Top Level Domains Alert

European Cultural & Linguistic Internet Domains

2010-07-29T23:01:00.008+02:00

I support the European Cultural & Linguistic Internet Domains.

ECLID was introduced to the European Parliament on the 24th of August. The introduction to European cultural and linguistic Top Level Domains was followed by a debate on the benefits of these initiatives : what they provide to their communities.

Members are .BZH / .CYM / .EUS / .GAL / .SCOT and .CAT

Find their official web site here

.UNICEF Top-Level Domain

2010-07-23T09:34:00.000+02:00

United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund may apply for a Top-Level Domain.

The official announcement is available here

.RIGA Top Level Domain

2010-07-21T23:31:00.000+02:00

The Title says it all : "SIA dotRiga" will apply for the geographic community gTLD ".riga" with ICANN in 2011.

.RIGA is a new project from Alexander Schubert born in September 1965 in Berlin, Germany, and living in Riga since the spring of 2006.

www.dotriga.org

TLD list updated with IDNs

2010-07-19T23:27:00.000+02:00

Registries.tel is a list I maintain with Top-Level Domains projects. Many listings do exist but none are up to date. I mean here many projects were announced but part of them now have their web site down or the domain name is just cyber-squatted.

The Internationalized Domain Names were missing to my list so you will find the link to the official list of Internationalized Domain Names ccTLD fast track string evaluation completion here : idn.registries.tel

Note this list is maintained by ICANN with primary string requested, country of request and contact details of requester.

.VEN not allowed ?

2010-07-09T12:16:00.003+02:00

In Draft Applicant Guidebook, I read :

"Applications for strings that are country or territory names will not be approved, as they are not available under the New gTLD Program in this application round. A string shall be considered to be a country or territory name if : it is an alpha-3 code listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard."

"VEN" is listed in the alpha-3 code listed in ISO 3166-1 for Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. I am lucky "VIN" is not listed there.

Source : 2.2.1.4.1 Treatment of Country or Territory Names

New TLDs : what to do to protect your brand ?

2010-07-02T09:45:00.000+02:00

Trademarks' anxiety is high to the approach of new Top-Level Domains. What should trademarks owners know to protect themselves in case of infringements ?

More (in french) on DomainesInfo

.FRA TLD project

2010-06-30T01:59:00.002+02:00

Espace de nommage et d'adressage sémantique de langue française.

A-FRA stands for "alliance pour l'espace .FRA"

New URL : http://a-fra.org

.AND Top-Level Domain for Andalusia

2010-06-28T09:50:00.000+02:00

A domain name extension for the culture of Andalusia.

The web site : puntoand.blogspot.com

.VAL Top-Level Domain

2010-06-28T09:45:00.000+02:00

A domain name extension for the people and culture of Valencia

The web site : www.puntval.org

.中国 - .香港 and .台灣 approved by ICANN

2010-06-26T01:01:00.000+02:00

ICANN approved yesterday .中国 for China, .香港 for Hong Kong and .台灣 for Taiwan as a province of China.

.XXX just approved by ICANN

2010-06-25T11:42:00.000+02:00

The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers just approved the .XXX Top-Level Domain with 2 abstentions...

...BUT...

...it still has to go through the hands of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) so no one can tell - today - if there will be a .XXX

Answer in december ?

ICM Registry is the company behind the .xxx registry.

The future of gTLD...in 2001

2010-06-17T22:49:00.001+02:00

I remember registering "france.something" at new.net some date close to 2001.

At that time I thought the future of the domain name was in the browser's plug-in !

Other example of service spotted recently and using a browser plug-in : dashworlds.com

Creating you own TLD ? OK but what for ?

2010-06-11T11:59:00.000+02:00

Why would a brand create its own Top-Level Domain ?

My chronicle is available in French on DomainesInfo.fr

Is .VIN authorized according to DAGv4 ?

2010-06-09T23:28:00.084+02:00

Applications for strings that are country or territory names will not be approved according to DAGv4 (Draft Applicant Guidebook version 4). What if "vin" was considered as a country or territory ? Basically, it means an application for a .VIN would automatically be rejected and domain names such as www.brand.vin could not see the day (at least on round 1).

Let's check below if the string "vin" matches with any of the elements below pasted from the DAGv4 :

DOES NOT MATCH = Good :-)

MATCHES = Bad :-(

It is an alpha-3 code listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard. DOES NOT MATCH 100%
It is a long-form name listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard, or a translation of the long-form name in any language. DOES NOT MATCH 50%
It is a short-form name listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard, or a translation of the short-form name in any language. DOES NOT MATCH 50%
It is the short- or long-form name association with a code that has been designated as “exceptionally reserved” by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency. DOES NOT MATCH 90%
It is a separable component of a country name designated on the “Separable Country Names List” or is a translation of a name appearing on the list, in any language. DOES NOT MATCH 100% (Source DAGv4)
It is a permutation or transposition of any of the names included in items (1) through (5). Permutations include removal of spaces, insertion of punctuation, and addition or removal of grammatical articles like “the.” A transposition is considered a change in the sequence of the long or short–form name, for example, “RepublicCzech” or “IslandsCayman.” DOES NOT MATCH 75%

Chances are high an application for a .VIN would not be considered as a country or territory name.

Draft Application Guidebook Version 4 is out

2010-06-01T09:32:00.000+02:00

First PDF on top of the page is the full document for discussion until the final version is out in, I hope, in december 2010.

The document entitled "redline"is to me the interesting documents : As ICANN defines it, "a red-lined, annotated version of the documents is provided to facilitate understanding of the changes that were made in progressing from Draft Applicant Guidebook, Version 3 to Version 4".

The 2 documents are available here :

http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/comments-4-en.htm

May 31 is DAGv4's day ;-)

2010-05-28T09:16:00.000+02:00

Draft Applicant Guidebook version 4 will be published on May 31 according to this source

Note this version of the manual remains a "draft", the final version is expected for december 2010 some day between the end of 2010 and beginning of 2011.

Non-Latin top level domains ?

2010-05-27T14:57:00.000+02:00

What is it all about ?

Read the explanation with examples in French here

Note these new projects are not listed in Registries.tel since they are considered as IDNs (IDN stands for "Internationalised Domain Names" according to Internet Assigned Numbers Authority).

List of new gTLD projects

2010-05-26T15:05:00.000+02:00

I noticed many web sites with great gTLD projects are not maintained, it happens these sites are just closed down, sometimes with their domain name cybers-quatted and sometimes ... with their domain name made available for sale.

Since I have a serious interest in these projects, I have decided to setup and maintain a list at Registries.tel

Feel free to contact me if you would like your project to be listed.

.SITE Top Level Domain

2010-05-24T12:22:00.000+02:00

.SITE wants to become the future of .COM

"Think of dotSiTE as wide open land where you can build your new home."

Source Dotsite.org

.IRISH web site is live

2010-05-22T10:37:00.000+02:00

Official web site is here

.EGO Top Level Domain project ?

2010-05-21T10:53:00.000+02:00

A trademark application was filled at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for ".ego" for or “Extension of domain names for identification of personal users on a global computer network”.

David Ways, owner of the trademark says : “.Ego encompasses everything about an individual” , “your ego is your personal identity.”

Source : Domainnamewire.com

.IRISH Top Level Domain

2010-05-20T20:00:00.000+02:00

Would there be a .IRISH TLD project being prepared ?

According to the www.dotirish.com web page, I doubt it. According to the ".IRISH" silver sponsor advertised on the official web page for the 38th ICANN meeting in Brussels : there are more chances a project is being prepared.

.GOOGLE ?

2010-05-17T12:44:00.000+02:00

I often hit "dot" + the domain name of a famous brand (or a generic keyword) to check if the domain name is registered.

"dot" in front of a domain name is often used as the URL to qualify a new Top Level Domain project. A few examples : dotafrica.org - dotsaarland.com - dotberlin.de - dotbkk.org - dotcym.org - ...

So I hit dotgoogle.com - dotapple.com - dotnokia.com - dotshell.com ...

Apparently squatters have taken the lead once again.

New TLDs are in the French press

2010-05-13T18:35:00.002+02:00

Read my chronic entitled "Les nouvelles extensions dans la presse grand public" (in french).

More here

Future is here...

2010-05-12T23:40:00.000+02:00

...and it's going to look like this :