.Asia to be IDN-ready by 2010

DotAsia has announced that it will be ready to accept IDN registrations on the .asia TLD in the second half of 2010. Because of the diverse nature of Asia’s languages and the wide variety of characters each uses, .asia will benefit immensely from IDN technology.

Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia, stated:

Asia is one of the most important regions for IDN. Asia is already the largest Internet marketplace with over 700 million users online. However, that represents only 18.5% penetration. IDN will bring the Internet to the rest of the people in Asia who do not speak English.

The IDN launch will include a sunrise period to ensure trademark holders can get register their domains before cybersquatters. DotAsia says it will be the first TLD registry to apply with ICANN for the use of IDNs.

Photo | clix

Domain sales up by 15%

While economic activity in most industries is stagnant, the domain market continues to show growth. A report recently released by a large domain auction house shows a 15% increase in its sales.

Other auction sites don’t always report their growth, so it’s hard to tell if this increase has occurred across the board. Given that the registration base of most TLDs and ccTLDs is increasing, I think its fair to say that there has been universal growth in sales.

The average name sale price has jumped 37%, too– from £1,031.17 to £1,412. This heavy market growth is the result of increased speculation among investors.

Photo | svilen001

What's the point of .africa?

This week, a group of African communication ministers met in Johannesburg, South Africa to discuss the creation of a .africa TLD. The thing is, does the continent really need its own extension?

Maybe further down the road there will be a use for it, but considering Africa is the most unwired continent in the world, what’s the point? Instead of worrying about a regional TLD, countries in the area should be concerned with improving their own extensions and infrastructure.

Finally, “.africa” is too long for an extension. Why not .afr or .afca?

ICANN considering .post domain

With so many people choosing email over traditional snail mail these days, it seems as though post offices are feeling a bit left out in the Internet age. The U.N.’s Universal Postal Union hopes to change that with the creation of a .post domain.

The gTLD would be available to any postal service provider around the globe. The UPU submitted an application for .post in 2004. This week, ICANN gave the UPU approval to sponsor the extension.

Before the name can go live, however, approval is also necessary from the Board of Directors. After ICANN’s meeting in Seoul on October 30, a pubic comments process will begin. If no major obstacles are encountered in these two phases, we could see a .post domain soon.

e.biz rakes in $66,001 at auction

The .biz registry, in conjunction with a prominent domain auction website, auctioned off all single-letter .biz domains this week. The highest sale price of the lot belongs to e.Biz, which yielded a stunning £41,240 ($66,001 USD) after ending with 20 bids.

Here are some other big sales:

1.biz- $32,003
a.biz- $10,099
b.biz- $10,005
d.biz- $26,110
e.biz- $63,001
m.biz- $15,611
w.biz- $13,500

As far as TLDs go, .biz has never really received much attention. While relatively high compared to average domain sale prices, the .biz auction results are low compared to what one would expect to see if single-letter domains of a more popular TLD were auctioned off.

Source | Domain Name Wire

Domain registrations grow amid recession

Despite the recession, domain names continue to grow. Though the number of TLD registrations last quarter was only 1% more than the quarter before, compared to last year, new registrations have gone up by 9%. This growth easily outpaces most industries.

ccTLDs also saw similar growth, increasing by 1% this quarter and 14% since this time year year. The most popular domain by far is still .com, however. Next in line is China’s .cn extension followed by Germany’s .de.

It will be interesting to see how the new gTLDs affect the growth of current TLDs and ccTLDs. It could lead to a decrease if the system catches on, but my guess is this won’t happen. It will probably have little if any impact on current extensions, for now, at least.

Photo | vilen001

Yahoo seeks to get hands on Yahoo.tel

Internet giant Yahoo recently filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum, arguing that it has rights to Yahoo.tel. The domain was registered on March 23, 2009 by David Blanco of Oviedo, Spain.

Yahoo will likely win the dispute. Given the company’s vast web presence and many trademarks, how can the current owner justify his use of the name?

What Yahoo should be concerned with is why it didn’t register the name in the first place. The .tel TLD, like all other new extensions, mandated a sunrise period where trademark holders could register their names before the mainstream public. Obtaining the domain then rather than paying the National Arbitration Forum fees to get the name now would have saved the company quite a bit of money.

Source | Domain News
Photo | Flickr

Free domain offers aren't all they're cracked up to be

One perk offered with web hosting packages these days is a free domain. If you sign up for several months, many providers are willing to register any major TLD for you.

This may look like a good way to save money at first glance, but read the fine print. Most web hosts who offer this sort of deal have a clause in their terms stating that if you cancel the hosting account, you must pay them the yearly registration fee. This seems reasonable enough until you discover providers will often charge as much as £15 for a domain.

Your best bet is to register your domain with a registrar unaffiliated with your web host. While the alternative would most likely be perfectly safe, why needlessly put all your eggs in one basket? If there is ever a major technical or billing issue, having your domain elsewhere not only makes switching easier, but also gives you more bargaining power with the host.

Photo | Flickr

.CAT turns four amid great success

The Catalan language domain, .cat, celebrated its fourth birthday today. When the suffix was launched in 2005, critics argued there was not a sufficient market base for it to succeed. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

As of this writing, there are some 36,000 .cat domains registered and 80 million Catalan pages indexed in Google. The extension is so successful that it is preferred by speakers of the language over .com.

Catalonia is an autonomous region in northern Spain. There are 7.7 million Catalan speakers worldwide, mostly in Spain and southern France.

The success of .cat will likely aid proponents of other regional extensions like .nyc and .bayern.

More domain extensions to be IDN-ready

Yesterday, Bulgeria made news when it announced the availability of its .bg extension in Cyrillic. Now, two more extensions are stepping up to the IDN plate: .eu and Russia’s .rf.

Because .eu is a TLD intended for all of Europe, plans are in place to support alphabets for 23 different languages starting December 10. This will make it the most linguistically diverse domain extension in the world.

Not to be left out of the picture, Russia will begin accepting Cyrillic registrations next summer on the .rf extension, a previously unused domain for the Russian Federation.

Source | Domain Name News