While looking for a place to host "Who Let the Dogs Out", a 3 meg Flash file that threatens at any given moment to cause our ISP to drop us, I remembered a place that will host web content for free and not place any ads on your pages, www.freehost.nu. Unfortunately their upload tool only handles files that are less than 500k so the search for space continues but the whole experience with Freehost sparked the question, what is .nu? Turns out that .nu is the domain appellation for a country called Niue (pronounced nee-ooo-ay). Niue is an island located in the South Pacific. They say it is close to Samoa but has political ties to New Zealand. In fact Niue is one of the smallest self governing bodies in the world but they have worked out an arrangement with New Zealand to get military protection (if ever required) and some financial backing. They get over 8 million a year in aid from New Zealand, which adds up to a lot since the GDP of Niue is just over a million. Industry in Niue mostly consists of selling their stamps to collectors and of course there is some tourism. The population of actual inhabitants is around 2,000 although many Niueians go looking for opportunities in New Zealand rather than sticking it out in their homeland. Total citizenship of Niue is around 6,000.

If you are looking for island paradise, this place sounds ideal. It has some of the clearest waters imaginable. There are few to no rivers on the island and that cuts down on the water murkiness so scuba diving here is amazing. The whole island looks like a wedding cake due to the fact that it is one of the largest raised coral atolls in the world. There are forests, fertile soil and mountainous trails that provide recreation for a Hash House Harrier running club and mountain biking excursions. They even play a game called "Touch". I have no idea how this game is played but the name has made me curious.

Getting to Niue is a bit of a challenge since there is only one flight a week to the island and the schedule is sometimes erratic. With no rivers on the island it appears that drinkable water might be a problem but the locals are known to be friendly and they welcome newcomers.

So back to the reason I discovered this place to being with. The .nu appellation is a fairly good one, of all the ones available it is one of the better ones. If you are like me however, every time you see one of these unknown appellations you think that the website must be located on that far off distant place and that connecting to it is going to be slow. This of course isn't always the case. The actual content could be coming from a web server down the street for all you know. 

My work here is done

On a previous edition of this page (five minutes ago) I outlined a detailed plan for giving 20% of the revenue collected from the .nu top level domain (TLD) in the form uniforms for the Niue Island Touch Association. It was a well thought out plan that would have made me a hero of the tiny island nation. Turns out though that a method is already in place to return some of those funds to the good people of Niue. A non-profit organization, Internet Users Society - Niue,  manages 25% of fees to build things like Internet infrastructure. In return they have given exclusive rights to the TLD to NuNames.Nu, a domain name registrar. There is a five member panel comprised of upstanding Niue citezens that helps allocate the funds. They are currently working on wiring the libraries and giving free Internet access to all islanders. They proclaim that Niue is the only nation that has universal free Internet access. The whole sordid tale can be found here.

So where does that leave me? Without a leg to stand on apparently. However I can sleep better at night knowing that the GDP of Niue is slowly rising with every .nu name registered and that Niueian children can be corrupted in thier libraries by accessing our site.

Epilogue> Freshmilk is looking for fares on travelocity to Niue, maybe we can work out a lowbar group fare and all go over.

-HH