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.BAIRES, .MUNICH, .ARAB… real TLD initiatives or just rumours?
Tuesday, June 30. 2009
.SELL, .WIKI… new gTLDs on alternative roots or just another scam?
Monday, June 29. 2009
New gTLDs active by end 2010
Wednesday, June 24. 2009
The GNSO Council meeting in Sydney.
Kurt Pritz, Senior Vice President of Services at ICANN, gave details on the projected timeline for the rollout of new gTLDs during the GNSO Council's meeting in Sydney today.
He also spoke on the ccTLD IDN fast-track process which is running parallel.
It now seems that process will come to fruition first. The ICANN Board is set to approve it at the Seoul meeting in October. If this is done, those countries that are ready to launch their IDN ccTLD (China and Russia are said to be anxious to do so) can then expect to do so mid 2010.
Kurt Pritz then gave his own personal estimate of when the first of the new gTLDs might come online. Expectations are for validation to take between 4 and 5 months. As the Board would then have to sign off on applications, the whole process could take up to 7 months.
As ICANN is currently working to open the first application cycle in February 2010, that would then mean that the earliest of the new gTLDs could be active on the Internet by the end of 2010.
Private enterprise push for .ROMA
Tuesday, June 23. 2009
.ROMA TLD slogan says "the eternal city deserves its web domain".
Italian capital Rome is the latest major city to declare an interest in its own Top Level Domain. The .ROMA initiative is actually not an official push by the city's government, but the result of efforts by a Roman entrepreneur to get his hometown on the CityTLD map.
Massimo Ralli has set up Roma TLD Srl to champion the request for a .ROMA. Massimo is known within the domain industry as cofounder of the Italian domain analysis company Domainsbot. I discussed the .ROMA initiative with one of his associates during the Sydney ICANN meeting and learned that although a .ROME had also been considered and that it may be the way the city is known by many internationally, it was inconceivable for Romans to refer to anything other than "Roma" as the name of their city.
Massimo is currently working to get the Rome mayor's endorsement.
Shaq wants a Dot Basketball
Tuesday, June 23. 2009
Basketball superstar Shaquille O'Neal is endorsing a request for the creation of a .BASKETBALL TLD. In a video being shown by Minds And Machines, Shaq, who describes himself as an avid Internet, Facebook and Twitter user, says .BASKETBALL would be the ideal TLD for both fans of the sport to follow their favourite players and for those players to keep in touch with their fan base.
How many .ECOs are there?
Wednesday, June 17. 2009
I'm still wondering...
I've just been made aware of a second .ECO initiative. I've talked before about Dot Eco LLC's project, which scored a major coup when it got former US vice president Al Gore to support it.
The second .ECO is championed by a for-profit Canadian company called Big Room Inc. Although the three founders aren't ICANN regulars, they are backed by at least 2 domain industry insiders: the inevitable Laga/Deloitte and Afilias.
So 2 .ECOs, plus the other eco friendly TLD project .GREEN, that's a lot of people vying for the same seat! You could almost be forgiven for thinking that being green is all the rage at the moment…
ICANN confirms global new gTLD consultations
Monday, June 15. 2009
An enlightened survey on new gTLDs? ICANN doesn't think so!
Wednesday, June 10. 2009
New York City consults on .NYC Top Level Domain
Monday, June 8. 2009
Should the City of New York launch a .NYC Internet domain? To try and answer that question, the City issued a Request For Information (RFI) in April through its Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT).
The RFI was just that: a call for help in determining whether the City should work on a .NYC project and if so, what the TLD should be. Contrary to what people normally expect from these RFIs, it was not a call for vendors to detail and offer their prospective services.
The City was quite clear in its call, explaining that "no contract will be awarded pursuant to this RFI and that responding to, or not responding to, this RFI will neither increase nor decrease any vendor’s chance of being awarded a contract from a subsequent solicitation issued by the City, if any, for relevant services."
DoITT invited several companies to respond to their RFI by the end of May. INDOM was the only non-US company to get the call and to respond to it. From what we know, the City received 5 others responses, all from US companies. Long-time proponents of .NYC Connecting.nyc and dotNYC both responded, as did Neustar, Verisign and New York based Name.Space.
We responded in the hope that our experience on .PARIS and other TLD projects may help the City of New York plan for a .NYC. We believe that sharing information like this can only help the City TLD cause in general. As more and more major cities like New York get on the City TLD bandwagon, this particular type of TLD is fast emerging as a standalone new category. One that can only increase the pressure on ICANN to launch the new gTLD program sooner rather than later.
