New TLDs

Sponsored
by

Noteworthy

Building a More Inclusive Internet for All: A Radix Initiative

Domains and Creators: Connecting Creativity, Clout and (Brand) Custody

10 Years of Radix and New gTLDs: An Interview with CEO Sandeep Ramchandani

New TLDs / Most Viewed

4 Key Dates on the gTLD Timeline

The new "dot-anything" domain extensions or "gTLDs" have been a major point of debate in the domain community for years now -- ever since they were just a glimmer in ICANN's eye -- and it's all come down to a few very important dates over the next six to nine months. more

Will Google Search Replace Domain Names?

The growing notion among big advertising agencies and brand marketers is that as search engines find answers instantly, there's no real need to enter a domain name in the browser and therefore domain names are far less important. They're absolutely right. Why would you type www.rolex.com when you can simply enter 'Rolex' and be there before you blink? But where they are seriously wrong is when you enter anything like 'Interlink', 'Pronet', 'National Trust', 'Premier Traders' or 'United Manufacturing', uncontrollable citations will gush out from every corners of the world. more

dot Brands Need to Look Under the Hood Before Partnering

As the countdown for the ICANN gTLD program ticks away its final 100 days, potential dot Brand applicants have to make important decisions in a short space of time: whether to apply for a new TLD, how to best leverage a new top-level domain, and which gTLD partner to choose. Most dot Brand applicants have excellent IT departments, but these resources are already over-stretched with current projects, and they likely lack the specific skills and experience needed to meet ICANN's exacting standards in the highly specialized area of top-level domain registry technology. more

GSA Looking Into .gov Outages

"The General Services Administration is analyzing what caused an outage of .gov websites for a few hours Wednesday morning," reports Federal Times. Officials said the problem involved so-called DNSSEC cybersecurity measures that affected access to certain .gov sites, according to GSA spokeswoman Mafara Hobson. more

Court Says gTLDs Aren’t ‘Domain Names’ for Cybersquatting Purposes, Declines LRO Review of .delmonte

A Swiss Del Monte entity that had a license to use the "DEL MONTE" mark applies to operate the .delmonte generic top level domain (gTLD). Another Del Monte entity, based in Delaware, filed a "legal rights objection" (LRO) - under WIPO-established procedures - to the Swiss Del Monte's application. A three member panel sustained the Delaware company's LRO... The Swiss entity sued in federal court seeking a declaration that it had sufficient rights in the "DEL MONTE" mark to operate the TLD... more

Bringing a New Top-Level Domain to Life

One of the key elements in any domain space is usage. It doesn't matter how potentially "cool" or "interesting" a Top-Level Domain (TLD) is if nobody is actually using it to provide content. It may be overused and totally abused, but "content is king"! The guys in dotMobi posted yesterday about some of the more interesting domains that they had come across recently. What did that lead to? Well I actually got out my phone and browsed the sites to see what all the fuss was about and I was truly impressed. more

Interview With Michael Froomkin: Watching ICANN Through IETF ? Part II

In the first part of our interview with Michael Froomkin, a Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law and one of the founding members of ICANNWatch, several issues were discussed regarding his recent article in the Harvard Law Review called, "[email protected]: Toward a Critical Theory of Cyberspace".

Michael Froomkin, who has underlined several striking lessons to be learned from IETF/ICANN contrast, continues with us in the second part of this interview, addressing even deeper matters such as ICANN's institutional design. more

Lack of ccTLD Growth in Africa Only Partially Due to Internet Penetration

ICANN says that, "the lack of ccTLD growth in africa is due to Internet penetration". However, Gideon Rop of DotConnectAfrica and an Internet Governance expert in the African landscape, expressed a different opinion during the Africa DNS forum in Nairobi. more

New gTLDs: Comments on the Unsigned “The Economic Case for Auctions”

When Kurt Pritz briefed the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council (and observers) in Los Angeles April 10th and 11th, the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) process model flows transition through an "auction" state in two of the three paths where two or more applications existed for the same (or similar) strings. At that time Kurt, speaking for Staff, was clear that the existence of a well-defined community was not dispositive, which surprised the Council members from the Intellectual Property Constituency... more

Who is Keeping TAS Down?

Today, Friday April 27, ICANN had promised an update on the problems that led to its TLD Registration System (TAS) being taken offline on April 12. As the working day ends in Europe, that update has yet to come. Even if it does, I would not expect anything more concrete than the "we are still working on the issue, thanks for your patience" message of recent days. So what's really going on here? Does anyone at ICANN seriously expect us to believe that the tech team is "still reviewing the TAS data and checking the integrity of each and every application"? more

Launch of .PARIS

Yesterday, hundreds of sweaty ICANN attendees put on their best clothes and braved the crush of the rush hour metro on a very hot day to crush together for the ICANN gala at the overwrought Hotel de Ville (city hall) in Paris. Most of them missed an interesting announcement. I arrived an hour late, but even so food and drink were not yet served (not even water), and everyone was in desperate need of provisioning. The dull roar of heat-induced complaining drowned out the dignitaries making speeches at the far end of the hall. more

.Mobi Premium Name Auction Off to Wild Success at TRAFFIC in Miami

I'm in attendance at the the TRAFFIC EAST 2006 show, in Hollywood [Miami], Florida. There has been a lot of buzz here about the .Mobi top level domain, ranging from the talk of early registrants hoping to create the next big mobile portal to those that were keen to see implementations of mobile content. There was a domain name auction this evening where flowers.mobi sold for $200,000.00 (USD), and fun.mobi for $100,000.00 (USD) from a long list of domain names in the com, net, info, org, us and mobi extensions. more

Beyond the Top Level: DNSSEC Deployment at ICANN 40

I recently wrote about the encouraging level of DNSSEC adoption among top-level domain name registries, and noted that adoption at the second level and in applications is an important next step for adding more security to the DNS. The root and approximately 20 percent of the top level domains are now signed; it is time for registrars and recursive DNS servers operated by the ISPs to occupy center stage. more

Notes from NANOG 63

The following is a selected summary of the recent NANOG 63 meeting, held in early February, with some personal views and opinions thrown in! ...One view of the IETF's positioning is that as a technology standardisation venue, the immediate circle of engagement in IETF activities is the producers of equipment and applications, and the common objective is interoperability. more

Who Are the Major New gTLD Applicants and… (Part Four: Donuts)

Donuts is an applicant that threw the entire domain name industry into uproar due to the number of applications it submitted: 307 in total. It is hardly surprising that whenever new gTLDs are mentioned in the media that Donuts are mentioned alongside due to shear number of applications that they have submitted. There are dozens of articles in the media mixing information and opinions about Donuts. Often, they address the benefits to those registrants who are excited about the possibility of acquiring a new domain name and the threats to those who have an existing .COM domain name portfolio. more