Thank you for the warm welcome!
Yea, Julia -- I totally agree: both keyword domain names and brand-name domain names need to work hand-in-hand (much like in web -0.2, the yellow pages and the white pages both had their specific usefulness -- if you knew your plumbers name, you might use the white pages, but if you only knew you were searching for a plumber, you would use the yellow pages instead).
I wrote an "FAQ" about this on a simple website I created about 5 (or maybe even more?) years ago at http://E-Z.Name (and I specifically described these two types of names as "white" names vs. "yellow" names). I was amused when -- after explaining this idea in a forum led by the founder of ebay -- ebay then bought two of the most valuable "yellow page" domain names on the Internet ("shopping.com" and "rent.com" -- indeed: "shopping" was one of the examples I had used on the FAQ! ;).
At any rate: this "dovetail" relationship of keywords and brands will become more and more pronounced as time goes on (and there will also increasingly be more and more "brands" of "yellow-page" sites -- e.g. shopping.com vs. shopping.net etc.).
I have created a rather simple php script at http://Browse.Name which simplifies such "direct navigation" (it only returns "live" sites, but some of these sites are unfortunately still filled with "automated" results).
The true value of such "yellow-page" sites becomes apparent when the sites listed are "hand selected" and "reliable" -- because they are recommended by "subject experts" (very much like a "traditional" librarian might be an expert in a particular academic field, such as "history" or "literature").
Oh, my -- this is probably more than you wanted to hear! :O
I find this community very appealing and interesting -- and I look forward to alot of rewarding discussions arising from the exchanges among a focused group of experts working together!
:) nmw