This week, people from all over the world and from all types of backgrounds came together to co-sign a letter to ICANN's management asking for new gTLDs to be launched as soon as possible.

The domain industry's major registrars, registries, prospective new gTLD operators, existing TLD operators, academics, business people both from inside and outside the domain industry… all participated in this landmark group action to speak for the innovation, job creation and increased competition that new gTLDs would bring.

The letter boasts a total of 61 signatories, from 16 different countries. INDOM was the only company from France to be asked to co-sign. We gladly agreed and are proud to support this initiative.

The long awaited 3rd version of ICANN's Draft Applicant Guidebook for the new gTLD program should be out at the beginning of next month. Maybe as early as October 1st. ICANN Senior VP Services Kurt Pritz confirmed the DAGv3 anticipated release date during today's GNSO Council teleconference which I attended as the Registrar Stakeholder Group's European representative on the Council.

Included in the DAGv3 should be those IRT recommendations that ICANN staff consider as useful in order to include a suitable level of rights protection in the gTLD program.

The dotHotel initiative isn't new, but surprisingly, it has managed to avoid drawing too much attention to itself. Not intentionally though, as the TLD sports a full and informative website.

The idea is to position .HOTEL as the TLD for the hotel industry, rather than a domain aimed at individuals such as hotel customers. "Domain names available with .HOTEL are precise and create identity for hotels, the hotel business and services," says dotHotel. 

However, it remains to be seen whether dotHotel can get key members of the hotel industry to support their efforts. Without such support, getting a generic TLD as valuable as .HOTEL may prove difficult…

DotHotel is a German initiative co-created by .BERLIN alumni Johannes Lenz-Hawliczek.

Add one world city to the growing list of candidates for CityTLDs. Thailand's Bangkok.

For the moment, the initiative's website is most definitely a work in progress. There's no real information on the site but a news story published by DomainPulse positions .BKK  as a partnership with the city's government. As such, all city agencies would get free .BKK names...

One of the good things about new gTLDs is that they make ignoramuses like myself a little less dumb. Take Szeklerland. Until a few minutes ago, I'd never heard of the place. A quick browse on Wikipedia and now I know that it's almost the birth place of Dracula. Szeklerland refers to " the territories inhabited by the Székely, a Hungarian people living in eastern Transylvania, centre of present-day Romania. They live in the valleys and hills of the Eastern Carpathian Mountains…".

Well it seems the Szekler people also call themselves the "Siculitas" and their National Council is intending to request .SIC from ICANN. It is clear that lesser known communities and territories like Szeklerland have a whole lot to gain from obtaining their own TLD. Just ask the Catalans if they are anything but happy with the way .CAT has put them on the world map!

So good-luck to Szeklerland and let's hope that they don't run into any interference from ICANN's very own SIC, the acronym for the Board's Structural Improvements Committee. Not that anyone could call that jolly band of fellows a bunch of bloodsuckers (sorry SIC members, couldn't resist that awful pun, and awful I have to admit it is).

The .OTTAWA project is intending to apply for the corresponding CityTLD. The project's website provides little information as to whom is behind .OTTAWA and in particular, if it is a private enterprise "à la" .BERLIN or directly supported by the local government as is the case for .PARIS or Barcelona's .BCN.

However the website does feature interesting schematics on some of the planned websites and on the planned registry systems.