Web

Global Paradigms We Relied Upon Were Destroyed Overnight - How Prepared Are You for New Realities?

Unprecedented new Political and Cyber Security Threats are happening at a scale that has never been witnessed before. These threats are large and malicious enough to take down nuclear programs, render oil refineries inoperable, and take billion-dollar websites offline (not to mention smaller ones). Recent events confirm that NO ONE IS IMMUNE. Despite the obvious warning signs, Internet business stakeholders the world over continue to act as if nothing has changed, and seem unaware that global paradigms have undergone a seismic shift almost overnight. more

Dot Brands Should Not Rush to Market, but Build Effective Strategies First

Brands applied for their new gTLDs to protect their brand and ensure they didn't miss an important new opportunity, but few had a clear business case for how they would use the gTLD platform when they applied. As brands approach the July 29th contracting deadline, the inevitable question is arising: "What do we do with this?" more

The DNS Still Isn’t a Directory

Back in the mid 1990s, before ICANN was invented, a lot of people assumed that the way you would find stuff on the Internet would be through the Domain Name System. It wasn't a ridiculous idea at the time. The most popular way to look for stuff was through manually managed directories like Yahoo's, but they couldn't keep up with the rapidly growing World Wide Web. Search engines had been around since 1994, but they were either underpowered and missed a lot of stuff, or else produced a blizzard of marginally relevant results. more

Consumers Are the Serfs of the Feudal Internet Companies

In one of the email conversations with my expert colleagues from around the globe, an interesting article was discussed written by Bruce Scheier in Wired: When it comes to security, we're back to feudalism. An interesting aspect of the discussion was the conclusion that Google's and Facebook's consumers are not their customers. The distinction is important, because consumers are the product being sold to their actual customers who are their advertisers. more

Domain Names Overcoming Awareness Gap in Mainstream Media

One of the challenges faced by registries that are launching is that there is a large lack awareness of the new options being available -- to browse as internet users or to register a domain. In a recent survey conducted by the Domain Name Association, (TheDNA) (of which I am a member), people of varying aptitude and experience from the general population of 10 different countries were provided a series of questions about their browsing habits. more

New gTLDs Show Promising SEO Performance

With the arrival of hundreds of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), many marketers are excited that they can now get a web address that best describes their business or brand. For instance, a company in the organic business can now get a web address on .ORGANIC, or a brand that's all about passion and excitement can now get on .RED, etc. At the same time, many are also asking some important SEO related questions. more

Early Data Suggests New gTLDs Perform Well in Search Environment

Internet addresses registered in new gTLDs are holding their own against -- and in some cases outperforming -- comparable addresses registered in legacy domains like .COM, according to new data that provides the best window yet into the operational functionality of new gTLD addresses. A question on everyone's mind in the run up to new gTLDs was: how would new domains perform in the wild against legacy domains on the key criteria of search? more

Banks Under e-Pressure

Back in the early 1980s we witnessed the launch of the first e-payments systems by French banks in Biarritz. A similar project was launched in Japan and a year or so later Berlin also launched their pilot service. In Biarritz the whole town received smartcards and all the shops were given devices to handle e-cash. Over the next 30 years very little happened -- nowhere did banks build on this initiative to take a leadership role in e-payments. more

Whose Customers Are Those Typing Brand Names in the Browser’s Address Bar?

Fourteen years ago, we had so much hope at the start of a new century. We thought the global economy was going to improve a lot because of the emerging Internet technologies. But where are we today? What has happened in the last 14 years? We know that even advanced countries are suffering from economic difficulties today. What happened to these advanced countries with high speed Internet? more

Annual Internet Traffic to Grow More Than 20 Percent, Reaching 1.6 Zettabytes by 2018

Global IP traffic for fixed and mobile connections is expected to reach an annual run rate of 1.6 zettabytes -- more than one and a half trillion gigabytes per year by 2018, according to the Cisco's Visual Networking Index. more

Still Think .brands Might Be a Waste of Time? Google Doesn’t!

The new Top-Level Domain (TLD) program was designed from the outset to enhance competition and foster innovation. It was a great result for the wider industry to see approximately one-third of the applications received by ICANN submitted by some of the world's largest companies seeking to own and operate their own .brand TLD. Even with organisations such as Apple, Citibank and IBM applying for their respective TLDs, scepticism remained on the potential for .brands to succeed. more

Better Than Best Efforts Routing of Mission Critical Traffic and the FCC

It appears that the FCC will permit exceptions to the standard, plain vanilla best efforts routing standard for Internet traffic, such as the paid peering arrangement recently negotiated between Comcast and Netflix. In both academic and applied papers I have supported this option, with several major conditions... With no opposition that I have seen, companies like Akamai offer better than best efforts routing of "mission critical" traffic from content source to last mile, "retail" Internet Service Providers. more

Celebrating the 25Th Anniversary of the World Wide Web

Today the full original name of the World Wide Web is being seen everywhere as people all around the world join together to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the proposal that Tim Berners-Lee submitted at CERN that led to the creation of the "Web" we have today. While many of our articles here on CircleID focus more on the underlying Internet infrastructure that makes the Web possible, it's good to take a moment to reflect on - and celebrate - the amazing evolution of the Web from those very early days!  more

AdDomains: A New Weapon for Traditional Advertising

ICANN's new gTLD program was designed in part to boost innovation. The thinking was: give people the canvas and let them paint in new and fascinating ways, with no set direction... and paint they will. Now that the new gTLD dream has become reality, new uses and business models are already emerging to prove this theory correct. One of the industries in which new gTLD innovation is making itself felt is traditional advertising. This is a sector that has been turned upside down by the Internet revolution of the last decade. more

Architectural Details and Routing Protocols for Energy Internet

The Energy Internet is based on the same principles as that of the classic Internet except that energy rather data packets are routed between sources and destinations. It sometimes also referred to as mico-grids or nano-grids, but generally these terms are a misnomer as they really refer to a smaller version of the traditional electrical grid. Traditional power systems are passive, hierarchical and for the most part have no intelligence or management. more