Beautiful Homes In Virginia's Smith Mountain Lake

Submitted By: Tim Stewart

Start with Virginia's Smith Mountain Lake. Bring together some of the best developers in Central Virginia, and a plan to build a great community. But don't think about communities that you've seen in the past: instead, focus on the possibilities of a development that follows the land and works with it rather than taking away from the natural beauty.

Think about a community where neighbors get together at one another's homes, enjoy one another's company by the pool, go out with one another for an afternoon of boating on the lake and cap off the evening with a great meal at a restaurant on the waterfront. Combine all of these elements, and you'll have a sense of the promise of Craddock Oaks.

Built on the area's natural beauty, Smith Mountain Lake along with the Blue Ridge Mountains and wooded lands, and drawing on the number of people who gravitate to the area for vacationing, Craddock Oaks aims to be a community for those who want to remain active and to enjoy all of the finer points of what life has to offer.

For some, this will mean taking short trips from home to visit historical landmarks. For others, it will mean browsing for antiques or seeing what is new in local art galleries. For others still it will involve trips for shows or other entertainment options including fine dining restaurants and shops offering high end fashions. After all, Craddock Oaks at Smith Mountain Lake is less than an hour away from both Roanoke and Lynchburg and less than three hours from Richmond as well as Raleigh, North Carolina.

Of course, that isn't to suggest that there will not be plenty of opportunities for activity much closer to your Craddock Oaks home. Residents of Craddock Oaks will be able to enjoy rounds of championship golf as well as to take advantage tennis courts, a fitness center and both volleyball and basketball courts. Covered boat slips and private beaches make it easy to enjoy time on the lake, but if you would prefer to swim laps you'll also have the opportunity to use the pool - all located within the community.

Numerous home styles will be available within the Craddock Oaks development - each at varying elevations and with different features. Given that the homes - as well as the various community amenities - will be built on over 500 acres of land, despite all that is offered, everyone will still find that they have plenty of space.

However, just because Craddock Oaks residents will have as much space as they'd like coupled with the ability to enjoy life in the way that best suits them doesn't mean that additional services if they need them. Built into the plans for the community is a program called CALM. This Community Assisted Lifestyle Management program is designed to provide interior and exterior property upkeep, meal planning and grocery shopping services and other care that may be needed.

Affordable Green in Craddock Oaks allows homeowners to participate in the preservation of our environment by buying into a development that uses energy efficient building materials and appliances, is designed to be pedestrian and golf cart friendly rather than promoting the use of cars, makes recycling easy and is investigating the use of additional recycled landscaping materials and geothermal energy for heating and cooling its homes.

Regardless of what your needs may be and regardless of what you're looking for in a community, chances are good that Craddock Oaks will make it available. A visit to the area is often enough to seal the deal.

Domain name for Asia up for grabs

The so-called landrush for the latest domain name suffix - .asia - has begun.
DotAsia, the organisation overseeing the registration, is expecting huge demand for the first domain name extension for the Asia Pacific region.

But some in the industry are concerned about the proliferation of domain name suffixes in recent years.

While others think that the business of buying domain names has become more about protecting brands than promoting them.

Cybersquatting

Work to create the .asia domain began in 2000 with the DotAsia Organisation winning official approval to set up the domain in 2006.

A so-called sunrise period, where companies can reserve domains to match their trademarks, has been ongoing since October.

Now the process has been opened up for anyone to register and the first .asia domains will go live on the internet in March.

Thomas Herbert, a product manager from UK hosting firm and registrar Hostway, believes the nature of buying domain names has changed, largely due to the lucrative businesses of cybersquatting.

"People are willing to pay big money for a domain and with domain name reselling on the increase, it has become a matter of protecting your trademark," he said.

As well as cybersquatting there can be legitimate battles over suffixes.

For example, in the sunrise period for the .eu domain, there were some 95,000 conflicting claims for domains.

The www.polo.eu domain was applied for by car maker Volkswagen, fashion house Ralph Lauren and sweet manufacturer Nestle.

To limit squabbles and cybersquatting this time around, the DotAsia Organisation, has put in place certain rules.

Companies must be already registered in the Asia/Pacific region to qualify and if there are any conflicts of interest, the domain will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Such restrictions are likely to increase as more domain names come online, thinks Mr Herbert.

Leona Chen, spokeswoman for the DotAsia Organisation, anticipated plenty of interest and hoped the suffix could have as significant an impact in Asia as .com has globally.

"We are ready for something big. All of our people and systems are in place and we look forward to the commencement of the .asia landrush," she said.

Too many?

UK domain name registrar NetNames pointed out that the number of firms registering interest is considerably lower than for the sell-off of the eu domain in April 2006.

"Only 30,780 applications have been filed for .asia domain names so far compared with 330,000 at the same point in the launch of the .eu domain name," said Jonathan Robinson, chief operating officer of NetNames.

He advised firms to get onboard quickly.

"Once it starts, there's far less protection for companies' trademarks and its open season on the .asia domain name for cybersquatters, online speculators and competitors," he said.

According to a report from Nominet, the overseer of the .uk registry, there is an active market in buying, selling and storing domain names, with sales regularly exceeding £100,000 and peak values reaching more than £1m.

While some of these resales are legitimate there was also a big market for speculators, said Nominet chief executive Lesley Cowley.

She was concerned that a sudden leap in the number of domain names could leave companies confused as to which ones they need to register for.

"The current process being developed by Icann (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) means there could be a couple of hundred or even thousands of new suffixes to bid for by the end of the year," she said.

The .asia domain name extends to some 70 countries, from the Middle East to Australia. 60% of the world's population lives within the Asia-Pacific region and there are 400 million internet users.

Other regional suffixes for Africa and Latin America are expected to follow.