www.sintbernadus.be

Apparently Saint is spelled Sint in Dutch which is the most popular language in Belgium which is where this brewery hails from which is why I won't fall them for choosing this URL. But not also buying SaintBernadus.be and displaying the URL in alllowercase are 2 unforgivable sins.

www.funerals.pro

Sorry I've been slacking my fellow URLaholics. Please know that I am not yet cured, just busy with other obsessions. You know you're out of the loop when you see a TLD that you didn't know existing. Now I realize I'm no domaining .pro but who knew!?!

http://bit.ly/dn5n10

Here's a tip when using bit.ly or other URL shorteners in print. Customize them! Too tough to tell the difference between zero and letter O and one and letter L. And this one ends with both. Oy vey! Thanks again to Brian Leiberman for the spot and reminding us that a little bit of extra effort goes a long way.

www.EMBA.utk.edu

The URL-alert Alichia Keller spotted this one and offered up some pun gems like "Education needs an education" and "This school needs to be schooled." Indeed the mix of CAPS and lowercase is befuddling. And the dubs aren't necessary in an online ad. Methinks this URL does not make the grade.

RIM.jobs

Want to work at RIM? Beware the back door dealings.

adultstudies.trnty.edu

And a few vowels could change your URL!

www.exercisetv.tv./fitness360

What is it with Ex-er-cise-tv-dot-tv? Not only is it a Bad URL but it has no concept of how to display itself. Not what you'd expect from a franchise devoted to improving one's appearance. Here, they not only present a mess of alllowercase preceded by Dubs and followed by a slash but theres an extra dot thrown in for good measure that makes this not even a functioning URL. Dot's not very nice.

KeepDelMarClean.org

Mr. Askew checks in with #44 here. He spotted this at Think Tank conference. While I don't love the Spacing Issues staggering the URL across 3 lines, the Leading Caps (which I just learned is technically called Camel Case) and Alternating Fonts more than make up for it. I also love the slogan here. In it's effort to keep it clean, Del Mar is definitely keeping it real.

www.carpetcleaning.cc

I don't hate the alternate domain (non-dot-com) because it bares the initials of the key words. It sucks that the decal has the first "c" caught in the crevice though. Dot-cc is already a not easily recognized TLD, much less when half of one of the letters is cut off. This URL's gonna make ya sweat til ya bleed. Finally, it's happened to me.

adultstudies.trnty.edu

Oh, Christ! Where to begin? The alllowercase? The non-intuitive abbreviation? Reminds me of Flutter, the parody of Twitter featuring a "nano-blogging" platform that strips out the vowels. 2 thmbs dwn fr ths bd rl.

G.cn

Peter Askew saw this great (and rare) 3-letter URL on the TV show, Amazing Race. Of course, the drama between Google and the Chinese government has been as exciting as any reality show plotline and ended with Google pulling out of China after getting hacked. This URL now redirects to the Google Hong Kong site where results are not censored. Too bad, this was one Good G.url.

inafj.org

The URL-icious Alichia Keller pointed me to this Yahoo! News article covering a campaign by unemployed residents of Buffalo, NY to get the attention of Obama on job creation. Don't love how they used the acronym for this slang as their URL. Acronyms/Abbreviations only work when the result is something easily recognizable. And that question mark before the URL only confuses matters even further. Is that part of the URL or not? Let's just hope these folks aren't trying to get jobs in marketing.

www.nuoviuffizi.com

I just returned from holiday in Italy. I was out there for a good friend’s wedding and my wife and I tacked on a few extra days for sight-seeing. I had fully intended on taking a break from URL-spotting and swapping URL-aholism for one of my other aholism vices (after all, we were in the land of vino) but I just couldn’t escape it.

Here we were in the political square of Florence admiring the original home of Michaelangelo’s David sculpture and out pops a digital billboard promoting the new Uffizi. It was like we’d been transported from ancient Italy to Times Square. And, as if intrusive advertising in a historically significant location weren’t enough, they topped it off with a bad URL!

I’ve softened my stance on using www (aka Dubs) so I won’t penalize them for that nor will I dispute the use of dot-com in the land of dot-IT because they are targeting tourists but I do take issue with the use of alllowercase. I would also like to penalize them for imposing their modern will against an medieval backdrop. There should be a penal code against posting digitalia within 100 yards of David’s genatalia!

www.misteroptik.it

Here’s another bad Florentine URL. This one uses the native TLD (.it) but fails to use Leading Caps to distinguish the words. With a name like Optik, that has the inverse of the TLD buried in it, the result is an optical illusion in which the “ti” and the “it” can easily become inverted. This Mister could stand a little fiber-optics in his diet.

Parks.it

To show that it’s not all bad in Italy, here’s a nice clean URL that I presume is for the Parks Department. When it comes to good URL presentation, they Get.it.

www.ivri.it

I saw quite a few URLs on Vehicles in the bigger cities in Italy. This one was promoting the Instituti Di Vigilanza Reuniti D’Ital. Can’t fault the URL selection here but I don’t love the alllowercase display. I much prefer ALLCAPS when it comes to Abbreviations as that makes the series of letters much more recognizable as an abbreviation and not some weird word. If only ivri-one understood this.

ti.atocos.www

This URL adorned the roof of a taxi cab in Florence. Not sure who they hope to reach with this one but it sure ain’t the passengers inside. And it’s not like Florence is Manhattan, replete with big buildings lining the streets, so there’s not people looking down on cars very often. Alas, I’m left looking down on this URL but not in the manner intended.

www.affittacamerelaluna.it

This sign was promoting rooms available in La Spezia near the train station. Once again, a few Leading Caps would’ve gone a long way. Maybe all the way to La Luna.

www.casadane.it

Here’s another purveyor of rooms in La Spezia making the same alllowercase mistake. IfOnlyTheyRealizedHowMuchRoomierTheirURLsWouldBeWithLeadingCaps.

FashionStore.it

This one features great presentation with Leading Caps but I’m not sure about pairing English words with a .it domain? That would be like having a glass of Chardonnay with a beefsteak.