From Russia, with IDNs
A little more than a year ago, Russia opened up registration for its top-level IDN: рф. Since then, more than 900,000 domains have been registered, making this the most successful …
IDN (Intl. Domain Name)
From Morocco to Malaysia, IDN growth continues
ICANN recently approved Malaysia’s Arabic IDN (internationalized domain name), bringing the number of countries or territories with approved IDNs to 29. Here is the full list. As shown here, Malaysia …
Kazakhstan gets an IDN (and I get to update our IDN poster)
Kazakhstan has joined a fast-expanding group of countries and regions that now have IDNs (28 and counting). I’ve highlighted Kazakhstan in the map above. The IDN is қаз. While getting approval for …
What the heck is an IDN and why you should care
Here’s a new article I’ve written for UX Magazine on the emergence of internationalized domain names (IDNs). I view IDNs as an inevitable (albeit awkward) evolution of the Internet. And here are the …
Making sense of internationalized domain names
Paul Sawers of The Next Web has written an in-depth article on the evolution of internationalized domain names (IDNs). It’s a great article for quickly getting up to speed on …
Think outside .com: A map of the world’s IDNs
If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you know I’m a fan of internationalized domain names (IDNs). Over the past year or so, ICANN has approved more than 20 …
The next Internet revolution will not be in English
This visual depicts about half of the currently approved internationalized domain names (IDNs), positioned over their respective regions. Notice the wide range of scripts over India and the wide range …
Gruber gives up on his ✪ IDN
Tech pundit John Gruber threw in the towel on his domain ✪df.ws. He writes: What I didn’t foresee was the tremendous amount of software out there that does not properly …
Where is China’s fast-track IDN?
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 …
IDN application update: Egypt, Russia, China…
So who’s applied for IDNs so far? According to ICANN, 10 applications (representing five languages) were submitted over the first four days. ICANN won’t announce exactly who applied and for …
ICANN is now accepting IDN applications
It’s now November the 16th in Asia, which means the “Fast Track” has begun. Here’s the process: The Fast Track process is only for ccTLDs and only for those countries …
IDNs coming in 2010. Really.
It’s beginning to feel like Groundhog Day when I read these “IDNs are coming” articles. Here’s one I read this morning about ICANN’s meeting in Seoul, happening now, where the …
IDNs on are the “fast track”
Could it be happening? Finally? After all these years? Internationalized domain names at last becoming a reality around the world — and not just in China? It’s looking that way. …
.EU to offer Greek and Cyrillic support
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 …
IDNs get on the fast track
So with the “father of Internet” and chief Internet evangelist at Google, Vinton Cerf, chairing the latest IDNA working group and ICANN issuing a fast track PDF document, it appears …