Results tagged “Domain name”

Not everyone speaks English.
Not everyone writes using Latin characters.
Unfortunately up until a couple of days ago there was no way to have a domain name 100% in a character set other than Latin. Sure, you could get special characters in the domain, but not in the extension ie. the part on the left of the "." could use special characters, but the bit on the right couldn't. So you could register a .com or a .eu with special characters in it, but the actual domain extension was still in ASCII.

ICANN has announced that the first non-Latin domain extensions are now online. You can read more about it on the ICANN blog

Related articles by Zemanta

• An Internet First: Non-Latin Domain Names (cbsnews.com)
• ICANN unveils first non-Latin domain names (news.cnet.com)
• The Web Is Now Truly International! (blacknight.com)
• Arabic internet addresses launch in Mideast (cbc.ca)
• First Non-Latin Domain Names Go Online (prweb.com)
• First non-Latin Internet domain names activated (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• First Internationalized Domain Names Go Live (techdailydose.nationaljournal.com)
• First non-latin web addresses go live (theworld.org)
• 'Historic' day for web languages (news.bbc.co.uk)
• ICANN Frees Country Codes from Latin Letters (readwriteweb.com)
• Web now supports non-Latin characters for addresses (crunchgear.com)
• First Internationalised domain names go live! (tomdoyletalk.com)
• First Non-Latin, International Domain Names Finally Launch (mashable.com)

Minds and Machines have launched a new site targetted at prospective candidates for "city TLDs".

The site provides information on what they predict will be the application process for a city that wants to run their own domain space.

While the site is obviously going to push the Minds and Machines' services to some extent it's still a pretty good source of information for city managers or people who are interested in understanding how the process may work.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Berlin The Latest New TLD Battleground? (isquattedyour.eu)
• Supporting New TLDs (blacknight.com)

Those involved with new TLD projects have been waiting "in the wings" for the last couple of months, as it was very unclear how ICANN intended to move forward

After the meeting in Seoul ICANN seem to have found a way of moving forward, though we will have to wait and see exactly how that pans out.

As new TLD projects come out of hiding we'll try to keep you up to date

Related articles by Zemanta

• Supporting New TLDs (blacknight.com)
• Afilias Seeks New TLD Partners (prweb.com)

While I am in favour of the introduction of new domain extensions, there are quite a few people who are against the whole idea.

So what are the arguments against them?

Confusion is a common one.

According to some naysayers the public, that's you, me and everyone else, is going to be "confused".

Confusion is a wonderful argument. If people are confused then they may make bad decisions or mistakes.

But is it a valid argument?

I think not.

The "end user confusion" argument always brings a smile to my face.

Would someone please show me all these confused end users please?

The only "arguments" I've seen to date have been extreme "edge cases" presented by corporate trademark lawyers with an agenda. Just because one user in a million might do something evil with a domain name does not mean that all users are going to. In any case most Western democracies still try to uphold the "innocent until proven guilty" concept.

 A year ago most users would never have visited a .ly domain, yet bit.ly is now an incredibly popular service ... Are users of bit.ly confused? Are they special in some way? Of course not.

 There's no reason why users wouldn't embrace new TLDs in the same way.

In any case it's the services and content that is built on the namespace and not the namespace itself that will make the difference. The case of ".ly" is a good example of this.

Why the creators of a URL shortener chose the .ly cctld for their service isn't important. It's what they did with the name that makes all the difference.

So imagine if someone were able to setup .movie as a domain extension. Wouldn't that be a lot more logical than "bighitthemovie.com" or "bigstudyproductionthefilm.com", as is so often the case now? Look at the poster for any big Hollywood release and you'll see what I mean.

Take "Transformers" and its sequel that came out earlier this summer. What domain name are they using? Transformersmovie.com. Admittedly transformers.com redirects to a Hasbro site, but wouldn't transformers.movie be a lot simpler and more logical?

Or would that confuse people?

In the coming months ICANN, the international organisation that oversees the internet, will be accepting applications from interested parties who want to launch their own domain extensions (TLDs).

So we might see people and businesses advertising themselves using .movie (dotMovie) or .food (dotFood)

If you use the internet either casually or for your business the introduction of new TLDs could impact you.

But do you care?

Possibly not that much.

And why would you?

Domain names are like cogs in a wheel. They're not very exciting, but if they break you know about it.

Over the coming months we're going to try and help people get to grips with the new TLD landscape, as it changes.

We'll try to explain what various companies and organisations are up to and why it might matter to your business.

If there are any things you'd like us to explain or if you think we're not being very clear - please let us know.