Brigitte von Boch, january 2000
at the Cybercafe de Paris, today Cremerie de Paris,
the time when was registered the Internet Domain
Phone Book of the World.com
Around the turn of the century
most people using the Internet were young, very young
some popular website have even been set up by Teanagers ....
Phone Book of the World came alive
because what the Figargo had later called
an 'old Lady'
in French 'une veille Dame'
expatriate from her beloved home country France
had had all her life ....
difficulties to find phone numbers ....
While visiting a Cybercafe in Paris,
Brigitte
inspired her nephew to register
a multitude of strategic internet domains
which contributed to the invention of the Phone Book of the World.
Working at a Cybercafe was fascinating.
At the time Parisian Hotels did not yet have internet access.
Travellers, almost exclusively from the US,
were desperately running through Paris
to find a web connection.
The cafe had encountered many tech pioneers
most of the time not even realizing who they were
... or who they were going to become.
Some, like Brigitte were already older,
one had walked on the Moon,
another one, had once been a friend of the inventor of the phone,
Professor Alexander Graham Bell.
Unlike Professor Bell who had worked years to invent the phone
and spend quite some money to finance his invention,
all Brigitte has done was to open her wallet
and to
offer her nephew 70 $
with a big smile ...
Registering .com domains was a question of 70 $
for a two year registration period.
This was the amount of the initial investment,
soon followed by more domains
and
the acquisition of the webdesign programs
Adobe and Dreamwaver.
The project never received any external funding
and let to the World's largest network of
online Telephone directories.
Unfortunately Brigitte did not participate very much.