Another Look at the Latest Domain Name Numbers and Trends

There are now 177 million domain names across all top-level domains, which is an increase by 16% (24 million domain names) compared to a year ago. These numbers are from the latest Domain Name Industry Brief, a quarterly report from VeriSign about the growth of the domain name industry. In this review, Royal Pingdom has broken down the numbers in order to demonstrate the growth of both gTLDs (generic TLDs, such as .com and .net) and ccTLDs (country-code TLDs, such as .cn, .se, .uk and .us). more

Google Flags Entire Web Unsafe, Glitch Due to Human Error According to Company

A glitch in Google's security update on Saturday morning caused links to every search result -- including Google's own pages -- to get flagged with the warning: "This site may harm your computer." The errors caused panic among users around the world who at first feared the popular search engine had suffered a major security failure. The problem which lasted for approximately 40 minutes has now been acknowledged and fixed by Google. The reason for the hiccup, as explained by Google, was due to a human error in the list of URLs Google uses to identify and flag websites known to install malicious software. more

For ccTLD Registries: 4 Steps to Guaranteed Success

The introduction of New gTLDs has increased the rate at which individuals and businesses are getting online today and we're already seeing mainstream adoption of New gTLDs. By going the extra mile to spread awareness about their extensions among the masses, New gTLD Registries are bringing attention to their value propositions and, more importantly, are sharing the idea of 'getting online' to audiences. more

The Crypto Wars Resume

For decades, the US government has fought against widespread, strong encryption. For about as long, privacy advocates and technologists have fought for widespread, strong encryption, to protect not just privacy but also as a tool to secure our computers and our data. The government has proposed a variety of access mechanisms and mandates to permit them to decrypt (lawfully) obtained content; technologists have asserted that "back doors" are inherently insecure. more

Those Who Don’t Remember 2014 Are Doomed to Repeat It

J. Gordon Crovitz is making his case against the IANA transition again today, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. I think it's useful to once again go on record opposing his flawed logic against the transition. i2Coalition was among those that publicly praised the IANA transition report when it arrived this week. When the Washington Post covered our announcement, I was frustrated by a commenter who has a different take on the transition than I. more

The Challenge Facing African TLDs

Africa's digital ecosystem is growing rapidly, with internet access becoming a central driver for innovation, business, and socio-economic development. As this digital adoption expands, so too does the importance of domain governance, particularly the effective management of Top-Level Domains (TLDs). Unfortunately, over the years, African registries have struggled to manage their TLDs, often leading to missed opportunities, inefficiencies, and a loss of competitive edge in the global domain market. more

Online Businesses to Benefit from Supreme Court “Booking.com” Ruling

Today, in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com, the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed that generic terms including .com domain names may be trademarked when consumers do not perceive the mark to signify the class of services, with heightened distinctiveness and recognition attributable to top-level domains that add meaning like .club, .guru, and .vip. more

Supporting Rural Cell Towers

I work with a lot of ISPs that own rural fiber. Some rural network owners have been successful in providing fiber to cell sites near their networks over the last decade. A few sell directly to a cellular carrier, but most of these connections are sold to an intermediate carrier that bundles together cellular connections across a large geographic area. more

Public Cloud Services in Mature Asia/Pacific Region to Reach $7.4 Billion in 2015

The public cloud services market in the mature Asia/Pacific (AP) region is on pace to grow 8.7 percent in 2015 to total $7.3 billion, up from $6.7 billion in 2014, according to new research from Gartner. more

The Social Responsibility Imperative - TLDs Leading the Charge

Last month at CIRA's annual general meeting, I had the pleasure of meeting Tracy Axelsson, the executive director of the Vancouver Community Network. Her organization is working to connect street-involved citizens in downtown Vancouver with critical life-saving information via SMS messages. Chatting about her program was a vivid reminder for me of what many technology companies around the world have recognized, that the benefits of our wares can have a profound impact on our economies, culture and social fabric of our countries. more

Will Broadband Go Wireless?

For years it's been impossible to go to any industry forum without meeting a few folks who predict that residential broadband will go wireless. This buzz has accelerated with the exaggerated claims that fast 5G broadband is right around the corner. I've seen even more talk about this due to a recent Pew poll that shows that the number of people that only use their cellphones for data has climbed significantly over the last few years – I'm going to discuss that poll in another upcoming blog. more

AI Musings: Using Image Classification Creatively and the Coming Collision in City Centers

Within this supercycle of digital innovation, we are experiencing globally; AI is revolutionizing business both in predictable and unpredictable ways. With an expectation of more than $20 trillion added to the global economy by 2030, the impact of AI on business is real. While most of the patents and citations are still coming from the US, China is rapidly gaining citations. more

Pharmacy Chain Boots Terminates Its New TLD .boots

"Boots becomes latest company to terminate new gTLD but other '.brands' go full steam ahead." Trevor Little reporting in World Trademark Review. more

Interpol’s Michael Moran Receives 2017 M3AAWG Litynski Award

Michael "Mick" Moran, who has helped rescue thousands of child abuse material victims since he started working in the field in 1997, challenged the internet industry to do more to protect innocent children as he received the 2017 M3AAWG Mary Litynski Award. more

Largest Spam Gang Operation in the World Shutdown by U.S. and New Zealand Authorities

U.S. authorities announced today that they have shut down one of the largest spam operations in the world, an extensive network with ties to Australia, New Zealand, India, China and the United States. The group, dubbed 'HerbalKing' by spam fighting organizations, had been active as far back as 2005 and became notorious as the number one worst spam gang on the Internet for much of 2007 and 2008 according to Spamhaus, a non-profit anti-spam research group. more