Much more than a list of funny names, Slurls is a new book that takes the reader on a global journey from small-town America to the tea rooms of Britain, with surreal stopovers, to look at the special charms of technology and big business.
Andy Geldman discovered the joy of awful URLs in 2006. Realising he had found his true calling, he coined the word “slurl” – a badly named URL, innocently chosen by a real businesses. Andy set up a website and devoted all his spare time to hunting down more gems. The website went on to draw thousands of visitors from around the world, bringing in over 75,000 in 2009.
Andy says: “With over a hundred million websites already registered it’s extremely unlikely that a business will get their first choice of address. In fact, they’ll be lucky to get their second, third or even hundredth choice. There have always been unintentionally funny names, but the internet takes it to a whole new level. It’s all because you can’t have a space in your URL. A business called IT Scrap is fine in the real world but not so great online with itscrap.com!”
This fascinating and humorous collection includes more than a hundred websites along with relevant facts, observations and Internet trivia. Chapters cover America, Britain, and the rest of the English-speaking world, business and technology, websites that sound pornographic but aren’t, hoaxes, and other website names that aren’t quite true slurls.
Andy Geldman is a self-employed computer programmer and took a break from his day job to write his first book. When not collecting slurls, Andy uses his personal blog Who Ate All The Cookies? to seek out and celebrate all that is ridiculous in the world of technology. He lives in London.