Global by Design

Last month, Rod Beckstrom, President of ICANN, spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Here’s the video. It’s a great introduction to how ICANN has evolved and where it’s headed. And, yes, Rod does talk about my favorite topic: IDNs!

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ICANN shed some light on its fast-track application process today, announcing the first four countries to pass the string evaluation of the process.
Here they are:

Saudi Arabia (SA): السعودية
Egypt (EG): مصر
United Arab Emirates (AE): امارات
Russian Federation (RU): рф

I’m surprised to see China absent from this list. But there are 12 other requests behind these four.
I know [...]

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If you want to know the world’s most dangersous ccTLDs, ask an anti-virus software company.
McAfee has released its list of most dangerous country codes. Here are the top five:

Cameroon (.cm)
PR of China (.cn)
Samoa (.ws)
Philippines (.ph)
Former Soviet Union (.su)

Why is Camerooon at the top of the list?
Because .cm is a common typo by users who intended [...]

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With a few hours to spare, here are the most popular blog posts of 2009, based on number of visitors:

The rise of “international” English — otherwise known as American English
Of Kosovo and .ks
Bing Beats Google in Insta-translation
Facebook: From 1 to 100 languages in two years
Is this the next language icon?
Google Translate now in 41 languages
Three [...]

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Just what the world needs — two more URL shorteners.
Google now has goo.gl.
And Facebook has FB.me.
But Google’s URL jumps out at me because it marks the first instance of Greenland (.gl) being used as a “countryless country code”
That is, the ccTLD is not being used to signify location, but for something totally unrelated.
I’ve compiled a [...]

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Nominet, the UK registrar, published the results of a poll that found:
More than three-quarters (77%) of British consumers prefer to use a .uk rather than a .com when searching for information on the Internet.
Clearly, you have to hold these numbers at arm’s length. But I would agree in general that people have an affinity for [...]

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So who’s applied for IDNs so far?
According to ICANN, 10 applications (representing five languages) were submitted over the first four days.
ICANN won’t announce exactly who applied and for what until each application is successful — which pushes us well into 2010.
So I’ve had to turn to press reports from the registries to piece together the [...]

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I’m pleased to announce a new country codes map, this one devoted to the 27 members of the European Union.
The ccTLDs are sized according to population and to the side is a list of the top 17 ccTLDs by number of registrations.
Germany leads the list of course. I also included .EU, which now has more [...]

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Last week I wrote about the coming of IDNs (internationalized domain names).
But IDNs aren’t the only new country codes to keep your eyes on.
There is also the occasional new Latin-based ccTLD.
Like .IC.
The Canary Islands is looking to get a country code to raise its visibility.
That, and also to bring in a few million dollars in [...]

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It’s now November the 16th in Asia, which means the “Fast Track” has begun.
Here’s the process:

The Fast Track process is only for ccTLDs and only for those countries with non-Latin official languages.
So if you qualify, get your application ready — that and your $26,000 fee.

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