John Demco
ICANN Launches Internationalized Top-Level Domain Evaluation – ICANN is launching an evaluation of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) as top-level domain names. The root zone is being augmented with 11 versions of the TLD name .test, and as of October 15 wiki pages will be available with the domain name example.test in Arabic, Persian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil.
.MOBI Auction Raises $850,000 – DotMobi, the registry operator for the .mobi domain, has reported that its auction of 100 .mobi domain names yielded more than $850,000. Top individual domain prices were: hosting.mobi ($101,000), bank.mobi ($51,501), download.mobi ($51,500), currency.mobi ($47,000) and insurance.mobi ($42,005).
New Zealand IDN Consultation Under Way – InternetNZ has established a working group “to consider the implementation of IDNs into the .nz domain name space. The initial focus of the IDN implementation will be on the 5 macronised vowels required to correctly spell Māori words in domain names.” Comments are being sought, with a closing date of December 19.
Picks To Click
- “A Script for Every Surfer” by Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post.
- “The problems of viewing IDNs” by Kim Davies in the ICANN Blog.
- The .au registry is releasing several hundred geographic names for registration.
Timeline
- Tue, Oct 9 – Tue, Oct 30: .asia registry sunrise for registered marks
- Fri, Oct 19: last day for submissions on draft .au recommendations
- Mon, Oct 29 – Fri, Nov 2: ICANN meetings in Los Angeles
- Wed, Oct 31: last day for responses to second Nominet governance consultation
- Mon, Nov 12: last day for submissions to .nz domain policy review
- Tue, Nov 13 – Tue, Jan 15: .asia registry sunrise for marks, extended marks, entity names
- Wed, Dec 19: last day for submissions to .nz IDN consultation
- Sun, Feb 10 – Fri, Feb 15: ICANN meetings in Delhi
- Sun, Jun 22 – Fri, Jun 27: ICANN meetings in Paris