it has been approved as an official registrar of the .us.com, and .eu.com Internet domain names.

The names have been developed by British company, CentralNic Ltd., in order to offer clients a new way to register their domain name of choice, while still maintaining the coveted .com extension.

"We are very excited about being able to offer these new domain extensions to our North American and European customers,'' said NamesDirect.com president Richard Lau.

"This is a great opportunity for companies and individuals to obtain a strong US or European identification right in their domain name. For US companies in particular, this is a great chance to reserve the domain name they want, but that may no longer be available as a .com extension.'' The .us.com domain name is expected to appeal to both American and international companies that do business in the United States, while .eu.com is expected to appeal to companies seeking a single European umbrella domain name, rather than having to rely on a number of Country Code Top Level Domain names, such as .uk, .de and .fr. Companies in countries with excessively restrictive domain regulations are also likely customers.

The two new domain name options will be available through NamesDirect.com and its partner sites for $99 for two years. All customers will also receive free-of-charge NamesDirect.com's valuable package of services, including: free email forwarding, free domain (URL) forwarding, free US trademark searches and free web-based email (with no advertising or message tags).

"CentralNic is delighted that NamesDirect is one of the first major registrars in North America to become an accredited CentralNic registrar.

"Given NamesDirect's pedigree and obvious success in the domain naming industry, the organisation is proving yet again, that by providing users with further choice in the domain name space, it is determined to stay an industry leader,'' said Stephen Dyer, chairman, CentralNic Ltd.

NamesDirect.com (www.namesdirect.com) NamesDirect.com Ltd. is an ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assignment of Names and Numbers) accredited registrar of .com, .net, and .org domain names. Since 1998, it has registered over quarter million domain names through its popular YourNameFree.com and 123Register4free.com affiliated websites.

CentralNic Ltd. was originally founded in 1995 by Stephen Dyer as NomiNation, CentralNic Ltd. was established in May 2000 as an independent global domain name registry for a portfolio of domain names including eu.com (Europe), us.com (United States), uk.com (United Kingdom), cn.com (China) and ru.com (Russia).