Have you registered your Cuba domain?
Cuba has long had its own country code: .CU. But most companies didn’t view this domain as a priority. Until now. But be aware that this domain isn’t cheap. I’ve …
Country Codes
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 …
One probable beneficiary of Scotland independence: .SCOT
So today is the big day for the people of Scotland as well as the UK. One question that occurs to country code geeks such as myself is what country code …
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 …
Aussies love .AU
Keeping in mind that this is a survey funded by Australia’s registry, the data points pretty clearly toward a preference for .au over .com. From the announcement: The report found .au remains …
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 …
The UK is moving away from the cumbersome .co.uk
One of the more common questions I hear when talking about country codes is why the inconsistency across countries. For instance, why do you have to register .co.uk in the UK …
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 …
From Russian to Arabic to Chinese, new TLDs have arrived
This screen is from a website advertising two new top level domains in Cyrillic. Here are the two domains and what they represent: .САЙТ (Website) .ОНЛАЙН (Online) Two other domains …
Tips and Best Practices for Targeting an APAC Audience (Part I)
Here’s my latest post for client Pitney Bowes: Any company with global aspirations cannot afford to ignore the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. It’s a region that includes more than two billion …
The next Internet revolution will not be in English
Imagine if, every time you wanted to visit a website, you were expected to type in letters from a foreign language, or worse, an entirely foreign script, such as Arabic, …
The Dutch love .nl
Country codes (ccTLDs) provide local and regional “front doors” to websites. They also can be used as local brand extensions, as shown here with Amazon: Not surprisingly, country code registries …
Taking the Great American Pastime Global
I was raised a Cardinals fan. But I don’t live in St. Louis anymore so I must follow the team virtually. Fortunately there’s the MLB mobile app. Now I can listen …