The most popular and useful generic foreign terms are being blocked from use due to a technical issue known as name collisions ("NGPC Resolution for Addressing the Consequences of Name Collisions?) which ICANN has been unable to resolve. Terms such as movie (????), game (????) and news (???????) are on the blocklist for the 2 […]

It is critical that IDN.com owners own the same IDN.com-in-IDN equivalent to avoid massive user confusion. However, ICANN has still not yet incorporated this point in their draft proposal. For instance, it is imperative that the owner of ?????.com should own ?????.???. Otherwise, there will be brand dilution, and two different owners will essential...

This brief IDNBlog exclusive is with Hiro Hotta, who is speaking on behalf of JPRS, which is the registry governing .jp domain names. He provides an update on the status of IDN.jp aliasing to IDN.??. Hiro Hotta, was recently asked about the current likelihood of JPRS obtaining an alias of .?? for .JP, whether this […]

A Verisign spokesperson participated in a Q&A with IDNBlog to address a few burning questions regarding Verisign's recent gTLD applications. While we understand the confidential nature of Verisign's future plans, below please find questions and answers on four key new gTLD topics. Q: It surprised some that Verisign applied for ????. (punycode:...

Verisign applied for 12 IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) transliterations of .COM, but it was Verisign's Hebrew application that stood out. Verisign applied for: ????. (punycode: xn--hdb9cza1b). Some natives hoped for a Verisign application for: ???. (punycode: xn--9dbq2a). While both ???? and ??? are correct Hebrew transliterations of ".COM", V...

Verisign has applied for the following transliterations of .COM: ??? / xn--42c2d9a, Transliteration of dot com (Thai) ?? / xn--tckwe, Transliteration of dot com (Japanese) ???? / xn--hdb9cza1b, Transliteration of dot com (Hebrew) ??? / xn--fhbei, Transliteration of dot com (Arabic) ?? / xn--3pxu8k,Transliteration of dot com (Simplified Chinese) ??/...

You might be surprised by this month's leading keyword on Snapnames' most searched keyword list. It is "xn--", which is used as the beginning of any punycode equivalent of an IDN. For instance ??????.com (Marble.com in Russian) has a punycode equivalent of xn--80axbihd.com. Either the IDN (??????.com) or the punycode (xn--80axbihd.com) will navigat...

If you are asking what happened in the IDN world recently in terms of progress, please look at the following sales: -????.com (Blog.com in Russian) sold for $3,435.37 dollars. (Link) -??.com (Shandong.com in Chinese) is currently in auction at ?6,200 (Link) - ??????.com (Moscow.com in Russian) was verified as selling for $216,000 (Link) In addition...

Opportunities abound in our new fixed price IDNTools.com marketplace that was just launched. Many top 50 terms, such as "Flowers, Doctors, Hotels, Games" are listed at historically low fixed prices. Here's why you should take a serious look at investing in IDNs from the newly launched marketplace: *Quality. Many listed domains are category leaders ...

Jeremy Lin is the Chinese-American basketball sensation who has led the Knicks to five straight wins. Lin's underdog story began when he was an undrafted Harvard graduate who was sleeping on his brother's couch and was without a guaranteed contract. He rose rapidly to become the starting point guard for the New York Knicks and

As a recap of the biggest sales year for IDNs yet, below we review the top reported IDN sales in 2011. A snapshot of some of the largest confirmed sales, courtesy of IDNTools Sales Charts, are as follows: Notable, is that even in this emerging IDN market, these top 10 public sales grossed over $100,000.

Q: You are currently a co-founder of myTLD.com, a consulting and management firm for new TLDs. What services do you offer and what types of clients do you work with? A: At MyTLD we provide a wide range of services, from general domain advice; gTLD application writing, strategy, processing, and launch to companies, organizations, or

Q: You are CEO of Top Level Domain Holdings, CEO and founder of Minds + Machines, CEO of dotNYC, and Principal of Names@Work. Are there any other companies or organizations that you are currently a part of, which I failed to mention? A: That's about it, although I also act as an advisor to DomainsBot,

The .?? ccTLD has quickly become a juggernaut with over 900,000 domains registered during its first year. Now .?? is officially open to non-Russian registrants. Below please find the official press release issued today, which also includes some interesting stats: Starting on November 11 foreigners are allowed to register domain names in the Cyrilli...

I first learned about it by reading a Forbes article making the rounds (here) at the end of September. Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers ("ANA") authored the article, which is entitled "How to (Unnecessarily) Encumber The Internet And The Economy" and argued that the new gTLD program will be...

As IDNBlog has recently entered into its 3rd year, we've had our share of breaking news and great interviews (Schwartz, Schilling, Wrixon, Dam and Gomes), auctions, newsletters, and events, but I am proudest of our diverse reader-base. Below, is a snapshot of where our traffic comes from in order. Though I can't give traffic numbers,...

Chinese buyers bought a series of high-priced numeric domains in the last few months including 55.com for $2.3 million, 33.com for $358,000 and 11.com for $525,000. A nice recap of these sales and of the central brokering role played by 4.cn can be found here at DomainShane. Chinese businesses have historically been pushed to go

ICANN President and CEO, Rod Beckstom, launched the ICANN 42 meeting in Dakar, Sengal, with a rousing address that included ICANN's hope that IDNs will expand the base of users on the Internet. Beckstrom stated: "We can also bring more voices and more people to the Internet through Internationalized Domain Names. IDNs make it possible...

Will the majority of the estimated 4,000 new gTLD applications even be in English? The Gulf News and other leading international news outlets have issued breathless reports about the potential of IDN gTLDs. In a recent interview Rod Beckstrom, outgoing ICANN CEO, stated that he was "surprised to hear that ICANN may see as many

Given the surge in multilingual website development, it is no surprise that an online service that connects freelance translators to customers is growing rapidly. myGengo, billed as an oDesk for those in need of translation, has been featured on TechCrunch and GigaOm this past week. Atomico, a London-based venture capital firm and existing investor...

IDNTools is changing once again. We are winding up our droplist service given that Google has tightened its Google Adwords Keyword API usage terms, and we can no longer use it to rank dropping names in our droplist. We are instead working on another IDNTools service that we believe will add equal if not greater

For sports fans, the site ?????.org ("Battle" in Russian), should hold your interest. The organizers of an extreme sports competition, the multisport marathon, launched the site in August. In addition, the event has been heavily promoted on Russian television and the associated commercial prominently showcases the IDN: The actual event, which comme...

In January, Tina Dam announced her resignation from the post of Senior Director of IDNs at ICANN. Then, just this past week ICANN CEO, Rod Beckstrom suddenly announced his retirement with no replacement in sight. This past year there were huge strides in the IDN ccTLD program, highlighted by the successful launch of Russia's .??.

A critical tool in developing site traffic is Google Adwords. In short, it is a great way to place targeted ads for cheap. The problem has always been that Adwords was not fully IDN compatible. Instead of being able to post an IDN that you are advertising, such as ????.??, you previously had to use

Pat Kane, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Verisign Naming Services, and Andrew Alleman of Domain Name Wire recently discussed new IDNs in an article here. Notably, the article pronounces that with regards to full IDN .com aliasing "you can expect .com equivalents in Japanese, Hangul, Chinese, Cyrillic, Arabic, and Hebrew." Moreover, Ka...

ICANN's vote today approved new generic top level domain names (gTLDs), which may be applied for in any language. This vote not only paves the way for new domains like .Coke, .FedEx and .Target, but more significantly opens the door for internationalized domain names (IDNs) such as .???, .??? and .?????. As a direct result

1. Punycode. A domain like "xn--c1ajz8b.xn--p1ai" reads like gibberish, but it is just an alternative representation for an IDN, ????.??. Use a punycode converter to translate punycode into a native language and vice-versa. Every IDN has a punycode equivalent. The value of an IDN clearly comes from the brandable, typable and searchable native chara...

VeriSign's May letter to ICANN began by touting the rise of IDNs: "While in the past most users of the web communicated in English using Latin script, in 2011 27% use English, 23% use Chinese script, and of the top 10 languages found on the Net, fully half ? Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian and Korean

More than 25% of the top 20 sales from this week's DNJournal sales chart are not in English. The six non-English domains highlighted across the top 20 below include an IDN and span across many languages including French, German and Spanish. Even more telling is that this megatrend is not only visible at the top

The latest issue of Managing IP magazine featured a cover article entitled, "How to Take Advantage of IDNs." Managing IP magazine is the leading publication for intellectual property executives looking to build and maintain their IP portfolios. In this IDN themed issue, end-users are taking note of the importance of owning IDNs. Caroline Perriard o...

I bought bangqiu.asia, which means "baseball" in Mandarin Pinyin. SInce I registered this name before May 10, 2011, I will be able to apply for the IDN version ??.asia during the sunrise period, and well before the landrush. Similarly, if you'd like to have the opportunity to register a top IDN.asia name during the sunrise

What will happen with the aliasing of IDNs and how soon? This question loomed large for many readers of the latest April 15, 2011 Draft of the Applicant Guidebook for New gTLDs, where the treatment of existing IDNs did not receive much attention. A particular concern given the latest guidebook is that owners of IDN.com

Steve Clarke has been investing in IDNs since 2005. Steve is an active member of IDNForums and owns premium IDNs across many top languages. In addition, Steve just sold ??????.com for five figures. Enjoy the Q&A that follows. Q: Let's start by talking about your recent big Hindi sale. What was the domain name, and

A number of press releases noting the forthcoming .Asia IDN launch have been issued and describe the following: Pre-registration of .Asia domains with Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters has begun. Sunrise and landrush is based on a model where all applications received within their respective periods will be considered to be received at the sa...

The registry that runs the .???namespace is known as the Coordination Center. ?Recently, I asked Julia?Ovchinnikova of the Coordination Center to address IDNBlog regarding the risk that registrants may have their .???domains seized as a penalty for the RU-CENTER (aka nic.ru) registrar's ?mistakes, as speculated here. Julia's answer was reassuring, ...

Japan is trying to recover from the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami, which left over half a million people homeless. As Japan is in a state of crisis, here are some ways you can help donate: Visit Redcross.org or text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 from your phone. Visit UNICEF here Visit International Medical Corps

Registrants of auctioned .?? domains (".RF" in Russian) stand to collectively lose millions of dollars in development costs if their .?? domain names are seized and "refunded." The RU Coordination Center recently considered two proposals (among others) to discipline registrars who held unauthorized auctions for new .?? registrations rather than off...

DNJournal's latest sales report broke the news of yet another set of four figure IDN sales. A Thai IDN – ?????????.com (the name of the island "Koh Samet") sold for $3,999 via BocaNames.com A German IDN – Aktion?r.de (meaning "Shareholder") sold for $8,479 via Sedo.

Google has been building its IDN portfolio steadily and it has been increasingly noticeable in WHOIS searches. More recently, friends and colleagues have been pointing out Google's IDNs as follows. Courtesy of Andrew, I was made aware of Google's purchase of ??.tw, which is a Mandarin typo for Google. The main Mandarin term for Google...

Joshua Quittner, the tech journalist, originally registered McDonalds.com to prove a point. His registration of the fast-food goliath's domain name was a wake-up call for big companies that they needed to "get it" as to the importance of domain names and internet branding. While this was a prank of sorts (full article here), McDonald's sure...

Yesterday, the .ORG registry released Cyrillic IDNs which are now available for all to register. Many major registrars and dropcatchers heavily marketed this release including Dynadot and Pool.com. While unlocking the Cyrillic alphabet for .ORG domains means that valuable Russian .ORG domains can now be registered, also notable is that Bosnian, Bul...

Below please find a sneak peak into our latest IDN Newsletter.? Usually we only release the newsletter to our subscribers.? But if you are curious as to what type of names are for sale and at what prices, see below.? If think you might be interested in purchasing a name, please email [email protected] and we

John Kane is Vice President of Corporate Services at Afilias and a domain name industry veteran. John has previously served on the Afilias Board of Directors, he has played an integral role in Afilias' bid for .INFO in 2001, and now oversees many Afilias product lines including the Managed DNS Services business and IDN email.

John Tziviskos is a veteran domain investor, with one of the top premium portfolios of Greek IDNs. Recently in response to posts here and on Acro.net, John showed me his proof of revenue from the last year. I was impressed that a number of John's top Greek IDNs netted a total profit of $22,000, and

Edmon Chung is the CEO of the DotAsia Organisation, which is the registry operator for the ?.Asia? regional gTLD. Edmon has served on many ICANN and global IDN related committees, including technical and policy groups, that made it possible for the introduction of multilingual domain names and email addresses on the Internet. Q: What is

VeriSign's conference call last week was just a blip on the radar of most domainers, with the exception being DNW's coverage here. Meanwhile, large investment research firms have certainly taken note. VeriSign CEO Mark McLaughlin said on the call that he expects big things for the IDN gTLD market, and that he looks forward to

A bargain hunter might be allured by bargain basement prices for top Greek terms. However, the low prices you are seeing are likely there for a reason as pointed out today by an interesting post on Acro.net, which is definitely worth reading and discussing. Acro notes that Greeks don?t often type in Greek, and instead

Sedo released their sales results this week, and among their top weekly sales was ???.kr ("Casino" in Korean), which sold for $11,500. IDNs continue to make their presence known on the sales chart, and noteworthy is that Korean is not even considered a top IDN language. Interestingly, the .COM version — ???.com — also sold...

A few good friends started a casual email discussion as to why IDNs are valuable. Spurred on by their thoughtful responses, here are my thoughts on the matter: Pent-Up Demand Leading to Future Value: In many countries IDNs will displace Latin domains as the domains of choice since native language domains are preferred. As an