Global by Design

In January of this year, ICANN announced that four fast-track IDNs had made it through linguistic approval — effectively clearing the way for commercialization.
Oddly missing from that list was China’s IDN.
One of the reasons ICANN initiated a fast-track process — if not the reason — was China.
China began putting pressure on ICANN a few years [...]

[Read more →]

Let me guess. Year of the Tiger?

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

Long before Google launched Google.cn, it launched the Chinese localized version of Google.com.
And this site is alive and well and hosted outside of China’s great firewall.
Just change your browser’s language preference to Chinese and you’ll see it the next time you visit Google.
And had China not continually blocked this site from Chinese citizens years ago, [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]