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Expanding Internet domain names in China

April 12, 2013 Staff Writer

An organization that coordinates Internet protocols is discussing the future of online domain names in Beijing. In addition to the familiar dot-com and dot-org suffixes, billions more new addresses could be hitting the web, including those using Chinese characters. China’s new domain name market is attracting experts and stakeholders from around the world. The non-governmental organization that oversees domain names, the Internet Committee for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is in Beijing to discuss allowing hundreds more suffixes, including those using Chinese characters rather than the western alphabets. With…

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U.S. Department of Commerce not supporting USPS objection to .mail top level domains

April 12, 2013 Staff Writer

Last week I wrote about how the United States Postal Service filed objections to all of the top level domain applications for .mail. It’s a big waste of money, as in order to prevail the USPS would have to show it has some sort of legal rights to the term “mail”. ICANN just published a letter from Lawrence Strickling, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the U.S. Department of Commerce, saying that it does not support the objections: Adapted from domainnamewire

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More Than 250M Domain Names Have Now Been Registered, Almost Half Are .Com And .Net

April 12, 2013April 12, 2013 Staff Writer

The total number of registered domain names passed 250 million in the last quarter of 2012, according to Verisign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief. More than 6 million domain names were registered in the fourth quarter of 2012, bringing the total to 252 million worldwide. The basic .com domains, of course, make up the majority of registered domain names. By the end of December users had registered 106.2 million .com domains, as well as 14.9 million .net addresses. The .com and .net top-level domains (TLDs) also accounted for the majority…

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ICANN picks Beijing to open first engagement center

April 12, 2013 Staff Writer

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will open its first new global engagement office in Beijing, China. “Engagement with China is not merely an option, we simply must engage at every level or we will lose our legitimacy,” said Fadi Chehade, ICANN CEO and President, in a statement Monday. He was making the announcement during the welcoming session at ICANN’s 46th public meeting in Beijing which will run through the rest of the week. adapted from Zdnet.com

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Google Announces Plans to Share the Internet at Crucial ICANN Summit

April 12, 2013 Staff Writer

names.co.uk reveals Google’s letter to ICANN saying .app and .search will be shared with the wider Internet community names.co.uk, one of the UK’s top domain name registrars, has today confirmed that Google will have to compromise on its share of generic Top Level Domains on the Internet, after attending today’s 46th ICANN meeting in Beijing (http://beijing46.icann.org). Google has previously made a play for some of the most valuable new Top Level Domains including .app, .search, .blog and .cloud. Last night it became clear that the Internet giant would have to…

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Computer outage in South Korea hits broadcasters and bank

March 20, 2013 Staff Writer

Seoul, South Korea (CNN) — South Korean police said Wednesday they are investigating a computer outage that is affecting servers at three leading television broadcasters and a large bank. One television station, YTN, reported that 500 of its computers had been disabled by the outage. Another, KBS, said that its internal networks had been “paralyzed,” but that the problem didn’t prevent it from broadcasting live. A third broadcaster, MBC, was also reportedly experiencing problems. Customers of Shinhan Bank are unable to log into the lender’s website at the moment, the…

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25 years on, Tim Berners-Lee wins ‘UK’s Nobel prize’ for siring the internet

March 19, 2013June 20, 2014 Staff Writer

Just the other day we were contemplating the tragic irony of the internet’s inventor Tim Berners-Lee having just 125,000 Twitter followers, while Jersey Shore’s trainwreck-in-chief ‘Snooki’ had over 6 million. Wasn’t it about time Sir Tim, who NBC’s presenters admitted they “hadn’t heard of” during the Olympic opening ceremony, got a little more recognition for his planet-altering creation of the world wide web? Well it turns out the judges for the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, our new answer to the Nobel prize, felt the same way and have…

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In youthful Africa, the Internet is mobile

March 18, 2013March 18, 2013 Staff Writer

After a week of business meetings in the cities of sub-Saharan Africa, we can say three things are new for the continent: a) The despotic leadership from the 1970s and 1980s is in decline, replaced by younger and more democratic leaders b) A huge youth demographic boom is underway, with a majority of the population being 25 or even under 20 years old c) Mobile phones are everywhere, and the Internet in Africa will be primarily a mobile one. Many of the older problems are still severe, including a lack…

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