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 [...]

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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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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 funny how top-level domain names (TLDs) outlast the countries they represent.
In 2007 I wrote about the end of .YU (Yugoslavia), though it didn’t exactly go away back then.
Stephane Gelder writes that the TLD for Yugoslavia expires officially in a week, to be replaced by .RS (Serbia).
So this is it. Goodbye .YU. It was nice [...]

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So Bit.ly has launched an even shorter URL: J.mp.
You can’t get any shorter than this, at least not until we see single-digital TLDs.
I can’t help but wonder if this new URL is a sign that Bit.ly is planning to shift away from its Libyan-dependent domain to one that may be a tad bit more politically [...]

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Another day, another URL shortener. Only this one I think will be around a lot longer than many that are out there.
That’s because it’s supported by WordPress.
It’s also the world’s first two-letter Montenegro (.me) domain.
Even though I use Bit.ly on Twitter, I still have concerns about what would happen if Libya clamped down on its [...]

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Nearly one year ago, I asked Will .CN become the next .COM?
And perhaps I was right in more ways than one.
Because now it appears that .CN is experiencing its very own .COM bust.
Just a year ago Chinese domain registrations were booming, so quickly in fact that .CN had surpassed .DE to become the most-registered ccTLD.
Of [...]

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A country code top-level-domains (ccTLD) has traditionally been used to signify a country-specific web site or resource, or simply to tell users where a given organization is located. For example, Russia’s leading search engine, Yandex, is hosted at www.yandex.ru and The Holy See hosts its site at www.vatican.va (.va = Vatican City).
Then along came the [...]

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Bit.ly, the URL shortener now used by Twitter, is not the first company to craft its name out of a county code top-level domain (ccTLD).
But Bit.ly does appear to be the first company to do so with the Libyan ccTLD.
As some have speculated, Bit.ly could put itself into a precarious position should it begin hosting [...]

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The European Commission has announced that it will begin supporting domain registration in Greek and Cyrillic characters. This will allow for support of all 23 official EU languages.
The EC hasn’t announced when registrations will be possible. I took a stab at registering a Cyrillic domain name and got an “invalid domain” error. My guess is [...]

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