February 2011 Archives

Recently, there has been a lot of progress in implementing Web addresses with non-English characters including different scripts. This ability is courtesy of the IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) technology.

Some test links are given below, but they may not work in older browsers. Note also that many have ASCII only equivalents or redirect to a site with an older ASCII only URL.

• http://þorn.info - a blog dedicated to the Runic letter thorn (/þ/ or /θ/ in IPA or "hard th" in English), also at http://evertype.com/blog/thorn/.
• http://bücher.ch - Online German language bookstore which actually redirects to http://www.weltbild.de/ Note that http://bücher.de directs to another online bookstore, http://www.buecher.de/
• http://中央大学.tw/ - National Central University, Taiwan (also at http://www.ncu.edu.tw/)
• http://山东大学.cn/ - Shandong University, China (also at http://www.sdu.edu.cn/)

Wikipedia is also a good source of non-ASCII URL's. Translated articles on Elizabeth I of England can be found at these locations.

• http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Елизавета_I (Russian)
• http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeþ_I_Engla_Cwēn (Ænglisc/Old English)
• http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/エリザベス1世_(イングランド女王) (Japanese)
• http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/إليزابيث_الأولى_ملكة_إنجلترا (Arabic)

For the latest news on IDN implementation, see IDN page on the ICANN Web site at http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/

It's the Go Daddy.co Super Bowl secret that was just TOO CALIENTE for TV. What is it?

Last night during the Super Bowl, Go Daddy.com revealed new Go Gaddy girl Joan Rivers and a "hot new .co domain" you can register for. It's the ".co" domain you see in UK (http://www.bbc.co.uk/) and Japan (http://www.kikkoman.co.jp/)...except that it really isn't.

Now that you're on the Internet, the secret of .co can now to be revealed as...the country code of Colombia. So now we can welcome another nation into the fold those who are using their country code to generate revenue from domain name registration. Other famous domain nations include Tuvalu (.tv), Montenegro (.me) and Libya (.ly),

The .co domain is especially well-positioned though because not only is it very similar to the prized .com suffix, but other countries have established .co as a near synonym for .com. I wish Colombia the best in this enterprise.