Internet addresses set for change

[RAM]

ICANN OKs International Domains: The Pros and Cons

ICANN's approval of non-Latin character domains undoubtedly is a game-changing decision in the history of the World Wide Web. With

Illustration: Jeffrey Peloscheduled to start popping up in the middle of next year, many people are debating if this digital support for more distinctly international sites balances with potential security threats and fragmentation of the Internet.

Here are a few pros and cons to consider as we move away from the traditional ASCII based-Web.

Pro: World Wide Web Supporting World Wide Language

Let's face it; millions of Internet users speak languages that aren't written using Roman characters. Allowing Web sites to have domains that use other characters will make Web addresses more recognizable to some and make the Web more accessible to millions of new users.

The transition will begin on November 16 when countries can apply for country codes in their own unique character sets.

"The first countries that participate will not only be providing valuable information of the operation of IDNs in the domain name system, they are also going to help to bring the first of billions more people online -- people who never use Roman characters in their daily lives," ICANN CEO and President Rod Beckstrom said in a statement.

Con: Country Codes are Only the Beginning

Generic domains such as .com, .org and .net aren't open to international characters yet, but could be in the next couple of years.

If ICANN decides to open generic domains without extending rights to existing URL holders, international companies and brands might find themselves purchasing URLs in multiple languages to protect the use of their name, points out PC World Tech Inciter writer Tech Inciter David Coursey.

Pro: Country Codes are Only the Beginning

If done properly, opening generic domains to international characters could be a good thing. If International corporations were granted rights to the .com URLs they already possess it could spell an end to selecting a region before entering the site. For instance, going to intel.com could lead to the English version of the site, while using a Japanese, Russian, or Korean suffix would take you to a version of the site with that language. It would also open doors for smaller Web sites that are just interested in serving a particular language group.

Con: A lesson from 1337 h4ck3r$

Expanding beyond Roman characters also increases potential for site rip-offs that use homoglyphs, characters with identical or indistinguishable shapes. This already occurs to some degree (for instance pointing your browser to google.com takes you to a different site than go0gle.com) but different languages might have characters that are identical to characters in other languages.

Con and Pro: No Latin Base Emphasis

Apparently homoglyphs are drawing some attention at ICANN. Languages that use accented Latin characters aren't being supported at this time, The CBC Reports. They attribute the lack of support to security concerns that accented characters could lead to phishing scams because, "internet users might not at first see the difference between, for example, 'google.com' and 'goógle.com.'"

This is bad news for French, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese speakers -- all four languages use accented characters.

But, if ICANN is aware of security concerns that would arise from including these languages, maybe they have some sort of anti-homoglyph trick up their sleeve for other languages, (here's looking at you, Cyrillic.)

Con: Keyboards and Restrictive Access

Adding support for 100,000 international characters would make traditional keyboards insufficient input devices for accessing the entire Internet. As fellow PC World writer Jacqueline Emigh pointed out, it would be next to impossible to produce a keyboard that could support characters from every language under the sun. Virtual keyboards and language packs could possibly help alleviate the problem for some people, but there wouldn't be an easy fix.

ICANN OKs International Domains: The Pros and Cons - PC World

 

[AkhandBharat]

ICANN OKs International Domains: The Pros and Cons

ICANN's approval of non-Latin character domains undoubtedly is a game-changing decision in the history of the World Wide Web. With

Illustration: Jeffrey Peloscheduled to start popping up in the middle of next year, many people are debating if this digital support for more distinctly international sites balances with potential security threats and fragmentation of the Internet.

Here are a few pros and cons to consider as we move away from the traditional ASCII based-Web.

Pro: World Wide Web Supporting World Wide Language

Let's face it; millions of Internet users speak languages that aren't written using Roman characters. Allowing Web sites to have domains that use other characters will make Web addresses more recognizable to some and make the Web more accessible to millions of new users.

The transition will begin on November 16 when countries can apply for country codes in their own unique character sets.

"The first countries that participate will not only be providing valuable information of the operation of IDNs in the domain name system, they are also going to help to bring the first of billions more people online -- people who never use Roman characters in their daily lives," ICANN CEO and President Rod Beckstrom said in a statement.

Con: Country Codes are Only the Beginning

Generic domains such as .com, .org and .net aren't open to international characters yet, but could be in the next couple of years.

If ICANN decides to open generic domains without extending rights to existing URL holders, international companies and brands might find themselves purchasing URLs in multiple languages to protect the use of their name, points out PC World Tech Inciter writer Tech Inciter David Coursey.

Pro: Country Codes are Only the Beginning

If done properly, opening generic domains to international characters could be a good thing. If International corporations were granted rights to the .com URLs they already possess it could spell an end to selecting a region before entering the site. For instance, going to intel.com could lead to the English version of the site, while using a Japanese, Russian, or Korean suffix would take you to a version of the site with that language. It would also open doors for smaller Web sites that are just interested in serving a particular language group.

Con: A lesson from 1337 h4ck3r$

Expanding beyond Roman characters also increases potential for site rip-offs that use homoglyphs, characters with identical or indistinguishable shapes. This already occurs to some degree (for instance pointing your browser to google.com takes you to a different site than go0gle.com) but different languages might have characters that are identical to characters in other languages.

Con and Pro: No Latin Base Emphasis

Apparently homoglyphs are drawing some attention at ICANN. Languages that use accented Latin characters aren't being supported at this time, The CBC Reports. They attribute the lack of support to security concerns that accented characters could lead to phishing scams because, "internet users might not at first see the difference between, for example, 'google.com' and 'goógle.com.'"

This is bad news for French, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese speakers -- all four languages use accented characters.

But, if ICANN is aware of security concerns that would arise from including these languages, maybe they have some sort of anti-homoglyph trick up their sleeve for other languages, (here's looking at you, Cyrillic.)

Con: Keyboards and Restrictive Access

Adding support for 100,000 international characters would make traditional keyboards insufficient input devices for accessing the entire Internet. As fellow PC World writer Jacqueline Emigh pointed out, it would be next to impossible to produce a keyboard that could support characters from every language under the sun. Virtual keyboards and language packs could possibly help alleviate the problem for some people, but there wouldn't be an easy fix.

ICANN OKs International Domains: The Pros and Cons - PC World

Its not impossible to produce a universal keyboard. All you have to do is make an LCD panel keyboard with the alphabet selection option available to the user. After the user selection, the keyboard can lit up with the corresponding alphabet set. With the prices of LCD panel dropping its not too distant (considering you can buy a 12 inch 1024x768 picture frames for a meager $50.00)

Multi-Language keyboard- TUAW

 

[RAM]

22 official Indian languages to be used for domain names

New Delhi: no more forcibly used a to z Latinized domain names said Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). After this there has been exciting comments from many.


Senior Director with the Department of Information Technology (DIT) Govind informs “this will be a revolutionary move on the World Wide Web (www) that would dignify the presence of Indian vernacular languages on Internet.”

Now, we can have Web addresses in languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati and Telegu.

At the conference held at Seoul, the top authorities of ICANN informed that there is no need for domain names like, .com, .net, .org etc. About 22 official Indian languages can be used for domain names.

Non Latin Internet Addresses to be Accepted from This Week

In what’s set to be one of the largest and far reaching changes to how the internet has worked for many years, the approval for non-Latin script for domain addresses has been confirmed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN.

“Right now internet address endings are limited to Latin characters – A to Z. But the Fast Track Process is the first step in bringing the 100,000 characters of the languages of the world online for domain names.” Said Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush in a statement to the press last week.

Since Its inception domain addresses have been used as the key identifier for websites, and during the mid nineties most of the best were snapped up. Domains can now sell for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pounds. One thing about domains that has remained constant has been the lettering – no matter what language you use, you’ve had to keep your letters to basic Latin script, despite most modern operating systems accepting many more.

This has long since been a problem for countries in the world that don’t use Latin script in their primary language, or even those that use accents on words. Key languages can now have their own domain names, such as Japanese, Arabic, Greek and Korean. The move has been described by ICANN as the “biggest [technical] change to the internet since it was invented 40 years ago”

The first non Latin domain names should be available from mid 2010 onwards.


22 official Indian languages to be used for domain names | Duniyalive.com

Non Latin Internet Addresses to be Accepted from This Week | - Webmaster & SEO News From Kingpin-seo