Country Codes of the World XL
I love to design custom Country Code or IDN prints for various companies and organizations. And, on occasion, these prints can be quite large, as shown below: This photo is from the London …
IDN (Intl. Domain Name)
Canon launches .canon along with improved global web design
Canon recently launched its generic top-level domain (gTLD) .canon at http://global.canon. In doing so, the company plans to migrate away from canon.com to .canon, presumably with different divisions and/or geographies occupying subdomains. …
Now you can register the Korean equivalent of .com: 닷컴
Earlier this year Verisign, the registry that manages the .com and .net domains, began rolling out the localized Japanese equivalent of .com: .コム. Today, Verisign adds another language to the mix, with …
You can now register the Japanese equivalent of .com: .コム
And so it begins. Verisign, the registrar that manages .com domains, has begun its rollout of non-Latin .com equivalents, beginning with Japanese: Now, if you don’t have a Japanese domain name, …
Is .com worth changing your name?
Venture capitalist Paul Graham believes so. He notes: 100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. 94% of the top 50 do. But only …
You Say .Sucks, I Say .Global: The flood of new domain names isn’t pretty but will create a truly global Internet
I sympathize with Internet old timers (such as myself) who look back wistfully at the good ol’ days, when the only decision you had to make when registering a new …
Country codes are maturing — but not retiring
Country codes are still adding registrations but the more developed markets are seeing a decline in growth rate. Shown below is a visual from the registry behind the .FR domain: …
Greece gets an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN)
Greece has received string approval for an IDN, shown below in red: This brings to 35 the number countries with approved IDNs — and an impressive range of scripts, shown here: I’ve just …
Armenia gets an IDN: հայ
This is not exactly breaking news, but Armenia now has an IDN: հայ Here it is in my fast-evolving IDN map: This means that 34 countries now have delegated IDNs. …
Bulgaria (at long last) gets it own internationalized domain name (IDN)
Five years ago, Bulgaria applied for an IDN but was denied by ICANN on the basis of “string similarity” with the country code of Brazil. Here is the Bulgarian IDN side …
Gmail leads the global (as in non-Latin) email race
It’s official. Gmail supports (to a degree) non-Latin email addresses. That is, you can receive an email from someone with a non-Latin email address, as well as send an email …
Google reenters the domain name business
It is being reported that Google is venturing into new territory by getting into the domain registration business. This isn’t completely accurate. Google dabbled its feet in domain registration years ago. And …
dotConfusing — What you need to know about the next wave of top-level domains
My latest post for client Pitney Bowes on making sense of the hype concerning the new generic TLDs. An excerpt: The first wave is rolling in More than 1,200 gTLDs have …
Macedonia gets an IDN: мкд
Lately I’ve been writing about all those new non-Latin generic TLDs. But countries are still in the process of acquiring the local-script equivalents of their country codes. Last week, Macedonia (.mk) …
Google launches its first Japanese IDN
I’ve long talked about the importance of non-Latin domain names, or IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names). Google has gone live with one if its many IDNs: みんな. I want to emphasize here …