Verisign launches Hebrew .com domain
Verisign has owned rights to the .com domain for many years, and profited enormously. So it’s no surprise that the company has been eager to see continued profits from language/script-specific …
IDN (Intl. Domain Name)
Think you can succeed in India supporting English only? Think again.
#serveinmylanguage It’s more than a hashtag; it’s a social movement. And it’s growing. A movement among Indian consumers to force the vendors who depend on their business to actually support …
A unique look at the emerging multilingual Internet
I’m happy to announce that I’ve updated my map of the world’s internationalized domain names for 2018: The map includes all ICANN-approved country code IDNs for the world — more …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
Web globalization predictions for 2014
I’m optimistic about the year ahead. I base this optimism in part on discussions I’ve had this year with dozens of marketing and web teams across about ten countries. While …
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 …
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, …
Don’t blame phishing on IDNs
I received a friendly email from Twitter awhile back. It was fake. I (stupidly) clicked on the link and was greeted with a login page that looked very much like …
A map of the multilingual Internet
With Mongolia gaining approval for its new internationalized domain name (IDN), there are now 30 countries and territories with non-Latin top-level domains. I’ve updated my map and, as you can …
Mongolia joins the IDN club with .мон
ICANN has approved Mongolia’s IDN application. Here’s a one-page list of all approved IDNs — a list that now includes 30 countries/territories. IDNs are laying the groundwork for a revolution …
France to offer support for actual French domain names
The French domain name registry AFNIC has published a PDF explaining why it will soon support internationalized domain names (IDNs). According to AFNIC: As of July 3, 2012, it will …