The Next New Media: Typewriters and Handwritten Letters

Who would have thought that typewriters and handwritten letters would ever be back in fashion? But back in 2013 it was reported that Russia was buying large quantities of typewriters. When this was further investigated the country denied that this was for security reasons. Since the Snowden revelations there has been a further rush on typewriters, both by government officials and by a range of, mainly corporate, businesses. more

Google Domains: Give Me More

The Buzz seems to be about Google Domains at the moment: Google is launching as a Registrar and will soon offer plenty of fantastic things to do with domain names. But... is there anything new with Google Domains? I checked the features but... I found nothing that other Registrars do not already offer and I admit I expected to be a little more impressed. more

Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group Releases Statement on ICANN Staff’s Accountability Plan

Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) today released the following statement on ICANN staff's accountability plan... "A number of public comments and discussions in London focused on the inherent conflict of interest behind staff developing its own accountability and transparency mechanisms, so it was surprising to see that input had not been taken into account in the development of this proposal..." more

Global Domain Name Registrations Reach 276 Million, Increase of Over 19M From Last Year

Five million domain names were added to the Internet in the first quarter of 2014, bringing the total number of registered domain names to 276 million worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of March 31, 2014, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief from Verisign. more

What is Metadata, and Why Should I Care?

August 2014 is proving yet again to be an amusing month in the Australian political scene, and in this case the source of the amusement was watching a number of Australian politicians fumble around the topic of digital surveillance and proposed legislation relating to data retention measures. The politicians assured us that the proposed data retention measures were nothing untoward, and all that was being called for was the retention of "metadata" by Australian ISPs for a period of two years. more

Constituencies Coalesce on IANA Transition and Enhanced ICANN Accountability Principles

It is now being broadly acknowledged that, as expressed unanimously by all GNSO constituencies at the recent ICANN London meeting, "as part of the IANA transition, the multi-stakeholder community has the opportunity and responsibility to propose meaningful accountability structures that go beyond just the IANA-specific accountability issues". In a July 22nd Keynote Address at the American Enterprise Institute, NTIA head Lawrence Strickling - whose agency must approve any IANA transition plan developed by Internet stakeholders - made this linkage an explicit element of U.S. government policy... more

Video Interviews of IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) Members

Want to know more about what is going on with the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG)? ICANN recently published a set of video interviews with members of the ICG. Here, for instance is the interview with Alissa Cooper who represents the IETF on the ICG... While this is certainly not the complete list of ICG members, it is a good sampling of the variety of people involved with the ICG and does provide a range of different viewpoints into what is going on within the ICG process. more

Call for Nominations: M3AAWG J. D. Falk Award Seeks Stewards of a Better Online World

Anyone seeking to honor a groundbreaking contribution toward a better online world should submit a nomination for the 2014 M3AAWG J. D. Falk Award. Presented to people whose work on specific projects made the Internet a safer, more collaborative, more inclusive place, the J. D. Falk Award has recognized leaders and pioneers who saw elements of the online experience that needed improvement and took action to fix them.  more

Gmail Now Supports Internationalized Domain Names

If your first language isn't English and you don't use the Latin character set you can and will run into barriers. While Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) i.e. domain names where either the left of the dot, the right of the dot or the entire string is in characters other than Latin ones, do exist and have existed for a number of years not all services work well with them. more

Six Approaches to Creating an Enterprise Cyber Intelligence Program

As few as seven years ago, cyber-threat intelligence was the purview of a small handful of practitioners, limited mostly to only the best-resourced organizations - primarily financial institutions that faced large financial losses due to cyber crime - and defense and intelligence agencies involved in computer network operations. Fast forward to today, and just about every business, large and small, is dependent on the Internet in some way for day-to-day operations, making cyber intelligence a critical component of a successful business plan. more

From Telegraph (1914) to Twitter (2014) - Are There Lessons to Be Learned?

Could the Great War have been avoided if leaders had gotten together and negotiated in person instead of exchanging telegrams? In the voluminous historiography of the origins of WWI, there is a very little on the role of the telegraph. Today, as Twitter takes its place conference rooms, we can learn a lot from the failure of telegraph diplomacy one century ago... The telegraph introduced the notion of 'virtual presence'; for the first time in human history, communication was detached from transportation. more

ICANN Extends Chehadé‘s Contract by Two More Years

ICANN today announced that its Board has extended the contract of Fadi Chehadé, President and Chief Executive Officer, by two more years. "I'm glad to be able to expend my energy and passion towards ICANN's noble mission and great public responsibility," said Chehadé. more

Worldwide Smartphone Shipments Grow 23.1% Year over Year in 2nd Quarter of 2014

The worldwide smartphone market grew 23.1% year over year in the second quarter of 2014 (2Q14), establishing a new single quarter record of 295.3 million shipments, according to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. more

“Requiescat in Pace” - the new .RIP Generic Top-Level Domain

I thought "RIP" stood for "Rest In Peace". I thought it was an acronym used in English only and a TLD that would be understood by the next generation; because no one would ever register such a domain name ending in .RIP today. When you say "RIP", it makes you think of death... I have also said that such a TLD was something... typically American and that no other culture would consider buying such domain names because promoting death online is something a bit odd. more

New Internet Domain Names Need a Backstory to Succeed

If web address registrations are any indication (and they may not be), the hundreds of new Internet domains (where .guru competes with .com and .berlin intrudes on .de) are seeing slow, but steady success. By one count, there are about 2 million new online addresses. Slow and steady may wind up being the best business model, but if the effect of the top level domains is to be felt in business, culturally and socially, there needs to be more done than create the opportunity to register a new name... more