The 87th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in Berlin, Germany, concluded on August 2, 2013. IETF Chair Jari Arkko recently published his summary of IETF 87 on the IETF Blog highlighting what he felt were some of the more important aspects of what was a very successful IETF meeting. I also had the privilege of interviewing Jari on video about the meeting. more
Verisign's spent the best part of 2016 putting out warnings. The .COM operator and domain industry heavyweight highlighted its Q3 earnings report with a stern "Ending Q4 '16 Domain Name Base expected to decrease by between 1.5M to 2.8M registrations from the end of Q3 '16". A forecast which the company said was based on "on historical seasonality and current market trends." As 2016 drew to a close, the downturn seemed to materialize... more
Need a good reason to cancel your Twitter account? Well, Gilbert Arenas of the Washington Wizards basketball team may have about $111M reasons to do so. Last Thursday, following his indefinite suspension from the National Basketball Association in the wake of a gun-related altercation with a teammate, Arenas canceled his Twitter account. His tweeting had factored somewhat into his suspension and, under his father's advice, he canceled his account so as not to be tempted to make matters worse. more
I'm pleased to announce the publication of The 2015 Web Globalization Report Card. Here are the top-scoring websites from the report... You'll notice that Google is once again ranked number one. The fact is, no other company on this list invests in web and software globalization like Google. While many software companies are happy to support 40 or even 50 languages on their websites, Google is looking at 60 or more languages across its many products. more
While we are spending years figuring out how to create the perfect generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) launch and guidebook, the Internet is moving along at an extraordinary pace without any care about ICANN policy-making. The fact of the matter is ICANN is a ghost to the ordinary person or Internet company. You can not imagine how many times I had to explain what ICANN is, what ICANN does and why ICANN is important. more
In an open letter to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced on Tuesday that it is resigning from World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in response to the organization publishing Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) as a standard. more
Trying to make sense of the nearly 2000 new TLD applications is not something that anyone can do quickly. Sure, you can look at the list and see who has applied for what, but it's only when you actually read the "public" part of their submission that you can get an insight into their plans. Let's call a spade a spade. If a big brand wants to get its own TLD then it's pretty much their own business how they use it, as long as they don't do any "harm" to the rest of the internet ecosystem... more
The current revelations about Cambridge Analytica's use of Facebook data illustrate an important drawback to using a Facebook account as your business' online presence: Facebook knows and sells your customers! Millions of companies - especially small companies and start-ups - rely on a Facebook account for their online presence. On the surface, it seems like a great idea... more
One thing was clear from a recent presentation by the new leaders of the SF-Bay Internet Society (ISOC) Chapter Working Groups: inclusion and collaboration will be the key to these groups' success. As Dr. Brandie Nonnecke, the Internet Governance Working Group (WG) Chair said, "We haven't yet cracked the code on what 'multistakeholder' means." But that won't stop her and Dr. Jaclyn Kerr, the Data Protection, Privacy, and Security WG Chair, from trying. more
Report from a new study by Analysys Mason, commissioned by the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), says there is a potential USD $9.8 billion growth opportunity in online revenue through a routine update to Internet systems, including those for speakers of languages that do not use the English script. more
Those who have been involved in the ICANN process as long as I have naturally become accustomed to ICANN controversies at all levels. But the latest is a "wrong" of international ramifications. The four (4) versions of the Guidebook for the new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) have been hundreds of pages long with a lot of The Good, The Bad, and to some, The Ugly. However, something new has appeared in the 4th and latest version called DAG4 can be called: "The Disturbing". more
As part of its efforts to speed up the delivery of web content, Google has proposed changes to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), "the workhorse of the Internet." Yuchung Cheng who works on the transport layer at Google wrties: "To deliver content effectively, Web browsers typically open several dozen parallel TCP connections ahead of making actual requests. This strategy overcomes inherent TCP limitations but results in high latency in many situations and is not scalable. Our research shows that the key to reducing latency is saving round trips. We’re experimenting with several improvements to TCP." more
Google has announced the release of a new open-source font called Noto that supports 800 languages and covers 110 writing systems. more
Do you know of someone who has made the Internet better in some way who deserves more recognition? Maybe someone who has helped extend Internet access to a large region? Or wrote widely-used programs that make the Internet more secure? Or served in some capacity behind the scenes in Internet services? Or maybe someone who has been actively working for open standards and open processes for the Internet? more
As part of its transparency report, Google says Copyright removal requests continue to be on steady rise and that the company received a new record 65,923,523 requests just last month. more
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