agenda on which Wales.info will be built.
Development Forum
Partners and potential partners are urged to join the Wales.info Development Forum at http://developmentforum.wales.info to help further their own particular interests and to have a big say in future Wales.info developments.
Mobile Services
Provision has already been made by Wales.info for the supply of information via mobile devices and announcements will be made in due course.
About Us
Background to Wales.info developments and details of the Wales.info can be seen at About Us.
Contact Us
Please click here to contact Wales.info direct.
Terms and Conditions
Wales.info’s general Terms and Conditions cover all standard matters. Special terms and conditions will be agreed with individual partners.