As an aid in locating devices and services, an authority registers names within a set of dimensions, and may charge recurring registration and usage fees. The set of dimensions include devices, services, networks, venues, spaces, people, processes, and events. The names within each dimension can have a hierarchical or non-hierarchical organization. The names may map to an address (e.g., an IP address) to operationally access a protocol to interact with the named item over a global network, such as a COM object, java applet, HTML, XML or other structured data. The authoritative name space created by this registry also operates to define concepts of proximity on the network, including geographical and other proximity concepts of relatedness of items in the various dimensions of the authoritative registry. The names serve as implicit terms in combination with an explicit search query to assess proximity of devices and services available over the global network.
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