Note that .dev is one of the new TLD's being handed out[1]. I also used .dev as my local environment and switched them all over to .local a while ago.
.local[2] was specifically set aside just for this task, and is recognized as a local address by the major browsers (instead of .dev, which often results in a search hit).
.local[2] was specifically set aside just for this task, and is recognized as a local address by the major browsers (instead of .dev, which often results in a search hit).
[1] http://www.newgtldsite.com/dot-dev-tld-domain-name-extension...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local
Edit: just noticed that the .dev hostnames come from Pow, the underlying server. probably not a good idea.