The first one makes no sense, while the second is obviously talking about a web URL. I'm sure there are other ways to make this work, but this author's post feels like a solution in search of a problem. At the very least, it's hardly "madness".
I remember a psychology study that showed people recognize www.yahoo.com as a url more quickly than yahoo.com -- with the latter, you don't see the ".com" until you get to the end of the phrase, and that's when you realize it's a url. I can only imagine that getting rid of the .com would make things even worse.
When I give my email I omit the .com. But I think this works with popular hosts only, like gmail or yahoo. I say "myname at yahoo" and people know to fill the rest.
People who advertise their company (for example, on the side of one of their trucks) sometimes start it with a www. which would fail one of those OS-detected http:// tests which only look for http:// and not www.
This is even more of an issue in conversation. Although the http can be omitted, the .com is often the only clue that the speaker is referring to a web address.
"For the latest blog post, just head to elliottkember."
"For the latest blog post, just head to http://elliottkember.com
The first one makes no sense, while the second is obviously talking about a web URL. I'm sure there are other ways to make this work, but this author's post feels like a solution in search of a problem. At the very least, it's hardly "madness".