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Above: Grand Canyon, Arizona photo by Bill and Kent. Below right: Sheki, Azerbaijan photo by Ben Paarmann. Both photos Creative Commons licensed, via Flickr. Click either image to see original. |
The Star Tribune in Minneapolis has a new entertainment site called
vita.mn. It's a cool site (
Steve Yelvington, a Star Tribune alumnus,
agrees), packed with Web. 2.0 features.
What I found most interesting was the site's TLD (top-level domain): .mn. That's the official U.S. Postal Service abbreviation for Minnesota. Of course, like all U.S. states, Minnesota doesn't have a unique TLD. Rather, the Star Tribune is using the TLD for Mongolia.
Well, I thought this was clever -- a way to tell readers, "Hey, this site is about Minnesota!" And I'd bet a lot of domain names not available as .com might be available in other countries.
This got me thinking: How many other state-focused sites could use country-based TLD's? Almost half, it turns out. Here's what I found (I haven't checked to see if these countries allow U.S.-based sites to register domains):
| TLD | State | Country |
| .al | Alabama | Albania |
| .ar | Arkansas | Argentina |
| .az | Arizona | Azerbaijan |
| .co | Colorado | Colombia |
| .de | Delaware | Germany |
| .ga | Georgia | Gabon |
| .id | Idaho | Indonesia |
| .il | Illinois | Israel |
| .in | Indiana | India |
| .ky | Kentucky | Cayman Islands |
| .la | Louisiana | Laos |
| .ma | Massachusetts | Morocco |
| .md | Maryland | Moldova |
| .me | Maine | Montenegro |
| .mo | Missouri | Macao |
| .ms | Mississippi | Montserrat |
| .mt | Montana | Malta |
| .nc | North Carolina | New Caledonia |
| .ne | Nebraska | Niger |
| .pa | Pennsylvania | Panama |
| .sc | South Carolina | Seychelles |
| .sd | South Dakota | Sudan |
| .tn | Tennessee | Tunisia |
| .va | Virginia | Vatican city-state |
