Today, four years after the launch of the Catalan linguistic and cultural registry, Google reports that there are 90 million pages of Catalan content under the some 36 thousand .CAT domains. As imperfect as Google's tools are as a metric, the correct observation is that the use of .CAT by Catalans vastly exceeds the expectations of its initial proponents... more
In 2008, ICANN made it known to the community that it is finally ready to discuss Internationalized Domain Names regarding Top-Level Domains (TLDs) after several years of working groups, technical trials, studies and considerations. It was highly anticipated by the Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) community. It was also with great disappointment when the New gTLD Application Guidebook, published on 24th Oct 2008, included the following paragraph... more
Upon being appointed as ICANN's new CEO in Sydney, Rod Beckstrom gave a rousing speech in which he stressed the vital importance of free expression on the Internet... Many ordinary, powerless people are indeed willing to fight and die. But is ICANN going to help them? Or at very least make sure that their decisions won't help those who want to muzzle them? more
Many software applications rely on validation routines to check the validity of domain names. By validation, I mean here to test the string submitted by the user and see if it matches a pre-defined pattern. A typical example are web forms that need to validate e-mail addresses. This is by new means a new issue. It first appeared with the introduction of the .info Top-Level Domain (TLD). more
Patrick Neighly reports on CommsDay about the Pacific Telecommunications Council 2009 Conference held last week where Vint Cerf was a keynote speaker. From the report: "Historians will view 2009 as a turning point in Internet history, according to Google internet evangelist Vint Cerf. Speaking to PTC'09 attendees, the legendary figure warned the industry to brace for 'significant change' and said Asia was poised to forever change the look and experience of the online landscape. The region boasts 578.5 million surfers with nearly 85% of its population still to come. That influx is likely to combine with the launch of non-Latin-character addresses to reshape the Web into a very different beast." more
Igor Schegolev, the Russian Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications spoke at the opening of the InfoCom 2008 exhibition in Moscow. Among other things, which made news (for example, that the Russian government will be implementing a free and open source based operating system on all computers in the Russian schools), he also made the following remarks - translated by me in English. more
While Google is as secretive about its internal processes and systems as Apple is about product development, every now and then senior people post articles on the official Google blog and offer their thoughts on the development of the web. In the latest posting, two Google engineers, Alfred Spector and Franz Och, look at how search strategies will benefit from the faster computers, greater volumes of data and better algorithms we are likely to see in the next decade, speculating that "we could train our systems to discern not only the characters or place names in a YouTube video or a book, for example, but also to recognise the plot or the symbolism." more
I have been thinking a lot lately on the topic of the free flow of information on the internet -- what kinds of tools are available now and in the future for governments (especially repressive ones) to control content, isolate their people and keep any contrary viewpoints censored. I had an interesting conversation with a Practice Lead from IFTF.org. The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is a California based independent, nonprofit research group with 40 years of experience in identifying emerging trends that will transform global society... Turns out they are quite concerned about the fragmentation and control of the Internet as well. But will it be an inevitability? more
Here is a list of the most viewed news and blog postings that were featured on CircleID in 2007. Best wishes for 2008. more
Though the "Techies" have been heavily involved in many initiatives like Internet Governance, Internationalized (Multi-lingual) Domain Names, Identity Management, Information Security, Access Rights Management etc., they still have to correctly apply the technologies at hand to be able to replicate many accepted norms that have matured in the physical world such as federated identities, non-repudiation, notarizing, witnessing, co-signing etc. more
We, members of the JET (Joint Engineering Team), send this open letter to request Microsoft Corporation to implement IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) standards[1] in the next version of Internet Explorer. ...IDN is a critical enabling technology that will make the Internet more useable and attractive to the majority of the Chinese, Japanese and Korean population who do not use English in their daily life. In fact, IDN is mentioned as one of the Declaration of Action of the World Summit of Information Society (WSIS). To date, IDN registration has been launched in .cn, .jp, .kr, .tw and many other European country code top level domain as well as other generic top level domain names. More than 1 million IDNs have been registered since 2000. Most of the web browsers, such as Safari, Firefox and Opera have implemented IDN standards. This means that users can use IDN in these web browsers without additional applications or plug-ins... more
The following is a report by Susan Crawford at the ICANN meeting in Cape Town where a workshop was held yesterday for increasing awareness and understanding of United Nation's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and issues that directly impact ICANN. "WSIS" is defined as a process in which governments intend to address a broad range of international legal, regulatory, economic, and policy issues related to the Internet. Some governments have proposed that an intergovernmental organization be responsible for "Internet governance," a phrase that remains undefined and some consider to include and/or mean the administration and coordination of the domain name system (DNS). more
The Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) is the constituency group representing civil society organizations in the formation of domain name policy. In August 2004 it initiated a process to nominate people to serve on the UN Secretary-General's Working Group on Internet Governance, as representatives of civil society. Our purpose was to assist the Secretary-General to identify qualified and widely-supported individuals capable of serving on the WGIG on behalf of civil society. more
Markus Kummer, Executive Coordinator, Secretariat of the United Nations Working Group on Internet Governance, is a career diplomat, who has served as eEnvoy of the Swiss Foreign Ministry in Bern since April 2002. His main tasks include foreign policy coordination in the area of information and communication technologies, in general, and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), in particular. He chaired the negotiating group that developed an agreed text on Internet governance for the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action in December 2003... Mr Kummer says: "The time-frame is very short indeed. And the task ahead of us is daunting." more
The At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) has released this statement about the results of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS). It is circulated for public comment, in view of subsequent statements to be released in the next months. At the World Summit on the Information Society held on December 10 to 12 in Geneva, the member states of the United Nations adopted the Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action that include specific language on the issue of "Internet Governance". ICANN's At Large Advisory Committee welcomes the fact that these statements clearly recognize the role of civil society as a full participant in the international management of the Internet, and bring attention to the need for a deep involvement of individual users into its governance. more
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