Former SOFTBANK Exec Joins centraal

Palo Alto, CA-based centraal corp., creators of the Real Name System, said that Ted West has been named executive vice president of sales and marketing.

West will be responsible for strategic development, marketing and sales of centraal’s Real Name Web address system.

West joins centraal from the former SOFTBANK Interactive Marketing, where he held the positions of chief operating officer, co-founder and director.

At SOFTBANK, taken over and renamed by Zulu-tek, West was responsible for interactive media sales for companies such as Netscape, Yahoo and ZDNet. West was also instrumental in launching the SOFTBANK Network, a system for targeted ad serving.

Prior to SOFTBANK, West was the president and founder of Consumer Direct Access which developed and published CATALYST – The National Consumer Guide, a source of products and services available through direct channels. Prior to CATALYST, he was vice president and general manager at Pacific Bell Directory.

The Real Name System is a new multilingual naming system for navigating the Internet. For users, Real Name addresses make it unnecessary to employ lengthy URLs. For brand owners, the Real Name System provides a straightforward way to promote their Web sites to users. Companies can register company and product names or campaign slogans like “New Beetle” for the new Volkswagen Beetle Web page.